Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to be here, even if it interferes with my presence at the Standing Committee on Justice.
I basically want to remind the House of the gist of our amendments in Group No. 2. The hon. parliamentary secretary and member for Anjou—Rivière-des-Prairies knows that what we want first is that the provinces be closely involved in the development and implementation of Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
The Bloc Quebecois, a responsible opposition party intent on continuing to be responsible, is aware that the research community needs money, and significant amounts of money at that.
We have no qualms about acknowledging the injection of an additional $500 million, which will be available starting next year, for the creation of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, which, as we know, will be virtual institutes. So, the money will not be invested in buildings.
The problem is that the health minister underlines the importance of having the researchers connect through a network, like the OCDE said it should be, and we agree, but the bill provides for an extreme centralization.
The minister talks about institutes of health research, plural, but since there is only one governing council, we should speak instead of a single Canadian institute of health research.
The bill is so centralizing that the president and the chairperson of the governing council are one and the same. Just imagine if, in Quebec, at the baseball division of the Régie des installation olympiques—I take that example because of your athletic dispositions and your love of baseball—there were a president and a chairperson.
We asked the parliamentary secretary and the minister why it had to be the same person. In large public organizations, centralized or decentralized, the principle of checks and balances is considered essential, which means that there is a director general and a chairperson of the board who are not one and the same.
We know that research is an area that evolves rapidly. We want the scientists to be networked, to be linked together in networks. But why not involve the provinces in the definition of the health research institutes?
We are proposing an amendment to make this possible both at the governing council level and in the various advisory committees. We did the same thing when the Canada Labour Code was reviewed, and we also have the preliminary version of the code. My colleague, the hon. member for Laurentides, will deal with the present bill. But a few years ago, when the government chose to amend Part III of the Canada Labour Code, we also tabled an amendment in order to enable the Canada Labour Relations Board to take inspiration from lists proposed by the provinces. We have done exactly the same thing here. We brought in an amendment asking the minister “Why not take inspiration from proposals made by the provinces?”
Jean Rochon, the minister of scientific development, who everyone knows is a great friend of the hon. member for Québec, is in the process of bringing in a science policy. This policy establishes directions to be given developmental priority for health research in Quebec.
What are these areas of priority? Genomics and heredity. The hon. member for Jonquière, who can at the very least be described as a woman of determination, is working hard to get an institute facility in her region, because a pool of researchers, with their expertise and knowledge, are concentrated there.
Not only must there be recognition of the strengths of Quebec as far as genomics and heredity are concerned, but there is also much expertise relating to cancer, and AIDS as well. Quebec is home to some of the most highly reputed researchers in the fields of AIDs and virology.
What we are saying to this government is “If it is your objective to create linkages so that the various researchers can interact in the spirit of complementarity and multidisciplinarity, you stand to gain by consulting the provinces”. That is the type of amendment we presented.
Many people came to us saying “Please ensure that the $500 million to be made available is going to really go to research”.
The result of this bill will be to abolish the Medical Research Council of Canada. I would have liked the parliamentary secretary to be here listening—I am sure he will agree with me. Once the Medical Research Council of Canada is abolished, we must make sure that the administration costs that fall to the Canadian institutes of health research under the new structure do not exceed 5%.
We think it would be wrong for the administration costs to be 10%, 15% or 20%. We would not agree with that. I hope that this amendment will meet with the approval of government members.
There is one problem. Perhaps the hon. member for Québec would give us a little smile. There is one problem and it is as follows. There are 13 references to the health care system in the bill. We are prepared to admit that research is an area of shared jurisdiction. The federal government has invested in the research sector since the early 1990s; in fact, its involvement goes back to something like 1910 or 1915 and, with a few notable exceptions, there are very few parliamentarians who were around back then.
The health care sector, however, does not come under federal jurisdiction. We have some concerns that the bill as now worded, with its references to the health care system, will be a way for the federal government to get its foot in the door of jurisdictions where it has no business.
This is why, very candidly and in a spirit of clarity, we moved an amendment asking the government to specify that the health care system does not come under its jurisdiction. The government's determination borders on the obsessive and will make it look rather narrow minded if it does not support our amendment.
I still have hopes that the parliamentary secretary, who has a huge influence within the government, will manage to convince the Minister of Health, a future leadership contender, to support our amendments.
This is a major bone of contention, so much so that the Quebec Minister of Health, Mrs. Marois, and her colleague, Mr. Rochon, took the time to write to the federal health minister to express their concerns. I tabled a copy of that letter in committee. I will be pleased to circulate it if some hon. members are interested in reading it.
Since I have little time left, let me say that we support health research. We believe it is important that researchers be part of a network. We also believe that this bill cannot be part of a nation building process. It must not be the excuse for the federal government to try to get involved in health, particularly in the health care system and in the procurement of equipment at points of service, two areas which come under provincial jurisdiction.
If the government—and I will conclude on this note—supports our amendments, which are very reasonable and certainly not out of line, we would be compelled to rise, at report stage and at third reading, to support this bill, which has some merits, but which appears to promote federal hegemony somewhat.
I invite hon. members to make sure that the government supports the amendments proposed by the Bloc Quebecois. We worked hard in committee, we showed up consistently, we heard witnesses and we are very qualified to talk about Quebec's interests. We know that researchers want this bill passed and we are prepared to support it, as long as it respects Quebec's jurisdictions.