DISSENTING OPINION OF THE
BLOC QUÉBÉCOIS ON THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON HEALTH'S REPORT ON ORGAN DONATION

The Bloc Québécois wants to thank the members and the staff of the Standing Committee on Health and all the interested parties who came to testify before the Committee. We can never tell the witnesses often enough how crucial their contribution is to our work as legislators. The Bloc Québécois does however want to voice certain concerns, not about one or more specific recommendations in the Report, but rather in general about the scope of those recommendations.

Our position has always been that health is fundamentally a matter of provincial jurisdiction. This being the case, the fact that the recommendations in this Report are well intentioned and excellent of their kind must not be allowed to obscure certain basic political and constitutional facts. We will limit ourselves here to the political aspects because we believe that the Report presents fairly accurately the distribution of powers with regard to health. (With the possible exception of the Liberal government's propensity to use its spending power constantly in this area.)

In this spirit, and in that of the Report's first recommendation, the Bloc Québécois considers that it is primarily the responsibility of the federal, provincial and territorial ministers of Health to decide on terms and conditions for managing organ donation in Canada. The recommendations in the Report are thus subordinate to the conclusions of the next federal/provincial/territorial meeting of health ministers.