Mr. Speaker, I know the member would like to speak more on this because he has worked on this project for so long. I want to let him know that I wholeheartedly support that. When he started his speech I was meeting with the generic representatives. I have three questions for the hon. member; two easy and one hard.
First, does the hon. member think there have been examples of abuse of the patent rule, pushing it beyond 20 years?
Second, with the U.S. now coming into line with the rest of the world to stop this abuse, will that make it easier for us to get this through Canada?
The hard question is this. If we are the only country in the world that allows this abuse of extending patents, the brand companies might say that it is a great environment for investment and they can protect their patent a lot longer. Therefore we would have a lot more investment in Canada.