Envoy Says Canada Can’t Fix U.S. Med Woes
WASHINGTON — Canada can’t solve the U.S. problem of providing low-cost prescription drugs, its ambassador said Monday in an interview with The Associated Press.
Ambassador Frank McKenna said the Canadian government felt caught in the middle in the current debate in Washington over whether to expand the ability to import prescription drugs from Canada, where they often sell for less than in the United States.
Various bills have been introduced into Congress to permit the importation of lower-cost prescription drugs from Canada and elsewhere but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has said it cannot vouch for the safety of drugs purchased from Canada.
McKenna dismissed concerns about the safety of drugs sold in Canada, saying Canada’s regulatory regime was tougher than the U.S. one. But he did concede that companies from all over the world could be using Canadian Internet sites to sell drugs into the United States, an activity that was not as easy to police.
He said the debate over whether to expand drug sales from Canada into the United States masked a bigger issue of how prescription drug prices should be set in the United States.
"Don’t think you are doing any favors to us by trying to open the United States market for Canadian drugs because you are not," he said in the interview. "If you are doing that, you are doing it for your own reasons and you are avoiding dealing with the fundamental question of your drug pricing."
Last month, House Democrats outlined a health care agenda that would permit the importation of prescription drugs from Canada and other nations, subject to safety regulations, and would give Medicare authority to negotiate lower prices with drug manufacturers in this country.
McKenna said the Canadian government intended to make it very clear in the debate over drug imports that Canada’s drug supply posed no health risks.
"We don’t want the reputation of our pharmaceutical sector sullied by attacks from the United States of America saying that reimported drugs aren’t safe," he said.
McKenna has only be Canada’s ambassador to Washington for three months, arriving at a delicate time in bilateral relations after the government of Prime Minister Paul Martin rejected the Bush administration’s offer to be part of a North American missile defense shield.
The ambassador said he and Bush discussed the issue during their first meeting, and he said the president understood the political pressures that influenced Martin’s decision.
Touching on other subjects in a wide-ranging interview, McKenna said it was important to make sure that disputes over such issues as Mad Cow disease and softwood lumber did not adversely impact other issues.
He said Canada would not would not close its border to U.S. beef imports despite last week’s announcement that a new case of mad cow disease may have been discovered in the United States. He contrasted Canada’s reaction to the situation in the United States, where live beef imports from Canada are still banned because of opposition from what he called a "rogue group" of U.S. ranchers.
The U.S. border was scheduled to reopen in March to live cattle shipments from Canada, but a federal judge in Billings, Mont., ordered it to be kept closed at the request of American ranchers suing to block Canadian cattle imports.
"The judge’s injunction is costing billions and billions of dollars and thousands of lost jobs," McKenna said because workers at U.S. beef packing plants are being laid off while employment at Canadian plants is increasing.
On another issue, McKenna predicted – based on discussions with the Bush administration – that the U.S. would drop a proposal to require all travelers to show passports in order to cross the border between the two nations. Today, U.S. and Canadian travelers only need a driver’s license to cross the border.
"It’s become clear to me that both sides of the border think it would be a very damaging change," he said, adding, "This would cause real havoc to the economy." Canada is the largest U.S. trading partner, with $1.2 billion worth of goods crossing the border daily.
On the divisive issue of softwood lumber, McKenna said talks were continuing to try to reach a negotiated settlement that would lift the average 27.5 percent punitive tariffs the United States is imposing on softwood lumber imports from Canada.
The United States contends the tariffs are justified because the Canadian government has been improperly subsidizing its lumber industry, allowing Canada to dump lumber in this country at unfairly low prices.
Part of the dispute involves the fact that under a U.S. law known as the Byrd amendment the higher tariffs on Canadian lumber, which amount to $4.5 billion currently, can be paid to the U.S. timber industry, a practice the World Trade Organization has ruled illegal.
McKenna said it would be "totally unacceptable" for the U.S. lumber companies to get that revenue. He predicted that both sides will eventually reach a negotiated settlement. "We will get there. It is a question of when and how," he said.
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On the Net:
U.S. Trade Representative: http://www.ustr.gov Â
Canadian Embassy: http://www.canadianembassy.org Â
Video from the AP interview is available at: