Mr. Speaker, I want to clarify a couple of things for the benefit of those who are following this debate.
In my view, the hon. member just made a very simplistic speech that borders on demagoguery for a number of reasons. His position can be summarized as follows: if a private company in which individuals invest does research and makes a discovery, the next day anyone should be allowed to copy this discovery. Basically, companies are expected to discover drugs and develop new products in a philanthropic fashion. That pretty much sums up the NDP's position.
I am glad that the hon. member mentioned AIDS. I will tell him about 3TC, a medication he knows a great deal about, which was discovered by BioChem Pharma, precisely in an environment that provided some protection to intellectual property. A drug must be discovered before it can be made accessible. And for it to be discovered, we must invest in research and development.
Under the hon. member's model, the state must engage in research and development so that everything will be fine. I doubt it. It is a very good thing in an industry to have motivated people who are knowledgeable in their field doing research in partnership with health care and educational institutions and discovering new products. Naturally, some are motivated by profit, but so what? It just makes them spend even more time and energy on research. What we are doing is providing some protection to these people for a while.
If the protection is reduced or the protection period shortened, it will not result in cheaper prices for drugs, on the contrary. The less time these companies have to recover their investment, the more they will charge for their products.
The solutions proposed by the NDP would result in drug prices that would be even higher than they are now. I hope that the hon. member does not really believe what he said.