Madam Speaker, millions of people are dying needlessly in Africa from treatable diseases such as HIV-AIDS, TB and malaria. In sub-Saharan Africa, the HIV-AIDS crisis has been made worse by extreme poverty and lack of antiviral drugs. This is causing people to bury their adult children and raise their orphaned grandchildren. Development assistance and antiretroviral drugs offer people with HIV-AIDS the chance to live healthy and productive lives.
This petition demands three things of Parliament: that a timetable be immediately set to meet by 2015 its 40-year-old promise to contribute .7% of our gross national income to developmental assistance; contribute its fair share to the global fund to fight AIDS, TB and malaria, for example, 5% of the funding needed for each year in the next five years; and make the legislative changes necessary for Canada's access to medicines regime to facilitate the immediate and sustainable flow of lower cost generic medicines to developing countries.
In fact, that is what we dealt with in this Parliament this past week.