Transcript of News Conference Following Bilateral Meeting Between Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty & Manitoba Premier Gary Doer

TRANSCRIPT OF NEWS CONFERENCE FOLLOWING BILATERAL MEETING BETWEEN MINNESOTA GOVERNOR TIM PAWLENTY & MANITOBA PREMIER GARY DOER-November 5, 2003

ROOM 200 MANITOBA LEGISLATIVE BUILDING

2:00 P.M. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2003

Premier Doer: Governor, we welcome you to your northern neighbours, your friends in Manitoba. Of course visiting us is very important. I think 250,000 Manitobans visit your great state every year and, of course, we have a number of your citizens, comparable amounts, visiting Manitoba every year and the friendships that we have across the borders with our citizens I certainly think were manifested with our meeting here today.

I hope the meetings went well on the safety of pharmaceuticals here, the visit that you had here in Winnipeg, in Manitoba. We also had a number of other items on our joint agenda.

One, Governor Pawlenty has been very, very interested in and made a priority, the biosciences and the future of biotechnology and biosciences in the state of Minnesota. He has been a leading Governor on developing that industry in his state and we have agreed to take advantage of our great connections across the borders. Our thirst for knowledge and our knowledge economies to have a bioscience corridor between Manitoba and Minnesota and to have a joint promotion in San Francisco at the next World Congress on Biotechnology and bioscience. We think working together we can share information and knowledge. Not only do we have Corey Koskie from Manitoba playing third base for the Twins, we also have Doctor Smith from Selkirk who is head of the Mayo Clinic working with St. Boniface Research Centre and that, of course, allows us to work more effectively together.

I have had an opportunity to talk to the Governor before, and again today, about the BSE situation. I want to thank the Legislators in Minnesota and in North Dakota for their resolution on BSE and having a strong decision on the basis of science. Of course there but for the grace of God go any one of our cows on either side of the border and to make these decisions on the basis of science for consumers is very, very, very important.

We certainly share water and water stewardship between Manitoba and Minnesota and North Dakota. We will be having an IFMI meeting sometime later in the year on flood mitigation and upper-basin storage of water, but I want to thank the Governor for his very strong letter to the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, on the issue of international treaties on water. His strong letter to Colin Powell I think is very, very important for Canadians and Americans on the integrity of treaties and the processes that should be taken through the International Joint Commission. So, again, welcome to Manitoba and thank you very, very much for joining us here at our Legislative building. Thank you.

Governor

Pawlenty: I appreciate that. It is indeed a pleasure and an honour to be here with one of the ten sexiest men in Canada [interjection by Doer: "that was a long time ago Governor"],

but the hospitality has been tremendous and the help and assistance that the Premier and his team has provided to us over the months that we have been in office on a whole range of issues is very much appreciated, and the relationship between Manitoba and Minnesota is very important from a whole number of perspectives. They are one of our most steadfast friends and we very much appreciate that relationship and that friendship.

*Transcript prepared from Manitoba information services audio tape.

As the Premier mentioned we did talk about a number of issues of mutual concern to Manitoba and to Minnesota. We are very excited about announcing this bioscience corridor between Manitoba and Minnesota. We intend to amend or update the existing Memorandum of Understanding between Manitoba and Minnesota on a number of topics, but we are going to include in the updated memorandum a commitment to this bioscience corridor.

One of the things that we would like to kick-off this new partnership in the biosciences area is developing or at least exploring the possibility of joint research efforts or collaborations between institutions in Minnesota and in Manitoba. That has happened to a certain extent between the Mayo Clinic and St. Boniface here in Manitoba, that relates to human health, but we believe there is great potential, additional potential in other areas to expand those kinds of relationships.

For example, Manitoba, the University of Manitoba and other institutions here have a great interest in how biotechnology might be applied to food or food processing or nutraceuticals. At the University of Minnesota, the St. Paul Campus, Cargill Dow has great interest in those issues as well, so we would like to explore in a more formal way an inventory of what has been undertaken in those institutions and to see how we can collaborate to the mutual benefit of both. So we are excited about that.

We had a very good discussion about water issues as well, a whole range of water issues, and I think the Premier and I are in general agreement and understanding on many of those issues.

We also talked about trade and tourism and the obvious exchange that takes place with respect to tourism between our respective citizens and residents, but we also like the idea, perhaps down the road, of looking at the concept of one vacation-two countries to see if we cannot leverage visitors from other countries who might visit both Manitoba and Minnesota.

We just had a very good discussion overall about the upcoming Grey Cup, hockey and a number of other things but we are so pleased, Mr. Premier, with your hospitality and your friendship and we are grateful for you extending that to us today.

Premier Doer: Well, thank you very much, thank you very much. Do we want to take questions first and then we have a more pleasant sweater exchange? I had to put an enemy football team sweater on the other day, but we have a more pleasant exchange in a minute.

Reporter: I guess Premier I really would like to discuss the top-ten ranking.

Premier Doer: Were you on that list Richard? I nominated you last year. I put his name in, he is still bitter.

[inaudible bantering]

Reporter: The FDA, of course, has asked the Canadian government, provinces, be tightened up and I believe the quote was not wanting Canada to get into a whirlpool of internet trade. Wanted to know, obviously, with the new opening, the expansion of the internet pharmacy today what are you doing, you know, to adhere to the FDA standard, and what did you think of it?

Premier Doer: Well I think the people of Minnesota, I have been in this Legislative building where busload after busload of seniors have come here to visit the Legislative buildings as they are purchasing pharmaceutical products here in Canada so I think the Governor certainly recognizes the affordability issues relative to his citizens and I know that that is very important.

Canada, when it agreed to the international NAFTA trade agreement, negotiated the provision to have a regulated pricing system as many other countries do to ensure that we could use the ability of all Canadians to get prices at a more affordable rate. Now we do not have the lowest rates of drug costs in the world or pharceuticals in the world, but certainly people that speak with their bus trips and their consumer decisions, certainly are speaking themselves with every decision that they make. So I guess to paraphrase a former American politician, I would say to the FDA tear down those walls, Sir.

Perhaps Governor Pawlenty wants.....................

Reporter: [inaudible]

Governor

Pawlenty: No, I don't, if I could just elaborate on that and then I would be happy to answer your question as well. You know, there is a lot of confusion, as we mentioned this morning, with internet purchases involving other countries, or even purchases within the United States that don't get as much scrutiny as perhaps they should. As we look towards purchasing medicines from Canada through a system where the state government would identify the entities that would be involved in Canada and give them, you know, kind of a Good Housekeeping stamp of approval, there is no evidence to indicate that there is a safety problem with those established pharmacies that are complying with Canadian regulations and protocols. There is just no evidence to suggest that and there's a lot of people who are trying to confuse issues with off-label drugs or what's going on on the Internet and in other countries, and it's just not fair or accurate to say that as applied to Canada.

Reporter: [inaudible]

Governor

Pawlenty: The information received this morning was terrific and really came away from that presentation, obviously we have to finish our due diligence and make sure that all holds up, but based on the information received this morning it looks very promising and I come away with a great deal of reassurance.

Reporter: Have you heard anything from the Premier of our province about your state using drugs from our province.

Governor

Pawlenty: I did not talk to the Premier about his personal views on that. I know within Canada there's, you know, potential concerns about how this impacts Canadians and we want to be respectful of that. In fact we want to help with that. I told the folks we met with this morning, on my own behalf and the behalf of other governors, we would be happy to come and make sure, lend voice to making sure that Canada gets treated fairly in this as well.

Premier Doer: I think the real issue for us as leaders is to be with our consumers and so if there's other obstacles that we have to deal with, other challenges we have to deal with, I think we're trying to show leadership for our consumers, the public we serve, and that really, really is the challenge for all of us.

Reporter: [inaudible]...Presidential election this year ......

Governor

Pawlenty: Well, that's an interesting question. I, you know there's people with sharply different views in the United States over this issue and there's a great political appetite I think to do something on prescription medicines. There's hope as there has been for twenty years that they're actually going to do something in the Medicare area that would be a great advance and a great piece of progress. However, even if you have a medicare benefit if the price is going up, you know, fifteen or twenty percent a year for the prescription medicines, it's not going to be too long down the road where we're going to be right back in the soup again. So I think the whole issue gets some momentum broadly because it's an election, coming into an election year.

There's a lot of opposition to this in the United States coming from the pharmaceutical industry primarily but I think we're going to win. It's just a matter of time. The current system is going to fall. Now it's just a question of when and where and how. There's some of us who have the opportunity to help lead that and maybe kick the pillars a little bit and accelerate its reformatting.

Reporter: And what does that mean, of course, [inaudible].. you being one of the Republican Governors that's started this....

Governor

Pawlenty: I don't know what that means. It's an opportunity to lead. I feel really good and strong about this issue and my position on it. All of the arguments that have been raised in opposition, again mostly from the pharmaceutical industry, I think if you just look at them one by one you can knock them down. People will listen to the facts and I think they're starting to and I think you're going to see more governors, more mayors, more people coming on board to approach like this and other approaches as well.

Reporter: What's your take on the U.S. government's characterization of the Canadian system as being fraught with danger for American consumers and unsafe and possibly counterfeit drugs out there [inaudible] of a diplomatic incident here?

Premier Doer: Well, I, maybe that's the word from Washington or fears in Ottawa, here we, here we are there's people in Ontario and Manitoba and Minnesota on this beautiful Lake of the Woods where we've had seniors come here for years from Minnesota to Manitoba, as they say bus loads through this Legislative building. The Governor is trying to make it easier for more people, more consumers in his state and just go with what the people want. The people are smart enough to make sure that their drugs are safe. The Governor is making, doing his due diligence, but the people are speaking with their feet, they're speaking with their bus tours, they're speaking with their purchasing decisions and they're speaking through their leaders with the Governor here today.

Reporter: [inaudible] in the characterization of the Canadian system, in this way?

Premier Doer: The facts always prevail. The people in their individual decisions always override rhetoric.

Reporter: [inaudible]

Premier Doer: Well, of course, in Canada, and this is an interesting safeguard for United States, not only did we negotiate a regulated drug environment. I mean, the first question is why are the drugs lower, the costs lower here? Because when we went from a twelve-year generic or twelve-year patent law protection to twenty years there was a provision put in place for a national regulatory framework in Canada. But part of that framework also includes that if you have a company denying supply, generic drugs can be sold less than the period of time under the drug patent laws.

The real issue here is how do we deal with an issue that the prices are escalating in a major way in the United States even moreso than Canada, how do we get more affordable drugs for those people who really need it in a safe way. That's the real.[inaudible - Reporter interjecting with question] Beg your pardon?

Reporter: [inaudible]

Premier Doer: Well I think the bottom line is we have some safeguards in the Canadian system. There is escalating costs and consumer demand in the American system. The best way to solve this is for not just governors and premiers to deal with this but to look way beyond just the existing situation with the NAFTA trade agreement and to make it more, I think, consumer-friendly on all the pharmaceuticals in North America.

Governor

Pawlenty: I think, if I might just add to that in my own view, I'm certainly not speaking for the Premier, but in my own view the actions and threats of the pharmaceutical industry in this regard is reprehensible. They started with all these other allegations including safety and now those are kind of vapourizing as the facts come out and so now they are threatening, just explicit about it. It is not a shortage because of lack of production, they are just threatening flat out on national television in the United States that they might retaliate against Canadian pharmacies by withholding supply.

If they do that and there's no evidence yet that they are doing that, and we were assured this morning that is not the case yet. But if it were to become the case I would hope and I would strongly encourage legal actions against the pharmaceutical industry to prohibit that, both through trade agreements and NAFTA and potentially others, as well as state and federal in the United States, anti-trust laws, they prohibit that, they can't do it in my opinion. Their threats of that are reprehensible and it's going to further alienate the American public against an industry that is already not very popular.

Reporter: What kind of assurances did you get this morning that the system here is safer[inaudible] what can you take back there to tell people that it is safe?

Governor

Pawlenty: Well, we had a review and some documents to support a comparison between the FDA regulatory and safety framework and its counterpart in Canada. We were told that the Canadian system meets or exceeds the FDA's requirements and expectations for safety. We also learned that there are a number of Canadian, federal and provincial and industry protocols and accreditations that could be used for benchmarks to assure a state or United States' consumers of safety procedures. As you look at all of that it appears to be meeting or exceeding the safety standards in the United States, and so I came away reassured and excited about moving forward with this idea.

Reporter: [inaudible]

Governor

Pawlenty: Well, for our part we hope to have this plan that we've announced, it involves a number of things but one piece of it is a Web site that Minnesota consumers could access that would list Canadian pharmacies and prices and also generic alternatives that people could use to know that we've screened these entities, that they're reliable, they're trustworthy, that they're credible and then they could use that to place their orders. Personally they would place their orders for personal use.

Reporter: [inaudible]

Premier Doer: Well as the Governor said there's laws. There are other ways to deal with the whole issue of supply with the existing laws in Canada on the provision of generic drugs for example and the timeframe necessary under the patent drug legislation that was enacted to deal with the WTO provision from twelve to twenty years. And I think that, as I say, the people of Minnesota have been coming here. I can tell you hundreds of buses that I've witnessed right at the front step, they have been coming to Manitoba for years, for the last number of years and this is just to, the Governor is taking leadership to make it easier for his consumers in Minnesota but the borders are not, we don't have a Berlin Wall here across the Minnesota-Manitoba border. Nor would we want one in a North American trading environment, so I think that if we do believe in trade and fair trade we should continue the practice of trade and that pharmaceuticals should be part of that trade.

Reporter: [inaudible] a Canadian internet or mail-order internet pharmacy should be regulated and they don't get sucked into this horrible whirlpool of internet [inaudible] What would you say to that, to the FDA that is urging that type of regulation, that type of control?

Premier Doer: I feel that we have regulations here that are very safe for the consumers here and they are very safe for consumers elsewhere. I mean, we've got an environment here, and I mention Lake of the Woods, we've always had the ability to have a doctor in Kenora on Lake of the Woods prescribe a drug, an individual pharmaceutical product to an individual living in Buffalo Point. We've always had that capacity before without all these, quote, statements of opposition.

Governor

Pawlenty: No, this has already happened, as the Premier has mentioned, with people buses and mouse clicks and mail-order, and even within the United States there are mail-order pharmacies and, for example, yesterday I was at the Veteran's Hospital in Minneapolis. They send out over 4,000 prescriptions by mail a day out of there within the United States. So these procedures are not some, you know, alien concept. It's just taking what we think are established, reliable procedures and applying it to a relationship with Canada. We can do it. It's already being done.

Reporter: [inaudible]

Premier Doer: Well, I don't have the total numbers but I think our visit today was to talk about how this industry is safe, how the companies here are regulated and safe for the consumers that he represents. The industry has a number of people working in it, approximately 2,000 people, but as I say before the industry started there were people coming here in buses and they arguably would be helping our, quote, tourism industry by staying and maybe helping other industries in the hospitality industry in Manitoba. So we do have, there is a demand and that demand has been met in the past with direct visits and is being met now in the present and in the future with the internet technology.

Reporter: How supportive are you of this [inaudible] somewhere down the road?

Premier Doer: I think the real issue is providing people with more affordable pharmaceutical products and that's the real fundamental issue that the Governor's leading, and in the private sector here in Manitoba. That need is being met. It's being met in a number of different ways but this is one of the ways and this is certainly part of the visit.

Reporter: [inaudible]

Premier Doer: Well if you support trade and free trade, and you support individual entrepreneurial decisions would have taken place, you certainly...... people saw a market and are meeting that niche.

Reporter: What kind of economic benefit is there for Minnesota?

Governor

Pawlenty: You better come over here before they.... From Minnesota the economic benefit, amongst other things, is going to be significant savings for Minnesota consumers and also a significant health benefit for people who currently can't afford prescription medicines.

Reporter: [inaudible] ....will you say a word about biosciences ....

Premier Doer: Well I think that we, we have a knowledge-based economy in both Minnesota and Manitoba. We've got a huge history of developments that have become international out of our own universities and private companies. We have a huge cluster of scientific research and educational research and health care research here in Manitoba along with Minnesota, clusters that are there.

The industry in Minnesota is larger than ours but we are growing at the same rapid rate that you are and there's a lot of advantages in us working together in this growing, emerging market. Nutraceutical foods is going to continue to be a massive economic growth area. Our farmers will be producing foods that will be using more science, more technology, be medically more appropriate for our citizens and we've got a real advantage of having a bioscience corridor, again, across an international boundary. I think it gives us a unique way of working with ideas that are working here, sharing them with Minnesota researchers and vice versa, and I think it will be a real advantage to both of our economies, and, obviously, to our health care system by having healthier diets and food and healthier products.

On the other side there's the whole issue of disease and there's the whole issue of potential bioterrorism and so it's not only an economic initiative but it's also dealing with some of the basic security issues that we share as a priority between Minnesota and Manitoba.

Reporter: [inaudible]

Governor

Pawlenty: I think it's hugely important to the future of our two countries and our state of Minnesota and province of Manitoba. This is going to change, in my view, in a profound way how we address human health, how we address animal health, how we address agriculture, how we address industrial applications and energy and pollution. The application of biotechnology is going to have a profound effect on our society and our economy, and those regions and states who are leaders in that area are going to not only make a great contribution to our quality of life but they're going to make a great contribution to our economy. And Minnesota and Manitoba have strengths and we need to amplify those strengths and I think we can do that by collaborating. So we're asking the Premier to join us and kind of doing what we did with the university and the Mayo Clinic and at least explore those projects that we can jointly work together on.

Reporter: [inaudible]

Premier Doer: We've discussed this with Ottawa and we'll continue to discuss it with Ottawa. We've also discussed with Ottawa some of our own concerns about escalating costs of drugs even within the Canadian system. How do we ensure that we can keep escalating costs manageable? How do we make sure that we're not duplicating approval processes between provinces? The provinces now are agreeing to a joint approval process rather than having ten separate processes. How do we ensure that the research and development is applied in the longer term? So this is not just an issue that we feel that we can rest on the status quo. Even in Canada ourselves we have to do a better job on controlling escalating costs of drugs notwithstanding the fact that Canada's in the middle on drug prices between some of the other jurisdictions and between higher-cost jurisdictions like United States.

Reporter: [inaudible]

Premier Doer: Well there are provisions now that if a drug company denies a drug the twenty-year drug patent law protection provisions are not enforceable for the drug companies. This is a protection for their R&D work and a protection for the Canadian public has been a regulated regime to deal with that. I suggest that the real issue for all of us is how do we go from this system in a NAFTA agreement, how do we take the leadership we see with Governor Pawlenty and make sure that the public interests are balanced off with the corporate interests in this whole debate. [interjection] And we're not without, you know..... Over time, the elected representatives, because we have trade agreements, are not without some levers in this, if we work together with Canada and the United States as two countries, there's one way to go is just the status quo. The other way to go is to look at a balance between consumer interests and the corporate interests to get a rate of return on their investment.

Reporter: Premier before you open the gift, just one more question. Essentially what do you think of the FDA urging provinces and Ottawa to crack down on the growth of internet pharmacies?

Premier Doer: Well I think that they're meeting a demand, but, you know, as I say there was buses after buses after buses. No, but people can drive here, they can take a bus here, they can take a plane here. Now it's easier with an internet here, but the public in Minnesota, the public is a lot ... We answer to the public, the public themselves have been voting over top of the FDA with their feet, with their cars, with their buses, and now with the technology. I say don't build walls between the two countries, between the people.

Reporter: [inaudible]

Premier Doer: They have the right to say whatever they want.

Reporter: [inaudible]

Premier Doer: No, no, I think the issue for me, it's not awkward, I think all consumers getting more affordable drugs is a good thing. Secondly, I find for me to say to the Governor who is representing the people of Minnesota what's safe for them is presumptuous. I trust his judgment and I think visiting here is a good thing. So I have always been very careful to say what is best for somebody else's citizens and I trust the Governor to do that and that is why he is here today. So that's why I'm being a little bit..................

Reporter: [inaudible]

Premier Doer: The people of Minnesota are our friends and neighbours. We have families that are together, you know, they might be separated by the border, but we have families across the two borders. I don't want to see any family put at an economic disadvantage through costs in drugs that are more and more unaffordable. I think there is a human dimension to this, a public dimension to this where I start from.

Governor

Pawlenty: I think we can construct and should strive to construct a win-win scenario where Canadian supplies are not threatened. They shouldn't be threatened and attempts to do so in my view are illegal and their supplies can be maintained and Minnesotans can also benefit through the program that we've unveiled. So it is not a zero-sum game. We also want to be mindful of the concerns that are in Ottawa and other parts of Canada and we're going to try to address that as best we can. We do not want to damage or hurt our Canadian friends.

(Exchange of Manitoba Moose and Minnesota Wild Sweaters/jerseys).