Madam Speaker, a few years ago I was with my daughter, Cindy, on Keewatin Street pushing for a national pharmacare plan, and the Winnipeg Sun had us on the front page of the paper. We have put forward petitions, and I have spoken on many occasions about it. I was really pleased to see it was in the throne speech back in September 2020. I am an optimist, and believe we are going to see a national pharmacare plan.
The NDP needs to realize that, in order to maximize the benefits of a national pharmacare plan, we need to have provinces on board. We cannot have a truly national plan that maximizes the benefits without the provinces. If he reads the throne speech, he will see it specifically references, I believe, needing to continue to look at working with provinces on ways in which we can implement a national pharmacare program. In the last four years, we have had more discussions about pharmacare than I have seen in the previous 26 years of my parliamentary experience.