Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Acadie—Bathurst for what is once again a very passionate presentation. He put across the views of many Canadians in the way they would expect a member of the House of Commons to do on their behalf.
It strikes me as we wind down to the final moments of the debate today on Bill S-17 that there has only been one party, one collective voice in the House of Commons that is advocating on behalf of ordinary Canadians.
We have heard from party after party, from the ruling Liberal Party to the Alliance Party, to the Bloc, to the Conservatives. All of them seem to see nothing wrong in the bill. It would in fact further augment and further enhance unreasonable profits for brand name drug companies. It is a bill which says nothing about the urgent situation in which Canadians find themselves in terms of affordable drug costs.
I put it to the hon. member that we are sent here by Canadians to advocate on their behalf, not to be corporate shills to advocate on behalf of multinational pharmaceutical drug companies that are frankly quite capable of taking care of their own interests.
We were sent here with a message. The message I get from the people in my riding, and I would like the hon. member for Acadie—Bathurst to concur, is that they are asking me to go to Ottawa and do something about the spiralling, out of control, escalating costs of drugs. Then we could put drugs into the hands of people who need them most at an affordable price.
Would the hon. member agree that throughout the debate today there has only been one collective voice, the voice of reason on behalf of Canadian people, and that is the voice of the NDP caucus?