Debates of April 23rd, 1998

Supply

[Mark Assad, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the NDP's convictions are as strong as its shouting is loud.

It is very simple. We need a consensus among all governments on this issue. If the provinces take the initiative, I am convinced that the Minister of Health will agree to reconsider the whole issue of compensation.

So I am asking my colleague if she agrees.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would say that I am not at all in agreement and that I am very surprised by the stand taken by the hon. member, who made the headlines today with his extreme compassion for all hepatitis C victims and who, according to the newspapers anyway, would like to vote against his party line.

He tells us today that what is needed is the agreement of all provincial health ministers, when the provinces have reached their limit, as I gave figures to show earlier. So far, they have made an exceptional effort, doing everything they could.

I would like to tell the hon. member that, when this same government that is forking out $900 million for submarines to keep the military happy, that is spending $2.5 billion on millennium scholarships that nobody wants, and that is buying over $1 billion worth of helicopters, cannot even come up with a few million dollars to compensate all hepatitis C victims, I hang my head. It is unbelievable that the provinces are being asked to do more, when they must manage the health care system.

I appeal to the intelligence of all members of this government and urge them to vote in favour of the Reform motion.

[The Deputy Speaker]

The time allotted for questions and comments has expired.

[Bill Blaikie, NDP, Winnipeg—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, given that the Prime Minister has declared this motion, I would say contrary to the spirit of the rules of the House, to be a matter of confidence, we can already see Liberal members running for cover, hiding under any little rock they can find from the reality that they are being presented with a compelling case for the Liberal backbench exercising the freedom which is theirs, both individually and politically, to tell the Prime Minister this is not and should not be declared a matter of confidence.

One can imagine the Prime Minister going to the people of Canada and saying we have resigned because parliament did not agree with us on our hepatitis C compensation package and we are going to have an election. That is what the Prime Minister said, he was willing to have an election over this particular package.

One can imagine what that election might be like. I think if we were to have an election which in effect would become a referendum of a sort on whether this hepatitis C package was legitimate and reflected the values of Canadians, the Liberals might be surprised to find out just how much of a majority of Canadians agree with the views that are being expressed on the opposition side here today.

People who are suffering from hepatitis C and who contracted that because of tainted blood should not be divided into two groups, those who qualify for compensation and those who do not on the basis of some arbitrary judgment arrived at 1986 as the dividing line. We know the use of 1986 as the cut-off date is something that could have been argued otherwise by the government if it had wanted to do so. It is not a hard and fast argument that the government is making. We know that the liability issue is not as clear as the minister would like us to believe.

The ALT test used to screen non-A, non-B hepatitis, as it was then called, was developed in 1958. In 1981 a New England Journal of Medicine study recommended this surrogate testing to screen for hepatitis C as did another eminent North American medical journal in the same year.

The Krever report on page 638 shows that the Red Cross and the federal health department discussed the test in 1981 but rejected it due to the expense. The victims were abandoned then due to the cost of prevention and they are being abandoned now due to the cost of compensation. In both cases we have governments making decisions, not on the basis of what is right, what is morally just, of what reflects the values of Canadians, but they are making these judgments with a calculator in their hands.

At the same time we know about the billions of dollars that are spent by the federal government, and for that matter by provincial governments, on many other things that are less deserving than compensation for people who have innocently been contaminated and made to suffer as a result of tainted blood.

I want to address the question that was raised by the member for Gatineau having to do with what appears to be the Liberal argument now that somehow the provinces should show leadership with this.

Next month I will have been here 19 years and I have heard a lot of spurious arguments in the House of Commons. But this has to be one of the worst I have ever heard, that the provinces should pick up the tab and show leadership on an issue of compensation for victims who suffered because of mistakes that were made by a federally regulated agency.

This really has to be a line of thought that could only be developed by a Liberal backbencher looking for a place to hide because of a lack of courage to stand up to the Prime Minister and say this is not a matter of confidence, this is a matter of doing the right thing and we are going to vote to do the right thing no matter what we are told to do.

Surely it was up to the federal government to provide leadership just on the basis of who was responsible, who was the regulatory authority. The provinces already have the burden of looking after the people who are sick as a result of this and are having to bear that burden in the context of billions of dollars being removed from their health care budgets by the cutbacks that were perpetrated by this very government. To turn to those provinces now and say they should show a little more leadership on this is absolutely preposterous, politically and morally, that the federal government should turn to the provincial governments and say they should show more leadership when they are not in a position to show that leadership because of the very cutbacks the federal government has brought about.

We in NDP support and have supported all along the notion that the people who contracted hepatitis C as a result of tainted blood should be compensated no matter when they were contaminated. We support the Reform Party motion on this and we urge the government backbenchers to. Perhaps it would help if all the House leaders of the opposition parties got together. We are going to be saying this individually throughout the day.

To make it clear, we do not regard this as a matter of confidence. We do not think that if parliament were to say to the Government of Canada that it does not think its compensation package is adequate, change it, make it more generous, make it more compassionate, that this is something over which a government should fall, something for which there should be an election call. The only person making that ridiculous claim is the Prime Minister. He stood in the House yesterday and said this is a matter of confidence.

In fairness, the Prime Minister is acting within the rules of the House. The member earlier was talking about the McGrath committee in which we recommended that, if implemented, all the matters of confidence be removed from the standing orders of the House and that confidence be a matter of political determination. The Prime Minister is politically determined that this will be a matter of confidence.

It is now up to the Liberal backbenchers to politically determine, to individually determine whether the Prime Minister has made the right decision on this or whether they have an opportunity on Tuesday to make parliamentary history, to say to the Prime Minister he has made a mistake on the package in the first place and by declaring this a matter of confidence.

They should vote the way they think is right in spite of what he said about this being a matter of confidence because when they think it over, if the motion were to pass and parliament were to express that the compensation package is not good enough, the Prime Minister will not see the governor general the next morning. The next morning they are going to say that maybe they should rethink the package, maybe they should expand it, maybe it should be more generous, have a motion of confidence passed in the House or simply declare that it was not a matter of non-confidence. All these things are possible within the rules.

I urge the Prime Minister to see things differently. I urge Liberal backbenchers to see things differently. They are on shaky ground, ethically and politically. I do not think Canadians accept that victims of hepatitis C should be divided into two groups, those who were contaminated after 1986 and those who were contaminated before 1986.

The government is putting forward an argument that it is trying to be legally cautious. It does not want to leave itself and other governments open to a precedent setting judgment. We have precedents already. We have the precedent of all people who contracted AIDS through tainted blood being compensated no matter when they contracted HIV. Why not pay attention to that precedent? If we are precedent conscious, why not pay attention to that precedent? Why not pay attention to both precedent and experience in other countries? The member for Macleod said earlier this has been done in Ireland. Has there been this rush of claims against the health care system? Apparently not. The government should muster up its moral courage.

This morning we were at the prayer breakfast. Let us ask ourselves what would Jesus do in this situation. Would he say to all the people who were sick with hepatitis C that they will compensate only some and not others? I doubt it.

[Werner Schmidt, Reform, Kelowna, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend my hon. colleague from Winnipeg—Transcona and I would like to ask him a question.

I wonder if the hon. member would venture to speculate about which way the people of Canada would have more confidence in the government: if the government insisted that it not pay, or if the government said it did make a mistake, there was some negligence and that it had the moral responsibility to expand the package. Would that perhaps engender more confidence in the government than insisting that it was right even when it was wrong?

I think the hon. member knows full well the moral dilemma of doing what is right. Everyone makes a mistake once in a while. I wonder if the member would comment on that particular issue. What does generate confidence? Is it insisting on a political answer or is it insisting on doing what is right?

[Bill Blaikie, NDP, Winnipeg—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I think Canadians would have a lot more confidence in their system of government, not just the government, and in the political process if they felt they were being governed by a process in which political parties, and governments in particular, because they are often the ones who make the decisions, did not feel compelled to defend to the death every last decision that they make no matter how wrong that decision may come to be seen or judged to be, even by themselves.

I agree with the point the hon. member is making. Canadians would have more confidence, not less, in a government and in a political process in which political parties and particularly government were able to say that they would truly allow the House to judge proposals on their merits. It must not be declared as a matter of confidence or, as is sometimes the case, it is not formally declared a matter of confidence, as it was yesterday by the Prime Minister, but is informally communicated to the members of the government caucus that this is something they are expected to be obedient on.

Canadians would have a lot more confidence in a system in which that did not take place as often as it does. I think there is a place for confidence. I think there is a place for governments to run on certain things and expect people who run with them to toe the line. However, I believe that should be a limited range of proposals and things.

The problem with the Canadian political system is that the range is like this instead of like that. We need to broaden and expand the range of issues on which members of parliament can express themselves as individuals or as representatives of their constituents, however they judge that to be possible. I believe all political parties have a job to do in that respect, but governments in particular because they are the ones who make decisions that have the immediate effect.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for raising the issue of political discussions in this House. This is of course the place to have political discussions. I think he perhaps deterred debate a little when he talked about procedures and the significance of procedures in the House. However, what I think he really wanted to talk about were the merits of compensation packages placed before victims for consideration.

If I could be allowed a moment I would like to present this to members of the House for consideration so they can understand exactly what it is that 13 different governments in this country established after taking into consideration all the health priorities, government priorities and concern for each and every one of their electorate.

The governments came forward with a package to establish a $1.1 billion fund to compensate victims. They also stated that services would be provided by the provinces over and above the normal services.

Finally, and most importantly, something we should not ignore is that there is a third component to this which is that the courts must accept all of the deals or go on to what is available to everyone right now which is access to the courts for consideration of—

[The Deputy Speaker]

Order, please. The member for Winnipeg—Transcona will require some time to respond and he has 15 seconds.

[Bill Blaikie, NDP, Winnipeg—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member did not say anything yet and, as was said before, he did not really respond to the argument that I was making. Seeing that he did not respond to what I had to say, I see no need to respond to something that I already responded to.

[Greg Thompson, Progressive Conservative, Charlotte, NB]

Mr. Speaker, at the outset I want to thank the member for Macleod for introducing the motion. I want to tell all members of the House that we will definitely be supporting the motion because I think this debate on the floor of the House of Commons is overdue.

One thing I am amazed at, and other members have touched on it, is the Prime Minister suggesting that this is going to be a confidence vote. That is absolutely ridiculous. Obviously we all know what happens in a confidence vote if the government should lose, and I think the government would certainly be in a position to lose this one because it does not even have the support of its back benches. What is the Prime Minister doing? He is using the big stick to crack the backbenchers into line, forcing them to vote against the motion, even though in their own hearts most of them would certainly support it. Some of them have been brave enough to say that publicly.

Just imagine if the government did lose the vote and it decided to take it to the people in an election campaign.

Mr. Speaker, I am thinking of some of the campaign slogans of the past, but you are probably old enough to remember this one. Do you remember in 1972 when Prime Minister Trudeau campaigned on the theme that the land is strong? You are nodding in agreement. You remember that.

I do not know what the campaign slogan would be this time, but I imagine the basis of the campaign would be: “We are running on this. We want a mandate from the Canadian people to deny innocent victims of hepatitis C compensation”.

Mr. Speaker, given your political past, do you believe that would be a tenable campaign position?

Mr. Speaker, you are absolutely right. I see you nodding in agreement.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh.

[Greg Thompson, Progressive Conservative, Charlotte, NB]

Mr. Speaker, that will probably be the only chuckle we will get out of this entire debate because that is not a tenable position.

Effectively we have 20,000 to 40,000 Canadians left outside the compensation package. The government does not know how many there are. In fact, the other day when questioning the Minister of Health he stood and admitted the government does not know how many people have been locked outside the package. It could be 20,000, it could be 40,000, it could be more. But the victims of hepatitis C are innocent victims. No one in their right mind could support that type of position in a country as historically generous as Canada.

We can imagine what will now happen is that the innocent victims will have to go through the courts to get compensation. They will have to go through the legal system to get compensation. That is their only recourse.

Every legal mind in the country and I think every member in the House will know that the government's position is pretty weak on this one. It cannot sustain its position in the courts. It will lose its case in the courts. When that happens the compensation package will be much bigger than what the government imagines.

The government is going to put these people through a protracted court process. At the end of the day some of the victims we are trying to help today will not be here because some of them are very, very sick. That is the sum of what we have been saying in the House.

The minister is in a very tricky situation. In the past in the House I have accused the Minister of Finance of being the real health minister because what is playing out on the Liberal front benches is obviously the jockeying for leadership. I do not think it is any secret that the Prime Minister is not going to be here forever. Of course, it will be his choice when he decides to open it up to a leadership race, but the leadership race, as we all well know, is already unofficially under way.

Now who we have jockeying for position is the health minister and the finance minister, the two we consider to be the front runners as unbiased observers of the Liberal Party.

The minister stands in the House and says “Listen, I went to cabinet, I fought the good fight and it is just unfortunate that I lost that fight in cabinet”. Guess who he lost the fight to? The finance minister is the guy who is calling the shots.

When we point across here and put questions to the health minister we should in fact be talking to the Minister of Finance. He is the guy who is calling the shots. Unfortunately, the health minister is the weak link in the chain and he is taking the brunt of this decision.

When we talk about opening this package up and doing the right thing, the honourable thing, and re-examining this package in the hope that all victims would be compensated—and we want a straight yes or no answer—what does the minister do? He fudges on that answer. He does not say yes and he does not say no. Why? He does not dare. If he says “Yes, we'll open it up”, zing, he is immediately gone. He is no longer in the front row. He is gone. He is history. If he says “No, we're not going to open it up”, he is going to have the wrath of 30 million Canadians on him.

I think politics is being played out in the front benches of the Liberal Party, on the government side of the House. That is unfortunate because who are the victims in all of this? They are the hepatitis C victims who have been left outside the package. That is unfortunate.

Before I finish I want to remind the House and all Canadians that the government found $500 million to bail itself out of a botched helicopter deal. That was just the legal fees. That did not purchase one helicopter. I will remind the people around the country that it was just to buy itself out of a legal problem which it created.

It did not stop there. It did the same thing with Pearson airport. It got into difficulty there and it cost $750 million to bail itself out of that botched deal.

It does not end there. The present Minister of Health was also the guy who brought in the gun registration bill. That cost the Canadian taxpayers another half a billion dollars.

The government is saying that it has a heart and it wants to do the right thing. We have the Prime Minister sitting over there nodding in agreement with the health minister. All the time this is playing out on the floor of the House of Commons, the only man who is smiling is the Minister of Finance. That is unfortunate.

Some of the hepatitis C victims and some of the leadership of the movement were asking me the other day, when the women from Ireland came over to press their case and to show us how it was done, what would have to happen in terms of parliamentary procedure. How would we proceed? What would have to happen?

I said it was very simple. In a parliamentary democracy the Prime Minister, when he enters this House, can rise in his place and say “Listen, we know we made a mistake. The honourable thing is to reopen this package and compensate all victims”. It is as easy as that.

There is one person in this House who can change it. He can change it on a moment's notice. He does not have to put his caucus or even some of the cabinet ministers, who I know have reservations about this deal, through the meat grinder. He does not have to use a big stick to beat them into submission to support his position. All he has to do is do the honourable thing, rise in this House, get up on his hind legs and say “We have made a mistake. We are going to revisit this thing”.

In the eyes of the international world, this is going to be a black eye for Canada. You know the history of this country as well as I do and probably better, Mr. Speaker. We know you are a student of history. This country cannot afford in the international world to make those types of cold, irrational decisions because we have always been a leader in terms of humanitarian aid to the rest of the world. All we are doing is asking that the same rules apply to us right here in Canada. Let us set the example and do it right here in this country.

Mr. Speaker, thank you for your patience. I will entertain questions from other members. Let this debate continue and on Tuesday night when we come into the House for the vote, hopefully the people on the other side of the aisle will do the right thing and support us in support of this motion.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, on such a serious topic as this I hope you will interrupt me if I engage in shameful partisan snipping. What I would like to do instead, contrary to the tone of some of the discussion so far, is to ask the member whether he has reviewed the facts as they stand before everyone, victims, assistants and members.

The member probably will recall that all victims have recourse to the courts. Very importantly, what is associated with that is that no action by the Government of Canada is taken to deprive people of an opportunity to seek compensation in the courts.

As I said to the previous speaker, the compensation package offered to a group of victims is dependent upon the accord of the courts. There has to be approval by the courts if the package is accepted. That does not preclude any other packages that may be sought afterward. It is an important distinction that makes members opposite feel uncomfortable. However, this is the case in a society where we have the rules of process determining everything that ought to happen.

If the member opposite wants to continue to speculate on the internal politics of all parties in this House, then that is a good way for him to determine the priorities of the people he would pretend to represent. From our side we have put something on the table which gives everyone an opportunity to consider it thoughtfully, deliberate and to make a decision. That does not exclude anyone. The rules of procedure allow everyone to seek satisfaction. The Government of Canada does not close the door on any of that.

[Jim Jones, Progressive Conservative, Markham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order. Will the parliamentary secretary put his question? He has been going on long enough.

[The Deputy Speaker]

I have indicated that I wanted the question put or the comment ended. The hon. member for Charlotte.

[Greg Thompson, Progressive Conservative, Charlotte, NB]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for your wise intervention.

Simply it is cruel and unusual punishment for members to sit on this side of the House and listen to the parliamentary secretary rant on. He never addresses the motion before this House, which is compensation for the victims.

I am going to take his minister's own words and remind him that the minister stood in this House last fall and this spring, in fact just hours before the compensation package was announced, and led all of us to believe that the government was going to do the right thing. He said he did not want these innocent victims to have to go through a lengthy and expensive protracted court procedure. We took the minister at his own words just hours before the compensation package was announced and he knowing full well that they would not be compensated.

I want to remind the Canadian people to stay tuned on Tuesday night and watch their members of parliament as to whether or not they will support this motion. We will support this motion because it is the right thing to do. We want all victims of hepatitis C compensated.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I was very interested in the comments of the hon. member for Charlotte regarding the finance minister and who actually is running the health department.

I read in today's Quorum that David Dodge, the key architect of the finance department, is now a member of the health department. I would his comments and views on that appointment.

[Greg Thompson, Progressive Conservative, Charlotte, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I lost part of that question. I know the member has been very complimentary in terms of his support. Specifically maybe one of the members could tell me exactly what he was asking because I was lost in the conversation.

[The Deputy Speaker]

Perhaps the hon. member could repeat his question more briefly. We have very limited time.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Charlotte had mentioned that the finance minister was running the health department. Today in the paper there is an announcement that David Dodge, a member of the finance department, is now the deputy minister of health. I would like his comments on that appointment please.

[Greg Thompson, Progressive Conservative, Charlotte, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I think we have all argued in this House that the decisions being made by the government in relation to this compensation package were made by accountants and lawyers. The human factor has to enter in here. I would rather see the minister bring in a psychiatrist, psychologist or counsellor of some sort rather than bean counters and more lawyers. The minister does need some administrative help but I think he needs more counselling than what he is probably getting.

[Maurice Vellacott, Reform, Wanuskewin, SK]

Mr. Speaker, this Liberal government has consistently stated how proud it is that Canada is the number one country in the world, the best nation in which to live.

I would like in a rhetorical fashion to ask a question of the Minister of Health if he is watching on CPAC today. If he were one who contracted hepatitis C in Canada and watched all the other hepatitis C victims get fair and generous compensation, in other jurisdictions in the world as well, would he still believe in view of that comparison that Canada was the number one country in the world, the best nation in which to live?

I rise today to speak of the oppression and injustice and how these hepatitis C victims feel. They feel not like citizens of a first rate nation, the number one country in the world, but more like those of a third world country not having the compassion for innocent victims, especially when those innocent victims have been made so by the negligence of the government's regulators.

No doubt numerous letters, e-mails, correspondence and fax messages have been received by other members of parliament, as they have been by the Reform official opposition health critics. I would like to read into the record a couple of letters. I will read one in full and part of another. They simply reflect the outpouring of grief, the lament and great sense of injustice and oppression felt by these people who have contracted hepatitis C and those who contracted it before 1986.

This letter was addressed to me:

I am writing to beseech you to assist me in influencing the [health minister] to reconsider his position on the scandalous treatment of hepatitis C victims in his patently unfair compensation package.

I contracted hepatitis C while having a kidney removed in June of 1983. At that time, testing was indeed available for non-A, non-B hepatitis, testing which was not, however, being used in Canada. The date chosen, 1986, is entirely arbitrary. Germany began testing in 1981, the United States in 1986.

I find it rather interesting there was no new information, that nothing new entered the equation from 1981 to 1986 in terms of information that was not available in 1981. It is rather interesting as well that this government sometimes rants and rails at the American health care system yet chooses in this instance to take the lead from them. A very selective practice. The government is allowing the American practice in this case to dictate Canadian policy. There is no other good scientific reason for so doing. The letter continues:

As it usually happens, I was unaware of my disease until 1995, when my symptoms began to make themselves known and I was tested. Since then, my symptoms have increased dramatically, in spite of the many lifestyle changes I made in the hope of slowing down the progression of the disease.

I am now faced with the prospect of having to leave my beloved but challenging job as a result of my illness. I work at the University of Victoria, where there is no long term disability program, so I am faced with three months sick leave, then 15 weeks of medical unemployment insurance then—nothing!! The fear of how I will pay my bills is as stressful as the disease itself and I find myself becoming even sicker as a result of all the added stresses accompanying my inability to continue to work.

I will be attending the funeral on Tuesday, April 7, of Leslie Ashcroft, a close friend who died last Sunday of liver cancer. I know all too well what might await me as my disease progresses.

The ultimate irony of this for me is that the [health minister] proposes to spend my tax dollars to compensate victims who were infected in the `right' time frame whether they are sick or not. And I face the prospect of losing everything I have spent my life working for due to this same disease, contracted when there was testing which was not used, as I am now too ill to continue working and paying those taxes.

Please remember that, sick as many of us are, we can still vote and you can be sure we will not vote to re-elect a government that treated so many honest, hardworking Canadians in such an unconscionable manner lacking any compassion or, in fact, logic.

Where is the compassion of a government that deems that some victims `deserve' compensation and others do not? Why have those of us infected before 1986 been doomed to litigation and hardship as a result—

She concludes her letter with a plea and a heartfelt appeal to understand her situation and to do the right thing.

I also have a letter from a Canadian citizen, Vicki Anderson of Nanaimo, B.C. who was infected with hepatitis C through tainted blood. In her letter she asks whether the health minister would accept this compensation package if he were infected himself. It would be an interesting question if the minister were here on this occasion, but he is not. But if he were here and if he were one of those infected before 1986, would he accept being excluded from the compensation package?

[The Deputy Speaker]

I hate to interrupt the hon. member but he knows it is out of order to refer to the absence of members. I urge him to refrain from doing so.

[Maurice Vellacott, Reform, Wanuskewin, SK]

In that case, it is the individual to whom I have just referred and to whom I cannot directly address the question. If he were infected with hepatitis C before 1986 would he accept being excluded from that compensation package?

The Liberals drone on about the should have, could have and would have. It is sickening. It is disgusting to hear that ring in our ears again and again, a track record like that. The minister's answers show that he cannot put himself in the shoes of those people. The minister needs to acknowledge that he has scarred the human side of what government is meant to be.

As Krever reports, the Red Cross was aware that non-A, non-B hepatitis was getting into the blood supply as early as 1978. The Red Cross rejected recommendations from its own people to implement surrogate tests in 1981, the ALT test that has already been referred to, and the 1984 anti-HBC test. A 1995 study in The Lancet , a prestigious and well respected medical journal, later revealed that the combined used of these two tests would have lowered the incidence of post-transfusion hep C by as much as 85%. From 1986 to 1990 the Red Cross was aware that the U.S. was using surrogate testing but did not implement or authorize its use in Canada.

The Prime Minister has admitted the government's direct liability yet he refuses to compensate. This reflects the continuing moral failure of this government. The health minister is the Prime Minister's hired gun, a lawyer using cold legal arguments to exclude victims who deserve compassion. The government meets flood and ice storm tragedies, “acts of God” for which it is not responsible. But this is the worst public health tragedy in Canadian history, for which the government is responsible, make no mistake.

The health minister says that he wants to keep the matter out of the courts but he is ready to drag up to 40,000 sick people into court. The heath minister is prepared to spend millions of tax dollars to battle victims in court which will force sick people to use their remaining strength and financial resources to fight for what is rightfully theirs. The health minister is hypocritical in compensating some hepatitis C victims while compensating all AIDS tainted blood victims.

Since 1992 the feds have spent more than $3 billion to help 40,000 fishermen who were thrown out of work, as they ought to, but the Liberals cannot bring themselves to help dying people, not people out of jobs. That is reason enough to help them. These are people not only out of jobs but out of their lives. They are dying people. When in opposition the Liberals called for compensation of all thalidomide victims, all HIV victims through tainted blood. Earlier the government compensated all who had urea formaldehyde foam insulation in their houses. Mr. Klein reversed his stand against compensating victims for sterilization programs in Alberta. Mr. Harris changed his mind with respect to Ontario's Dionne quintuplets. Why can the federal health minister not do the honourable thing, save face in some manner, do some supplementary program and compensate all victims?

After four years of public pressure, finally at long last Ireland did give generous compensation to its victims. But we have to wait four years in Canada, the supposed number one nation in the world, for that. It has already taken three years. How many more years will victims have to wait? If Ireland, a nation one-tenth the size of Canada, can afford to be generous to its victims, why cannot Canada?

The health minister says he wants to save the government money, but there are three class actions for $5 billion against him already and more to come. If he really wants to help taxpayers he will settle out of court. The health minister claims if we compensate hepatitis C victims we would have to settle others, like victims of faulty breast implants. But those companies have settled with 16,000 Canadian breast implant victims for $900 million. Each company owned up, faced responsibility and settled out of court. Why cannot the health minister do that?

Hepatitis C victims say the government's number of 40,000 is probably deliberately inflated. The Red Cross says half of that. What is the real number? There are number games being played to turn the Canadian public against the hepatitis C victims. Why is he doing that? The government should be giving compensation to all.

[Jim Hart, Reform, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Madam Speaker, I rise today on behalf of the constituents of Okanagan—Coquihalla to participate in this opposition motion to see that all victims who received tainted blood receive compensation as the Krever commission indicated was appropriate.

I am very discouraged by what I am hearing from the government side today, in particular from the parliamentary secretary who has been sent here to do a task, which I understand completely. But the task has been sent to do is to say that all victims do not and should not receive fair and adequate compensation because of the tainted blood they received through no fault of their own. I think this position is not a position that is held certainly on this side of the House and certainly by a majority of Canadians.

In January an Angus Reid poll concluded that 87% of Canadians agree that all victims of hepatitis C who received their blood through blood transfusions through no fault of their own should be compensated. This is not the position the Government of Canada has taken though. It has decided to take a very legal position, a position that could be argued is an accounting position. It certainly has not looked at the moral obligation of a government when it comes to compensation for these victims.

I heard the parliamentary secretary speak about the future of the blood system. Those are all good things. All Canadians hope that now the new system will be a better system and a good system so that we do not have to worry about that system. I thank the parliamentary secretary for talking about the future of a blood system.

What I would like to talk about today is the future of people. In particular I would like to talk about the future of a young person in my riding who is 13 years old. His name is Chase Makarenko. Chase is an interesting young fellow. At two and a half years of age it was discovered that young Chase had leukemia. He required extensive chemotherapy and many medical procedures. In 1987 his family was advised that he would need a blood transfusion. Note the date, 1987.

That leaves young Chase out of the compensation package. I would like the government to explain to Chase and his family why they are not included in this compensation package. It was not Chase's fault. It was not the family's fault. It was a system that was regulated and controlled by the Governments of Canada that tainted the blood he received. Now Chase has an uncertain future.

Those are the futures we are talking about today, like young Chase who is 13. What does it mean at age 13 to find out that you have hepatitis C? Has anybody every considered the fact that you cannot a mortgage anymore? You cannot get a loan. You cannot go to the bank and go into business like other Canadians who do not have hepatitis C. Has any body considered that? Has the government considered that? I do not think so. If it has it has disregarded it. It has chosen to take a very firm position on this legal point and a date. It wants to draw a line in the sand.

I sat in this House and heard the Minister of Health say, before they announced the compensation package, that he did not want to see the victims of hepatitis C, of tainted blood, to spend their lives in court wrangling, going before judges and pleading their case. Now we are hearing that young Chase Makarenko, a 13 year old who received poisoned blood through not fault of his own, to get compensation will have to spend time in court. I do not understand that. I would like the government to explain that to me. I have been sent here by the people of my riding to get answers from this government and to ask questions.

I met with the hepatitis C victims of Okanagan—Coquihalla last week. I have a lot of questions. I have a lot of heart wrenching stories. The Minister of Health does not want to meet with those victims. The Minister of Health does not want to meet with young Chase Makarenko from Peachland, B.C. who finds himself in this unenviable position. It is a sad day for Canadians.

It is a very sad day when we can say to the producers of maple syrup that they deserve compensation because we had an ice storm. It was a tragic event and maybe they should receive compensation. I am not arguing that. We have seen so many things like the Red River flood. Do those people deserve compensation? Yes. But does 13 year old Chase Makarenko of Peachland not deserve compensation? I would argue and debate with anyone who wants to debate it with me that he does. So do the other victims who received poisoned blood. It was not their fault.

I urge all members to think about Chase and the other victims who unfortunately do not fall into the compensation package outlined by this government.

In conclusion I would like to read the letter I received from Mrs. Makarenko: “I ask you, would you like to step in his shoes or try to walk for the next 13 years with him? I would rather doubt it. You would not be able to understand or handle the pain, the suffering, the questions, the uncertainty, the medical procedures, the discrimination and the costs. I believe each and every one of you would pass on this gift of life”.

Then she does the most amazing thing. She thanks the parliamentarians and the government for the time we took to read her letter. She says it is greatly appreciated. She ends with thank you and a signature.

I hope we can have some compassion in this House and say the decision was wrong and unfair and Chase will be able to live as normal a life as he can.

Therefore I urge this House, whenever the vote comes up, to please support Chase and the other victims of hepatitis C.