Mr. Speaker, last week I asked a question of the Minister of Health regarding the hepatitis C compensation package. The reason I raised the question in the House is that it is about five years after the Krever inquiry, where Krever said that all victims of hepatitis C should be compensated.
The government made a unilateral deliberate decision only to compensate those victims between 1986 and 1990. We on this side of the House, and in fact some members on that side of the House, felt that was wrong at the time.
That question came forward from me last week because in that five year interval between the Krever inquiry and today, the RCMP has laid criminal charges against the Red Cross, Health Canada officials and officials in the corporate sector.
We do not know what the outcome of those trials will be. In fact they could be proven innocent. We are not trying to prejudge what might happen in a criminal trial, but we do know this as we stand here tonight.
There is a very casual and sometimes cavalier attitude by some of the officials. At the very minimum it is sloppy behaviour by those people. We know that because of that sloppy behaviour, people died and people got sick. We know that because of that type of behaviour by officials who have been charged, lives were lost and families have been destroyed.
The question again is, why would the Government of Canada compensate some of those victims but not others? I pointed out to the minister that day in the House that out of the compensation fund of approximately $1.2 billion--the minister says $1.4 billion, so let us take the minister's word, $1.4 billion--the first group of people to be paid were the lawyers. They received $55 million before any of the victims received a nickel.
As we stand here, only 2,000 people have been approved for compensation in that artificial timeframe of 1986 to 1990. For months on end, the government, and health ministers going back to 1997, claimed in the House that it could not afford to pay those people outside that artificial date the government had set up arbitrarily.
Now we know there are only 5,000 people outside that timeframe who should be compensated. The fact of the matter is that the interest on that fund is sustaining the fund. The government has not drawn down enough from that fund to jeopardize it.
There is a very strong and compelling argument why all victims should be compensated.
I challenge the minister to bring the actuaries to a committee of the whole and report to the House what that fund is capable of doing.
Our belief is it can sustain itself over that period of time and all victims can in fact be compensated as they should be.