Mr. Speaker, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Health Minister will have her chance to speak, but I will remind her that it is true. They did kowtow to the wishes of the Prime Minister.
Tomorrow on the front lawn of Parliament Hill a rally will be taking place. It will be led by a man by the name of Joey Haché who criss-crossed Canada by bicycle last year in an effort to raise public opinion on this issue.
I will read from the notice, not that I am using it as a prop, but it states:
Wednesday, April 28, noon on the front steps of Parliament—no rally...just a statement. I'm asking all Opposition MPs to join me for 5 minutes to show victims across Canada that they haven't been forgotten! Can we still count on your support against the Liberals?
He can count on our support on this side of the House. I believe he can probably count on support from across the aisle as well, from some of those people who found it very difficult to stand in their place and support a measure they did not believe in. They have now had a year to think about it.
What is so crazy about the government's position is that it is saying it cannot afford to compensate all victims so it will compensate some. I say this position is dictated more by the Minister of Finance than it is by the Minister of Health. On numerous occasions, on questions in the House, I would say “would the real Minister of Health stand up”. Do members know which minister would rise on such questions? It was the finance minister because he was the one holding the purse strings. He was the one, more so than the health minister, who dictated who would be compensated. It was so ridiculous when $1.1 billion was announced only for the victims between 1986 and 1990.
Some of our people today talked about helicopters. This is the same government that cancelled a necessary helicopter deal. It cancelled a legal and binding agreement which cost the taxpayers of Canada $750 million. It did not build a single helicopter. The helicopter issue resurrects its ugly head from time to time in this Chamber simply because what is going on in the world today is part of this debate. It cancelled the deal, which just paid its legal costs, to buy itself out of a piece of business. It is unbelievable.
It did the same thing with Pearson airport. The people of Toronto are suffering because of a lack of leadership on the part of the government in the expansion of Pearson airport. What did the government do in that case? It cancelled the deal. It cost the taxpayers over a billion dollars to simply cancel a a binding contract it did not want with all the i 's an t 's dotted and crossed.
If we take those two deals alone, we are talking about $1.75 billion. However, for the sake of argument, let us say $2 billion because the government is still adding and counting in terms of the Pearson deal. We still do not yet know what the final settlement will be.
The government is saying that it cannot compensate hepatitis C victims but it can carry out a political vendetta against whatever group at whatever cost. It does not have to talk about compensating innocent Canadians. This falls directly at the doorstep of the Prime Minister. It is not too late to do something.
Logically one might ask why this issue would resurrect its ugly head again in the House of Commons. Did we not have enough to say about it last year? We have not had enough to say about it. This issue will continually resurrect its ugly head until the government deals with it. Members are going to hear this from this side of the House time and time again. We are going to keep throwing in motions and using standing orders to remind the government that it did the wrong thing.
We only have to go through the clippings to realize how poorly the Liberal government handled this. The Red Cross, which has had its own set of problems, said that all victims should be compensated. The September 19, 1998 headline from the Globe and Mail said “Payments to blood victims ruled out. Ottawa's enhanced health care offer is met with scorn”.
It goes on even into the Senate, that chamber of sober second thought which we sometimes criticize on a daily basis in this place. It even recommended that all victims be compensated. What happened? Some governments acted on their own. They showed some leadership. The Government of Ontario, recognizing an injustice, compensated all victims in that province.
I called upon the province of New Brunswick last December to do the same thing. On December 16, 1998 I met with Premier Thériault and his health minister, Mrs. Breau, on that very issue. I suggested that they should compensate all victims or at least extend the compensation on an interim basis to those people before the package was agreed upon.
The other sad fact about the compensation package that was announced is that not one single victim has received a cent of compensation. Now there is a protracted legal argument because of the mishandling by the present government.
What we are saying is the provinces have to act alone. Unilaterally they should do it as the province of Ontario has done. We would like to see it happen in all the provinces. If they have to take the leadership on this issue, so be it. We do not have a government that will take the leadership or has even shown an inch of leadership on this issue.
In all fairness we are all disappointed with the announcement that only the 1986 to 1990 victims will be compensated. We want to see all victims compensated. I look forward to the debate on this motion.