Fighting for tainted blood money
From a Toronto bank executive earning millions until liver disease wrecked his health, to a young British Columbia mother on social assistance “dying before my children’s eyes on a couch,” victims of Canada’s tainted blood scandal of the 1990s spoke out in court Tuesday, pleading to be further compensated for what they lost to hepatitis C.
They urged three judges to distribute a massive surplus from a compensation fund that was set up for more people than actually applied, rather than return it to the federal government.
“I don’t view it as a surplus,” said one woman from a small town in Manitoba, who was infected during childbirth at age 18 by a tainted blood infusion. She said she thanks God every day she got the contaminated bag of blood and her newborn daughter did not. “It’s money sitting there to compensate us.”
It was an unusual hearing in Toronto, with live links to courtrooms in Vancouver and Quebec, and a steady stream of anguished l ife stories from people who can be identified only by claimant numbers.
At issue is the court’s discretionary power to pay out the money, return it to the government, or leave it sitting in the 80-year trust.
The surplus is between $ 236 million and $ 257 million, according to a judge. The t rust of more t han $1 billion was created to settle a class-action launched in 1998 against the Canadian Red Cross, which then administered blood banks, and the federal government and provinces. It is meant to compensate people infected between 1986 and 1990, when there was a lab test that could have prevented it.
The year before the lawsuit began, a Royal Commission led to the creation of Canadian Blood Services and Héma- Québec, at arm’slength from government.
One woman in Vancouver described being infected during cancer treatment at age 19. Her comments focused on the mental health aspects, which have passed through the generations in her family.
“I was basically dying before my children’s eyes on the couch. There was nothing there to help them,” she said. “Your blood is your life source, and you’re afraid of your life source.”
A young woman, also in Vancouver, spoke of losing both her parents, and the burden that placed on her.
One key point of contention is about people who are as yet undiagnosed and deserving of compensation without knowing it. A volunteer from a B.C. advocacy group spoke on their behalf.
Many victims spoke of the inadequacy of the compensation so far. Individual payouts range between $10,000 and $250,000.
An estimated 50,000 were expected to apply when the fund was set up but only 22,000 actually did.
One man, who was born with hemophilia and needed regular blood transfusions, spoke of his anguish since being infected with HIV. At clinics, he would see men “wither and die like flowers,” and he knew this also awaited him.
Later, he learned he had also been infected by hepatitis C. He felt shame in needing medical leave from work and considered himself abandoned by the medical system. “This is also going to kill me slowly,” he said. He lost dramatic amounts of weight and his treatments “destroyed my sense of self.”
“I was becoming those dead and dying flowers,” he said. And now, as he put it, the same government that poisoned him twice with fatal viruses is trying to take away the money set aside for his assistance.
He said his wife urged him not to bother going to court anymore, but his morality compelled him.
“My boys will learn that sometimes in life you may have to make a decision to protect yourself,” he said.
His lawyer argued that the terms of the deal mean that the only way a surplus can be “paid to government” is in the context of a clear proposal to distribute it among members of the class.
Another lawyer spoke on behalf of a client, at the highest level of hepatitis C infection, seeking to remove a cap on income compensation at $ 200,000. A hemophiliac as a child, this man suffered testicular cancer as a young man and did not expect to survive. But he planned to marry his girlfriend if he was cancer- free. New drugs saved his life, and after celebrating his health and engagement, he walked into a checkup only to be met by lawyers, doctors, even security, there to tell him his transfusions had infected him with HIV. Thirteen years later, he learned he also had hepatitis C.
Today, this man is unusual in the settlement class for his affluence, with a gross income over $ 2 million and a net income over $ 1 million. He studied physics at Toronto and MIT before moving into banking and was on track to be a CEO in Toronto’s competitive finance world, with an income as high as $ 3 million. But his health declined in 2000, due to the hepatitis, and after a liver transplant he is left with depression, fatigue, anxiety and anger.
To him, $ 3 million is at stake if that cap is enforced, more than half of what the fund intended to save. As his lawyer put it, the purpose of this settlement was “compensating people for the lives that were taken away.”
The hearing continues and a decision is not expected for weeks.
I WAS BECOMING THOSE DEAD AND DYING FLOWERS.