Mr. Speaker, first, I want to congratulate the minister sponsoring that bill. She has strongly and successfully defended the principles championed for half a century by the Liberal Party, while developing Canada's health care system. Over the years, medicare was threatened many times, sometimes from one quarter, sometimes from another.
True to the tradition upheld by her illustrious predecessors, the minister has just repelled the most recent attacks on medicare, and all Canadians are grateful for that.
This Liberal government is proud, and deservedly so, of all the pioneers who saw to the proper development of medicare. Successive Liberal governments improved the system, so as to preserve its soundness and effectiveness. This is why Canada now enjoys a health care program that is second to none, both from a technical and a social standpoint. The quality of our health care remains unsurpassed. Equal access for all is also guaranteed to the fullest extent possible.
Social development is contingent upon health. A healthy nation is a productive nation. It can enjoy those things that make life worth living, it stands a better chance of being happy, and its people can build a strong nation.
One of the ever present challenges faced by the health department is to find which policies and programs can best contribute to the health and well-being of Canadians.
Without taking anything away from Canadian health professionals, I want to congratulate the Minister of Health and Health Canada for giving priority to essential programs such as disease prevention and health promotion.
In the past, preventive medicine meant things like vaccination, which practically eliminated afflictions like smallpox, diphtheria and poliomyelitis for previous generations. Today, sophisticated tests and equipment warn us about dangers and allow Canadians of all regions to add many years of good health to their lives.
Twenty years ago, a Liberal minister of Health, the hon. Marc Lalonde, published a working paper entitled A New Perspective on the Health of Canadians which was to have an impact on health systems across the world. It was a visionary document for the time. It is comforting to see that so many aspects of Mr. Lalonde's vision have been realized thanks to the department whose name we are discussing today.
Many fundamental elements of the health system we know today came out of the Lalonde paper. The preamble to the Canada Health Act which mentions the social, environmental and industrial causes of diseases was also inspired by that document. The causal factor model which the National Forum on Health is now studying also comes from the Lalonde working paper.
According to A New Perspective on the Health of Canadians , and I quote: ``When the full impact of environment and lifestyle has been assessed, -there can be no doubt that the traditional view of equating the level of health in Canada with the availability of physicians and hospitals is inadequate''. The document predicts appropriately that, to improve the health of Canadians in the future, we will have to clean up the environment, reduce risks we expose ourselves to, and improve our knowledge of human biology.
This is the source of the reasoning in favour of social well-being, which is at the heart of this new bill, as members will note. This is the source of the arguments against tobacco and excessive alcohol consumption, which underlie Health Canada's tobacco demand reduction strategy, and the activities of the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse.
This is the source of the arguments in favour of health research, which are guiding Health Canada in its laboratory work, and the Medical Research Council in its operation; the latter does not report to the department but to Parliament through the health minister. This is the source of the argument that everyone is responsible for his or her own health and must keep sufficiently fit to ensure his or her own well-being. As the members are aware, responsibility for the promotion of physical fitness was given back to Health Canada.
From now on, it is incumbent upon the health department to encourage Canadians to stay physically active throughout their lives because physical activity is essential to good health. Health Canada helps many organizations make physical activity more accessible and readily available to all Canadians in general and to the disabled in particular, because the latter are probably the ones who need it most and have to overcome the most obstacles in that regard.
With the reorganization of the health department-the main reason for introducing Bill C-95-another determining factor relating to the health of Canadians is being added to departmental operations. Product safety in now being transferred from the former Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs to the Department of Health. Product safety does indeed come under the broader field of health protection. Accidents in the home and on the job are major causes of death and injury for people between 5 and 35 years of age. Because of such accidents, we have people who can no longer live a full life, economic losses and an increase in medical and hospital bills.
A lot of these accidents involve consumer and household products. Health Canada is responsible for the enforcement of the Hazardous Products Act. This act deals with the sale, the advertisement and the importation of certain hazardous products and ensures that consumers are well informed about the risks associated with the misuse of other products.
Before I conclude, I want to raise a point we seem to forget when we talk about what contributes to improve the health and welfare of Canadians. The provinces are of course responsible for providing health services to the public, but some health problems know no provincial boundaries. Their causes are deep-rooted in the social fabric of our nation.
For Canadians to enjoy good health, their basic needs must be met. They must have a job and a reasonable income and be able to care for their families. This is where the federal government plays an important part. It must help to maintain a viable economic structure so that these goals can be reached.
The Jobs and Growth government agenda will greatly contribute to improve the health of Canadians. We can expect positive economic results from the deficit reduction, which will help to improve the health of Canadians. We all stand behind Health Canada in this cause. These are the reasons why I wholeheartedly support Bill C-95.