Madam Speaker, I move that the first report of the Standing Committee on Health presented to the House on Monday, November 1, 2004, be concurred in.
Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia.
This is a very important motion and I would like to explain exactly how it came to the House. This is a motion that was made in the health committee and it was a unanimous decision by the committee. Unanimous decisions are not all that striking in themselves but the House has to understand that this decision was made unanimously and it went against the direction in which the government has gone for the last two parliaments.
It becomes very significant when government members will sit in a committee room, discuss the issue and realize that they were in error for the direction in which the government had been going on the issue of compensation to hepatitis C victims outside the window for the last seven years, or even a decade. It becomes a very significant issue to understand how it came to the House.
We made the motion in committee. It was a unanimous decision to compensate all those victims outside the window. There was another motion made in committee which was to bring it to the House and have it reported here. It was reported on Monday so my notice of motion was for the concurrence of the House to recognize that the decision of the committee is the right direction in which to go. We are asking the House to concur with that motion. It is a very legitimate request and we believe that the House should concur.
There is $1.1 billion left in a compensation fund that started at $1.2 billion and all of those who are within the window have already been paid. We know the numbers outside the window are much reduced compared to the estimates that were made initially. There are about 5,000 left, maybe 6,000 at the very most. There is absolutely no rational reason why we would not compensate outside that window.
We had a take note debate in the House last evening to discuss the issue. The minister said that he would like to pursue this and plans to take it to cabinet. When I looked at the cabinet ministers I realized that a number of cabinet ministers who were against this for the last decade are still sitting in cabinet. Therefore, I am a little nervous about the direction in which they will go when they are in the cabinet room. That is why it is very important for the House to send them a message urging them to do the right thing.
There is no reason that this should not happen. The funding is there, although the decision should never have been based on the funding. It should have been based on fairness.
We have to understand that all of those outside the window who were impacted by tainted blood who got HIV and which progressed to AIDS were compensated. It is only the hepatitis C victims. Not only was there discrimination of the individuals, it was also of the disease itself. Because of that, in the sense of fairness if for no other reason, all victims of tainted blood should be compensated.
It was a terrible time in the history of this country when the citizens felt that the blood system was safe and it was not. The government knew. It had been forewarned that it was not safe but it proceeded. We could go on and on with the rationale and the history of the situation. I do not know if it is important to do that at this time. What is important is that we make sure that the House has an opportunity to speak to the cabinet and to the government in power with regard to doing the right thing for all Canadians.
The decision in 1998 should have been to compensate all those outside the window, which coincides with the Krever inquiry. That was the right thing to do then. It is the right thing to do now. We still have time to do the right thing and I encourage Parliament to send that message.