A Senate of Canada committee report notes, "The work of consolidating the existing international drug control treaties into one instrument began in 1948, but it was 1961 before an acceptable third draft was ready." That year, the UN Economic and Social Council convened a plenipotentiary conference of 73 nations for the adoption of a single convention on narcotic drugs. That meeting was known as the United Nations Conference on Narcotic Drugs. Canadian William B. McAllister, Q.C., notes that the participating states organized themselves into five distinct caucuses: