I went to hear Stephen Lewis speak on Thursday night. I had heard he is a good speaker. As he is the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, he works in an area that I’m interested in.

It wasn’t a public event. There was an AIDS researchers’ conference in Halifax this past weekend, and Lewis gave the opening address.

It’s true. Lewis is a great speaker. He has forty years of experience as a politician and diplomat. He is passionate about his subject. He has a wonderful command of a rich and painterly vocabulary. He speaks with humour, authority and intimacy.

Lewis told wrenching stories of people living with AIDS in Africa. He spoke with real sadness and love about children, about women suffering lacerating injuries to their spirits and lives. He spoke with hot anger about a world that would abandon an entire continent where the prevalence of HIV/AIDS reaches 40 per cent in some countries.

The AIDS Fund is broke — developed countries won’t pay up their fair share of its cost. Canada’s commitment to the fund is $150-million. Paltry. Lewis said we should triple that amount.

I sat there listening to Lewis’ stories, nodding yes to myself and feeling more and more anger and sadness. Friday morning I called my MP, my voice in the House of Commons. I told Alexa McDonough that I was calling as a constituent. I wanted her to vote in favour of an increase to Canada’s payment to the Global Fund.

I asked her what else I could do. “Write to Bill Graham, the Minister of Foreign Affairs,” she said. “And to Susan Whelan, Minister for International Cooperation.”

McDonough said that a “One Third is Not Enough” campaign will be launched in the next little while by the NDP. Postcards and a website will be used to pressure the Liberal government into meeting Canada’s fair share and to use its moral authority to pressure other countries to do the same. The $150-million that Canada has committed is spread over four years. Even a wretch like me can see that’s only chump change. If Canada would triple that amount, it would be the first country in the world to meet its obligation to the fund.

Canada does have moral authority. Alexa was recently in the Middle East. “You know,” she said, “we still have a great reputation. Over There, people were saying, ‘you have the stature. You have the credentials. You have the tradition. You have the diplomacy skills.’”

On Thursday evening, Stephen Lewis said, “it behooves us as a nation that pretends to have a moral anchor, to behave as though that moral anchor is real.”

The first country that Canada should put the screws to is the U.S. It also hasn’t ponied up its $750-million share of paying for the Global Fund. America is busy with a war that many sources say is costing a minimum of $100-billion. One of those sources is former White House economic adviser Larry Lindsey. Before he got the boot, he said a war with Iraq would cost $100 billion to $200 billion. He also said that the assumed U.S. victory could free up oil which would be good for the U.S. economy.

This is not the line of thinking that Canada should ever follow. Ignoring the pandemic of HIV/AIDS in Africa is a sin that Canada should have no part of. If Canadians want Canada’s good reputation to be preserved, we need to tell our government to put its money where its mouth is.