Dear Friends:

It has been some time since I last updated this website, and much has changed since then. When I last wrote in 2007, Max and I had relocated to Ferney-Voltaire, in eastern France, where I accepted a position with Public Services International. After leaving Parliament in June, 2004, I had returned to advocacy, working with the BC Government and Service Employees Union. I took a leave from the BCGEU when I was offered the position with PSI. Work with PSI was challenging and rewarding, coordinating their international climate change activities, as well as their work on global trade, public administration, pensions and human rights issues. 

After returning to BCGEU from my leave, in early 2009, I was once again offered a terrific opportunity to work with The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, based in Geneva, Switzerland. The Global Fund is the largest funder of international programmes to fight TB and Malaria, and funds some 25% of all international HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care. I am working with the Fund coordinating their outreach to Parliamentarians, and preparing for involvement in the upcoming G8 meeting to be hosted by Canada in 2010. It is an exciting and challenging position, working with a respected global body that is saving lives around the world and is on the front lines of prevention, treatment and care on the three pandemics, while also reducing maternal and child mortality and strengthening health systems in the poorest countries. As a young boy my hero was the great German doctor Albert Schweitzer, who worked with the poor in Lambarene, Africa, and I had done pre-medical studies before deciding to go into law and politics.

This work is very rewarding, and I hope that my many years of experience in public life will be able to make a contribution to the important mission of The Global Fund. I will keep you posted on future developments.

Yours,