Mr. Speaker, I invite the member for Halifax to refer to the blues and see what the member for Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia's speech indicated to see if there was any partisanship in it. I would invite her to look at the reports of the committees and the dialogue from the health committee meetings to see if there was any partisanship there. I would also invite her to read the reports of debate of previous discussions on this and see if there was any partisanship in the speeches made by the member for Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia.
If she still feels that I was wrong to suggest that there was partisanship and that I was wrong in those accusations, then I will re-read all those same documents. If it warrants, I will certainly retract, but until that is done, it is very difficult.
She makes the point that the committee has suggested unanimously, including my vote at the committee, that compensation be made for those people suffering from hepatitis C previous to 1986 and post 1990. The minister has agreed with that. The minister has tasked his officials to enter into discussions and to look at all available options for compensation.
Then we come back with another resolution and it is in light of the large surplus in the federal hepatitis C compensation fund. But there is no federal hepatitis C compensation fund. That does not exist. There is a trust that the federal government contributed to that is owned by the people who contracted hepatitis C between 1986 and 1990. There is good potential that there is a surplus, but we have to know what the actuarial surplus is and then we have to follow the regulations within that trust to see how those funds could be used.
That was a suggestion of the committee originally in light of that surplus, but the minister went beyond that and said we would look at all available options, not including any or excluding any but look at all available options for compensation.
We agree with the committee. We want the compensation to be made as quickly as possible, but when the term “immediately” is used, what does that mean? Does that mean that we just send a cheque to everybody or do we develop criteria? Do we find out how many people there are and the level to which they are affected?
If we look at the 1986 to 1990 group, there are criteria that are administered by the trustees regarding their levels of disabilities and how much they should receive. It is important that we have that information and the process has started. As I mentioned, they are meeting this month. The discussions and negotiations are ongoing. That is the right and reasonable way to approach these things otherwise we risk making grievous mistakes by not doing it with the proper information.
The member opposite clearly raised a good point, that the last time we set up a fund we did not have the right numbers. We used the numbers that were provided by the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs did not, I am sure, intend to mislead. They had the best numbers that they could calculate with the information that they had at the time. It came to light that happily the number of sufferers so far have been a lot less than predicted. But that was unknown to the plaintiffs or to the governments in those negotiations at that time, so now we are in the similar situation with this group. The discussions are underway to discover the available options and how the compensation should happen. We are committed to see that through.