Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to again discuss this bill. As members of the House know, we have seen this bill many times and in many forms. It is a bill which members of all parties can take some pride. We worked together on an issue as serious as this in terms of trying to get cheaper medicines into least developed nations by amending the Patent Act.
For the parliamentary secretary's information, I was asking more about the infrastructure that is helping to ensure that these medicines get to the people who need them and that they do the most good when they get there.
A lot of the people from the non-governmental organizations, like Médecins Sans Frontières, the global AIDS fund, Oxfam and others, came before us and said it is one thing to allow for cheaper medicines, but it is another thing to ensure that the system is in place. We have the physicians and nurses, but we should also ensure that people are taking these medicines with an adequate diet, a clean water supply, and know how to take the medicines properly. If they do not take them properly, it can act in the exact opposite way and make them immune to treatment. I encourage the government to ensure that through CIDA and other departments, agencies and organizations it continues to work with the NGOs to ensure that the medicines actually arrive and do some good.
When this bill was introduced in the past Parliament, every opposition party was willing to pass this legislation in one day. Unfortunately, it has taken the government four times to get this legislation right. That reveals a lot about this Parliament and the last Parliament. In fact, there were people in all parties who through goodwill have tried to move forward on this issue. It says something about the government. It brought the bill forward and reintroduced amendments in committee. Now it has reintroduced amendments again to its own piece of legislation which had unanimous opposition support from the first day it was introduced.
It should be pointed out to the Canadian people that there are parties like the Conservative Party that are very willing to work with all other parties on issues of concern to Canadians. I certainly commend my colleagues from the Bloc Québécois and the NDP who worked on this issue. I know they put a lot of effort into this as well. To be fair, the current Minister of Labour and Housing was quite instrumental in committee in trying to shepherd some of these amendments.
I want to give a brief overview of this issue. It is about trying to enable generic manufacturers to manufacture medicines, which are still under the 20 year patent protection, at lower cost, so a lot of the individuals in the least developed nations will be able to reduce the cost in terms of what they actually pay for these medicines. It is important because it allows generic manufacturers to step in not only from Canada but from other nations.
We should also recognize the efforts that a lot of the brand name manufacturers have made. I had the opportunity to visit the headquarters of GSK, GlaxoSmithKline, in the United Kingdom. One of the things it talked about was river disease in Africa. I believe it has dealt with about 20 million people and has been able to combat that disease. Its goal is to eradicate it within about 20 years. We should recognize its efforts, as well as Merck Frosst's efforts in Botswana. This is an issue which people and companies of goodwill can certainly have an impact on.
We supported Bill C-29 and the Jean Chrétien pledge to Africa act in the last Parliament and we support these amendments. We hope that this bill will finally be passed and become law. The Conservative Party is showing an awful lot of goodwill by putting up one speaker and ensuring the bill goes through in an hour to an hour and a half of debate.
I encourage the government to work with the NGOs to ensure that the infrastructure is in place. I encourage it to keep an accounting and then report to Canadians on what progress has been made.
I was trying to make another point to the parliamentary secretary. The government should keep track of how much medicine actually goes to these nations under this legislation so that we can be accountable to Canadians. We should be able to tell them in 2006, 2007, and in subsequent years that under legislation which was enacted in 2005, how many people were helped, how much medicine was produced, and how much money went globally to fight the horrific challenging diseases of tuberculosis, malaria and HIV-AIDS.
We in the Conservative Party support these amendments. We support the goal of this legislation. We would like to see it succeed.