Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments and the intervention by the hon. member. I found that her from the heart, off the top of her head defence of the Canadian Red Cross and of the blood system and relating to us her past experience were very admirable. An even better compliment is that it was much better than the department's canned speech she read a couple of weeks ago. Maybe she should speak her mind more often and we would all be better off based on her wisdom and her knowledge. This House could benefit from it, with respect.
The member knows darn well that I am not criticizing the Red Cross. I am criticizing a system that has been set in place. The information has to be gathered and should be shared with the many people who suffered. The victims of the tainted blood want to know what happened. That is all they want to know. I do not think they want to go on a witch hunt. They just want to know. I do not know why this government is catering to the former ministers of health, the pharmaceutical agencies and the people who are now filing legal petitions to prevent this report from being made public. That is the part I do not understand.
My point today in debate was to point out that this government is hypocritical in its actions and is duplicitous in the self-serving rhetoric it uses. I tried to give specific examples. A lot of the time the rhetoric is good. In fact a lot of time it is the same as ours and I would swear that the government stole some of our speeches, but its actions are not the same and do not match the rhetoric that it uses.
That is a disservice to the Canadian public. It is a disservice to the government. Canadians are much smarter than a lot of politicians give them credit for. In our isolated little world here we tend to believe what we see on TV, what we read in the newspapers, the national media types. We think that is what is important but it is not. What is important is the grassroots. Our constituencies are what are important and we should always stay in touch with them.