Mr. Lewis, thank you for being here today and for your very appropriate and adroit comments. Also, certainly on behalf of my constituents, I want to thank you for all your work over the years.
You gave a speech at the Chateau Laurier in 2002 about what the needs were and about the consequences of inaction, which spurred many members, including me, to try to convince our government of the day of the need to provide a relaxation of the existing drug regime to address a human catastrophe, as I think you called it back then.
Since then, of course, we have watched this and have been, as have you, rather surprised at the fact that not one single pill has gone to help.
I also had the opportunity to speak to Mark Fried and others from Oxfam and Médecins Sans Frontières, and I wrote a letter some years ago explaining the situation in detail. It seemed to me at the time, as you quite rightly pointed out, that Canada was very much at the leading edge. We had NGOs on the spot. We couldn't be everywhere, but we certainly had the ability to distribute these drugs.
I'm here with my colleague Keith Martin, who will ask a question in just a moment, and who has a rather direct understanding of the situation in Africa as well.
But I want to ask you whether there are nations, in your mind, notwithstanding all of the good intentions that we have provided in Canada without result, that have actually made breakthroughs, that have in fact been bold enough to address this pandemic, this underlying catastrophe?