Mr. Speaker, before I speak to the motion, let me extend, on behalf of all of us, my best wishes for a happy birthday to the member for Témiscamingue, whose age I will keep a secret.
The motion today is extremely important. It was considered extensively in the Standing Committee on Health. It was introduced by our colleague, the Conservative health critic. Concerning the debate on hepatitis C and the victims who contracted this illness as a result of blood transfusions in public institutions—hospitals—it is true that the parliamentary secretary is quite right in inviting us not to be partisan on an issue such as this. However, it is too easy for the government to say that it is now in favour of this cause and that it is bound by a number of technical details that we will be able to discuss in a moment.
We cannot help, however, but to point out that, back in 1997, when Justice Krever presented his report, the Bloc Québécois critic for health was the hon. member for Drummond. In 1997, the government should have followed up on the first recommendation from Justice Krever, who is not a parliamentarian and, therefore, is not partisan and who took a scientific look at series of data. Hon. members will also remember that the provincial health ministers were subpoenaed as Crown witnesses. There was a serious, scientific investigation process. After two years of investigation, the Krever commission called for compensation, no fault compensation, to be paid.
Those of my hon. colleagues who were here at the time—I know that the hon. member for Québec was here—and myself will not soon forget the following scene: a former Liberal member who had changed allegiance at the time when the first Liberal budget was brought down because the government had failed to abolish the GST crossed the floor and laid a flower on the desk of Allan Rock, the then health minister, inviting him to increase the compensation. Had there been a will to resolve this debate in 1997, the government had the means to implement its policies.
Granted, this is a unique issue. We are not talking about taxation, social housing, the war on poverty or sports, but about human lives. As time goes by, week after week, month after month, the number of victims increases and we can assess the magnitude of the government's mistake.
Earlier, I heard the parliamentary secretary say that they did not have the relevant information concerning the actual number of victims. I am sorry, but I remember perfectly well the debate we had in this House, and it was not about the number of victims. The argument put forward by Mr. Rock, who was the health minister at the time, which was also the argument of the member for Sudbury and every Liberal health minister from 1993 to 2004, was that screening technologies were available during the period to which they did not want to extend the compensation.
It had nothing to do with determining the number of victims, but it had everything to do with the government arguing that the screening technologies were available and that public health agencies and agencies responsible for the blood supply system should have used them. From an historical point of view, we must keep this argument in mind. It is our duty, as parliamentarians, to be extremely vigilant with regard to this issue. I am grateful to our Conservative colleague for that, and I think the Bloc Québécois has also always been extremely vigilant in matters such as this one.
The purpose of the motion in the parliamentary committee is to bring the government to right an historical wrong. Personally, I think that the government should apologize to the victims.
The Minister of Health should have seized the opportunity provided by today's motion to make a statement.
Today, for example, I spoke with someone from the Canadian Hemophilia Society. This is not just any organization; it has an official role to play as a representative in this matter. It so happens that the Canadian Hemophilia Society was not even aware of the nature of the discussions between the lawyers representing the victims infected before 1986 and those representing the victims infected between 1986 and 1990.
I understand that the legal process in which we are engaged imposes certain limits on the government. However, it is totally unacceptable that an organization such as the Canadian Hemophilia Society, which is authorized to speak on behalf of victims of tainted blood, is not kept informed of what is happening with regard to this issue.
I understand that the funds totalling slightly more than $1 billion that were put in trust no longer belong to the Government of Canada for administrative purposes. The managers of this trust act independently.
It is true that when these issues were debated in the House, we wanted such a mechanism to be put in place to prevent any form of political interference.
This does not, however, mean that it is not within the mandate of the Minister of Health to assess the situation from time to time and provide the lawyers involved in these negotiations with some very specific directions. I do not, moreover, believe that a number of the members here are any more informed.
It is one thing to have an independently administered program, as we have been calling for wholeheartedly, but it is quite another to keep parliamentarians out of the loop as far as progress is concerned.
I remember the take note debate we had just before the holidays. The Bloc Québécois, through its leader, the hon. member for Roberval, a man who very rarely descends to political partisanship, proposed to the other parliamentary leaders that a take note debate be held.
At that time, I asked the minister if he could provide us with guarantees that this matter would be settled by June. He was confident that it could. Even this past week, I asked the parliamentary secretary whether a cabinet memorandum had been submitted on this and what the status was.
Now it is April and I have learned that things are barely moving. Even if lawyers are not the fastest and most zealous members of our society, the situation is still this: here we are in April and the negotiations have scarcely begun.
What comfort can we find, then, in the commitments made during the take note debate held before the Christmas break? The wish had been expressed that this matter be settled before the summer adjournment in June. Yet the lawyers have barely begun their discussions.
This is where Parliament can bring some pressure to bear. The minister must give the lawyers a very clear mandate including performance obligations—we know what that means in legal language—so that, by June, official conclusions will be reached and the fund made accessible to the pre-1986 and post-July 1990 victims. This would remedy an historic wrong that has gone on far too long.
The Prime Minister should have risen in the House today to apologize to the victims on behalf of his government. Naturally, the Minister of Health was not present in the House. He is new, a young recruit. He was elected in the most recent election, in 2004. Of course, he was not here before, but, in the name of ministerial solidarity, he should have risen in this House. He would have brought greater credit to his office had he apologized to the House.
It would not be the first time. Brian Mulroney apologized to the Japanese community for the suffering it endured in the second world war. I repeat, quick follow-up was required, but Allan Rock gave an exceedingly technocratic speech. It was devoid of any hint of sympathy for the victims infected before 1986 and after 1990.
Again, I recall clearly an hon. member, whose name escapes me, who was a member of the rat pack when the Liberals were in opposition. Former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien excluded this member from caucus. This member had wanted to follow through and have the Liberals act on their promise to abolish the GST, which the journalists interpreted as “Give Sheila Time”. We have not forgotten that the former Canadian Heritage minister went public with a statement that, if the Liberals did not abolish the GST, she would resign. In politics, making commitments means keeping them.
In conclusion, today is an important day for the victims. The opposition has done its job. I do not doubt that there is compassion among the Liberals, on the government side. I am thinking about my committee chair, the hon. member for Oakville, and other members of the Standing Committee on Health who agree that what is needed in terms of historical redress is to broaden compensation.
The government made a historic error in the form of a terrible insensitivity. The Minister of Health allowed himself to be guided by terribly technocratic considerations. Nonetheless, I do not doubt that among the Liberals there are some people who want to redress this historic error.
The best thing the Minister of Health can do—and he is said to represent the left in the Liberal Party—is to give urgent information and directives to his lawyers to ensure that by summer adjournment, roughly the second week of June, the lawyers have sealed an agreement. We have to be able to tell the victims that we are finally going to make good on recommendation number one of the Krever inquiry and that all hepatitis C victims will receive compensation regardless of when they contracted the disease. In this situation we certainly cannot accuse people of being the authors of their own misfortune.
When you go to the hospital it is reasonable to expect the blood supply system to be safe. I must add, for historical purposes, that at the time, the Red Cross was in charge of the blood supply. The Red Cross had a very good international reputation. We all felt secure in the fact that this was the agency in charge. We were comforted by the fact that the Red Cross was in charge of these operations.
You know what happened next. Unfortunately, the supply was tainted. However, once again, the government was simply far too slow in acting on recommendation number one in the report of the Krever inquiry.
Today, we would have expected the Minister of Health to stand up, apologize to the victims and make a clear commitment on the mandates given to the lawyers. I am sure that all the members in this House will continue to follow this case and pressure the government as long as we do not receive a guarantee that money will be available for all hepatitis C victims.