Mr. Speaker, I appreciated the hon. member's comments, some of which were well thought out. I appreciate her supporting the bill.
The most important recurring theme I heard the hon. member refer to was that this new act will weaken the Ministry of Health in that the Ministry of Health will have to collaborate and co-operate with other departments. I do not see it that way.
As the hon. member rightly said, health is more than just the absence of disease. Health has to do with environmental issues. It has to do with issues relating to poverty and socioeconomic status. It has to do with issues of public health which has to do with contagious or transferable diseases.
Departments such as environment, Indian affairs and northern development and human resources development are already in existence and are already dealing with these issues. What happens is a duplication of efforts. In the past, programs were going on within other departments and health would be duplicating some of them. The idea is that if there had been a concerted effort, then health and the other department, which in turn deals with its colleagues at the provincial level, can create a better understanding of the issue. Then the appropriate department working with health can set a healthy public policy with regard to those things.
The positive thing about it is that in the past many departments have always felt that what they did did not impact on health. There is now a real opportunity here for departments to understand that health touches every single aspect of our lives. Those departments, whenever they make policy, can focus on looking at the healthy public policy component of their policy instead of just focusing on the other aspects of their policy that did not include health and left the health components up to health, in which case it was very diluted. It was more diluted in that case than it would be in this way.
For example, let us look at the issue of poverty and the transfer of the welfare component of health and welfare to human resources development. We know that one of the things that has to do with poverty has to do with creating opportunity for people for employment training to become independent contributors to society. This is already a major part of human resources development. Therefore, developing human resources is going to decrease poverty in the long run which will then impact on health.
This gives better focus to all of the departments which will in turn see that health is an important component of whatever they do across the spectrum. It also gives the Ministry of Health the ability to look at developing clear health promotion and disease prevention guidelines, focusing on research and some of the things the hon. member spoke about.
Research in terms of disease is not the only component of research one wants to do. The Medical Research Council is looking at health promotion research which will lead to the promotion of positive health status as opposed to just looking at the disease components.
This gives the Department of Health a better focus on some of those issues including public health which, as members well know, means taking healthy public policy with regard to things like sewers, contagious diseases, quality of drinking water and safety, as the hon. member mentioned, which is an important part of what the department does right now. The department will focus on those issues very clearly and will work in co-operation and collaboration with the other departments. This will be a learning process with the other departments to see how what they do impacts on health.