Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise in this House today and speak in support of Motion No. 285, a motion that the government test all immigrants to Canada for HIV positive status.
Like many of the private members' motions to come before this House, Motion No. 285 is another example of common sense. It is a simple and direct motion designed to change the way the immigration department conducts its business. It should not be necessary for this House to move such common sense procedure but this Liberal government and this minister of immigration have once again refused to put the cares and concerns of ordinary Canadians ahead of political correctness in pandering to special interest groups.
There are health implications for Canadians if we let people into this country with the disease. AIDS is communicable. AIDS is also fatal and there are no proven treatments or cures. Once you have it, unfortunately your days are numbered. We needlessly put at risk other Canadians who may contract the disease.
We know of many ways that can happen. The disease can be passed on sexually or through blood or bodily fluids. When I visit my dentist now, he and all his staff wear latex gloves. They do not do this because some health regulation forces them to; they wear their gloves as a preventive measure. They do not want to take the risk, however small, of coming into contact with a fatal disease. Why would we as a government take the risk, however small, of exposing Canadians to the potential for receiving AIDS from an immigrant?
Why there is refusal to do mandatory testing of all immigrants for AIDS or HIV is beyond me. We have a specific section in our Immigration Act which states: "No person shall be granted entry who is suffering from disease, disorder, or disability which will likely be a danger to public health or which would cause excessive demands on health or social services". This section is there for the protection of Canadian society.
Every member in this House will agree that immigration should be a benefit to Canada and not a threat to public health or indeed the economy. Clearly the potential threat to both health and finances from AIDS carriers entering our country is cause for alarm.
In the debate on this motion so far we have not heard one rational argument about why HIV testing should not be done on all immigrants. The member for St. Denis stated: "Even if they test HIV positive they can continue contributing to Canadian society for many years". It is the refusal of some to admit the obvious that angers so many Canadians. It is totally unacceptable and a contravention of the law to allow HIV positive immigrants into Canada.
The member for Thunder Bay-Atikokan believes that "it would be inappropriate to institute a blanket exclusion of persons with HIV". He quotes the Human Rights Commission and states that "such a practice would be discriminatory".
HIV is not a discriminatory disease. It will kill anyone it comes in contact with. I support the right of Canadian citizens over the right of non-citizens to be free from discrimination.
Saturday's Globe and Mail reported that the immigration minister is going to propose a tightening up of the immigration system including fewer family class immigrants and a move to allowing in those with better language skills and job skills so that the financial burden on our social programs will be reduced. These are moves in the right direction. The immigration minister should be congratulated for this reform, and I emphasize reform.
However, the job is not finished yet. The immigrants to Canada who have more applicable job skills and speak English or French but also have AIDS will not be net contributors at all. They will be a burden on our welfare and health care systems and their presence increases the potential for others to be infected. As a guardian of the public purse I believe it is my duty to examine the costs involved in both the government's stated course of action and the measures proposed by this bill.
The government avoids performing a $12, I will emphasize $12, test for AIDS on every immigrant who comes into Canada, not the proposed $10,000 as was alluded to earlier by a member from the other side but $12. With the current level of 250,000 immigrants a year that is a saving of three million tax dollars. What are the costs of failing to perform such a test? The average health cost of caring for one person with AIDS is $250,000. If there are absolutely no immigrants coming to Canada with AIDS then indeed we have saved ourselves $3 million.
However we have no idea how many immigrants are coming into Canada with AIDS. What if there are a mere 20 a year reaching our land with this fatal disease? The cost of caring for these 20 would be $5 million. If the number is 200, the cost is $50 million. Is it not worth $3 million to conduct this basic test?
The Reform Party promised to be a constructive alternative in Parliament and offer solutions to the overspending problems of government. I do not believe we need to allocate new resources to this important task. We can point out some current expenditures that could be reallocated for the purposes of conducting mandatory testing.
The federal Ministry of Health devotes an incredible amount of its resources toward the goal of AIDS prevention and elimination. The department spends over $40 million a year on such programs. Less than half of this money is spent on actual research to develop treatments or vaccines. Most of this funding goes toward yet another government bureaucracy, the Canadian AIDS Secretariat, and special interest groups.
I would like to give some examples of the kind of nonsense that tax dollars have recently been frittered away on. There was the $35,000 spent on a centrefold in a homosexual magazine on the impact of AIDS. There was another $35,000 for a six month project called "The Puppets Against AIDS Tour". A group in New Brunswick received $128,000 to work for the empowerment of people with AIDS.
What is the net benefit to Canadians of this type of funding? What did the empowering do for the health problem? Does it bring us closer to a cure? Who does it really educate? Would this money not be better spent on AIDS testing for immigrants?
The goal of any public health campaign is clear: prevention of disease. One way to prevent the spread of disease in Canada is to eliminate new sources of the disease.
We have a dilemma on our hands. On the one hand the Liberal government has a policy in the department of health to prevent the transmission of AIDS and it spends big dollars doing it. On the other hand the immigration department has a policy which allows into Canada an unknown number of AIDS carriers. This is not the only area of Liberal government policy where we can see a contradiction.
The ministry of agriculture has looked at this type of issue already. We have all read about mad cow disease in Britain, a fatal disorder that attacks the nervous system of cattle. Our Agriculture Canada people have put down all the cattle imported into Canada from Britain since the time of the outbreak in 1986. The reason for this is simple. The disease can be passed on to other animals. We decided the risk of this happening, however small, was not worth the few cattle that were put down. It would seem that when it comes to the potential to contact fatal disease this Liberal government places the value of Canadian farm animals higher than it does that of Canadian citizens.
I want to point out one final example of contradiction in public health policy. We recently witnessed Health Canada officials at airports across Canada examining flights arriving from India, a country recently experiencing an outbreak of pneumonic plague. Much care and attention was focused on prevention by screening our borders. Pneumonic plague is easily treatable and poses no serious health threat to Canada. Yet much was done to deal with the situation. Why the same attention is not paid to detecting AIDS, a far more deadly disease, at our borders is just ridiculous.
The time for action is now. We must deal with this problem before more lives are put at risk or taxpayers' dollars are thrown away. AIDS testing of immigrants is just plain common sense. Let us do it by supporting Motion No. 285.