Yes, a very good scientist, as my colleague from Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre just said. She was doing research on a particular drug called L1. She was trying to help people with a blood disease called thalassemia and who needed repeated transfusions. She worked very hard on this drug and came to the conclusion that the side effects might be greater than the actual benefits. She chose to inform the drug companies sponsoring this research about those concerns. As a result of that expression of concern, she was silenced. To this day, she is still fighting for the right as a scientist to operate with integrity and to ensure full disclosure of any information that would be important in terms of the public good and the public interest.
I do not need to tell members about Dr. Anne Holbrook, with the Centre for Evaluation of Medicines at St. Joseph's Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario, who was threatened recently with a lawsuit by a major pharmaceutical company when her findings showed that the company's widely sold ulcer medication had essentially the same effect as two cheaper medicines.
I do not need to tell members about the outcry from scientists in the government's own Bureau of Veterinary Drugs who felt pressured by representatives of one of Canada's largest drug companies, Monsanto Canada Inc., on the whole issue of reviewing bovine growth hormone, or BST.
I do not need to tell members about how the government, in one of its first initiative when it took office in 1997, eliminated the drug research bureau, the one independent body within government to provide ongoing analysis on an independent basis of drugs approved in this country.
I do not need to tell members about how the government gutted the food research laboratory and how the government has, at every step of the way, weakened the capacity of government to ensure ongoing, independent, science based research around the drugs Canadians must take, the food we eat and the medical devices that are essential for health and well-being.
I do not need to tell members about the auditor general's recent report, following its review of the most serious incident of food borne disease in this country to date. It documented very clearly the question of scientific investigation being influenced by owners of, in this case, a meat packing plant and documented interference right from beginning to end around the safety of Canadians when it came to food products being purchased in grocery stores today.
I do not need to tell members about the recent decision by the government to fast track drugs through a new provision that has no basis in law, the notice of compliance with conditions.
I do not need to tell members about how our whole Health Protection Branch has been under tremendous change and direction from the government to deregulate, privatize and off-load.
I do not need to tell members about how much danger Canadians are in because the government has made a decision to actually withdraw from the whole area of public research and independent science based investigation in this country today.
I raise all of this so that we can all understand just where this bill fits in with the broad Liberal agenda in the country today, and just how much is at risk because we are letting commercialization and privatization rule the day.
My plea today is for us to acknowledge the very important role of government to ensure that the public good is protected, that in whatever partnerships are developed between the private sector, the labour movement and the public sector, that we clearly understand and delineate the rules of government and realize its paramount obligation is, in the final analysis, to uphold the public good.
The whole issue of commercialization was one of our concerns. I see my time is going much more quickly than I expected.
My second concern has to do with the way in which this bill allows for appointments to the governing council. One way we can actually ensure that the public good is paramount is by having very clearly defined requirements in place with respect to appointments to the governing council. The bill does not provide for clear conflict of interest guidelines and regulations, something we tried very hard to get in our amendments that were, as I said at the outset, just ignored by Liberal members on the committee.
The bill permits the appointment of representatives from the pharmaceutical industry, the biotech industry and the medical devices private sector, which carries with it the potential for conflict of interest between the goal we have on one hand of improving the health of Canadians at the lowest possible cost versus the objective of increasing profits on the part of the pharmaceutical industry. This should come as no surprise when we realize that this government, when it was in opposition, promised to nullify the Mulroney patent protection legislation for drug companies but has failed to do so. Not only did it fail to keep its promise, it went a step further over the last number of years and has improved the conditions for brand name drug companies by giving them a greater share of the market and denying Canadians access to cheaper safe drugs.
We presented to the government some very concrete amendments for ensuring conflict of interest provisions were built into this bill to avoid precisely that kind of situation that all Canadians are worried about, and we failed.
We also made a concerted effort to ensure that the board would be more representative of the population by ensuring that smaller provinces, which do not have the ear of government the way stronger provinces have, would have a say on this governing council. We wanted regional balance. We wanted to ensure that the board reflected the population. We asked for gender parity, something the government claims is part of its ongoing philosophy and the way in which it governs as a political party. Did we get gender parity? No, we did not.
We tried to get a commitment from the government for a women's health institute to assist with their goals for promoting women's health policy. We were unsuccessful.
We tried to get the government to commit to addressing in a more serious way environmental and occupational health as part of one of these institutes. We were unsuccessful.
We tried to get a serious commitment from the government around aboriginal health, ensuring a very focused research endeavour in that regard. We were unsuccessful.
Finally, and this is a point I am sure my colleagues across the way will be interested in, we tried very hard, and were looking forward to measures being adopted at the report stage of this bill, to get more transparency and accountability. A five year review was something basic and something we expected would be adopted by the Liberal government when it came to report stage over the last couple of days. Did that happen? No, it did not.
The basic elements of transparency, accountability, protection of the public good over private interests, gender parity and ensuring that we actually have a new transformative research agenda based on population health, based on environmental illness and occupational problems, all of which have not been dealt with by this government.
The government had an opportunity to improve a bill that does make progress and makes an important transition from the Medical Research Council to a more holistic approach to health care but it failed in the final analysis to do what Canadians expected it to do, which was to ensure in that bill absolute guarantees of protection for public good, absolute accountability to the public and openness and transparency in the way it is run.
The government refused to give even a token of consideration to these very important amendments and to the testimony presented to the House of Commons by numerous experts and witnesses.
It is with great regret that we cannot support Bill C-13 in the final analysis. However, we will continue to do whatever we can in the days, weeks and months ahead to ensure that the translation of this legislation into research bodies and organizations that are reflective of the population will be carried out. We will be monitoring the appointment process and the way in which the institutes are established. We will be outspoken in our attempts to ensure that this bill in terms of its noble objectives are actually transformed into action so that the words and the reality are one and the same.