Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm always amazed at the ability of a government and a Parliament to complicate things. When you multiply that by the number of countries that are members of the WTO, I guess we now realize that the possibilities are infinite.
We've taken the goodwill of the world and put it smack in the middle of the minefield of a war between the generics and the brand names, and then we should be proud of that--something's wrong.
Then there's also this complicated relationship between pills and money. Here are countries that are the poorest countries in the world and they're supposed to want medicines, but in fact they want money. If we send them money to buy our medicines, they will say it's paternalistic, that they don't want it. They want our money to build their plants to produce their medicine with our patents or our absence of patents. So at no time will we see a real order with real money for real drugs at a good price. They are not interested.
Moreover, most of those countries on the schedule are on another schedule, the schedule of the most corrupt states in the world. Here we are, with our goodwill and our minefield, trying to be asked to produce some drugs for them, then we'll give them a good price. I'm not sure they're interested in buying drugs. They will take everything we give them, but they would still prefer money because it's so much easier to put money in a Swiss account than in pills.
Mr. Kay, you told us about your nasty experience with a country that did not want to be identified. This country, was it a real order they were ready to pay for when you invented the triple combination of peppermint you have on your desk? Was that a bona fide order or was it just talk?
