Mr. Speaker, I am sure the health minister will agree that the government is now paying the price for its blind support for multinational drug corporations.
He will know that Bayer has used the automatic two year delay clause in our patent legislation four times to tie up processing patents for Cipro in the courts since 1993. If the government had acted to rid us of that clause which the supreme court called draconian, a cheaper generic version of this drug might have been available to Canadians as early as 1995.
Will the health minister today at least agree to review the patent legislation with a view to making sure that cheaper generic drugs are available?