Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'll be brief. I think it's important for us to talk to the witnesses who are here today.
I want to start by thanking my colleagues for continuing with the study of Bill C-393, as Judy Wasylycia-Leis, the original sponsor of the bill, has moved on. I want to thank my colleagues for living up to the commitment they made to have hearings in this committee. I do appreciate that.
I want to provide a little bit of context. I won't get into many of the details of the bill, but I will maybe talk a little bit about why the bill is important and provide a little bit of the history for members who weren't around at that time.
I was elected back in 2002. When I came to Parliament Hill, there was already a movement to have a bill or a law to deal with some of the world's poorest and developing nations to help them get access to pharmaceuticals and medicines, since the simple status quo was not acceptable.
A year later, the WTO and a series of other global endeavours led to an opportunity for Canada to be one of those countries to actually put a system in place for generic drugs to be produced in advance of patents to help those suffering from tuberculosis, malaria, HIV/AIDS, and other types of catastrophic diseases and health problems. Bill C-56 was tabled in the House of Commons, and a subsequent government tabled Bill C-9, known as Jean Chrétien's Pledge to Africa bill.
At that time, the committee had lots of hearings. We had several different panels come forward. There were really comprehensive examinations. And just so my colleagues know, I actually proposed 100 amendments to that bill at that committee, believing at the time that it was flawed. Now, that's not to say I was right, but, at the end of the day, in the House of Commons all political parties ended up agreeing unanimously to a bill.
The explicit goal of everybody in that room and in the House of Commons was to have Canada put in place a system to be able to get these drugs to children and people across the globe who are suffering. As things stand, each day around 14,000 people die of HIV or AIDS, and when children actually have HIV/AIDS, one-third die by the age of one, and one-half by the age of two. We simply have the tools necessary to correct this situation.
Only one patent has gone through this regime to date. That was to Rwanda. It's been very limited in scope. That's from Apotex. There have been generic drug companies that say they will send more drugs overseas if we fix the legislation, and that's what we're proposing to do.
Once again, I'm proud to sponsor this bill, but, at the same time, I'm ashamed of my record on this, because I voted for a bill, and we promised the world we would do something that hasn't taken place. It certainly hasn't met what people said in the House of Commons and what they said here at committee, so I want to seek solutions to fix that.
I voted for the bill even though I thought it was flawed, because we stand unanimously together, as parliamentarians, to try to make a difference. We put those things aside to see whether or not the bill would actually work and if the problems we thought would happen weren't going to take place. But the reality is that they have.
So I stand here today to once again try to correct this situation, and to work cooperatively with everyone, because I think there was honest and sincere debate from all members and all parties to actually have a country that actually has a solution for this and that contributes and shows leadership. But we have failed people on this. There's no doubt about it. People are suffering. People are dying. People are not getting treatment. We put a lot of weight behind this and we need to solve it. I think it's a moral and ethical obligation for us, and I think Canada has the tools to be, once again, a leader in this field.
I thank you again for continuing with your commitment to have this heard in the halls of this committee, and hopefully in Parliament as well.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.