Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the member for Wild Rose said something in this House that I found quite outrageous. He condemned the Department of Health for distributing an information brochure on how AIDS is transmitted.
The disturbing thing is that an elected representative of the people does not know that AIDS is a viral infection transmitted through blood or semen. For lack of protection and sufficient information, hundreds of people have contracted this disease and died from it. It is unfortunate that Reform members are so hard on the homosexual community. This gut-level homophobia has no place in Parliament.
Some Reform Party members have shown narrow-mindedness, partisanship and base ignorance of the AIDS problem. The Department of Health should give them an intensive briefing on how AIDS is transmitted; this search for information should be the first step to greater tolerance.