I appreciate the fact that the member from the NDP is so well versed when it comes to this bill and can cite exactly which section different pieces are in. It stands to reason, because this is probably the only time the federal NDP will be responsible for drafting a piece of government legislation. I can understand the amount of effort they would put in, because this is part of their supply and confidence agreement and selling many parts of their party's soul to prop up a government. They're voting in favour of time allocation and all kinds of other pieces that would make the previous iterations of this party roll over in their graves.
To get back to this piece of this particular legislation, which is the continuation of the national bulk purchasing strategy, this legislation makes it sound as if this is somehow a brilliant new thing that is going to revolutionize the way Canadians access their medication and that somehow we're not already paying fair prices. We heard in witness testimony, although it was very limited witness testimony, that a national bulk purchasing strategy already exists.
It was frustrating when we were hearing from the witnesses. Normally, the tradition of this committee is that we find out in advance who has invited each one of the witnesses. It gives us an opportunity to better prepare as we go forward, yet in this particular case, we didn't find out who invited the various witnesses. In fact, it's worth noting for the record that we still don't know who invited which particular witness. I have some theories as to which party invited the majority of the witnesses, based on some of the testimony that came out, but we don't actually know which party was responsible for inviting most of the witnesses, which is the standard tradition here.
My question for the officials here is whether Canada already has a national bulk purchasing strategy.