Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to what my colleague had to say .
I would like to remind the people listening to us that last year, at about this same time, the bill was very urgent. It absolutely had to be passed and all the parties worked together on passing it.
Last fall we made technical amendments that should have been made earlier. Now we have another delay, thanks to what a Senate committee has done, with recommendations that may be justified in the end.
However, the government and even all the parties have been criticized somewhat in the papers this week about the fact that a law that was leading edge a year ago is still not in effect. This is not something frivolous. This is about major health problems in very poor countries, developing countries. We are speaking about people with an urgent need for the medicines to be made available.
I would like to ask my colleague how he can explain why it has taken such a long time before—finally I hope—passing the bill, making no more amendments and allowing it to come into effect.
In the comments made by the newspapers this week, people from the generic drug industry said, among other things, that there were some aspects that discouraged putting the law into effect.
There were also some amendments proposed in the Senate. Public servants explained a bit of the reasons for this delay to us.
In the end, however, we are in a situation where we wonder, if the same tragic situation had arisen here in Canada, would we have taken so long to deal with it?
It is important for the government to tell us why it took so long to add to what already existed last year and what had already been introduced as a bill. It will be remembered that we were on the eve of an election call. We went through several stages very quickly, thinking we were doing the right thing. What we have before us now is the same bill, or the same bill slightly modified, as we know. Can anyone explain why it took so long?