Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Burnaby—New Westminster. I too want to comment on Bill C-29.
I want to indicate that we all recognize here in the House and in Canada the serious nature of HIV and AIDS, and the consequences they are having around the world. To highlight, we just saw the tremendous tsunami that literally has taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and the huge devastation.
The reality with HIV-AIDS is that it is like a tsunami happening every 10 days. Deaths and illness due to HIV-AIDS is equivalent to a tsunami happening every 10 days. It is absolutely crucial that as a Parliament, as a nation and as a world, we respond as viciously and vibrantly to that disaster that is happening to humankind as we do to the tsunami.
My colleague from Huron—Bruce indicated that we have a process where bills have to go through the other place and that is the proper process. However, the reality with the technicality in relation to the Senate and this bill is not that we would avert that normal process of bills going from the Commons to the Senate. In this so-called technicality what is put into the bill is the fact that there has to be a Senate representative on the advisory council. That is absolutely not necessary. It certainly is not something that we would see as a technicality that had to be fixed in order for this bill to do its job.
There is no question that on the issue of the fees we have to respond, and we have to respond quickly. We do not want to delay these products being made available. However, I wanted to correct the impression that somehow we were suggesting that we would not go through a certain process. However, we all recognize there is an unelected other side over there that not all people of Canada support.