Bill C-64

Pharmacare Act

An Act respecting pharmacare

This enactment sets out the principles that the Minister of Health is to consider when working towards the implementation of national universal pharmacare and obliges the Minister to make payments, in certain circumstances, in relation to the coverage of certain prescription drugs and related products. It also sets out certain powers and obligations of the Minister — including in relation to the preparation of a list to inform the development of a national formulary and in relation to the development of a national bulk purchasing strategy — and requires the Minister to publish a pan-Canadian strategy regarding the appropriate use of prescription drugs and related products. Finally, it provides for the establishment of a committee of experts to make certain recommendations.

Pharmacare Act

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, absolutely it would have a really positive impact, but the Liberals are not off the hook here. They might talk about the right to access safe abortions and the right to a safe abortion, but they have failed in terms of providing access, and this does not include the number of Liberal MPs who are listed as anti-choice. I am glad that the Liberals are on board with the NDP pharmacare plan to put in place free contraception and diabetes medication, but they need to look at stuff in their own backyard, including ensuring that all women and gender-diverse people can access safe, trauma-informed abortion care.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Madam Speaker, before I ask a question, I want to talk about something that came to mind when I was listening to my colleague's speech. I am wondering how some men would react if, tomorrow morning, all of the women in this Parliament introduced a bill that forced men to get a vasectomy until they were ready to procreate. Perhaps that is extreme, but no more so than preventing a woman from making her own choice about whether to go forward with a pregnancy or not. In my opinion, preventing her from making that choice is just as extreme, and we should not go there.

That being said, I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on how difficult it is to access services in remote areas, particularly any sort of gynecological care services. What does that involve in terms of time, travel and cost for women who need urgent gynecological care?

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, quite frankly, most women, historically, have gotten their tubes tied, which is a very major surgery, when we know that vasectomies are much easier. We are not asking people to get vasectomies. We are just saying, if we want a birth control pill, can someone give it to us? There is not just the fact that it is still up to women, in terms of the primary responsibility to consume the contraception, but there is also the fact that people whom it will never affect are violently fighting against it when there are easy solutions.

Let us put all the solutions on the table. We are not even asking for that; we are just asking for free contraception. I think that is pretty reasonable. Ensuring that women can have a choice over their body is a lot cheaper than the emotional turmoil we have heard about with stories shared in the House because they did not have proper contraception to be able to make choices.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

Uqaqtittiji, I do want to ask my hon. colleague a question regarding parental rights, because Conservatives use that as a guise, I think, to pretend to care about women's bodies or unborn babies. I think that the pharmacare act could help make a difference regarding contraceptives and how Canadians need to be better informed when Conservatives are pretending to care through words or slogans like “parental rights”.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, in fact we are studying this in the status of women committee, and just how women's legal groups, particularly, want to actually get rid of claims about parental alienation because they have no scientific basis, which is what they are saying. It actually results, very often, in women and gender-diverse people who are experiencing violence being more victimized. This is well researched.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Regina—Lewvan.

I would like to get back to the basics on the bill before us, which is on a national pharmacare program. Before we can even consider a program like this, I believe Canadians need to place all of this into context within the fiscal mess that has been created by the Liberal government going forward.

As members know, we are facing a fiscal wall. We are leaving behind, for future generations to pay back, a massive national debt. In fact, over the last nine years, this Prime Minister and his Liberal government have amassed more indebtedness than all previous Canadian governments combined since Confederation. That is one piece of the context.

What about the ongoing deficits being run by this Liberal government? There is no end to them. In fact, time and time again, the finance minister has been asked to at least give us a timeline when we will return to balance, when Canada will begin again to live within its means and not spend more money than is being brought in by taxes. Each time, the Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister has said nothing. She will not respond to that question, because the answer is that there is no plan. How can we, as a nation, justify billion-dollar program after billion-dollar program without having a plan to bring our fiscal mess back into order? The only way to do that is to come back into balanced budgets, which has not happened.

There is also the challenge of increasing taxes on Canadians. Carbon taxes, which have been the subject of much debate in the House, keep going up and up. Fuel taxes are going up and up. In fact, it was not long ago when my colleague for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon was at committee, and they were grilling the Minister of Small Business. The minister had asserted that she had reduced taxes on small businesses. The simple question that my colleague asked was which tax the minister had reduced on small business. And the answer was, well, humming and hawing. Finally the minister turned to her officials and said that perhaps her officials could answer that question. The officials looked dumbfounded, because they did not have an answer either. The truth is, taxes have not been reduced on small businesses. Across the board, taxes have been raised on Canadians.

Now, within that context, this Liberal government wants to introduce another billion-dollar spending program. The Liberals could have come to us and said, “Listen, the recent budget shows that we will be returning to balance within the next, say, five years, and within that context we'd like to bring forward a program that is going to help those who have no pharmacare coverage.” However, that is not what they did. This government came forward and said that it was going to spend another $40 billion, $50 billion additional, that it would go into deficit by another $40 billion, and that it would throw in this program that would put Canada in the hole for years to come. However, who has to pay all of that back? I heard some heckling over here in the corner because they do not like to hear the truth, but it will be future generations of Canadians, with interest thereon. So that is the context in which this whole pharmacare discussion needs to take place.

This is not a pharmacare plan. Like so many others, this is an empty promise that will leave Canadians deeply disappointed and angry.

Let us remember it was the current Prime Minister who promised affordable housing back when he was first elected in 2015. Instead, what we have is a doubling of housing prices, rents, down payments, interest rates and mortgage payments, and another broken promise. Oh yes, the carbon tax would not cost Canadians anything and we now know from the PBO that in fact that is not true. The Prime Minister promised taxes would go down. He promised safe streets and instead we have chaos, crime and drugs on our streets and social disorder. With so many broken promises, we could go on and on. We could spend hours talking about broken promises, but the pharmacare plan is destined to be just another one of those broken promises.

Now, there is another problem. By its own definition, the pharmacare plan is intended to be a single-payer plan. That means the Government of Canada pays and it is universal, so, of course, the fear is for the 97% of Canadians who already have some kind of coverage, typically through their union plan or company plan, or they may have bought coverage. They would now lose that coverage because the pharmacare plan that is being proposed by the current Liberal government is a very narrow one. It would cover a very small number of medicines when, in fact, most plans across Canada are expansive. Now, it looks like the government wants to insert itself and introduce a plan that would actually cannibalize many of the other plans across Canada. There has been no consultation with the insurance industry and there has been no consultation with the provinces.

Let us remember that health care is the purview of the provinces and yet we have the government starting to step into dental care and pharmacare. That is on top of all the billions and billions of dollars in health care transfers every single year. Somehow, the provinces have not been consulted adequately. We know that some provinces are already providing additional pharmacare support and some provincial leaders are saying, “Listen, instead, give us the cash because we are already providing these services.” Others are saying, “Listen, we have a long list of priorities for our health care system and that is not the top priority. We have a number of other priorities.” For example, how about that mental health funding that was supposed to come to the provinces? It has never happened. Oh, what about that palliative care funding that the Prime Minister promised to the provinces years ago? What happened to that? It is gone. Therefore, the lack of consultation with the provinces and repeated stepping into areas that are the exclusive jurisdiction of the provinces is, I believe, leading us down this road where, without a fiscal plan that will lead us back to budget balance, we continue to heap more spending onto the taxpayer and that is unsustainable.

This pharmacare program is a big program, like so many other programs that the current government tries to introduce and implement. In fact, it was the member for Kingston and the Islands who said that this program is big and complex. Well, if it is big and complex, there is one guarantee: The current Liberal government will not be able to manage it effectively. We think of all the scandals, the spending scandals, GC Strategies, the ArriveCAN scandal and the TMX pipeline that went seven times over budget after the Liberal government purchased that pipeline.

This is the question that Canadians have to ask themselves: Do we trust the current Liberal government and the Prime Minister to manage a pharmacare program that is billions of dollars in the coming years? Do we trust them to manage this program efficiently and effectively? I believe the answer from Canadians would be a resounding no.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, there is the contrast right there from the member. The Conservative Party does not see the national role with regard to health care, even though we have the Canada Health Act and even though the member cannot point out any Constitution that says the federal government does not play a role in health care.

The Conservatives oppose the dental plan. They oppose the pharmacare plan. They oppose the $200 billion we have committed to the provinces over the next 10 years for future generations of health care delivery. Canadians will have a very clear choice to make whenever that next election is, which is going to be, in good part, based on the Conservatives' hidden agenda on health care. Some of that agenda was just unveiled by the member opposite, who made it very clear the Conservative Reform Party of Canada does not support the type of health care system Canadians expect from the national government in working with the provinces.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Madam Speaker, that is simply preposterous. In fact, what I think I heard the member do just now is actually suggest there be constitutional reform to make health care the purview of the federal government instead of the provinces. Now that is a huge step. It is pretty clear and acknowledged across the country, and if one asks the provinces, they will acknowledge it, that health care is a provincial responsibility. Yes, there is a choice Canadians will have to make. In fact, we have asked the Liberal government time and time again to let Canadians make that choice now and to let us have a carbon tax election now. It refuses to do so. Why? Its members are afraid of losing. We, as Conservatives, can do much better on the health care front than these Liberals have done over the past failed nine years.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Madam Speaker, the member for Winnipeg North is wrong when he talks about the national government, because Quebeckers' national government is in Quebec City. This is the federal government. We know that the reason the federal government is interfering in health is because of a loophole in the Constitution called the federal spending power. This is the only federation in the world that has not regulated that in one way or another, because the federal government is predatory and invasive toward the provinces.

The federal government's role is clear. It is to take Quebeckers' money, write a cheque and transfer it to the Government of Quebec and to the provinces so that they can provide care, because the federal government is incapable of providing care. When it does so, particularly for the military, that care is inefficient, ineffective and very costly.

Here is my question for my Conservative colleague. If and when his party takes office, will it commit to respecting the federal government's constitutional role, meeting the demands of all of the provinces and territories and substantially increasing unconditional health transfers to the provinces?

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Madam Speaker, I can assure the member that a future Conservative government will respect the role of the provinces. However, I did hear him say one thing, and he is correct, which is that the Liberal Party and the member who just spoke want to do violence to the Constitution. That is how it was translated: violence to the Constitution. That will be the story in the next election. It is going to be the fact that the Liberal Party wants to trample on the rights of the provinces and usurp the role of the provinces. Shame on him for even suggesting that.

[Taylor Bachrach, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Madam Speaker, I have a good deal of respect for the member for Abbotsford, so it is disappointing to hear he does not support some of the core tenets of universal health care in Canada. Of course health care is a shared jurisdiction. Health care delivery is the responsibility of the provinces, but setting national standards and providing funding for health care has always been the purview of the federal government.

One of the core pieces of this legislation we are debating is the fact that universal pharmacare would follow the principles of the Canada Health Act. Does he not accept one of the core tenets of the Canada Health Act and the way in which universal health care has been delivered in Canada since that act came into effect has been that the federal government has a responsibility to set standards and deliver funding, which is precisely what this legislation before us would accomplish?

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Madam Speaker, the delivery of health care is the purview of the provinces. That is indisputable. The provinces have affirmed that time and time again, and so has the Supreme Court of Canada.

However, I would suggest that the premise that somehow the universality of health care is at stake here is preposterous. It is ridiculous to suggest that. We in the Conservative Party believe in universal coverage of health care for every single Canadian.

[An hon. member]

Oh, oh!

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Alexandra Mendes]

The hon. member for Mirabel on a point of order.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Madam Speaker, we all like the member for Winnipeg North, but there are times when we need a modicum of decorum. I think the word “crazy” that was shouted here in the House at the member for Abbotsford was inappropriate.