Over the past few days, Industry Minister Allan Rock and International Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew stressed that Canada has worked tirelessly to amend its patent laws.

Canada hopes to become the first country in the Group of Seven to make major laboratories operating within its borders -- both Canadian companies and multinational firms -- share their formulas with the manufacturers of generic AIDS drugs for export to developing countries, which are hardest hit by the pandemic.

These countries, primarily in Africa, quite often have no means for producing the drugs and are at the mercy of developed countries to obtain them.

Ottawa wants to be the first industrialized country to make good on an agreement, reached by the 146 World Trade Organization (WTO) member nations in late August in Geneva, to furnish low-priced medications to developing nations.

For now, the details of a bill are still being hammered out, but supporters hope to see a measure passed by Parliament within as little as one week.

"I would like to present a draft to ministers in the next few weeks or months, (but) I have not been given a deadline. We've been asked to take the time we need but to speed up the process," Eric Dagenais, head of patent policy at the Ministry of Industry, told AFP.

The United Nations' special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, Stephen Lewis, said that "the additional capacity to produce generics is vital because, at the moment in Africa, only between 50,000 and 75,000 people are in treatment, out of 4.1 million that are said to be eligible for treatment."

While many nongovernmental organizations expressed doubts about the scope of the WTO accord, several of them -- including Doctors Without Borders and Oxfam -- called a press conference Wednesday in Toronto to congratulate the Canadian government on its plans and to keep the pressure on.

The groups fear that the legislation will get mired in "legal fineries," as Doctors Without Borders said, or fall victim to the pharmaceutical lobby.