Grant Hill

[Hepatitis C, May 6th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, is it not interesting when you are cornered like a rat you come out fighting.

[Hepatitis C, May 6th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting that during the conference call on Friday all the ministers said that they accept the old deal.

Premier Harris today is still accepting the old deal, but what he has done bravely is said that there must be a new deal for the other individuals.

I have a question for the Prime Minister. Does he accept that principle? Yes or no. Are they to negotiate or say no?

[Supply, May 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I just received an interesting letter. It is dated today and is from the premier of Ontario. I would like to paraphrase a couple of the comments.

Ontario is committed to treating pre 1986 victims on the same basis as 1986 to 1990 victims. The premier says “I urge the federal government to make the same commitment”. The letter is addressed to the Prime Minister of Canada. “The Prime Minister's commitment will allow officials from both our governments to determine not whether but how to get assistance into the hands of Ontario victims as quickly as possible”. He goes on to say that for the sake of the victims that is why the province is doing this.

It is a very interesting and provocative letter. Does my colleague from the Tory party agree with the very interesting letter from the premier of Ontario?

[Hepatitis C, May 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think any of them have read the Krever report. The minister himself said there were four volumes and there are only three. In the Krever report it says that the screening test was available to Canadian regulators as early as 1981. What did they do with it? They ignored the test.

I will ask again, does the Prime Minister agree with the principle that every one of these victims who got hepatitis C from tainted blood should be compensated, yes or no?

[Hepatitis C, May 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, this sounds like some kind of courtroom argument. This is the way the government has taken this from day one.

This question is not that tough for the Prime Minister. It is not tough at all. I think we will ask it until he answers it directly. Does he agree with the principle, yes or no, that all victims of hepatitis C from tainted blood should be compensated? That is the question. Yes or no?

[Supply, May 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary did give an interesting speech this morning which was not down the government line. In fact, it was somewhat negative on this motion.

I wonder if we could ask for unanimous support of the House for the parliamentary secretary to come back now and give a second speech where he can support the motion. He certainly did in the first one.

[Supply, May 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, my question is similar to that posed by my Conservative colleague. This is an NDP motion and I presume the NDP would be supportive of this motion. However, if there were a dissident, if someone decided not to, would they be forced to vote against their conscience on this issue or would this be a free vote for the NDP?

[Supply, May 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I have a procedural question for the member for Charlotte. The Reform Party treats an opposition day motion as a free vote. We give a recommendation and members will vote according to how they feel.

I wonder how Conservative members will treat this non-partisan opposition motion today. Will they treat it the same way? Will they be voting freely without whip constraint? Will they be voting with their hearts, will they be voting the wishes of their constituents?

[Supply, May 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the commissioning of this new research facility has been fairly recent. It is the perfect facility to be leading the charge in this way. This facility looks after things like the ebola virus which is profoundly risky to all human life. The facility certainly could and should be involved.

I have only been in touch with one of the highest officials in the lab. I am not certain how far down the road it is with new equipment and whatnot to be conducting these experiments. This is the perfect facility to be a world leader in this area and certainly something I endorse personally. Once again, we surely want to fix the problem before it comes rather than fix the problem after it is there.

[Supply, May 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the member can take no small pride in the amount of work he has put into this file as well.

It would be patently unfair for one rich province to say that it will give funds and no one else would. Imagine the position a poorer province would be in if it said it would not look after these individuals when the numbers of dollars especially in relationship to the numbers of victims are not that great.

We have seen inflated figures, figures which I think are completely unfair. The numbers I have used as a comparison, another jurisdiction with four million people ended up with 732 victims who were sick enough to go for compensation. If we extrapolate that in Canada we will find that the figures are far different.

Nova Scotia, a relatively have not province, led the file on HIV. The Tory government there led the push for HIV compensation. I do not think that anybody would say that it did that because it had lots of extra funds. The province did it because it was correct, proper and right. In a sense it shamed other governments into following its lead.

I believe that funds will be taken from other frivolous things, such as giving money to businesses that are already successful, and put where Canadians think the funds should go. That is to those who have been unfortunately harmed because federal regulators did not do what they should have done.