Mr. Speaker, I rise to support the motion before the House and to add my voice in urging other hon. members to do likewise.
For weeks the issue of securing fair compensation for all the victims of tainted blood has been front and centre in the House. The health minister and the Prime Minister presented legal, financial and accounting arguments against expanding the compensation package, but weightier arguments based on the concepts of fairness, compassion and morality have also been presented with many of them being provided by the victims themselves. These arguments led to expanding the compensation package for victims of tainted blood. We on this side of the House are pleased to finally see some small movement in this direction by the government.
The principal objective of the official opposition in this whole exercise, and it is reflected in the NDP motion before the House, is simply to get fair compensation for all those who contracted hepatitis C as a result of defects in the federally regulated blood system. The objective is not to drag the government down and thereby score political points. The objective is to simply do the right, fair and compassionate thing for the victims of this tainted blood tragedy.
Daniel Johnson, the former Liberal leader in Quebec, is to be commended for his initiative in raising this issue in a new way in the Quebec legislature. Premier Harris of Ontario is to be particularly commended for his leadership in this matter. Not only has Premier Harris declared that the compensation package should be renegotiated but he has also agreed to bring more money to the table.
We feel therefore that the time has come for the federal government, in particular the Prime Minister himself, to start showing some real leadership on this issue and to drive it to a fair and compassionate resolution. In our opinion the exercise of this leadership involves three things.
First it involves the Prime Minister himself convening a national federal-provincial meeting in order to resolve this injustice. We agree that the victims of tainted blood themselves should have input to this meeting, which is the thrust of the motion before us. We also believe that this meeting should be convened by the Prime Minister because the federal health minister has lost all credibility on this issue. To coin a phrase, he has hit rock bottom.
Second, federal leadership on this matter should involve directing the Minister of Finance, who has been strangely silent throughout all of this, to develop a plan for financing the federal portion of an expanded compensation package by reallocating funds within the existing federal budget.
Third, in order for the federal-provincial meeting alluded to by this resolution to be successful, the federal government must clearly and publicly abandon three arguments which the health minister and the Prime Minister have been using over the past few months to fight any expansion of the compensation package. These arguments need to be identified and abandoned now because if the government continues to maintain and advocate them, the federal-provincial meeting envisioned by this resolution will not be successful. Let me be specific.
First, the Prime Minister must fully and frankly abandon the argument that there was no test available prior to 1986 to detect hepatitis C in the blood supply. This is a false argument.
Justice Krever said clearly that such tests were available. My colleague has already referred to Dr. Moore of the Canadian Red Cross national reference laboratory proposing a test to help screen donors for non-A and non-B hepatitis as early as May 1981 and the New York Blood Centre was testing for hepatitis C in 1982. The government must acknowledge that its 1986 line in the sand was drawn there primarily for political reasons which are simply not acceptable to the Canadian people.
Second, the government must abandon the argument that compensating all victims of hepatitis C who contracted the disease through tainted blood will somehow open the floodgates to compensate everyone and anyone who becomes ill for whatever reason. This too is a fallacious argument.
No one is asking the government to compensate everyone who becomes ill regardless of the circumstances or the causes. What we are requesting is that the government compensate people who became ill as a result of proven government negligence, negligence established as a result of a thorough, objective, scientific and judicial inquiry by the Krever commission.
Third, the government must abandon the argument that somehow compensating all victims who contracted hepatitis C from tainted blood will be fiscally irresponsible. The official opposition finds this argument both hypocritical and false.
It is hypocritical coming from Liberals who normally have no hesitancy about spending public money on anything, particularly when it is other people's money. It is also false because there is a way to increase the federal compensation for victims of tainted blood in a fiscally responsible manner. There is a way to increase the federal compensation for victims of tainted blood without increasing total federal spending, or taxation, or unbalancing the budget.
The finance minister should be directed to find the money, not through any spending or taxation increases but by reallocating resources within the existing spending limits. Possible sources of funding include the $7 billion in savings proposed by Reform to the finance committee during the budget, debate and the finance minister's so-called $3 billion contingency fund.
In other words, the federal government should approach the funding of this expanded compensation package in exactly the same way that a Canadian family faced with an unanticipated family crisis would face the problem. If the family had no additional sources of revenue, the only way to cope with a crisis like this would be to reallocate funds, to take money from some other purpose and apply it to dealing with the crisis.
This is precisely what the federal government should do in this case. If it needs help in applying the novel concept of fiscal responsibility within existing spending limits to this situation, the official opposition would be more than happy to offer that help.
In conclusion, I want to pay tribute to all the victims of hepatitis C who have persisted in presenting their case. They have persisted in the face of intransigence from the leader of our country, and the Minister of Health who is supposed to be the guardian of the health care system, and the intransigence of the government itself. These people are persistent despite their illness and lack of resources.
This resolution before us today acknowledges their persistence and gives them standing at the federal-provincial meeting. May I suggest that the greatest tribute we can pay to these people is not through resolutions, through speeches or through press releases but by simply doing the right thing. In this case doing the right thing involves providing just and compassionate compensation for the effects which this terrible tragedy has had, is having and will continue to have on their lives and on their families.
