Canada: Province's "Secret Pact With Drug Firms"

While publicly opposing Canada's C-91 federal drug patent law amendments two years ago, the New Democratic Party premier of Ontario, Bob Rae, secretly accepted the end of compulsory licensing, and permitted letters bearing his signature and giving drug multinationals very significant concessions to be partly drafted by the companies themselves, says a new book.

Rae Days: The Rise and Follies of the NDP, by Toronto Star journalist Thomas Walkom, says that while federal NDP leader Audrey MacLaughlin had been counting on the powerful support of the Ontario government against C-91, "what the federal party did not know was that, on October 20, 1992, the Rae cabinet had secretly capitulated. Partly in the hope of winning 150 new drug company jobs in Metro Toronto, it had agreed to accept the elimination of compulsory licensing." No public announcement was made of this change of policy.

Nor was it widely known how intimately involved Mr Rae had been in the negotiations. Mr Walkom says the Premier personally promised in a letter to Eli Lilly that its antibiotic Ceclor (cefaclor) would remain on the Ontario Drug benefit Plan for a further two years, in return for the creation of 150 new jobs at the company's Scarborough plant, new jobs which were in fact never created. The C$1.2 billion ($88.5 million) Drug Benefit Plan, which provides medicines free to people aged over 65 and those on welfare, represents about 40% of the Ontario drug market.