There's a wonderful little story for you! And in perfect keeping with the theme of this post, it took me several tries to post a link to the story here on my blog. No vids and now no links to stories? Is this 2015 or 1984? Anyway, it seems American drug company Eli Lilly wants to sue the government of Canada for 500 million bucks. That's a cool half billion to be paid by the taxpayers, that is, those Canadians who are poor and Pavlovian enough to think they have to pay them, NOT the actual government, who are the real culprits. No, the politicians just create the expenses, they don't pay them. This obliviousness to the concept of accountability is one of many ways Canadian politicians are a lot like children. What did they do this time? Remember NAFTA? Yeah well in it there is a section, ironically called "Chapter 11," in which foreign investors are provided protection from expropriation of their investments so the CAN'T go bankrupt. What that means is if Canada does anything that will affect the projected profitability of a foreign company, like pass a law that somehow limits said company's operations, that company is entitled to civil retribution.
What a sweetheart of a deal for the company! Even if the product your company deals in is found faulty and discontinued, you still pick up a paycheck. And who decides on what your FUTURE profits might have been?
It's a stupid deal. It's one of a great many stupid deals our governments have been forcing on a public who, by and large, would look at the deal and say, "Speaking of drugs, are you on some right now?" But let's look at the details and see just how stupid this is, shall we?
The drugs in question are 1. Straterra and 2. Zyprexa. Yup, sufficiently mediciney sounding names. Straterra is an ADHD drug and Zyprexa is for schizophrenia. I certainly don't want to be the judge hearing a case on the efficacy of a drug for either of these conditions of the mind that by their very nature are behavioural and therefore easy to fake or misdiagnose. But that's what happened. Due to the insistence of generic, (cheap), drug company Novopharm, who wanted a piece of this placebo action, these drugs were put on trial. And apparently Canada has stricter standards than a lot of other countries pertaining to such drugs. Canadians want them to work.
When the inventors of the two drugs applied for the patents they said or implied that they were superior treatments for the two mental conditions. Canadian judges ruled otherwise. Well of course Eli Lilly was outraged at the standards of Canada expecting pharmaceutical companies to supply people with drugs that actually WORK. Here is their defence and I'm not making this up, "Canada has an "elevated standard" when it comes to demonstrating the utility of a new drug and doesn't use the widely accepted threshold that demands only that patent holders show their invention has a "scintilla" of utility." See in other juris dictions, nobody was smart enough to notice that the Emperor was naked.
So for Straterra, Eli Lilly is seeking 100 million and for Zyprexa, (ruled on in 2009 and appealed in 2011, the very year the patent was to expire), they are seeking 400 million. 400 million for less than a year! There must be a LOT of schizophrenics in Canada! What makes you type that, Dave? Heh heh. Or maybe that drug is just a lot more expensive. Who knows how they come up with those numbers? It doesn't matter much to the government cuz they're not paying. The Canadian people are. Well, the REAL Canadian people...
On a related note, here's another story. Only this time I think it has to do with FIPA and not NAFTA. Remember the latest of the stupid, stupid deals our government signed? FIPA. I warned you about it when it happened back in October. We have already seen signs of it like the recently negotiated ability for Chinese to do business in Canada in their own currency without suffering multiple exchanges from Canadian to American then to Chinese again. Wasn't that nice of us! That was shoved down our throats while Stephen Harpoon was in China and could take no heat for it. Again pundits sang the praises of it but the only effects on the average Canadian will be higher taxes and more cheaply and easily exploited natural resources resulting in the inevitable deterioration of Canada's natural beauty.
With FIPA the Chinese got the very same kind of protection the Americans got with NAFTA. So if Canada passes environmental laws limiting fracking or protecting the country from non-stop oil spillage that pipelines will lead to, the Chinese can just sue us for projected profits. I remember all kinds of columnists and media pundits saying things like, "Don't fear the FIPA," when it happened assuring people that the process of litigation isn't worth it and would not be entered into but they no doubt said the same about NAFTA and look where we are now. And I have encountered no group of people more fond of exploiting Canadian litigious shortcomings than the Chinese.
This story hasn't much to do with the Chinese but it's just another nudge from our government so that we don't forget about FIPA, much as we'd like to. That said, the regulation of the internet will make the already slow and expensive Canadian internet slower and more expensive. Who do you think will pay for the internet police, Rogers? Bell? Hah! They didn't get those giant buildings in every major Canadian city by UNDERcharging customers! And with all the bandwidth the internet censors will usurp, we won't be able to download or stream anything anyway on our shitty 100-dollar-a-month internet! I have been to China and used the regulated internet there. It sucks. Just another way Canada is becoming more like China every day. Thanks Crime Minister Stephen Carradine! (a white guy trying to act Chinese. (Kung Fu (the TV series (David Carradine (young people, Google it!))))).
And please, dear reader, allow me a minor digression. Here it is World Jr. Hockey season again and more and more people have been making that part of their Christmas/New Year's holiday tradition. I have looked forward to Boxing Day for years for just that reason. I try to go to TSN.ca and watch the live streams of the games the way I have for many years now while overseas. What do I find? Sorry, you need a Rogers or Bell username or password to access this service. Well there you have the kind of companies Rogers and Bell are! EVERYbody in Canada has cable and will watch the games on it. The live stream on TSN is for the Canadians who are overseas. Overseas maybe because Canada is just getting shittier and shittier. Rogers and Bell just gave all of us a big middle finger there. I recently read in the National Post of Canada how TSN has made the World Jrs. a real part of Canadian culture. And here we are in an age when more than half of the people in Canada weren't born there, more Canadians than ever are working in some other country and we NEED our culture more than ever. Does Bell or Rogers give half a damn? No, they're obviously struggling companies who have to think of profits more than stupid things like Canadian culture. PLEASE somebody start a pirate cable company in Canada! Or maybe it would be good to see the Sony hackers bring down Bell or Rogers or both. They're just too big for their britches.
So I go to Wiziwig to get some live streaming World Jrs. Not as good as TSN and sometimes not available in English but guess what I find there. "Sorry, our site has been shut down by Big Brother." We are losing maybe the last bastion of true freedom in the world! The internet! This year you get a fine for downloading a movie, next year you buy a DVD and watch it at home with a guest who paid the manufacturers, producers, actors, and everyone associated with that motion picture NOTHING, and you are dragged out to the newly built stocks and given 20 lashes. We are progressing backwards, folks. Anyway, I found a Russian site and a couple other sites that have worked okay. I am thankful for people who share what they are paying for! They pay for cable and upload the program for free so those overseas or too poor can watch. Modern day Robin Hoods and the cable companies are Sheriffs of Nottingham.
But back to the topic, that's the problem with business these days and the reason they can do all this crap NObody wants them to. They are just too big. Imagine, just imagine if a big, giant oil conglomerate, or a group of them combined, decided that they wanted to mine for oil up in northern Canada where the nature is still pristine and habitats and ecosystems still remain fairly intact. In comparison to most of Canada they are relatively untouched. These massive oil companies don't want to waste any of their truckloads of money doing things the environmentally friendly way, they have decided to just, oh I dunno, sink some dynamite down to the ocean floor and explode it and see if any oil bubbles to the surface. Okay that's just an extreme example I pulled right out of my arse, but imagine if that happened. What could Canada do? Well first we'd need a whole bunch of people to know about it. That's tough when the oil companies buy off the media. But it could still happen if we keep our internet free. Then we'd need to make some petitions and stir up some moral outrage and after years and years of lobbying finally convince a corrupt government and a glacially slow legislature to outlaw oil mining with dynamite. But during all that time, boom, boom, boom! And then after that time, pursuant to the NAFTA and/or FIPA regulations, the offending oil companies would have civil recourse. They could sue Canada, (you and me), for losses that probably would have accrued if they had been able to do business... blah blah blah.
I keep asking this but how much more like China is Harper going to make Canada? You're saying, "Come on, Dave. You're being outrageous. That'll never happen." At least you're hoping. You might even be saying, "If something like that happened for SURE Canadians would revolt! I mean that's just ridiculous! Hell I would revolt if that happened! But it'll never happen." Well guess what, I DIDN'T just pull that outta my arse, it's happening. Are you gonna revolt? Are you gonna do something about it? Okay, now, in true Canadian style you're saying, "Well hold on here, maybe instead of revolting we could write some strongly worded letters or start a petition or march or do nothing and stay home and watch our expensive cable TV and surf our slow, Big Brother monitored internet."
I don't even know who it is with this crazy idea. It could be an American company or it could be a Chinese company or it might even be a company from somewhere else. Doubtful but... Does it matter? I am hoping to return to Canada someday and retire. I really hope it won't be as big a shock as it was the last time I returned. But I have this funny feeling it'll be even bigger. Canadians are being bullied by bureaucracy, Big Brother, banks and the boys on Bay Street. Right now there is something called the TPP that American politicians are trying to fast track into law. It's pretty much the same thing that has left Canadians helpless and will all but certify that the interests of the people are undermined in favour of amoral capitalism. IF this gets squashed the way it should, then there's a possibility that countries that follow the lead of America, like Canada, might smarten up and squash any similar situations. I don't know how likely that is but I sure hope SOMEhow Canada can see how the country is going down the crapper and do something about it. I'm just getting really really tired of seeing Canada fall apart.
I can't even watch the World Jrs! Well, yes I can, but I have to be really resourceful. Anyway, I feel like I'm cheering for the Canadian people even more than I'm cheering for our World Jr. squad. I have infinitely more hope for the hockey team than the people, let me say that right now. I think Canada will win the gold in a walk this year! Said that BEFORE they nuked the Danes 8-0. But I have so much less faith in our people! All I ever hear is bad news about Canada getting more and more corporate and Orwellian. I sure hope we can snap outta this soon! Before it's too late.
GO CANADA GO!
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