Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of the constituents of Saanich—Gulf Islands to speak on this very important issue brought forward by my colleague the member for Macleod.
I have been following the debate in my office. We have heard a lot of heart wrenching testimonies. It is very important that we listen to them but that we also listen to our moral conscience, listen to our constituents, and do what is right.
I have letters which I am going to bring into the debate, but I am going to start off with what needs to be done as right. I am really frustrated at what this government is doing.
Let me read from an article in the April 23 issue of the Toronto Star . These are the tactics the Prime Minister has brought himself down to in this debate, and I say has brought himself down to: “the Prime Minister declared a vote on a Reform Party motion expected early next week to be a vote of confidence in his government”. What he is really doing here is bringing out a big hammer. He is telling all of his backbenchers that they will do as they are told.
This vote has been declared a whipped vote by the government. I got that from one of the Liberal members. A whipped vote means the government will pull every single stop to make sure that every single member votes with the government. I do not believe we will see any members on that side vote against. There will be a few who will have the courage to stay out of the House.
When members are forced to vote against the wishes of their constituents and against their own moral conscience, when they are ordered, not told but ordered how to vote, that is called a dictatorship. That is exactly what the Prime Minister is doing in this situation. He is ordering his members what to do.
It is really ironic and this is just a coincidence, but where is the Prime Minister going to be when we vote? Where is the Prime Minister going to be next Tuesday? He is going to be in Cuba. How ironic. The Prime Minister is going to be in Cuba and he is dictating to his members on how to vote.
I know the Prime Minister believes in democracy. He has expressed that to us and I believe that he does. But I think his tunnel vision on this issue is so narrow that he does not even realize he is dictating to the worst extremes.
We have heard from some of the Liberal backbenchers how frustrated they are with the government. For the government now to pull all the stops out and force this issue is absolutely wrong. It goes against all the principles of democracy, people's own moral conscience and the wishes of members' constituents to be ordered for political reasons by the Prime Minister. To do this is absolutely dead wrong. They will have to look at themselves in the mirror, as will the Prime Minister.
Let us get on to the issue of the hepatitis C victims. I want to quote from Justice Krever's recommendations:
Until now, our treatment of the blood-injured has been unequal—. Compensating some needy sufferers and not others cannot, in my opinion, be justified.
I do not know how much clearer we can get than that.
I know an arbitrary date has been drawn in the sand. From everything that I have read, there was a test available. I have heard members on the other side argue that the United States did not start their testing until 1986. My question is since when especially in our health care system, do we have to follow the lead of the United States? We make decisions on our own. That is absolutely the worst kind of argument and it shows the government is grasping at straws.
I will read parts of a letter. I will not read the entire letter because I do not have time. A constituent, Mrs. Betty Back of Victoria, wrote this letter to me. In 1997 the Red Cross told her that she had hepatitis C. She writes: “This came as quite a shock because I did not know I had been given a transfusion”. Because of the complications from a hip operation, Mrs. Back had to undergo numerous operations between 1983 and 1997. She raised the point that she has no idea when she was infected. She has no idea when she was injected with poisonous blood, none whatsoever.
Again I quote: “I don't know what our government proposes to do. There should be no guidelines as to if a person was infected in the 1970s, 1980s or 1990s. I have hepatitis C and I got infected from a blood transfusion. There is no cure. Transfusions were meant to save lives, not kill them, and kill it does. No one but no one should be discriminated against”. That is exactly what this government is doing. It is cutting her off. There will be no evidence to indicate when she got hepatitis C.
Her point is exactly what we are debating. We cannot just draw a line in the sand. We know these tests were available. The evidence is out there. In my research I have seen different dates. All kinds of dates are thrown in here. My conclusion is that in the early eighties, at least 1980 or 1981, without question there were tests available and other tests were available before that.
I understand that all four opposition parties have left the partisan politics out of the issue. They are doing what is right, members from one corner of this country to the other. I know there are members from the other side who would wish to join in that as well, but of course they have been dictated to by the Prime Minister. They have been ordered. I see the smiles. To me that is more serious in itself than the issue we are dealing with. Today I spoke to one of the members who explained the level of orders they are receiving on this. The Prime Minister is concerned. He is treating this as a confidence vote.
Let us talk about confidence votes. I agree with the Prime Minister that this is a confidence vote but not in the same way he means it. I am not suggesting this will bring down the government at all. This is a vote about the confidence of the people of Canada. The Prime Minister has an opportunity to do the right thing. It is never ever too late to right a wrong. He could come into the House today and say “We have made a wrong decision here and we are going to correct it”. I hope he does.
I hope the Prime Minister is following this debate and listening to the arguments. If he is, I am sure he will have to do that. I do not see how anybody could not follow this debate and not come in and correct that wrong. That is the only way he will gain the confidence of the people of Canada. This is about confidence.
This government is losing that confidence. It is related not only to the hepatitis C issue and the government's failure to compensate some victims, which would be the right thing to do, but also to the issue of democracy. If the Prime Minister continues to run a government that dictates instead of allows the people on that side of the House to represent their constituents, they will be receiving calls all weekend on this.
I ask the government to reconsider. I ask the Prime Minister to make the right decision so we can support him on this issue.