Madam Speaker, I will begin my brief debate on this extremely important bill that is before the House this afternoon by quoting a message I received in my office this morning from an international development student who happens to be at St. Mary's University in my riding. I think she both expresses the sentiment and reflects the experience of a great many people who have visited the African continent in the last several years. The message reads:
I just returned a few days ago from a four month CIDA-funded research project in Malawi, Africa. I interviewed women who were caring for dying family members. I spent my days in the villages, witnessing the most shocking and horrible situations: a nine year old girl, alone to nurse her dying mother and take care of her twin seven year old brothers--she told me that the best part of her day was when she walked 40 minutes to get to school because once there, it was the only time of the day that she could rest; an old woman, completely bent over, unable to stand straight or walk properly, nursing her sick daughter and looking after scores of orphans from her other children who had already died. I spent days in the pediatric palliative care unit, talking to mothers of dying children--what can be said? What hope can they have? Imagine such a thing happening here. One thing that stays in my mind is women telling me repeatedly, “here, there is no peace--they weren't talking of civil war or political unrest, they were talking about the misery and poverty and injustice of so many people dying from a disease for which there are drugs, but not for them. There certainly can be no peace as long as this continues in our world. It is a blight on our common humanity.
To that I want to add that I think it would be a blight, not just on the record of the Liberal government, but a blight on the record of all members of Parliament if we are not able to summon here, over the next week, starting with the vote on this bill this afternoon, the absolute commitment, with determination, persistence and an appropriate sense of urgency, to ensure that the bill goes to committee where hearings will be held and that it comes back to the House for passage within the next 10 days.
I want to refer again to a statistic that I cited earlier. We think people can imagine the human misery that lies behind the statistic that every 13 seconds a person in Africa dies of AIDS. Nelson Mandela, not surprisingly, has been an incredible champion of the cause of dealing with the African pandemic. He stated:
The vision which fuelled our struggle for freedom;--
Referring to the struggle against apartheid. He goes on to say:
--the deployment of energies and resources; the unity and commitment to common goals--all these are needed if we are to bring AIDS under control.
This is a war, it has killed more people than has been the case in all previous wars... We must not continue to be debating, to be arguing, when people are dying.
Those words inevitably give rise to the question: why are we here discussing instead of doing? Why would we stop or hesitate for one nanosecond in getting on with speedy passage?
The possibility existed for us to send the bill all the way to third reading and conclusion in the House today. The questions that will be asked of all 301 of us will be: Why are we here debating? Why are we sending it to committee? I think we have to answer those questions honestly for Canadians.
I do not want to dwell, in the spirit of all party cooperation, on the point that has been made by the previous speakers that the government left it awfully late in the life of this session to introduce this legislation, because I want to focus on how we can deal with this in the most hasty manner possible but not such a hasty manner that we do not fix a fundamental flaw that exists in the legislation.
The reason we are here discussing the legislation and proposing that it go to committee is so the flaw can be fixed.
This is an occasion when we should express our gratitude, not only to the incredibly Herculean work of special envoy, Stephen Lewis, who has literally laid his life on the line in this struggle against the HIV-AIDS pandemic, but the other heroes and heroines on the ground: the NGOs in the African villages and communities who are doing unimaginable work; the representatives here in Canada who have helped to deal with our ignorance and our complacency in relation to this HIV-AIDS pandemic. This includes those who have been working under the umbrella of the Canadian Council for International Co-operation, the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network , Oxfam, Medécins son frontières and many more. I think through them we want to express our thanks to all of those who have worked so hard.
Let me share with members what the coordinator and the spokesperson for the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network said today. He said:
The bill is intended to amend the Patent Act by allowing generic pharmaceutical companies to make lower-cost medicines for export to developing countries to deal with their public health problems. But as currently drafted, Bill C-56 provides that a brand-name pharmaceutical company has the right to take over a contract that a generic manufacturer has negotiated with a developing country. If they do so, the generic manufacturer cannot get a licence to make the medicine and export it.
This leaves generic companies unable to fill contracts that they have negotiated in good faith and at great cost and effort with developing countries.
As Richard Elliott, director, legal research and policy of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, has said, “as a result, developing countries cannot effectively give licences to generic manufacturers to make their cheaper medicines”. This means we will not actually end up seeing lower prices from either generic companies or brand name companies and developing countries will not see the benefit that Bill C-56 is supposed to deliver.
We need to heed the concerns that are being expressed. We should not act so hastily that we do not fix the flaw in the bill. At the same time, however, we must unanimously agree to act with great haste to make sure the legislation is enacted as quickly as humanly possible.
Yesterday was a rare day in the House, one of those rare occasions that I wish occurred far more often, when there was a real sense of common purpose in the House. I want to pay tribute to the outgoing Prime Minister when I say this. Yesterday we saw him, not only in some of his finest moments, but he delivered a very important message to us. It was a message that I think we have to take very seriously.
Sure we can have some fun poking criticisms at the record of his government, and there are legitimate criticisms, but let us today act in the spirit that was very evident in the House yesterday and the tone that was set by the outgoing Prime Minister when he pleaded with us to make Parliament work and to demonstrate to Canadians that we are all here for the same reason.
If there were ever a test of that resolve, if there were ever a test of whether that can be truly said about the 301 parliamentarians assembled here working on behalf of Canadians, surely we can make that commitment. Surely we can commit today to see the bill through in the most effective and efficient way that we possibly can do it.
The government can demonstrate good faith here. I do not buy the idea that it is bad faith on the government's part that it is saying we should send this legislation to committee. To the contrary, it is evident that the government wants to see this legislation became part of the so-called legacy of the Prime Minister. It is fair game for all of us to say we will help make it part of the Prime Minister's legacy.
That requires a commitment today from the House leader and from government members opposite that this legislation will go to committee, that it will be fast tracked. If there had not been a fundamental flaw in the bill, we were prepared to fast track it through at every stage of reading today and see it enacted as soon as possible. We cannot do that.
What can we do that is second best? What can we do in view of the circumstances that we face? We can agree today that we will be back on Parliament Hill for committee meetings.There is a recess in the parliamentary calendar and the government party has important work to do with respect to electing a new leader, which we all understand and respect. However we can be back in this place a week from Monday to hold committee hearings. Those hearings can happen over a period of a few days. We can ensure that the legislation will come back and will be enacted within the next 10 days or two weeks.
There are all kinds of suggestions going around that the government is shutting down this session of Parliament. It has tried every day this week to get the means to do that by outvoting us on a call to recess Parliament. We stood against it in solidarity with other parliamentarians to ensure that Parliament did not recess before we had an opportunity to deal with the legislation to get drugs to the millions of people who are dying in Africa.
Let us use the opportunity that we have to summon that all party cooperation. Let us make sure that we can hold our heads up high. Canadians and other countries around the world want Canada to provide the leadership. Let us make sure that the committee does its work and that Parliament does its work to get this legislation enacted within a couple of weeks.
I would like to finish by quoting Stephen Lewis, the special envoy who has been working tirelessly on this issue. He provided some of the most powerful inspirational evidence before the foreign affairs committee on this issue early in 2003. He said:
The pandemic is overshadowing anything we know in human history, that nothing is comparable, not the 14th century Black Death nor all the loss of life, both military and civilian, in the two world wars of the 20th century, military and civilian. Nothing can begin to compare to the dreadful consequences of the pandemic. People now talk about 100 million deaths down the road. I don't doubt that for a moment. The numbers may rise even higher than that.
The numbers will rise higher than that and they will rise faster than is necessary if we do not fast track this legislation. The numbers will rise if the desperately needed drugs are not dispensed in the most effective way possible. The numbers will rise if we do not help put the infrastructure in place to ensure that the drugs can be dispensed in the most effective way possible and that treatment and support is given to those who are suffering from HIV-AIDS.
Let us act with compassion in dispatch and get the job done. That can be part of the legacy, not only of the Liberal government, but of this Parliament.