Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, everybody.
My question would be specifically for those of you who I understand have workers on the ground over there, namely Monsieur Fox, Madam Devine, Monsieur Kelsall.
More than three years after WTO laid this egg, we are still unable to count one single dose of medicine that has been shipped over there, either by Canada or by more than 30 countries that have tried to do the same. I'm quite sure that a failure of such magnitude cannot be attributed to one single cause. It's most probably a galaxy of causes.
Of all the things that have been mentioned here two days ago and today, and by you, we seem to realize that the countries that could be receiving those medicines simply don't ask for them. There are many other factors, I'm sure, legal and otherwise, political and otherwise, but they simply don't ask for the medicine that would be available if they asked for it in the proper, complicated way.
That brings me to the fact—and only Madame Brunelle has alluded to it, when she talked about the diversion of medicine—that most of those countries are dirt poor, that most of those countries would accept all Canadian funds that could be sent their way, that they would never say no to money, but yet they say no to medicines.
That brings us to the inevitable questions of corruption. Most of those countries have people who live on $1 a day, but have elites who are very rich and have bank accounts in Switzerland. Is it possible that they will accept all the money we'd send their way but are not interested in asking for our medicines because medicines are much more difficult to send to Switzerland? Is this a problem of corruption also?