Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the comments made by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health and I have to say that I am really quite taken aback.
Instead of congratulating the member for Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, I have rarely heard a member of this House be more condescending in chastizing someone and making what seemed to me very close to accusations about his trying to mislead the House and actually accusing him of motives, which I thought were in fact extra parliamentary, not acceptable in parliamentary terms.
However, let me go the question that I would like to ask the parliamentary secretary to address.
I am sure he has read carefully the motion that has come from the committee. Let me remind him that it is not only urging the government to extend compensation to all those who contracted hepatitis C from tainted blood but that the government do so immediately “in recognition of the recommendation of the Krever Inquiry and the large surplus in the federal Hepatitis C compensation fund”.
How can the parliamentary secretary so conveniently ignore the urging of the committee, including the Liberal members, that the government move immediately to commit to compensating all hepatitis C victims prior to 1986 and following 1990, and instead turn this into one of the most grotesquely partisan attacks on a member who is simply reflecting the unanimous will of the health committee that brought this motion forward?