Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have a few minutes to raise an issue that I presented to the House on April 22. It concerns a very critical health care issue, that of organ donations and transplantation.
One thing I am sure we in the House all agree on is that we have a serious problem in terms of the number of organ donors in Canada. There is no question that Canada has one of the worst rates of organ donors anywhere in the western world. That is a critical situation which all of us need to work at addressing.
The health committee spent a good period of time hearing from witnesses, receiving evidence, getting advice and presenting a report about how to address this very serious matter. I regret though that on a couple of very important issues in my opinion the committee's recommendations were weak and less than helpful.
I want to raise two specific points and ask the government to give serious consideration to these recommendations.
The first has to do with respect to a national donor registry system. The government has refused to commit to a registry that would encourage Canadians to think seriously about demonstrating their commitment to donate an organ if they should be faced with death. I want the government to look at a model that has been tried in other jurisdictions.
The Government of British Columbia has a donor registry system that allows every individual to look at the situation. They can make the serious decision that yes they want to donate, or no they do not want to donate, or that they are undecided.
We think that would have been a very important system to encourage Canadians to make commitments around organ donations. The government and the health committee of parliament have refused to make that specific recommendation.
Second, I want to raise the issue of safety and the whole area of health protection when it comes to organ donations. In our view, organs are no different than blood. We know we should have learned from our sorry history on the question of blood and taken very seriously the recommendations of Justice Krever when he said that this government must pursue a proactive regulatory approach when it comes to blood. I would suggest he would also say that applies to organs, to tissues and to everything that is important in terms of the health and well-being of Canadians.
On this particular issue the government continues to reject the recommendations of Justice Krever and is bent on pursuing what it would call a risk management approach, which is basically a hands off, buyer beware kind of mentality, and that is not at all appropriate to the kind of issues we are dealing with.
Time and time again, whether we talk about blood, medical devices, food, genetically modified products, children's toys, breast implants or drugs, this government continues to reject its responsibility around absolute safety for Canadians. I urge the government to take seriously the need to protect all Canadians when it comes to—