Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to begin by saying to Mrs. Rennie that her testimonial was very moving, and the part I remember the most was her comment that this can only be solved if we increase the supply of medicines to those who need them.
I've had the pleasure of having the Grandmothers for Africa twice in my office during the past year. I had two grandmothers, so I know how powerful grandmothers can be. I want to say again, with respect to the intent, I share that intent 100% to get those medicines to those who need them.
I'm an engineer. I think in very Cartesian terms, and I'm saying to myself, some people are saying that CAMR doesn't work as written and we need Bill C-393. Other people say it does work and we don't really need to focus on that, but rather we should be focusing on all of the other challenges with respect to infrastructure and other matters, which I think you probably agree with, that all those other things also need to be addressed.
But as part of my trying to understand this argument, it's very difficult for me to understand who is right, because the positions are diametrically opposite in many ways. I dearly wish that Apotex had been here this morning. It's very unfortunate they're not here, because I had some definite questions to ask them.
Given that they're not here, I'm going to ask my questions to Mr. Perry and Mr. Williams, and I'm coming back to this issue. Under current CAMR rules there's been one case, the Rwanda case, and Apotex was involved. I want to hear again, because this timeline is really confusing me. It was 68 days that was supposedly required for the three providers of patent medicine to grant a voluntary licence to Apotex. Then it took a year for the medicines—supposedly 15 million pills were authorized—for the first batch to get there, and then another year for the second batch.
I'm trying to understand why, when it appears that the process worked well in terms of granting of the voluntary licence, it took a year to get the medicines over there. I'd like to understand that a little bit better, so I'd like to hear your interpretation. I wanted to ask this question of Apotex, but they're not here. I'd like to ask Mr. Perry and Mr. Williams what their view is of that.
Mrs. Rennie and Mrs. MacLean, I'd be glad to hear your views too.