Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Beauharnois—Salaberry for his highly relevant question. I had the pleasure of working with him on the Standing Committee on Industry when he was the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Industry. I must say that this is not only a relevant question, but one that is at the heart of our concerns with this bill.
As I was saying, it is one thing to make drugs available to developing countries, but it is another to make sure that the people who truly need them have access to them and use them properly.
International provisions and the bill itself provide a number of safeguards so that the drugs being made available to developing countries will not end up on the black market and be resold for less to other countries, industrialized countries, or even here. Such a practice would bypass the patent holders that sell these products in industrialized countries, where people usually have the means to buy them.
As was mentioned earlier, the bill sets out various provisions, including drug labelling. We were promised that, in addition to labelling on packaging and the pharmaceutical products themselves, drugs would be a different colour than the originals to prevent this possibility or drug smuggling. These mechanisms allow us to maintain a certain level of confidence in terms of avoiding these problems.
That said, what is cruelly missing from this debate is the assurance that, at the other end, these drugs will be reliable.
My colleague is asking me: what would be the best way to proceed? There is no best way. In certain cases, Canada has a different relationship with each developing country. With some countries, our aid goes through non-governmental organizations, while, with other countries, our aid goes directly through the authorities of the country in question on a bilateral basis.
So, we must ensure that, in every country where lower cost pharmaceutical products will be sold to counter epidemics, a distribution infrastructure is set up to ensure that people in the most isolated regions of the African jungle and elsewhere have access.
In closing, I want to make one comment, by saying simply that the title we want to give this bill, the Jean Chrétien Pledge to Africa Act, is very commendable and recognizes the former prime minister's interest. However, I think this causes confusion. Countries that might be eligible or that could request access to these pharmaceutical products are not just in Africa. I would hate, due to the title of a highly commendable bill, to confuse countries outside Africa that could request access to such pharmaceutical products.