Mr. Speaker, I commend the previous speaker for an absolutely excellent speech on the bill at hand. I thought I heard another speech from one of her colleagues that was quite a bit different. Her colleague indicated that he would not support the bill. That is the way I heard it anyway. However, I am very pleased that not only did the member make an excellent speech, but she dealt square on with the whole issue at hand.
She outlined how the legislation originally was to be a legacy to Jean Chrétien. The legislation passed unanimously in May 2004. Its goal was humanitarian. It was non-partisan. It was supported by all members of the House, yet in five years all we have to show for this is one shipment of an AIDS drug by one company to one country. After half a decade, that is unbelievable.
It reminds me of the great intentions of the United States government to deal with Hurricane Katrina. It supposedly had a whole plan in place. At the end of the day, we saw a disaster that was compounded by the efforts of the government to help solve the disaster. Among many other things, people were living in trailers that turned out to be toxic. It was a total disaster. That was a case with a country that had huge resources and supposedly a plan.
Here we have a lack of resources, but at least we had the intention to do something good for people who were suffering. Members have brought out statistics on how quickly people are dying in Africa as a result of disease. The question is this. How could this have gone so wrong in such a short period of time and what will we do as a group, as a collective, to try to solve this issue?
We will not solve it and we will not make progress when we have speakers defending big pharma, the drug companies and the patent system. They say that they cannot get involved in this because it would offend drug companies in their ridings and that the drugs they produce are not available yet for generic companies to produce. Therefore, they are going to vote against this because they are concerned about jobs in their ridings.
Sadly, that is what this may turn out to be at the end of the day and that is really a sad commentary on the whole country in some ways.
I understand the intellectual property argument. Manitoba had huge fights in the seventies over the whole issue of whether generic drug companies should even be allowed to survive. The big guys wanted to get them out of business and argued that it was totally unfair. Then a government somewhere along the line, whether Liberal or Conservative, gave the drug companies a 20 year patent protection. I am uncertain, but I believe it was the Mulroney government.
Nevertheless, I do remember that argument at the time. There was a lot of reaction to it in Manitoba because Manitoba does not have a lot of big pharmaceutical companies but it does have generic companies that are trying to produce drugs at a reasonable cost. They are the ones who would be stepping up to the plate to help in a situation like this.
We have other really good examples, such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. I do not know how many people know Warren Buffett. He owns half of the companies in the United States, everything from 10% of Gillette and 10% of Coca-Cola, and Dairy Queen and Fruit of the Loom and so on. Warren Buffett is the second-richest man in the world and he is worth around $50 billion or close to it, slightly less than Bill Gates.
Rather than doing what some single billionaires do, this multi-billionaire decided that his kids did not need this kind of money so he gave it to Bill and Melinda Gates' trust in which they put an equal amount. They would give out the money on his behalf. The desire of both Gates and Buffett is to send the money to Africa to be used for the AIDS cause.
Warren Buffett lives in Omaha. I had the good fortune to drive through Omaha on the way to a legislators' conference in August. We decided to find Warren Buffett's house. People in Omaha know where he is. They see him around. He even hands out candies to kids at Halloween. His house has no number on it, but it was not hard to find. I did knock on his door, but he did not happen to be at home.
My point is that Warren Buffett is a fairly selfless individual. Certainly in business he has taken his knocks over the years. I could spend hours talking about the things that Warren Buffett has done in business. This man recognizes that he is not going to live forever, and he has given money to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to be used in Africa. I am not saying we have to go to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for a donation, but it is something that might have to be considered.
Another idea has come up, and I do not know how practical it is but articles have been written on it. The British are in charge of trying to eradicate the poppy in Afghanistan. Besides trying to spray it and kill it, they are trying to put in other crops. Some people have suggested that the opium crop from the poppies should be used in areas of the world that need the drug as a painkiller.
The majority of people in Africa are not used to the same sort of medical treatment that we are here in Canada. When we have a procedure done in the hospital, we are given good pain medication. People in Africa do not even have the basics. In a way we would be killing two birds with one stone if we could somehow take that crop that is going to be poisoned and sprayed and torn out of the ground and actually harvest it and use it for good in Africa. There may be some problems associated with that idea. We have to find ways to solve these problems. It is a wonderful idea.
The member of our caucus is tireless in her efforts not only in this area, but in everything she does. I actually sat with her in the Manitoba legislature some 20 years back.
We need to get something done about this. We need to straighten out this problem--