Madam Speaker, I have a few comments to make. First, I was listening to the member's story about the European trip, the world trade trip where he was with the then Secretary of State for International Financial Institutions and they both came back to vote. I think that was bad planning on both sides. Only one should have come back or both should have stayed there. It would have been a balance.
The second point is on the member's reference to the numbers. He was in the House at the time and I was not. It is easy to be revisionist and point to the others and say that they made the mistakes. If the numbers prepared and presented by the experts were those numbers that were used, it would seem to me to be the reasonable numbers.
If it proved not to be correct for different reasons and we have a potential for a surplus, that is great. We can do something with that and go forward with another of Krever's recommendations, but we should not be of the opinion that the government did not respond to Krever.
Following the Krever inquiry Canada strengthened its practice on regulating the blood system. It invested additional resources. We now have stronger research, surveillance, inspection and regulatory practices. We have provided assistance to those living with hepatitis C and those who received tainted blood. I think a lot was done.
There was $500 million that was invested in research and the regulatory side as well as assisting the provinces. If we look at the monthly, or few months, or yearly charges, interferon at the time was $14,000. That would have been devastating to the provinces but with the assistance of the federal government we were able to give care to those people, if not cash, they got care.