Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to rise tonight to speak to this motion, which I think is a very important motion. I want to commend my hon. colleague from Edmonton East for bringing forward his concern for the well-being and the health of our veterans.
We in the NDP support the motion. We think it is very important that there be national standards for veterans' health care.
National Defence, as we know, comes under federal jurisdiction and we feel that the federal government must not abandon its responsibility to ensure that those who defend our country receive quality health care.
Unfortunately, this is not happening at present. We all know the many stories, and we see them coming forth daily, of our military personnel who are returning home from missions abroad: the gulf war, Somalia, various other missions. These people are ending up suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, depleted uranium and so forth.
What we see is a state of denial by DND with respect to even giving these veterans the benefit of the doubt that their illnesses may have in fact been caused by something that happened while they were overseas.
I will speak for a moment on depleted uranium. I attended a briefing today where DND again attempted to indicate that there was no real serious concern about this material, no danger in this and that there was no evidence to support this. However, this seems to fly in the face of the very real evidence that we see from the people who are suffering and have been exposed to this material.
I will remind the House of what Dr. Rosalie Bertell, a famous epidemiologist, had to say about depleted uranium. She said:
DU is highly toxic to humans, both chemically as a heavy metal and radiologically as an alpha particle emitter which is very dangerous when taken internally.
Upon impact, the DU bursts into flames. It produces a toxic and radioactive ceramic aerosol that is much lighter than uranium dust. It can travel in the air tens of kilometres from the point of release, or settle as dust suspended in the air waiting to be stirred up by human or animal movement.
It is very small and can be breathed by anyone from babies and pregnant women to the elderly and the sick. This radioactive and toxic ceramic can stay in the lungs for years, irradiating the surrounding tissue with powerful alpha particles. It can affect the lungs, gastrointestinal system, liver, kidneys, bones, other tissues and renal systems.
She goes on to say:
It is most likely a major contributor to the Gulf War Syndrome experienced by the veterans and the people of Iraq.
We know that after the war Iraq experienced explosive rates of stillbirths, children born with defects, childhood leukemia and other cancers and, in particular, near the Basara region where these shells were fired.
I think we have to look seriously at the situation concerning depleted uranium and not put our heads in the sand and try to pretend that it does not exist.
However, we do see that there is a constant state of denial by the department to connect any of the symptoms experienced to depleted uranium or to the missions that our soldiers have been on.
Now, after a lot of pressure, a lot of studies and so forth, the government has finally agreed to do some testing of the veterans for depleted uranium. Even then, I have some concern that the testing may not be as thorough, as impartial and as complete as one would like because the talk today was only about the testing of urine. However, if we want to have any faith restored in our military and in the capability of the government to support our men and women when they return home, we must take an impartial look at this whole situation.
Another example of why we need some high standards of health care for our veterans is the case of the former Sergeant Kipling, a veteran with 26 years experience. Eight years ago he refused to take a vaccine when it was administered before the gulf war conflict. What did he get for this refusal? He got a court martial. He refused the vaccine because he was concerned about his health and about the effects of the vaccine, which has not been approved in Canada for general use. He had many questions surrounding its safety and his well-being, yet rather than getting support, he was court-martialled.
Let us look at those individuals who do not come under military health care. Those of us who come under the provincial health care system do not find ourselves faced with these problems. We do not have to accept medicines or vaccinations that we do not want to take. However, this is the case in the military.
If the federal government does institute national standards for health care with maintenance and special needs provisions, as indicated in the motion, it may indeed have a problem having such standards agreed upon by all the provinces, particularly if the federal government does not restore the funding that has been cut from the health care system. If there is going to be a standard of health care there has to be sufficient funding to meet that standard.
We all know that there have been billions and billions of dollars cut from the health care system to the point that even our provincial health care systems are struggling today. People are waiting in long lineups in hospitals. People are not able to get the kind of care that they should get because of the funding crisis in the health care system.
Even if we did agree to national standards for our veterans, there is still a problem in that regard if there is not sufficient funding coming forward.
The motion talks about having these standards agreed upon by all provinces before devolving responsibility to any province for any portion of care. I would point out that the federal government is extremely good at devolving responsibilities to other levels of government or to other parties without first putting the things in order that should be put in order.
Let us look at the example of the Halifax International Airport. That airport was eventually passed down to the Halifax Airport Authority without the federal government first accepting responsibility and cleaning up the environmental hazard due to the pyritic slate in the area. This was a very important issue that should have been resolved before the transfer took place. However, the federal government put the authority in a position that it had to take it or leave it in the final bargaining. The authority had to finally accept what should have been the responsibility of the federal government, which was to clean up the hazard before devolving the airport down to the authority.
Again, I would have that kind of concern with national health standards for our veterans. We should work these things out in such a way that we do not leave the provinces with any responsibilities that should rightly be carried by the federal government.
We can see from the massive cuts that have taken place in our health care system that we are now slowly moving toward a two-tier American style health system. It is time for Canadians to take back control of our country, to take back control of the things we should control.
I recall back to 1993 when the federal government decided to get out of the housing program and pass the responsibility over to the provinces. We now see the results of that where we have many people without homes who are dying on the street. Why? It is because the federal government withdrew from the social housing program. It devolved and put this responsibility down to the provinces and again did not provide adequate funding to maintain adequate shelter for our citizens.
We must be very careful when we talk about the devolving of responsibility and passing it down. The federal government seems to be good at wanting to privatize things, to put them into the hands of the private sector as if they can do so much better than public control.
This is a very important motion that has been brought forward concerning the health of our veterans. It is very important that Canada supports and looks after those who have gone off to defend our borders, to fight in places where perhaps we would not even want to go ourselves, and to carry out jobs that many of us would not want to do. The least we can do is make sure that when they return they are well looked after and that we give them the benefit of the doubt when they are suffering.
I will wind up very quickly by saying again that I commend the member for bringing forth his concern in this motion. I certainly feel that all of us in the House should be concerned about the well-being of our veterans and do everything we can to ensure that their health and safety are carried forward in a very positive way. We should also remember the effect not just on those veterans but on their families, their wives, their children, and the communities in which they live.