Mr. Speaker, I will briefly repeat what I said at second reading. This bill must be passed as soon as possible, since it will allow us to provide Africa with quality drugs as soon as possible and at a lower cost.
When all the parties helped pass this bill at second reading, it was in the months leading up to a possible election call. Collaboration in the House permitted the desired result to be achieved at that time. The intention was extremely good, although we will have to wait a bit longer for the results. We passed this bill at second reading, but at the same time, we did not necessarily provide the funding to go with the drug supplies.
When Africa receives the crates of drugs it needs to treat these kinds of diseases, it must also have the necessary infrastructure and staff. We have some work to do here, which is much more important than the aim of the amendment moved today. Be that as it may, the two amendments deserved to be adopted.
Let us hope that we will then be able to achieve a workable system as soon as possible to eradicate diseases such as AIDS, which is wreaking such devastation in Africa. New cases appear daily. The phenomenon has, unfortunately, become commonplace, and taken for granted in recent years. Major corrective steps need to be taken. It is always the same. We in the developing countries have better means to defend ourselves against such things as earthquakes and disease, for example.
In this case, we really needed to make changes to the matter of intellectual property in order to meet international objectives on this in order to help Africa. This has been a collaborative effort by both the R and D companies producing experimental drugs and the generic drug companies. The same collaboration took place here in the House. This is, everyone must admit, a rather rare occurrence. The R and D firms researching new drugs and the generic firms are locked in battle, and there are often serious clashes here as well, leading to some pretty sharp exchanges. In this instance, however, we all felt that the situation needed to be remedied as soon as possible. That is the purpose of the two amendments we are looking at now.
In fact, an oversight occurred in our rush to get the bill through. The senators kindly agreed to pass the bill regardless, so as to not hold up the process. Now we are making the correction in this first amendment.
The second amendment, is intended to assist business, small research firms in particular, which felt they were being penalized by the kind of fines that they occasionally had to pay. So we are correcting this situation as well. This is a definite advantage.
I therefore encourage everyone in the House to vote in favour of this bill as soon as possible, so that we may at last put the finishing touches on this legislative package that will enable us to provide the countries of Africa, generally the most disadvantaged countries in the world, with these drugs.
Let us also call upon the government to make some specific announcements as part of its next budget for companion actions. This must not be just a bill but rather an action plan that will make it possible to eradicate such diseases as AIDS and malaria from Africa. We have no right to leave these countries struggling with these diseases as they are at the moment.