117. The representative of Canada said that it had not been demonstrated that there was a problem that would require an amendment to the TRIPS Agreement. In his view, the TRIPS Agreement and the CBD were mutually supportive, and therefore there was no need to amend the TRIPS Agreement. The most meaningful way to advance the discussion on the relationship between the TRIPS Agreement and the CBD in the WTO was to engage in a fact-based technical discussion of the various proposals made in the TRIPS Council. Time and consideration should be given to a full scoping of the issue before proceeding further, with particular focus on either best practices or problems in the implementation of the CBD. He expressed his delegation's disappointment that the July meeting had ended in an impasse. Nonetheless, his delegation remained strongly committed to the WTO and the multilateral process and supported ongoing discussions to try to reach full modalities in agriculture and NAMA by the end of the year. He said that attempts to interlink the three TRIPS issues and include them as part of the Single Undertaking were not helpful. His delegation did not support this artificial parallelism and believed that these three issues should be dealt with individually. Finally, he said that his delegation was committed to accelerating the work of the WIPO IGC as per its mandate and to achieve concrete outcomes. He informed the Council that great efforts had been made during the last IGC session to find a way forward and to establish a process seeking to accelerate the work on the protection of traditional cultural expressions, traditional knowledge and genetic resources. His delegation looked forward to engaging with other member States and the new Chair in order to build a consensus in advance of the next session of the IGC scheduled for March 2009.
