Debates of Feb. 17th, 2000

Supply

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh.

[Yvon Charbonneau, Liberal, Anjou—Rivière-Des-Prairies, QC]

They have no respect whatsoever for the partnership forged throughout our common history. These people are in a state of total disarray and they want to hide it with shouts and insults. They deny that the rest of Canada has any interest in the issue. For them, the approach is unilateral “Hello, thank you, we are leaving”. Even separatist Quebecers have no right to do that.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh.

[Yvon Charbonneau, Liberal, Anjou—Rivière-Des-Prairies, QC]

Their problem is that their option has lost all or most of its supporters. Parizeau said these people were the spearhead, but the spear has separated from the head.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh.

[Yvon Charbonneau, Liberal, Anjou—Rivière-Des-Prairies, QC]

They are guided by Parizeau, who is pushing them towards independence and they talk about rebuilding Canada with a new partnership. This option is totally illogical and the people of Quebec see it quite well—

[The Deputy Speaker]

I am sorry to interrupt the member, but the member for Peterborough wishes to raise a point of order.

[Peter Adams, Liberal, Peterborough, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. It is a reflection on the noise we have been hearing in the House of Commons that it took you four or five minutes to realize that I had a point of order here at this end of the House.

I have to say to you, Mr. Speaker, that I am deeply disturbed by the fact that this afternoon it has been impossible for those of us at this end of the House to follow the speech of my colleague and his predecessors, even though we have an earphone system.

Mr. Speaker, I think you should ensure that my colleague and my other colleagues have an opportunity to be heard in the House of Commons.

[The Deputy Speaker]

The hon. member for Peterborough has raised a valid point of order. I must say that it was fortunate from my point of view that the hon. member was sitting close to the Chair; otherwise I think may have had trouble hearing him if he had been down where the hon. member for Peterborough was sitting. I did indicate by gesture a few times that I thought the noise was excessive and I was having trouble hearing.

I am sorry to hear that the hon. member for Peterborough missed out on the speeches that have taken place this afternoon.

I know that hon. members on all sides of course will want to restrain themselves because we do have freedom of speech in the House and members should listen attentively to what other members are saying even sometimes if we disagree.

I will now hear the member for Charlesbourg. I hope his comments are not on the same issue because there is nothing I can do at this point.

[Richard Marceau, Bloc, Charlesbourg, QC]

Mr. Speaker, on the same point of order, I would first tell my colleague that, even if he cannot hear, he is not missing very much, because nothing too astonishing is being said—

[The Deputy Speaker]

I am afraid of such a debate.

It being 5.15 p.m., it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the business of supply.

The question is on the amendment. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the amendment?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Deputy Speaker]

All those in favour of the amendment will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Deputy Speaker]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And more than five members having risen:

[The Deputy Speaker]

Call in the members.

And the bells having rung:

[The Deputy Speaker]

In accordance with a request from the chief government whip, the division will be deferred until Monday at the conclusion of the time provided for Government Orders.

Is it agreed that we call it 5.30 p.m.?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Deputy Speaker]

It being 5.30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of Private Members' Business as listed on today's order paper.

Veterans Health Care

[Peter Goldring, Reform, Edmonton East, AB]

moved:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should institute national standards for veterans health care with maintenance and special needs provisions, and have these standards agreed upon by all provinces before devolving responsibilities to any province for any portion of care.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Motion No. 13. I will repeat the motion because it is very important:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should institute national standards for veterans health care with maintenance and special needs provisions, and have these standards agreed upon by all provinces before devolving responsibilities to any province for any portion of care.

The basic concern behind the motion is that the federal government has been too quick to rid itself of its health care responsibilities for veterans by devolving responsibility to the provinces, and that further devolution of responsibility for our veterans' health care should be reviewed with caution.

The government used to fulfill its responsibilities to veterans through a federally funded and administered regime of military hospitals and veterans homes. Over the last several years many of these hospitals and homes have become the responsibility of provincial governments and subject to provincial standards of health care. Yet the provinces are often in the midst of their own cost cutting initiatives.

I have visited many health care facilities for veterans throughout Canada. I have seen firsthand the effects of downloading and consolidation. I have spoken to veterans who have been left to sit in wet and soiled diapers for the better part of a day due to staff shortages and institutional indifference.

Those military veterans who are sick and disabled are subject to two government imposed hardships: standards of health care which are no longer consistent across the country and growing erosion in the quality of veterans health care. A further hardship to which our veterans are exposed is the indifference of the active military to the health care concerns of recently discharged veterans.

On December 16, Colonel Joe Sharpe released the report of his board of inquiry into the health care of our peacekeeping veterans in Croatia. He described the Canadian military's care of sick peacekeepers from Croatia as disgraceful. His chilling comment was that the military showed more care and concern for its airplanes than for the sick veterans.

Many of our veterans do not have access to military standards of health care either because the health care responsibilities have already been devolved to particular provinces, or because a disbelieving military, fearful of being seen to favour large numbers of disability claims, denies at the outset that the veteran's health problems relate in any way to his or her term of military service.

Hearing loss from the sound of artillery, cancers as a result of exposure to radioactive toxins in the theatre of war, and psychiatric challenges as a result of exposure to the carnage and inhumanity of war are examples of very different conditions experienced by our veterans from those experienced by the civilian population.

Our political leaders make sure that those whom they send to theatres of war are completely healthy and they do not arrive at a battlefield with disabilities. Our healthy men then return changed by war. Some are damaged physically. Others are damaged psychiatrically. Some return with mysterious but persistent ailments for which there is no identified cause and for which there is no clear cure.

Our veterans should not be subject to civilian levels of health care since their exposures to the theatres of war are far from being the normal civilian experiences of most Canadians.

The Ste. Anne de Bellevue military hospital outside Montreal provides long term care to veterans. The hospital is currently in a limbo status in terms of its proposed devolution to the province of Quebec. The Quebec government, while having the right to act to effect the devolution from the federal government, has not yet done so.

The veterans who are cared for in this institution plus their many supporters prefer that the hospital remain under the jurisdiction of veterans affairs rather than the responsibility being devolved to the province. Veterans are concerned that they will be subject to a lower standard of care if the hospital is administered by the province of Quebec. Veterans are also concerned that they will lose service if their first language is English.

If this hospital were to be devolved to Quebec, there is fear that no Canadian flag would be permitted to fly there if the recent policy resolutions of the Parti Quebecois on flag management were to be implemented, specifically that no Canadian flag be permitted to fly in front of any building under Quebec jurisdiction.

For these reasons alone, quality of health care plus potential effects of separatist politics, I suggest that further devolution to the provinces of health care responsibilities for our veterans should be viewed with extreme caution.

A growing number of veterans who return from contemporary theatres of war with unexplained ailments are more likely to be regarded as malingerers by their military superiors.

Louise Richard, a military nurse in the gulf war, comes from a family with a famed military history. Her father was a general in the Royal 22nd Regiment, the Van Doos. She returned from the gulf suffering from multiple ailments including tuberculosis, chronic fatigue, blurred vision and severe pain in her muscles and joints. Her appeals to the military were met with scepticism. Post-traumatic stress indeed.

Captain Terry Riordon had 23 years of military service. He went to the gulf war and returned with multiple disabilities which were categorized by the military as merely epilepsy or psychosis. At the time of his death nine years after his gulf war service, tests showed that his body contained depleted uranium. Captain Riordon was exposed to depleted uranium during his service and now he is dead.

Despite their claims to the contrary, Canadian military leaders clearly knew there was something seriously wrong with Captain Riordon's health. After his death, his body was medically defined in Canada as contagious and then taped shut in an orange toxic bag. Post-traumatic stress again. Captain Riordon's wife had asked the Canadian military to do a tissue analysis but they refused. She turned to U.S. researchers for help.

Other veterans who have become ill after having returned from recent peacekeeping arrangements have indicated that they also want to be tested for the presence of depleted uranium in their systems, but the military says that such tests prove nothing since depleted uranium is not harmful. What the military fails to acknowledge is that depleted uranium outside one's body has very different effects than uranium particles that are ingested in a theatre of war. In such circumstances I have been advised that the inner body acts like an open sore permitting the radioactive effects of depleted uranium to directly affect cells.

In my capacity as opposition critic for veterans affairs, I have proposed that an annual medical assessment be made available to any member or veteran of our armed forces who requests it so that no one would be compelled to wait for the results of tissue sample tests in the United States.

Any member of the military who has reason to believe that he or she is exposed to toxins in a theatre of conflict would have a legal right to a determination of the nature and extent of such exposure. Such procedures would also facilitate annual documentation of developments of physical ailments and ongoing effects of environmental exposures which would assist in future health and disability assessments.

It defies logic that so many returning soldiers could all be categorized as suffering from stress related illnesses. This is the case with many of the disability claims resulting from service in Croatia, including that of Colonel Matt Stopford. To say that these claimants are suffering from some form of post-traumatic stress does grave disservice to the bravery of these men and women. Any categorization of the illnesses of these soldiers as resulting from a nervous condition castigates all soldiers as potential malingerers even though many are career oriented soldiers with distinguished military careers.

When soldiers bound for Rwanda raised questions concerning the effects of anthrax vaccine and its relationship to gulf war syndrome, they were compelled to take the vaccine under threat of court martial. Such is the case of former Sergeant Michael Kipling whose court martial has commenced in Winnipeg this week despite his resignation from the military. The military relentlessly and shamelessly hounds Kipling through the courts to this day.

Some illnesses defy medical categorization based on the current state of medical knowledge. The gulf war syndrome is suspected to be caused by the anthrax vaccine or more likely by exposure to depleted uranium. It may be caused by both.

Whatever the cause, our soldiers are returning from these theatres of war with very serious illnesses and reportedly high levels of radioactivity in their bodies. Their claims for assistance must be given the benefit of the doubt and not have doubts cast upon them through the insult of categorizing most such problems as stress related.

The motion before the House is one step toward more formal recognition that throughout their career and afterward the men and women of our military bravely face experiences that most of us do not. Their bravery, when face to face with the dark side of humanity, calls for them to be treated differently upon their return to Canada or their retirement from the military. We must acknowledge that their lives are different from the lives of most of us in terms of what they have had to face.

National standards of veterans health care referenced specifically to the unique experiences of our military are but one step. We must recognize that the devolution of the health care of our veterans to the provinces should be approached with extreme caution and safeguards, if it is to be continued at all. We owe a great debt to our veterans. Surely we must provide them with the best of health care at all times. We must never forget.

I would seek unanimous consent to make this motion votable.

[The Deputy Speaker]

Is there unanimous consent that the motion be votable?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.