Tory Defeat of Bill C-398 will cost lives

December 1^st was Worlds AIDS day: a time when most politicians and countries commit to increasing their efforts in battling this deadly disease. For example in the United States, the Obama administration launched a new initiative called a “Creating an AIDS-free generation”.

In Canada, however, the opposite is true. Just days before Worlds AIDS Day, Harper’s Conservatives rose in the House of Commons and defeated private member’s Bill C-398.

Introduced by NDP MP Hélène Laverdière, Bill C-398, titled the Medicines for All Bill, would have made changes to the Canadian Access to Medicines Regime (CAMR) that would have made it easier for Canada’s generic drug manufactures to provide inexpensive life-saving medicines to those in Africa suffering from AIDS and other curable diseases who can’t afford brand-name medicines. The bill would have saved lives and resulted in fewer infections.

 Bill C-398 was the same as a previous private member’s bill that had made its way through Parliament and was passed with the support of all parties back in 2011 but died in the Senate when the election was called. It was reintroduced this spring and passed First Reading with the support of several Conservative MPs. On November 28 Stephan Harper and all his MPs, except for 7, stood in Parliament and defeated the bill at Second Reading by a vote of 148-141.

Stephen Lewis, Canada’s former United Nations (UN) Ambassador and the UN’s special envoy for HIV/AIDs in Africa best described the action of Harper’s Conservatives. “So in the great choice in life, the Harper government has chosen patent protection over the lives of children. And that’s about as perfidious as you can get as a government,” said Lewis in a recently published article by the Globe and Mail.

On a side note, Liberal leadership candidate Justin Trudeau released a video on World’s AIDS Day encouraging the efforts to fight the disease. But three days earlier he failed to show up and vote in support of Bill C-398 even though he was in Ottawa and was seen later that day at a Christmas party for Parliamentary staff.  That is not what many would call leadership.