Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time this afternoon with the hon. member for Mississauga West.
I have sat here day after day listening to attempts to make it seem like our government is working according to a purely legal approach, that it is just tossing people out on the street with nowhere to go for medical help.
I have observed that we have one of the very best health care systems in the world. I am sick and tired of partisan opportunists trying to make it appear as though our government has no social safety net, like we are an uncaring society.
It is especially galling coming from the opposition party whose bluebook advocates the gutting of the Canadian medicare system. Also galling is the myth that they have helped propagate, that Canada is behind other countries in terms of how we are dealing with hepatitis C.
I stand here today to ensure that the truth is not hidden within the lines of political rhetoric and partisan excess. Of course we have all heard of Ireland's approach to its own particular circumstances. For partisan critics Ireland's program is the one they highlight, the one against which all comparisons are made. However this single example is not one which can really be compared to our own. This is a different society with different structures, processes and pressures.
Ireland created a social program. While I do not know the extent to which it underwent consultation and consideration in that country, I do know that the full implications have not been fully discussed in our country.
How else do we compare ourselves to Ireland? Is its society so similar to our own? Is it the same size? Does it have the same democratic structure? Does it have the same history? Does our supreme court refer to Ireland to see what it has done on issues of law? The answer is a definite no.
When do we copy other countries' policies? Should we adopt, for instance, the U.S. style of health care as advocated by the opposition parties? Do we follow the human rights practices of other countries?
The answer to all of those questions is no. At the same time we should look to see where practices that do fit our own circumstances might exist.
If we have to consider other countries then I suggest we should take a look at what other major industrial countries have done. By that I mean the G-7 or the G-8 as we now include Russia. Among these countries nobody has followed Ireland's approach, nobody.
Let us look at Italy which has only given some very limited help to hemophiliacs. It has excluded everybody else. Can we really say the people abroad get the same kind of care we get here in Canada? That is really where it ends. Nobody else has even come close to providing the compensation offer that we are providing in Canada.
I think we should now make it a matter of record perhaps to compare it to some other countries. What has Russia done? Nothing that we know of. What has the United Kingdom done? It has defended itself in court and it is defending itself in court without acknowledging any type of responsibility outside that court. The same goes for France, Japan and Germany. Germany is conducting all legal claims through the court system.
Then there is the United States where we understand there are very few lawsuits. Why is that? That is because in 1986 it used surrogate testing on a national basis and we did not.
Today Canada has acted in a reasonable, responsible and clear way that even brought people into the picture who did not have lawsuits. We did so because that fits our rationale. Is that a purely legalistic approach? Has anybody else in the G-8 done this? No.
Let us go beyond those nations for the moment. Let us go beyond those countries against which Canada is most frequently compared and look at New Zealand. New Zealand does not compensate those with hepatitis C. It used to but only through its no fault system for accidents.
Now a large number of people have been left out by changes made in 1992. Why did they make changes that restrict access to this deteriorating program? They made them because New Zealand's no fault system is hurting as is its health care system. Is this an example we really want to follow?
People with hepatitis C are now left out of that system. They are suing their government. Should we be following the path of a nation that might eventually be following ours? Its newspapers report that Canada's approach might provide direction as to how it will deal with this problem. We should not be copying New Zealand. We should be learning from its experience.
Finally, there is Australia. Australia has settled its litigation out of court. We do not know exactly what has happened because there the agreement is secret. What we do know is that it settled cases that came about because it failed to use surrogate tests. This does sound awfully familiar.
We know it settled its cases without the Australian public knowing the conditions of the settlement. We also know it did not include people who had no court claim. It hedged its bets. Its rationale was purely legal. That is the approach that fits its public environment, culture and history. It suited its particular circumstances.
We have gone beyond that. Nobody can say that we took this legal approach because, as I said, our national approach to hepatitis C includes people who although they did not file a court case were affected at the same time as the rest. They were affected during a time when Canada's blood system should have performed better.
No other comparable country has included so many people as this country has. No other country has been as responsible as we have. That is the international record on this matter. Canada is a leader in its approach. It is not a blind follower.