Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the agreement of members to go back to this part of the proceedings.
I am presenting a petition from hundreds of citizens in Port Moody, Coquitlam and New Westminster. I am a proud founding member of the Greater Vancouver Gogos. “Gogo” means grandmother in Zulu. This organization wants to see Canada live up to its decades-old pledge to increase aid to 0.7% of GNI.
The petitioners say that Canada, shamefully, ranks fifteenth out of the 22 countries that have made this pledge. They note that 25 million to 30 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are infected with HIV, yet only one in five has access to lifesaving anti-retroviral medication. It is appalling that 1,400 children die every day from AIDS. The petitioners call on the government to allow generic anti-retroviral drugs to be exported to Africa, and they ask the government to honour the pledges that Canada made at Gleneagles in 2005.