On November 22 at this year’s Hot Talks, Dr. Jane Philpott challenged the audience to ‘donate, educate and activate’. If you have found your way to this post, you are no doubt already educated to the crisis of HIV/AIDS in Africa and have committed to donate a day’s pay on December 1st. But it is Dr. Philpott’s third challenge, to activate, that asks the most of us.

Without the support of campaigns like GAD, the capacity of Dignitas International, the Stephen Lewis Foundation and their African partners to fight this disease would become seriously compromised. But to begin and end our support at personal financial contributions would betray their full potential to effect lasting change at a time when the fight against HIV/AIDS is at a turning point. Though the collective action of GAD support is important, it will also take the collective action of every Canadian through our government to tip the balance at a time when progress is under threat.

In 2009, the Minister of International Cooperation announced a realignment of priority countries under the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Instead of continuing relationships with many low-income countries in Africa suffering from some of the highest rates of AIDS and related diseases, funding was shifted to middle income countries with which Canada was in free trade negotiations. Long-term partnerships, the bedrock for sustainable change, were severed and inroads made against the epidemic of HIV/AIDS in some of the most afflicted parts of the world were closed. Then, just one year later in the 2010 budget speech, it was announced that foreign aid spending would be frozen, further diminishing our countries capacity to effect change. In the face of the growing enthusiasm and the spirit that the GAD campaign has captured, do these decisions express our collective desire to fight poverty and disease? Clearly, they do not.

A federal budget is now around the corner, with deliberation and debate well underway. With calls for austerity, there is also real concern for further reductions of an already frozen foreign aid budget. From December 17 to January 29, Members of Parliament will be dismissed from Ottawa, and be home in their constituency offices. As Canadians who support campaigns like GAD and organizations like Dignitas International and the Stephen Lewis Foundation, now is the time to activate ourselves and activate our communities. It is time to let our representatives in government know that anything but a cut in the rate of HIV/AIDS is unacceptable.

Dan Raza is a family physician and current Fellow in Global Health & Vulnerable Populations at the University of Toronto’s Department of Family & Community Medicine. He recently completed his residency at Queen’s University and earned his MD from the University of Western Ontario.