Malcolm Allen

[Multiple Sclerosis, June 14th, 2010]

Mr. Chair, in reviewing the material at the subcommittee on neurological disease, Dr. Ewart Mark Haacke talked about the federal government making a commitment as far as putting a centre of excellence together. He suggested that even if the government started with one that saw 500 patients, that would amount to 500 MS studies that could actually be looked at. If the government put five centres across the country, that would total 2,500 patients. If the government put 1,000 in each one, that would be 5,000. If it actually worked, and the efficacy was proven, the following year they could put 2,000 through each place, and that would amount to 10,000 people.

As I said earlier, in an exchange with the member for Lethbridge, this particular procedure will not fix all cases. MS sufferers know that. This procedure will not fix all of them, but it can fix some. If it fixes one, then it is well worth doing.

[Multiple Sclerosis, June 14th, 2010]

Mr. Chair, I certainly understand what that young boy was saying when he wrote a letter about his father. I could have been him years ago, writing as well, if this had been around at the time.

As I said earlier, we will do anything to help them. When it is a family member, we will do whatever it takes to help, because we feel helpless. We watch as these people suffer day in and day out. Every day gets worse, and we cannot raise a hand to help. One needs to live it to feel it, to know what it is like not to be able to help. It is the most powerless feeling in the world to watch a father or another loved one suffer and know that you cannot help. In agony, I watched my father's legs bounce like jumping jacks for an hour uncontrollably, because no medication would stop them. I held them with my hands and pushed his feet to the floor to try to help. My arms simply bounced. That is how powerless I felt. That is how much it means to do what we need to do to help them.

[Multiple Sclerosis, June 14th, 2010]

Mr. Chair, I appreciate the question.

I think everyone agrees. I do not think that there is any MS sufferer out there who says that they wish to be a human guinea pig for something that is experimental.

The problem most MS sufferers have is that there is no cure. This one particular aspect is not being purported to be a cure either. What they are saying is that it looks as if it has a reasonable prospect of helping to alleviate symptoms.

Dr. Zamboni has not said that he found the magic bullet that cured MS. If that were the case, they would be lined up around the block and around the country to get at him and those who can do the procedure.

Yes, one needs to be able to make sure that it is good science. The difference with this particular procedure is that the procedure is done to alleviate different types of symptoms for other diseases, such as different types of blockages. Therefore, it is not new in the sense that it is radically different from something that is done somewhere else. That is the difference with this. That is why people have latched onto it so quickly. It is not just the results that people have seen in some patients. What they see is that it is easier to do in the sense that it is not a complicated procedure.

All surgeries have risks. Let us be abundantly clear about that. If you get an anesthetic, there is a risk involved in getting the anesthetic.

I thank the member for the question.

We need to go quickly but scientifically.

[Multiple Sclerosis, June 14th, 2010]

Mr. Chair, I would like to thank those who spurred this debate, the member for Etobicoke North as well as the minister, who have helped to put this on the table this evening. It means a great deal to me.

As the member for Lethbridge said, for some of us this is extremely personal. It is not about constituents. It is not about friends. It is about family. In my case it is about my father who died of MS. Although the MS Society will say people do not die of MS, my father is no longer with us today because MS killed him. They can say it was cardiac failure from complications from pneumonia and everything else he went through in his life, but my father is dead because of MS. He would have seen me stand in the House on my first day if he had not died of MS the year before.

It means a great deal to me to do this. It means a great deal to me when I hear the member for Barrie talk passionately about what we can do. But then he asks whether we have written to our provincial health minister. I would suggest to the member that perhaps we should write a letter and have all 308 of us sign it, send it to every health minister across this land, and state that we ought to look at what we can do for those who suffer from this disease.

We cannot know what it is like unless we live with it. My colleague and friend from Lethbridge knows that.

We cannot know what is like to have a father fall because he wants the dignity to go to the bathroom on his own. My father fell behind the door and squealed in agony because I had to open the door and squeeze him between the door and the wall to get in to help him get to his walker. People cannot know that unless they do it, unless they live with it. People cannot know the toll it takes on one's mother as she is providing his care every day of his life.

The member for Lethbridge and I understand that because we have lived with it. We know what it is like for families to watch that person go through agony, to watch their dignity be stolen from them. I watched the person I knew and looked up to as a father look to me as his father, 20 years before it should have happened, because he no longer had the ability to carry on.

As a school boy, my father went to work at the age of 14 in a shipyard in Belfast. He worked his entire life, and at the age of 57 he was diagnosed with MS. It was later in life than most MS sufferers, but unfortunately he got the worst case, which is called progressive MS. In fact it was rampant. He never had a break. He also suffered the aggravated pain in his legs, to the point where he was on morphine every day until the end of his life.

He said to me years after he was diagnosed that someone dealt the cards and he had to play the hand. He came to terms with his suffering. I do not know how. I watched him day in and day out in agony, when he could not eat. When he did eat he was ill because he could not keep the food in his stomach anymore. His sphincter valve had reversed itself, and as the food went down it came back up. That is the life that MS sufferers lead. That is why they look to us and say help. They put their hand out to us and say help because their life does not get better.

Regardless of the drugs they are given, most physicians do not know what to do. In a lot of cases they do not know someone has MS. They say the person is asymptomatic, until an MRI finally shows they have the clouding in the brain. The doctors say “oh, by the way, you have MS”. A lot of specialists throw their hands in the air and say they will do the best they can to try to manage a patient's life. Those are the cards that are dealt, as my Dad used to call them.

What does it mean when we see a treatment and its potential? I agree with my colleague from Lethbridge that this treatment would never have worked for my father. For most of the folks who have rampant progressive MS, this would not work.

My father is not with me today. I am not asking for him, but I know he would want me to ask for all those others, who like him have suffered, especially young people who see older folks and know that is where they are going.

They are going to be in wheelchairs. They are going to be in long-term care facilities. They are going to be in places where, at the end of the day, what will it mean to the quality of their lives and the dignity of their lives? It will be taken away from them.

This is not a cure-all. If it were, I think every member of this House would rush out and sign up for it. We all know that it is not a cure-all. However, what it is indeed is an opportunity for those who potentially could be spared some of the symptoms, perhaps even for a period of time.

I like to say that my mother is small in stature--my mother is four feet eleven inches--but she is the wiliest little Scotswoman one ever saw. She was a giant when it came to advocating for my father. She would go after the MS Society day in and day out and say, “Have you seen this, have you seen that, did you know about this report, did you know about this new study?”, and nine times out of ten, they said no. My mother, at the age of 62, learned how to use the Internet, and she became his advocate as well as his caregiver.

Unfortunately for MS sufferers, it is their families who advocate for them. That is why we see the push we see today when it comes to a specific treatment. It is because they advocate so passionately for them, because they know that their suffering is all too real. As I said earlier, we have to live with it and have to have someone who is dear to us, who we see day in and day out, to know what it really is like.

I know that many of my colleagues here this evening have spoken quite eloquently and passionately about constituents who call, and that is all too real. There are those of us in this House who have family members now, and hopefully will for a long period of time to come, who will hopefully get well in the future. I can only hope for that for my colleague from Lethbridge for his daughter.

There are those of us who have lost loved ones because of this disease. We can divide the line any way we want. We are not going to get into a constitutional crisis over MS, whether it be provincial or federal. We are not about to get into that kind of debate here. However, at the end of the day, whatever power we have, whether that be moral suasion only, we do a disservice, I do a disservice to my father, we do a disservice to MS sufferers and their families, if we do not take that mantle up, if we do not take that challenge and go forward. We desert them. The life is being taken from them now. Let us not desert them any more.

The medical community for a long time deserted MS sufferers, because it did not know what to do. The medical community is now coming back to MS patients saying that it knows what it did and that it has to find things to help. They have looked at all kinds and manners of treatment. You name it, my father tried it, whether it be bee sting serum or something else. My mother learned how to give injections to him when she got to be nearly 70. She figured it out. Let me tell members, people do not get the personal and home care that is needed when they are MS sufferers. It is just not there. They will be told to go to a long-term facility and will be put on a waiting list. Heaven forbid, though, that they actually want to stay at home with their life partners, as my father did.

I used to say to my mother, “Mom, you're a heck of a stubborn lady”, and she said, “Yes, I married him in sickness and in health, and I intend to keep him,” and she did. I can tell members that she kept him until the day he died. He died in his own bed, in his bedroom, because that is where he wanted to die. He chose his moment to go. He knew that he had no more time. He knew that he had no more energy to fight. He knew that this was the end. He decided to go back to his house and his family. It did not make it easier for us to be there with him when he went, but it made it his decision. Ultimately, the only dignity he ended up with at the end of his life was choosing the day he died, when he said “No more. No more treatment. No more interventions. I don't want to be intubated. I don't want any of it. Take me home.”

I took him home from the hospital, and he died in three weeks. That was his choosing. That was the last actual act of dignity he got to perform in the last 20 years of his life. MS robbed my parents of the retirement life they had planned for 40 years. It took it away from them. It takes it away from young people, as well.

A lot of folks say that my dad was lucky. He got to live until he was old. He got it later in life. The unfortunate part is that there are a lot of young folks in this country and across this world who do not have the luxury to live that long. So, I implore--

[Questions on the Order Paper, June 14th, 2010]

With regard to the government’s collection of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) on poppies and poppy wreaths: (a) what is the total amount in dollars of GST collected by the government from the purchase of these items for each year from 1996, up to and including the current year; and (b) what is the total amount in dollars of GST collected by the government from the purchase of these items for each year from 1991 through 1996?

[Business of the House, June 14th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I request that the following motion be adopted by this place by unanimous consent and that it be known as the Homolka motion.

I move: “That, in the opinion of the House, urgent changes to the Criminal Records Act are required to prevent pardons from being granted that would bring the administration of justice into disrepute, and therefore the government should immediately introduce legislation with the specific purpose to empower the National Parole Board to deny pardons in cases where granting a pardon would bring the administration of justice into disrepute, with cooperation and support from all parties to move swiftly such legislation through the House and Senate before Parliament rises for the summer, and further that the Standing Committee on Public Safety should be directed to conduct a thorough study of all other changes that should be made to the Canadian pardon system to ensure it is strengthened and fair or all Canadians”.

I think it only fair to note that draft legislation referred to in this motion has been circulated to all parties.

[Eliminating Pardons for Serious Crimes Act, June 7th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, it defies logic as to why we need to have all of it at once. As my colleague said, we gave the government a motion last week. It is not an issue of me standing in my place and springing something on the government during debate. We sent it to the government a number of days ago to let it study it, so it had plenty of time to look at it before bringing forward its bill and to see if it had the sense that it would want to do that.

I remain optimistic. I have to be optimistic for my community and, most important, for the French family, that the government will understand why we have asked for this. The government knows its bill is going to committee, which means it cannot get this piece through in time to prohibit Ms. Homolka from applying for a pardon. If it would work with us on this side of the House in a spirit of co-operation, I believe it would find that all of us want to assure the Frenches that a pardon cannot be applied for by Ms. Homolka.

I understand the government has its agenda and bills in hand and wants to move forward with them. However, in this case, when all of us understand the significance of this process and this pardon that Ms. Homolka will ask for, surely this one time, the government, in a spirit of co-operation, would cut the one piece off, get this done, go to committee with the rest of the pieces and work it through. In a bipartisan way and in the spirit of co-operation, it would make the pardon system work for all of our communities and for all of those who will apply for pardons in the future.

[Eliminating Pardons for Serious Crimes Act, June 7th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-23 from two perspectives.

First, do we need to study the pardon bill, or the record bill, or whatever lovely name we want to give it? It really does not matter what one calls it. We need to look at how to go about granting pardons to folks who have committed different categories of offences. It seems appropriate that we should be doing that. However, it seems to me that we could have done that three years ago, because what has been said previously in this House is true. There were opportunities. There was a quick look at it, and the minister decided that it was good enough and simply said that things were fine.

We saw the most recent example of this in the press, which reported that Mr. James was granted a pardon a couple of years ago. It twigged the government's interest in looking at the pardon bill.

My community in the Niagara Peninsula went through an absolutely horrendous evil with Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka. I do not know how else to explain it to hon. members. We lived through a series of things that no one should have to live through. Clearly, for us, the granting of a pardon to Karla Homolka is unconscionable. Unfortunately, the bill before us cannot be passed in time to prevent Ms. Homolka from applying for a pardon.

New Democrats offered the government a way out by suggesting that we split this bill with a motion that would allow us to deal now with people like Karla Homolka. We would look for unanimity in the House, which I believe the government could get, to fast-track it so that Ms. Homolka would not be granted a pardon. The motion stated:

That, in the opinion of the House, urgent changes to the Criminal Records Act are required to prevent pardons from being granted that would shock the conscience of Canadians or bring the administration of justice into disrepute, and therefore the government should immediately introduce legislation with the specific purpose to empower the National Parole Board to deny pardons in cases where granting a pardon would shock the conscience of Canadians or bring the administration of justice into disrepute....

It was an opportunity to do this, and hopefully, there still will be an opportunity to do this.

I met with the granddaughter of Mr. and Mrs. French on Friday. She wrote me a letter asking what I could do to help with this issue. She was very compelling. She did not have to be. I raised my family in that community. I know what it was like to live through that period of time and the fear it generated. We lived through what was for all of us a period of anxiety that none of us had ever experienced before, which none of us ever want to experience again, especially those of us who had young girls, who were the specific targets.

I invited her to speak with me about the issue she was representing. She had generated within a very short period of time 1,700 names, which she sent to the Minister of Public Safety. She was imploring him to take out this piece and work on this one aspect. As I explained how we could do that, she was extremely gratified. She said that this is what she would like to see happen. As I explained to her, the other parts of the pardon act do not pertain to the types of heinous crimes that were committed by Ms. Homolka and her spouse, Paul Bernardo.

I talked to her about a young man who had sent me an email. This young man was a 19-year-old who was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol. He said that he had done it, he was guilty, he was caught, and he served what he had to under the Criminal Code. He pleaded guilty to his act. He said that he had never done it again, that he will never do it again in his life, and that he had accepted the punishment. He also asked that we please not add a couple of more years to the punishment, because he did not deserve it.

When I related that story to Ms. Doyle, she said that he was right; he did not.

I thought that was absolutely compelling testimony from the granddaughter of Mr. and Mrs. French and the niece of Kristen French. She got that. She said that I was right that he should not have to suffer any more. He had suffered enough.

However, she also relayed the message that she and her family should not have to suffer again. Every time the name is raised and the event is talked about, they suffer again what happened to them in an all too real way that most of us cannot imagine. For them, it is never over, as she said to me. She was quite cogent about the fact that it is never over for them. One day leads to the next, but they are always reminded in one form or another.

If Ms. Homolka were to receive a pardon, for the French family, and indeed, for the members of my community in the Niagara Peninsula, it would be as if she had been forgiven. To be truthful, the French family does not want her to be forgiven. I know that my community in the Niagara Peninsula does not want to forgive her either.

I implore the government to reconsider and find a way, with the help of this side of the House, of course, because that hand is open to you and is extended to you, to ensure that this indeed does not happen. Let us not have that family relive those days. Let them rest assured that the acts perpetrated by that couple will forever be admonished and will never be pardoned in the sense that it is okay and it is now over. For them, as I said, it can never be over.

All of us understand it in a mental way, in the sense that we can intellectualize it, but to understand it as they do, in our hearts and in our guts, is next to impossible for us, including those of us who lived in the region and understood this absolute horror on a first-hand basis.

I would ask the House, especially the government, to hear what Ms. Talin French-Doyle said in her letter, which states:

Victims of crimes are direct and indirect as in family, friends and even the general public in the case of particularly fear inducing or morally reprehensible acts. Please be aware that each time an offender name is mentioned or the ongoing events of their life are documented, the victims, both direct and indirect are brought back to the events of the offence. In this regard, the past is never gone for victims and the world will never be the same again.

She went on to say:

Forgiveness is the right of a victim, not a requirement of the State.

Ms. Doyle is asking the government and all of us in this place to help the French family not have to endure what they have endured for so many years by allowing a pardon. Time is of the essence, because as we know, indeed, the application process could start as early as next month. There is no guarantee that it will happen, but no one in the House can guarantee the Frenches that it will not. They are asking the House to ensure that it cannot happen in Ms. Homolka's case. We have that ability.

It would be a shame, in a magnitude of disproportionate terms, not to ensure that we stop it, especially when we have the ability to do so. We owe it to the French family to say that we will ensure that this request it is making of its government is carried forward. It is not asking a lot. It is simply asking that the government do what it wants to do with its own legislation, but to do it now.

I believe if the government were to ask for that one section, we may find that we could get it done. That would send a message to the French family that we have not forgotten it, that we understand the type of terror it went through, we understand the pain it has suffered and still continues to suffer and we understand if this is one small thing we can do, we will do for the family.

I implore the government to consider Mr. and Mrs. French when it thinks about what it can do in the immediate term. For those who perhaps are less familiar with the case, albeit for me to recite the horrors of it because they are horrors, they may want to go back and do a little research to understand that case and what was perpetrated on those young women, the horror the family faced and what it felt like to live in a community that was wretched by fear.

I will not take the time to go through the details because they are absolutely heinous and extremely gory. I would never want to subject anyone, through a debate, to have to listen to those sorts of details. However, people should make themselves aware of it so they can understand what that family lives with every day of its life.

Let me speak to the other side of the bill, which really needs to go to committee to be studied. Like the young man I referenced earlier who had a drunk driving conviction, we need to look at those clauses of the bill. We need to ask ourselves if it is appropriate for the timeline we now have or should it be extended perhaps for him and for others. We need to study it and we need to have expert witnesses who know the criminal justice system and what works and what does not.

Clearly we have examples around the world on things that do work. People do deserve to get pardoned, provided they meet the requirements set out in law, people who are participating in the broader community, who have not committed other offences, who are deemed to be of good character and who are moving on with their lives. As my hon. colleague said earlier, they do not deserve to have a brand put on them for the rest of their lives. They deserve the opportunity to move forward with their lives and we want to see that happen.

However, we need to talk to folks who understand the system and not make law on the fly because of something we see in the newspaper or because we missed one in the case of Mr. James and then rush to try to ensure it works.

One of the provisions in the bill is the three strikes and out. The three strikes and out law in the U.S. does not work. Why do we want to incorporate things that do not work into legislation? We want to make good, appropriate legislation to ensure that it does work for society.

It is about all of us, not just those who ask for a pardon. It is about the broader community. We want everyone to participate in the system so when we say people are pardoned, it is because society says they are and believes in that pardon. Those people can then go forward with their lives knowing full well that whatever punishment they have served, society has said to them to move forward with their lives.

In one of the three strikes and out clauses in the bill, one could be charged with three offences during one crime. If that is the case and one happens to be a younger person, or a not so young person, who commits a crime and is charged with three serious offences, that person would never be pardoned. There could have been all kinds of underlying reasons as to why the person committed that offence at that moment in time. It could have been an impaired mental state, a deep depression, anxiety, some sort of mental breakdown or any number of things that happened at that point in the person's life. This could happen to all of us.

Mental health experts say a great many of us can suffer mental breakdown. Most of us do not want to have that happen to us and when we see it in the broader community, or our families, it is heart-rending. However, to punish people for the rest of their lives based on what happened to them in a moment of time that would never happen again is not appropriate.

It is more appropriate that we take the system, ensure we understand the rules, ensure we review it and allow ourselves to be educated around what works and what does not. We should talk to the John Howard Society and Elizabeth Fry Society. The Salvation Army in my community works with folks in halfway houses to help them integrate into the broader community. There are all manners of occupations and groups around the country that work with folks as they come out of incarceration. They can help us understand what it takes to help them on their way and what we should look for when we pardon them.

Except for those I referenced earlier who should never be pardoned, the Karla Homolkas of this world, we want others to be pardoned. I think all of society wants that. If they fit the criteria, if they have successfully done all of the things society has asked them to do, then it is fair and appropriate of society say that they have met all the requirements put before them and if they request it, they will granted the pardon.

If the government is serious about the pardon system, then it has an obligation to Canadians to ensure it gets it right. It seems we have not done so to date. The very reason the Conservatives have rushed this forward is their acceptance of not getting it right three years ago when they took a quick look at it and put it back on the shelf thinking all is well and now recognize that all is not well.

In my community we recognize that all is not well in the system when we look at a person who should never get a pardon but is about to get one if we do not act. If the government is not going to act on this issue, then clearly the government is going to take responsibility for another individual who should never receive a pardon. It will have to answer why that happened. It will be the government's responsibility, when it had the opportunity to ensure it did not happen, to answer the question as to why it happened.

The act has become bigger than many folks probably thought it would be. I am sure many folks thought it was only about a pardon system and what could be so difficult about that. It is difficult because we are dealing with the future of other human beings and we are dealing with society determining whether it wants to give to other individuals in the broader community the right to move forward with their lives. It is up to us to say that we understand that they have decided to move forward and put their past behind them, that we accept the fact they want to move forward and therefore we grant them that pardon. Without this, in many cases, they will be unable to move forward and it will hang over them for a long time.

The other side of the coin must be that there are those we can never pardon and time is of the essence. I look to the government to say that it will not allow Ms. Homolka to get a pardon and that it will ensure that. Then I can convey that message to the Frenches, that they can rest assured it will never be seen in their lifetime.

[June 3rd, 2010]

Madam Speaker, this hon. member always votes for food safety for Canadians and I think that has been abundantly clear.

There is money to hire the first 70 inspectors; that is actually last year's money. That has been approved. The bottom line is the government does not have the 70 yet and the government has not done the compliance verification system, the CVS, that Ms. Weatherill said was the absolute critical component of all the things it needed to do. The commitment by the minister last fall was to have it done by January. In March it was to be done by May. In May, according to the CFIA's website and its report to the minister, we might get it by September.

Without the CVS actually being done and completed and making sure we know what it is, there is no way to know how many inspectors we actually need. The 170 may be a lowball number. We might need 207. Unless the Conservatives do the very thing that they hired the administrator to do who told them this is what they should do, and they have paid for that already, they will never know how many they need.

As for the actual number of 538, the agreement between Ms. Weatherill and the CFIA is that 170 are needed in meat inspection alone, not out there checking on cross-pollination of some sort of plant that has come from Southeast Asia, or some sort of insect that showed up in a cargo van. That is what they do, important tasks. We need 170 meat inspectors but they are not out there. There is money for at least 70 without the estimates, but the government has not been able to get it done.

My question clearly is, where is the member in getting the next 35 applicants?

[June 3rd, 2010]

Madam Speaker, during question period, I asked the Minister of Agriculture a couple of questions concerning the number of inspectors the CFIA had committed to hiring in a very rapid period of time. According to the CFIA vice-president, 35 are hired, which means they are in some sort of process but are not necessarily in the field inspecting, and an additional 35 are going to hired over the next two years. That was announced on March 23, 2010.

In the House, the minister had said that 170 people were going to be hired quite quickly. There are 35 in some sort of process, 35 to be hired over the next two years and money to hire an additional 100, but there is no mention of when exactly that will happen. Clearly, we were told that the CFIA intended to get 170 people out into the field in meat inspection and ready-to-eat meat plants.

Are the 35 that we know are in the system being trained? Are they indeed working in ready-to-eat meat plants? Are they doing that work? What kind of progress is being made on the 35 that are supposed to be hired, albeit over the next two years? What about the additional 100?

If we are talking about 35 in process, 35 to be hired over the next two years and an additional 100 beyond that, when are we going to see the total of 170 inspectors? Considering the timeframe that the CFIA vice-president has given and the rate at which the CFIA is hiring people, the 170 should materialize sometime around 2014.

That is hardly an immediate response to a need the minister identified. He said that they were on top of this and that they intended to make sure the situation was cleared up. He said the CFIA would have boots on the ground to do the inspection that needs to get done. That is not going to happen in the timeframe it is talking about.

Even the CFIA's own website as of this week shows there has been no progress on hiring the additional 35 inspectors. The CFIA is still out there looking for them. It is some sort of hiring process. There is no indication that it has hired folks and is going through the process of training them. None of those things have materialized.

Where is the commitment that the government says it has to food safety when it cannot get people hired and cannot get them through the process? If it intends to actually do this, it is incumbent upon the government to have people who will do the inspection. That has not happened.

I ask the minister again, can he clarify as to when we are going to see the inspection process at meat plants which the government said it is committed to? The money is there but there are no people. Money cannot inspect plants. Money cannot inspect food. The only thing that can inspect food are people and the CFIA has not been able to hire the people.

Either people do not want to work for the CFIA or perhaps it is just not a priority for the government because it is not actually out there recruiting people as well as it should. At the end of the day, it is about making sure there are folks on the ground who will ensure that the inspection process will be completed.