Patrick Brown

[Business of Supply, February 20th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the Government of Canada has put $526 million toward fighting homelessness and helping low income families renovate their homes. It has also dedicated an additional $1.4 billion to three housing trusts.

I would note that the best recipe for creating jobs is a strong economy. Obviously, we see what happens with the New Democratic philosophy when the New Democrats are in power, for example, Glen Clark in British Columbia, or Bob Rae in Ontario. Low income Canadians in those provinces lost jobs. The NDP governments in those provinces created poverty by hampering the economy.

We need to continue with the approach this government is taking by fostering and building a strong Canadian economy to make sure as many Canadians as possible have jobs.

[Business of Supply, February 20th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, it is always interesting to hear issues brought forward by the Liberal Party, specifically on these two issues.

On the minimum wage I would note that the Liberal premier of Ontario was the one who recently rejected the minimum wage. In the native city of the member who asked the question, the Liberals received a significant electoral loss with the recognition by Premier Dalton McGuinty that the $10 minimum wage would have consequences for the Ontario economy. To hear a Liberal member preach in favour of the $10 minimum wage when her party's leader in Ontario has argued the exact opposite is a little hypocritical.

In terms of child care I note that the Liberals promised child care in 1993. It was in their platform commitment. Thirteen years later, there was nothing, not a single child care space.

The Conservative government has already begun delivering $100 cheques for all children in need of child care, for young Canadian families. It is the current Liberal leader who is saying that he wants to rip those funds away from Canadian parents, from Canadian families, people who need it, low income Canadians.

[Business of Supply, February 20th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the motion of the member for Sault Ste. Marie. I will focus my speech on the topic of health and the well-being of Canadians and women.

This government understands that good physical and mental health will help all Canadians contribute and prosper in their communities and ensure that these communities stay prosperous. In other words, strong, successful economies and communities require healthy individuals. Having healthy and successful individuals and communities will go a long way to dealing with the issue of poverty.

When it comes to health, this government has done more in 13 months than the previous government did in 13 years. It was under the old Liberal government that Canadians saw wait times continuously rise. The Liberals are trying to brand themselves as a party of social justice. The provinces, which deliver health, education, literacy and social benefit programs, saw their budgets cut by $25 billion when the previous Liberal government made cuts to transfers. That is some social justice agenda.

One thing this government will not do is make a $25 billion cut to health and social transfers that the provinces depend upon to fund services to the many vulnerable and low income Canadians.

Because Canadians are clambering for leadership, they asked this government to do things differently. We are making significant and effective investments in Canadians' well-being to help them reach their full potential.

In the area of health care, this government has made a campaign commitment to implement a national wait time guarantee. Within our federal jurisdiction, for reserves and with pilots elsewhere, we have made significant progress on that commitment. We are taking action right now.

In January, this government announced a third wait time guarantee. We announced a 15 month wait time guarantee pilot project, investing $2.6 million for children in need of surgery. This project includes the development of the first pan-Canadian wait times information system to measure the burden of waiting times for children who need surgery.

This government is about making investments that have a positive impact on the lives of Canadians and helping them improve their lives.

We understand how poverty can become entrenched in some families and how crucial it is to improve their long term prospects through education, employment and, yes, appropriate government policies that will support their climb up the economic ladder.

If we look at the labour market performance of women in Canada over the last decade, it has been positive. Many women in Canada have been able to seize upon the new labour market opportunities and have experienced consequent gains in their income and assets. The participation rates for women rose from 57% in 1996 to 62% in 2006. The rate of low income Canadians among women declined from 16.5% in 1997 to 11.7% in 2004. This means that 587,000 fewer women were living in low income in 2004 compared to 1996.

Despite this success, there are segments of the female population who continue to experience higher levels of low income than their male counterparts. This is a reflection on both the circumstances and decisions.

Poverty rates among seniors, both men and women, singles and couples, have declined significantly over the past 25 years. Poverty among seniors fell from a high of 21.3% in 1980 to 5.6% in 2004. That in itself is a Canadian success story.

Despite this impressive progress, senior women experience higher rates of low income than their male counterparts. For example, 17.6% of unattached senior women lived in low income in 2004 compared to 11.6% of unattached senior men. Overall, women comprised 72% of all seniors living in low income in 2004.

Why is that the case? Older women were less likely than the young women of today to engage in substantial paid work outside the home. As a result, these women have had lower levels of contribution to the Canada pension plan and workplace pension plans. For younger generations of women, retirement will be quite different. In fact, their retirement income should be more similar to their male counterparts than the senior women of today.

The labour force participation rate of women in the core working years from age 40 to 44 in 2006 was 80% and 71% were contributing to the CPP. These figures are roughly double what they were for women now in their early seventies. Workplace pension coverage is also almost twice as high among these younger cohorts.

Despite the positive outlook in retirement, there are significant challenges that remain for younger women, as for every generation, it is young women who have children and who are often the main caregiver. There are challenges for young parents, in particular, young mothers who juggle the demands of a career and family related responsibilities. Reduced attachment to the labour market, costs of day care and other child related expenses can compete with other critical financial needs, including saving for retirement.

In 2001 one in five families with children was headed by a female lone parent, double since 1971. Single parent families are five times more likely to live in low income than two parent families. Over 80% of single parent families are headed by women.

On a positive side, the low income rate for single mothers has declined considerably in recent years from 52.7% in 1996 to 35.6% in 2004. Women are also more likely to experience persistent low income than men. Between 1999 and 2004, 6.3% of women lived in low income situations for at least four years compared to 4.6% for men.

There are also particular groups of women at a higher risk of persistent low income. These groups include women with disabilities, immigrant women and aboriginal women. Women with disabilities make up the majority, 55% of adults with disabilities, and this increases with age. Their median income is significantly less than that of men: $15,500 compared to $28,157 for men with disabilities.

Immigrant women also face challenges. In 2000, 23% of foreign born women lived in a low income situation, considerably higher than Canadian born women. This is despite the fact that a higher proportion of foreign born women have a university degree.

The women's unemployment rate has declined significantly over time and is currently at a 30 year low, 6.1% in 2006. Women are more highly represented than men in non-standard employment, particularly in part time and temporary work, 40% compared to 34% for men in 2006. This has implications for income and earnings and private pension coverage rates.

Women have also made considerable strides in education attainment. The national graduate survey tells us that in 2003 women represented 60% of all university graduates, which is an encouraging sign.

Responding to the challenges I have mentioned requires the efforts of all sectors of society, including the provinces and territories as well as employers, employees and the labour movement. The Government of Canada plays a key role in this area, primarily through income support programs, tax benefits and transfers to provinces and other partners. In the interest of time I will not detail these programs, but I would like to underline the importance of helping women increase their labour market participation in recent years.

That concludes my remarks, and I will close on this point. Unlike the member for Sault Ste. Marie, I believe that we should give women in Canada credit for helping us all climb steadily up the economic ladder.

[Income Tax Act, February 19th, 2007]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-405, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act (deduction for medical doctors in underserviced areas).

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to introduce this bill today that would help underserviced communities recruit doctors to their hospitals and establish family physicians.

I would like to thank the students at the University of Ottawa Law School, specifically, Paul Braczek and Jeffrey Kroeker, who assisted in the drafting of this private member's bill.

One out of 30 Canadians do not have a family doctor. In small towns and underserviced areas, it becomes as acute as one out of four do not have a family doctor. Barrie, the riding I have the honour of representing, is one of those communities where we have a very acute doctor shortage. This bill would certainly be a step forward in helping alleviate that concern.

Specifically, I want to also pay recognition to Dr. Rob Ballagh and Dr. Brad Dibble, who chaired our physician recruitment task force in our community and helped me come up with this idea as a means to entice doctors to small towns and rural areas that do not have the pleasure of having as many doctors as do larger urban areas that have medical schools.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Air-India Inquiry, February 19th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, today the head of the Air-India inquiry is threatening to shut down the investigation. Can the Prime Minister respond to former Supreme Court Justice John Major's statement that he is receiving heavily censored documents and this practice will seriously hurt the progress of the inquiry?

[Senate Tenure Legislation, February 7th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I stand in the House today to address the inaction we have seen from the Liberal senators on Bill S-4. Since being introduced in the Senate 253 days ago, we continue to see unelected, unaccountable Liberal senators filibustering, preventing any debate on this very important bill.

To add insult to injury, even the leader of the Liberal opposition in the Senate highlighted last week “You are appointed. You're not accountable”.

Canadians have told us they want term limits for senators. The Liberal leader has publicly said that he supports term limits for senators. Yet this message seems to be lost on the Liberal senators. Is it that they just do not get it, or is it that the Liberal leader simply cannot lead his own caucus?

When will the Liberal leader stop this obstruction, stop defending this patronage in the Senate and allow us to debate this very important bill in the House of Commons?

[Organized Crime, February 5th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, over the winter recess my constituents raised many issues of concern with me. One of the issues troubling them the most was the growing influence of gangs and organized crime in our country, including the drugs and violence that threaten the lives of our young people.

Could the Minister of Justice tell the House what the government is doing to address the very serious problem of gangs, guns and organized crime?

[Business of Supply, November 28th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, there is a lot of support in the House, myself included, for our universal health care system. Many Canadians take tremendous pride in that.

If we have seen a slippage toward private health, and that has been under the Premier of Ontario, Dalton McGuinty. He decided to remove eye and chiropractic care from the services available to many Ontarians. I was very concerned about that. It was an unfortunate process that the Liberal Premier of Ontario undertook.

I know this government is very committed to health care in Canada to ensure that all Canadians get the best possible health care.

[Business of Supply, November 28th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, it is always amusing to hear a Liberal member talk about funding for health care when it was the Liberal Party that cut health care by $25 billion between 1994 and 1999.

The new Government of Canada has made it very clear that the $41 billion for health care is a fundamental investment that it is willing to stand behind and support. It is making a tangible difference. I raised examples that patient wait time reductions were working across the country, from coast to coast. I know the Minister of Health is doing everything he can to work with his provincial and territorial counterparts to ensure that the government's goals for patient wait times guarantee can be realized.

I will read the statistics of the hospital in Barrie in the last year, which I find most impressive, and the government has only been in power for about a year. If we break down what funding in the budget means for local hospitals, for my local hospital it is $3.14 million for 2006-07. That funding has allowed the hospital to perform 606 additional cancer, cataract and joint replacement surgeries and an additional 1,880 MRI hours.

The investment that the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Health have put into health care is making a tangible difference in communities. It is in stark contrast to the days in the 1990s when hospitals and provincial health ministers were continually scared and in trepidation of the cuts the Liberals may inflict on health care systems.

We can ignore the $25 billion, but the growth in wait times was a direct cause of the cuts inflicted by the former finance minister at the time. It is unfortunate that it happened, but this government is doing everything we can to ensure that the health care system has the funding it deserves, and we are seeing that happen today.

[Business of Supply, November 28th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am sharing my time with the member for Louis-Hébert.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak about wait times in Canada, which continue to be of concern to Canadian citizens and providers and are a key priority for the government.

I take health care very seriously. I am actively involved in my local hospital, the Royal Victoria Hospital. I sit on the physician recruitment committee. Our entire community is actively working toward our hospital expansion in 2008.

To give a bit of context about why health care is so important for my community, Barrie, Ontario is currently short 27 doctors. We have 30,000 individuals without a family physician. Our city council put forward $52.5 million toward our expansion in 2005. My community is doing everything it can to make health care the best it can be.

That is why I am so pleased that we are finally getting leadership in Ottawa on this very important file. We have a Minister of Health who actually understands the pressures of the health care system.

Just two weeks ago our Minister of Health visited the emergency department at RVH and talked directly to nurses, doctors and patients. The head of our nurses union, Tracey Taylor, remarked that it was great to see a health minister actually talk to the real providers of health care, the regular patients, the regular nurses who work hard every day.

Let us examine at the forefront how we got to this point. Why have wait times become such an issue for Canadians? It did not happen overnight and it is important to assess the root causes. During the Liberals' tenure in power, wait times to see a specialist rose from 9.3 weeks to 17.7 weeks. Between 1994 and 1999, the Liberal Party of Canada cut health care by $25 billion. The Canadian health care system could not sustain the assault imposed by the Liberal Party. Faith in Ottawa to support health care dwindled to an all time low.

Canadians need to have confidence that the public health care system will be there for them when they need it. Canadians expect a health care system that is responsive, fair, transparent and accountable. That is why over the past several months our Minister of Health has had discussions with the health ministers from every province and territory to obtain their views on the opportunities and challenges they see in reducing patient wait times.

Already some provinces have tackled complex issues and are achieving improved results. They are making progress on reducing wait times and moving toward being ready for patient wait times guarantees, which we see as the natural next step.

At the forefront of this progress is Quebec, which has proposed its own guarantees with recourse mechanisms for selected services, the first province to do so. Quebec is proposing a guarantee of access for three procedures: hip and knee replacements and cataract surgery. The province will offer recourse to patients in a stepped fashion with different access to service mechanisms kicking in at different times.

Manitoba and Quebec have also indicated they are providing a form of guarantee for some cardiac services and cancer treatment, which are improving access. For example, Quebec's service corridor model allows cancer patients waiting for more than eight weeks the option to be transferred between radiation oncology centres. Meanwhile, Manitoba's wait times for cancer radiation therapy are down to under one week from over six weeks in 1999.

Improvements in wait time reductions and management are evident elsewhere in the country too. In Atlantic Canada, provinces are collaborating on health infrastructure Atlantic. This involves capturing medical imagery through broadband networks, giving doctors quick access to test results which lowers costs and improves services.

In my province of Ontario we are also experiencing significant progress. Since launching the Ontario wait times strategy in November 2004, wait times for procedures have been reduced by 19.6% for cataract surgeries, 17.9% for hip replacements, 11.8% for knee replacements, 25% for angioplasty, 23% for MRI exams, and 13.6% for CT scans.

What does this mean for my local hospital? I am there regularly and I asked what this means for the Royal Victoria Hospital in Barrie. What does the new government's commitment mean on a local level? In 2006-07 it means $3.14 million has been directed, and this funding has had a dramatic impact for patients at my local hospital. It would allow the RVH to perform 606 additional cancer, cataract and joint replacement surgeries this year compared to 472 last year.

It means an additional 1,880 MRI hours. The hospital has been able to increase MRI operation to 24 hour coverage on weekdays and extended hours on weekends. As a result, RVH went from having the dubious distinction of the longest wait times in the province for MRI scans a year ago at an astounding 54 weeks, to 7 weeks today, a very impressive improvement.

Look at Alberta's success too. Alberta's hip and knee replacement pilot project has demonstrated a success in reducing wait times from 47 weeks to 4.7 weeks by streamlining the patient journey, increasing capacity and reorganizing resources.

In British Columbia the median wait time for cataract surgery fell from 9.7 weeks in 2005 to 7.4 weeks. B.C. has also reported significant wait time reductions between 2005 and 2006 for joint replacements. It attributes this decline as evidence that its innovative wait time strategy announced in February 2006 is helping reduce backlogs while building long term capacity in the health care system.

These examples, and there are many more, clearly show that when we work with focus and determination, when we have a common goal, and most important, when governments work together, we can deliver for Canadians the kind of health care system they deserve.

Last summer our Minister of Health met with health ministers from Denmark, Sweden, Mexico and France to see how other nations have been able to reduce wait times.

For example Sweden introduced its national maximum waiting time guarantee in 2005. Its plan includes patients to be treated elsewhere if the waits become excessive.

Denmark's extended choice of hospitals initiative was launched in 2002. If its health system is unable to provide treatment within two months, patients have the option of being treated in a private facility or another country.

The U.K. has a choice at six months policy. This means that patients who wait more than six months for elective surgery will be offered the choice of moving to another provider for fast treatment. The U.K. program is a good example of a system triggered recourse. The patient is not required to complain at six months; the choice is offered automatically.

These international examples show the kinds of guarantees that are possible for governments to offer their citizens. Sweden, Denmark and the United Kingdom did not deliver patient wait time guarantees overnight. It was a process founded on improving the management of their health systems and the use of taxpayers' dollars more efficiently and more effectively to provide their citizens with better health care outcomes.

The message from international experience is quite simple. The effectiveness of a nation's health care system depends on two things: its medicine and its management. To provide the very best, countries must do equally well.

Canada is a world leader in many scientific medically based endeavours. Our scientists and our scientific community are among the most valued in the world, often in terms of scientific citations being at the forefront of their disciplines. This is something we need to be very proud of as a country. Recent successes in the provincial management of wait times indicate that we are making progress on the management of our system. This includes the financial management of our system.

Let us address the money issue head on. There is a lot of new money going into the health care system: $41 billion in new dollars to the provinces and territories over 10 years with a 6% increase a year for inflation, $5.5 billion specifically for wait times reduction. Canadians want and demand to know that this money is being managed effectively. They want, as our government has promised, greater transparency in terms of what their tax dollars are delivering and they want greater accountability results.

Establishing a patient wait times guarantee is a process, not an event, building upon existing provincial and territorial reforms, comprehensive wait times initiatives while representing different provincial priorities as it relates to their respective health care systems.

Today I have provided just a few examples of the success stories achieved by the provinces and territories and health care system administrators who clearly are making progress on reducing wait times through better management and innovation. These are examples that also demonstrate the solid building blocks in place to move forward on a patient wait times guarantee.

We look forward to continuing to work with the provinces and territories to deliver outcomes Canadians want, and certainly ones they deserve in their health care system.