moved:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should take all necessary steps to provide a humane and fair resolution for those infected with hepatitis C through the blood supply system, and provide for research, education and support into the identification of other inherited bleeding disorders, in particular von Willebrand's disease.
Mr. Speaker, it is nice to be on my feet again on this very timely topic. I just want to remind the House that it will be a year ago tomorrow that we voted on the compensation package for all hepatitis C victims. I want to read into the record the motion the House voted on a year ago.
That this House urges the government to act on the recommendation of Justice Horace Krever to compensate all victims who contracted Hepatitis C through tainted blood.
The difficulty is of course that the government only recognizes those individuals between 1986 and 1990. That pretty well explains my motion. What we have are innocent victims outside of that time package who are as deserving of compensation as those people within that time period. It is a very narrow period of time that the government purposely designed. It has created problems.
I have always figured, and I think most of us have, that Canada is a very fair and generous country. When we are leaving victims outside a package designed to compensate them there is something dreadfully wrong.
I want to go through some of the numbers just to point out how generous Canadians are. We are very supportive as a people, as a group and as a country of compensating all of those victims. These are some statistics. Statistics alone cannot obviously tell the story. I will be the first to admit that no government should operate basically on public opinion all the time because there are other factors that have to be considered. However, I think this gives a sense of what Canadians are thinking.
Statistics tell us that 89% of Canadians support providing financial assistance to all persons with serious adverse consequences as a result of contracting hepatitis C from the blood supply system; 83% of Canadians believe it is unfair that pre-1986 victims are not eligible for financial assistance; and only 9% said it is fair.
In terms of supporting compensation, it is pretty unanimous across the country. For example, in Ontario it is 88%, 93% in Quebec, 87% in B.C., 84% in the prairies and 95% in Atlantic Canada. It is pretty compelling when we take a look at the statistics in terms of public support for compensating all victims.
I want to quote directly from Justice Krever's report, volume 3, page 1029. It states:
The compassion of a society can be judged by the measures it takes to reduce the impact of tragedy on its members.
In Volume 3, page 1045 of that same report, Krever states:
Until now, our treatment of the blood-injured has been unequal. After years of suffering devastating financial losses, many persons infected with HIV from blood or blood products, or their surviving family members, finally did receive financial assistance. Other Canadians—
—and we are talking about hepatitis C people—
—who have suffered injuries from blood therapy have not received any compensation. Yet the needs of those who have been harmed are the same, regardless of their cause and whether or not fault can be proved. Compensating some needy sufferers and not others cannot, in my opinion, be justified.
I think the Canadian people are in complete agreement with Justice Krever. We cannot justify a package that leaves people outside. Think of the dates, 1986 to 1990. It means that if someone became infected because of a blood transfusion on December 31, 1985 they would not be compensated. A day later, New Year's day of 1986, they would be.
What kind of perverse logic would lead someone to believe that type of package would be acceptable to the Canadian people? It is not acceptable. We in the House fought for months on that particular issue.
A year ago tomorrow will be the day when the Liberals stood up and supported a package that discriminates against victims of hepatitis C through no fault of their own. Why would they do it? Why did they do it? They just simply kowtowed or bowed down to pressure exerted on them by the Prime Minister. They all stood in their place and did it.