The conditions are terrible, and we've heard that a lot of these people whose organs are taken do not survive because the operations are done in backrooms and alleys and there is no aftercare. Some of them are threatened. They're told they are being followed and that if they even tell anyone that their organ was harvested, they will be killed. They are just left to their own devices. A lot of them don't even know. They are kidnapped, and their organ is harvested. Then they wake up and realize they don't have a kidney.
It's been going on, and a lot of our allies have strengthened legislation, and we haven't.
The Senate of Canada is not a foreign country; we're just a few blocks down. This is the legislation that we looked at, and the senators on every side.... We have four different groups there, and everyone agreed. This is not a partisan bill. We heard that this legislation was started by the Liberals 15 years, ago, and we did have Mr. Cotler as a witness. We looked at it and we looked at it, and the reason it didn't go before the committee.... The leadership of the Senate sat and said that this is something that we looked at and we should have passed it a long time ago. We accepted the changes that you made. We're sending you the bill that you sent to us. We did not change anything.
I don't know what else to say. As I said, it's the harvest of the poor. A lot of those people don't even get paid, and a lot of them don't survive.
For me, this is not a partisan bill. It's about doing the right thing.