Madam Speaker, I want to pay a compliment to my colleague from Winnipeg, our health critic, who brought this motion forward.
This has been around the House, as members well know, a long time. In fact, it predates many of us in this place. It basically goes back to the 1980s when Canadians were subjected to plasma infected with hepatitis C from blood that was received from places like, for example, prisons in the United States and Canada, and developing countries where there are no safeguards. As a result of that, many Canadians were infected with that very debilitating and often fatal disease.
The government then appointed Justice Krever to look into how this could occur in a country like Canada. How could we have a tainted blood scandal, if you will? Justice Krever uncovered a pattern of gross negligence and criminality, not only involving the Red Cross but Ottawa itself in terms of the handling of our blood supply.
After a number of years of investigation hearings across the country, Justice Krever concluded that all victims of hepatitis C as a result of that tainted blood should be compensated. Most Canadians agreed with Justice Krever. Everyone on this side of the House agreed with Justice Krever and many people on the other side of the House, that is the government of the day, the Liberal government, agreed as well that all victims should be compensated.
Unfortunately, and this is really why we are still debating this after so many years, not all those victims are being compensated. Only victims between 1986 and 1990 are being compensated. That is simply an artificial time period that the government threw up for convenience because it simply did not want to spend the money to compensate innocent victims of a tainted blood scandal.
Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Langley.
The government had an opportunity back in 1997, when Krever reported, to do what was right, that every Canadian considered was the right thing to do: compensate these innocent victims. It did not. It only compensated those between 1986 and 1990. If a person's date of infection resulted outside of that time span, he or she was simply out of luck, according to the government.
On this side of the House, as health critic for our party at that time, I take a lot of pride in being the first to stand in the House and demand from the government that all victims should be compensated. I was part of that very strong debate coming from this side of the House and really putting the wood to the government on that issue with the help of a lot of my colleagues. At that time, as members well know, we did not have a united Conservative Party. My colleague from the Reform Party at that time, Dr. Grant Hill, was another member of the House who led the fight to do exactly what we are speaking of, and that is to compensate all victims.
What do we know about what the government has done? We know that it did agree on a $1.2 billion package between federal and provincial governments to compensate those victims in the timeframe of which it speaks.
The government at the time was exaggerating the number of claimants who would come forward. That is its excuse for not compensating all victims. This we do know, that since the fund was set up, the $1.2 billion fund, there is still $1.05 billion left in the fund. In other words, more than enough money to compensate all the victims, not just some but all the victims.
What is so sad about this story is that we do know that the government lawyers have received $70 million out of the fund. They are the same people to whom the government is now listening. They are saying not to compensate all the victims.
My argument would be that the lawyers are looking after themselves very nicely, thanks very much. That is the same legal argument that the government always falls down on when it comes to defending its original position to compensate some, but not all. It is a bogus argument. It will not withstand scrutiny and close examination.
In fact, the Auditor General does not have the power nor the authority, nor does Parliament, to go in and peek behind the curtains in terms of how that fund is being administered. That is another example of how sad this regime is that the present government has set up. The government members all stood up in this House and voted for that, leaving people outside the package.
In fact, we have some members of cabinet presently in this room and listening to me speak who were forced by the Prime Minister of the day, Mr. Chrétien, to stand in their place and vote down compensation for all members. It was a motion that came from this side of the House, brought forward by Dr. Grant Hill, to do the very thing that Canadians are saying would be the fair thing to do.
The Liberals are running out of excuses. It is as simple as that. The clock is ticking. Some of these people will actually go to their graves without having received a nickel of compensation from the Government of Canada for a disease inflected on them through no fault of their own. It does not get any worse than that. It is totally unacceptable.
I know families that are basically on the verge of bankruptcy because they were left outside of the artificial time limit that the Liberal government conveniently put in place. That is just fundamentally wrong, but that is how basic this argument is. It is about an artificial time line imposed by the Liberal Government of Canada on some unfortunate Canadians.
I often use this as an example. If a person were infected on December 31, 1985, that person would be outside the package. If the person were infected, for example, on January 1, 1986, that person would be inside. Does that make any sense? None at all and government members opposite know that.
What is annoying and what annoys a lot of Canadians is that they are forced to stand in their place by a Prime Minister to support the government position, knowing full well that they are doing the wrong thing. What does that say about this present Prime Minister and his battle to knock down the democratic deficit, or to do something about it to make this place democratic, so that members of his own government can stand in their place and do the right thing?
Nothing has changed. The present Prime Minister is no better than Mr. Chrétien who imposed the same set of rules on his members at the time. The same crowd, the same group of members on Wednesday evening when we vote on this, will stand in their place and deny the opportunity for these people to be treated fairly, the way that most Canadians would expect to be treated when there is a level of incompetence and, in fact, criminality taking place. Most of us would expect those people to be compensated by the government of the day.
That is what this motion demands. It has nothing to do with the arguments that we are hearing from the other side. Those are simply bogus arguments.
When we see Liberals standing up and pushing back on an issue like this, it tells us that there is something fundamentally wrong with them and in the way they deliver government to Canadians. It talks of their incompetence. It talks of their arrogance and it talks about their basic uncaring, when a government does that to its very members that were democratically elected to do the right thing in this place.
I suggest that all members in this House do the right thing on Wednesday night by standing up and demanding fair compensation for all the victims of hepatitis C. Do what Justice Krever said should be done. Let us follow Krever and do the right thing and compensate all victims. That is the challenge to the government.