Mr. Speaker, the member will be aware that the Patent Act comes under the jurisdiction of the Minister of Industry.
The hon. member should be aware that under the provisions of the Patent Act and particularly the Patented Medicines Review Board the companies which are responsible thereto have lived up to their commitments in terms of keeping the price below the CPI. They have also lived up to their commitments with regard to the moneys they had earmarked for the purposes of research in this country. So on those two points they have lived up to their commitments.
However, the hon. member is correct that drug pricing in this country is all too high in many jurisdictions and I hope that we can co-operate with the provinces, including the province of Saskatchewan, where they might delegate the powers to the Patented Medicines Review Board so that we might have a full study of pricing both for generic and brand names in this country.