Mr. Speaker, I was fascinated by the headline I saw on Saturday which said the hepatitis C victim compensation was rock solid. The headline I would put on the docket today is that the hepatitis C compensation package of the government is more like a rock slide.
There is a hopeful nature to what I am to say today. Although the issue is not resolved and is not completed, I see positive movement.
I give credit today to the victims. I have actually met some of them. I hope it would not be unfair to characterize them as a ragtag assortment of people who are sick. The hepatitis C organization which I have come to know a bit about does not have enough money to rent space. It borrows space. It is lucky if it has enough money to afford faxes. It is borrowing computer equipment for the Internet and whatnot.
I am proud this little ragtag group—and if anyone takes that as a slam, it is not—of ill people has up to the might of the federal government, to its PR people, to its communications people, to its huge spending capabilities, and has said quietly and sincerely “This is not fair and we won't go away until it is changed”.
For the group of cynics who says “You cannot do anything in the face of a big, powerful government”, this indicates to me that is not so. I am so proud of those individuals who would not lie down, who would not fall over, who would not just say “Because I'm sick I will accept this compensation”.
The joy of this is in a fax I received this morning from a woman in B.C. She congratulated the opposition parties for what they are doing and whatnot, but what she went on to indicate was heart rending to me. She is eligible for compensation. She is in that window as the deal stands. However, she said “I will not take anything until all the needy are properly looked after”. She also said that I could use her name and her remarks. Her name is Doris Corrigan in Surrey, B.C., who in my view is compassionate beyond belief.
It has also been fascinating to watch the arguments of the government systematically dismantled by these individuals. The argument that this would cause a floodgate of frivolous legal claims has been dismantled. The argument that this would cause a precedent to be set that would destroy medicare was dismantled. There is also the argument that the test was unavailable before 1986.
I practised medicine from 1970 until I came to parliament. I must admit that my memory is not always perfect but I remember the very first week I was in practice in my small community. What test did I order during that very first week in 1970? I ordered the ALT test. I ordered that test to try to find out if one of my patients had hepatitis. It was the most specific sensitive test available to us at that time. Normally a screening test would be done to look for liver damage. If liver damage was found the most specific test which was ALT would be done. I used the ALT test throughout my medical career. I used it every single time there was a patient with hepatitis and I wanted to see how serious the hepatitis was.
The minister said so plainly on TV last week that the test was not available in Canada before 1986. What he should have said and should have added to that is that the regulators decided not to use that test to screen for hepatitis C in donated blood. If he had added that proviso, he would have been on firm ground. But to say the test was not available before 1986, I cannot use the word I would like to use to express how I feel about that, but it was wrong. It was available. It was here. I used it. Every single MD in Canada knows that.
For those physicians listening who do not know the name of the test by ALT, we call it SGPT. That is the common name of the test. It was the most specific test we had available. It was available, used here and regulators decided it was not useful for screening, which was a mistake.
This is not a negative talk at all. Because I am hopeful I wanted to say what the hepatitis C victims expect. I received a letter this week from one of my colleagues at home who said “I do not favour compensation for everyone who is not symptomatic”, in medical parlance, asymptomatic.
Here is what the hepatitis C victims want. They want the connection between hep C seropositivity connected to a transfusion to give them the opening to walk through a door into the room of compensation. They only want funds if they are sick. They have not been able to make that issue clear because they are not at the table, which is why I so strongly support my NDP colleagues who are asking for them to be at the table. They are not at the table to be able to tell the government. Who are negotiating? Class action lawyers. My colleagues in the NDP are on the right track by saying they need to be there to express what they want from compensation.
They also need to be there because they have the best numbers figures. They have gone through these. The trace back and look back figures are now coming forward, but the numbers that the government is using are inaccurate. We can look at the international experience and do some calculations and find that as well as looking at the domestic experience.
In my hopeful comments I also want to look to the future. What does the future hold for our blood system? What really went wrong in our old blood system is that there was not one single person in charge. There were experts who gave advice and whose advice was ignored for various reasons. There was no one there who could say “That decision is wrong and for safety we must go that road”. What will our new system do to prevent this? What about CJD, the human variant of mad cow disease? Would it be prevented by the new blood system? There is a big question mark here because in the new blood system again it is not one person in charge.
Who should be in charge? The federal Minister of Health should have that mantle on his shoulders. He should be able to say from all the discussions that take place “This must happen”. It is not something he can delegate to someone else. It is not something he can throw away.
New therapies are coming along which are so exciting to these victims. Ribavirin and interferon, a combination that has just been approved in the U.S., gives me great hope that we may be able to throw away this compensation package for those victims who are not very sick. Is this not our desire, to have these people cured rather than needing compensation? If we cannot cure them, when they have been let down by the federal regulator, surely we should look after them.
I want to pay tribute to Joey Haché. Joey is the 15-year old boy who came here on his own hook. On Monday just before the vote he said to his dad “Dad, I have hepatitis C. I want to go down there and I want to see how this works in parliament. They are voting on an important issue to me”. He does not live very far from here, so down he came. He sat up in the gallery. He watched the voting. He spontaneously rose afterward and clapped for the opposition members for their stand. I had an opportunity to meet Joey after. I shook his hand and said “I think you are the bravest guy here”.
Joey watched the proceedings in the House of Commons the next day and said that he did not like the way some questions were answered in the House. He wrote out his questions to the Prime Minister. He could not ask them, but who could? He brought them to me. Joey was asked if I had approached him and tried to drag him down here for partisan purposes “Did he try to use you for political purposes?” Joey with his cute little 15-year old smile said “You know, I think I am using the member for Macleod for my political purposes”.
Just to set the record straight, Joey was not contacted. He spontaneously came here and said what he wanted to say with his resources.
I am very hopeful today for the victims. I want so much to be able to stop this haranguing. I want to say to the government that it has finally done the right thing, even if it had to be dragged there kicking and screaming. That is my sincere hope for the sake of the victims.