Mr. Chair, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to split my time with my colleague from Sackville—Eastern Shore.
I am anxious to participate in the debate because many of us, I among this group of parliamentarians, were here in the House when this issue emerged and was debated day in and day out. I rose just a moment ago to ask the Liberal member from British Columbia a question because I believe that the government of the day had a choice.
I am not here to criticize or to question the compassion of members across the way. I am here to say that the government of the day in 1997 and 1998 had a choice and it chose not to do the right thing, the morally responsible thing and to follow the public accountability path. It chose to ignore all reasoned approaches to this issue and selected compensation for a specific period of time for a very defined group of individuals, ignoring the fact that many people outside that window had also contracted hepatitis C through tainted blood, even though the tests and evidence were available to the government to make a better decision.
I think it is important in this debate to set the record straight and to simply point out, which is what we said at the time, that as early as 1991 a test was available to determine tainted blood, which the government knew about but chose to ignore the evidence that was mounting.
I raise that issue because as we get closer to a final resolution of this sorry chapter in our history, we can address it from the point of view of what is necessary on a principled basis and not what will be done because money is available.
The point all of us have been making in the House tonight, at least on the opposition benches, is that we must make a decision soon to compensate all victims of the hepatitis C tainted blood tragedy, regardless of how much money is left over to support the victims between the 1986 and 1990 period. That is the essence of the debate tonight.
I do not want to talk about who has more compassion in the House. I want all of us to remember what the victims have gone through over these years and what the champions of this fight have been through. We need to remember the battles of people like Joey Haché who was in this chamber time and time again in that 1997 to 1999 period fighting, speaking out, biking across the country, knocking on our doors, making speeches and reminding us of our obligations. He is still waiting for justice to this day.
It is also important to remember people like Mike McCarthy who has been the head of the Canadian Hemophilia Society for all this period and has never given up the battle in his search for justice.
Today we come together, not out of anger and not out of despair, but of remembering how we missed a responsibility many years ago and how today we have an obligation to finally meet the challenge and do what is right. If we do anything out of today's debate it should be to say, with one voice, that the government of the day must make a decision to compensate all the victims of the hepatitis C tainted blood scandal, regardless of when they were infected, as soon as possible, on a matter of principle, not on a matter of cost affordability or dollars available.
We in the House owe a debt of gratitude to all those people who have fought for this, who never gave up faith and who never stopped speaking out for justice so that we would not have a system of two tier compensation and so that those victims had the means by which they could afford the necessary medicines that they needed. Those are the people who want us to say with one voice that we accept our responsibilities as parliamentarians and that justice will finally be handed out to those who deserve this kind of response on the part of this highest court of the land.