Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to begin the debate on behalf of the New Democratic Party on Bill C-14, known as the drinking water materials safety act.
On first blush and at face value, one would perhaps immediately jump to the opportunity of giving this bill our enthusiastic support. If one looks at and reads through the background material that the Minister of Health has provided on Bill C-14 we read the following:
Some drinking water materials may contaminate drinking water, for example by leaching lead or by failing to destroy or remove micro-organisms. This could put the health of Canadians at risk. Currently, only 30% of product models of components and devices sold in Canada are certified to accepted North American health based standards on a voluntary basis.
There is not a person in this House I am sure who is not interested in this government's assuring all Canadians that the water we drink is safe and free from any toxins, contaminants or poisonings. There is not a person in this House I am sure who would not be interested in this government's guaranteeing every Canadian that the water we drink, the food we eat, the air we breathe and the drugs we must take for medical reasons are safe at all times.
It would be so much easier to address this bill and give it wholehearted support and endorsement if we knew that was the kind of framework from which this government was operating and if we knew that there was a philosophical commitment to providing measures that would guarantee that the products we intake are safe at all times.
There is no question about the need in this country for a very tough regulatory, proactive position on the part of the government on such fundamental issues that pertain to the health and well-being of every Canadian.
In that context, we have a great deal of difficulty trying to place this bill in the broader context and trying to understand its motives, its purpose and what it is attempting to accomplish. On every other front we are seeing the opposite. We are faced with a government that is rapidly moving out of regulatory approaches. It is rapidly seeking ways to privatize areas once assumed to be areas for government intervention. We are seeing a government increasingly tied to the demands of transnational corporations on a global scale.
I only have to go back as far as question period today when we raised a very important issue pertaining to lead poisoning. Lead poisoning is found in a great number of children's toys and vinyl products on the market today.
I remind members in this House of the kind of actions we have seen, or lack thereof, from this government on such an important issue.
Let me put it in context. We had findings previously unveiled by Greenpeace about high lead content and high cadmium content in a number of children's toys and products.
The government, the Minister of Health and Health Canada all agreed that this was an issue worth exploring and proceeded to do their own studies of high lead content in products that end up causing serious neurological disorders when that poisoning enters the body.
The government released its findings a short while ago and verified that there is a very high lead content in a number of those products. In fact, it demonstrated that the lead content and the cadmium content in a good number of those products was even higher than the findings of Greenpeace.
That was acknowledged but the key point to it all and why this is so relevant to a debate on water and the safety of water materials present in our society today is that this government then said “Yes, the levels are high. Yes, they exceed Health Canada's standards but there is no risk to children in our society today”.
What was the reason? Something to do with the fact that unlike the miniblind issue, these products were not necessarily subject to high heat intensity or to sunlight and therefore were not going to release that lead poisoning. Never mind the fact that there was a level of poisoning that far exceeded Health Canada's standards to begin with.
My question today is where does this legislation come from? What is it intending to achieve? What regulatory framework does it fit into? How firm is this government in meeting its current obligations never mind pursuing any other standards or any other regulatory approaches?
Do we not have a critical situation now in Health Canada in all those areas I have mentioned: drugs, food, water and air? We have a government that is in the middle of very quietly moving toward a privatized deregulated approach seeking to reduce its liability. Those are the words right out of the departmental document outlining the full intentions of this government.
What is the result of that approach? We have lost a valuable research bureau on drugs. We no longer have an independent body in this country for assessing the impact of certain drugs allowed into this country and their interaction with other drugs, their interaction with foods, their interaction with environmental toxins.
Come on, a regulatory body of utmost importance has vanished. Costing what? $2 million to $3 million. That is what this government is saving by ridding this country of one of the most important regulatory bodies that we have in the whole drug field.