Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the speech made by the member for Eglinton—Lawrence. He spoke with a great deal of passion.
However, we have to get to the bottom of this. On the one hand the member stands up and acts as if he is addressing a new area for which he is prepared to push his government on and, on the other hand, he fails to acknowledge just how much his own government has been negligent in this regard.
We are talking about notice of compliance regulations. We are talking about the fact that the Brian Mulroney government failed to eliminate the injunction that gave brand name drug companies another two year protection beyond the 20 years. We are talking about a Liberal government that in 1998, rather than address the situation, actually made it worse.
I want the member to account for the decision by his own Minister of Industry in March 1998 to push through changes to the notice of compliance regulations, which actually evoked the ire of Canadians, health organizations and the generic drug industry. Those individuals and organizations were very concerned and went so far as to suggest that the Minister of Industry was doing nothing more than being a servant of foreign owned multinational drug companies. They called for his resignation because, as they noted, the government did exactly what Brian Mulroney did in 1993. It moved with haste to respond in the best interests of the brand name drug companies.
How in heaven's name can the member stand up today and show such indignation over something that his government should have and should have acted but refused to act on? We are now left with a situation where we are not dealing with a 20 year patent protection but at least a 22 year patent protection. Could he account for that kind of two faced position and that kind of flip-flopping?