Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today as the member of Parliament for London West. I have had an opportunity over the summer months before prorogation to consult with my constituents. I am very pleased that in the Speech from the Throne there are many areas that I know will be very important to members of my community.
First, like just about everybody in the House, we are concerned with our health care, with financing our health care and making sure that in the future we will be taken care of like we have been used to from cradle to grave. There are responsible measures to be taken, with perhaps some changes in the way we go about it. The value system we share across this land means having good health care for all of us, not just because of a pocketbook that is fuller than that of our neighbour, but because we are entitled to good health and good health protection by way of prevention programs. These are some of the things that we heard in the Speech from the Throne.
I would be remiss if I did not remind members of the House that London is a community that has health research. We are very fortunate to have many tens of thousands of our citizens working in the health care community and specifically in the health care research community. Not only do research dollars impact on the health of Canadians, but that knowledge is shared with literally the world. We were very fortunate to hear in the throne speech that we will be advancing more dollars for health research and in fact for research in general, because we are in need of a more innovative economy in order to be a more productive economy.
It is especially important for the students. In London we have Fanshawe College and the University of Western Ontario. Representatives from both of those institutions constantly come to talk to the members of Parliament in our area to emphasize the real need for the upping of these resources. We have to go from where we were many years ago when we took over the government. We were down because we were not supplying sufficient research dollars. In fact, we were losing many talented young people in whom Canada had invested. We were losing their talents. Also, after their primary, secondary and usually first university education, we were losing them as graduate students as they fled to other countries. We have reversed that.
Last week the president of the university visited me here in the House and reiterated how thankful they were that the climate for these young people has changed. I think we can even do better and improve it further. But that does not mean they get to do just the research and that is the end of it. There has to be a commercialization of the research, which I think is important.
Many of our colleges and universities and in fact our hospital systems are strapped financially. There is a method for us to help the system. What we heard in the Speech from the Throne is that we are now talking about working with the universities in particular on the indirect costs of research. This is a promising way to deliver more funds. That will then prevent the graduate and research students literally taking the dollars away from the undergraduate students and their studies. It will help support the educational infrastructure throughout Canada. I am very pleased to see that this will be for all universities across every province. That formula is a necessary one and I am glad to see that we are headed in that direction.
I want to talk about the physical environment of where I live. Unfortunately, there is something we are not proud of. I live in the area of Canada that has the most pollutants in the air. Lack of clean air is a problem. We had in excess of 27 smog days this summer in London. Combined with that, we had high humidity days. Not all of those pollutants were made in our backyard. We happen to live in a geographical basin. We get some winds from across our lake shared by our neighbour to the south. I am very pleased to see that this was addressed, because clean air is not an issue that we can take on as one country or one city. It is something we have to work at in collaboration with the United States. We have specifically said that and I think it is important.
Over the summer I talked with many people about Kyoto, climate change and reducing the necessity of getting those greenhouse gases down over time. I have heard the argument that Canada only produces 2% of the problem, but California only produces 2% of the problem. We have roughly equal populations. If we all were to say that we are just a bit of the problem so we do not have to participate, the problem could never be solved over time. I think we have to face reality. We are the potentially endangered species on this planet.
I think this is a situation where, even though it might be more difficult in the shorter term, we can turn this to our economic advantage. I think we should be going into cleaner energy. We should be looking for those products, innovations and methodologies in our cities, on our farms and in our industries to support getting to our global solution, because we do share the planet and we are certainly affected as a northern country in a way that is not welcomed by many of us.
I believe that doing this not only for ourselves but for our future generations is important. I appreciate that there may be bottom line costs to this and I also appreciate that they may not be known to the penny at this time, but sometimes there are situations in which we have to start on the solution and head in the right direction because it is the right and correct thing to do.
I want to talk a little more about biotechnology, the clean energy and the health sciences, because these are opportunities for economic growth. Again, this is fed by the research and the changing environment. We have passed through different ages over time. The industrial age has created some of the problems we are faced with now. We now will be moving into an age of future science and we are going to have to look at some of the ethics of those potential problems. We are going to have to look at the science. We are going to have to marry the values of Canadians with the legislation. Around the table here we are going to have to take into consideration and listen to the concerns of people who perhaps do not represent my party but, I believe, represent Canadians, and those Canadians have shared values. I think it is important that we listen and that we try to move ahead for the benefit of all of us in this wonderful democratic society we have.
One of the things that I feel very strongly about is palliative care. I read one part of the throne speech that was about a commitment to helping people who may have to serve outside the workforce while taking care of their family members during an illness. Palliative care is not just for aged people. It is for ill children and all ill people. I am glad to see that we are moving in this direction and I would encourage my government to move faster and with more strength in this area because I think there is a real need.
Senator Carstairs from the other House came to my riding a couple of weeks ago when we put the health care professionals together in a room. I do not think there is a family among us that will not be dealing with these situations. Sometimes our health care system by itself will not be able to cope. We will be asked to volunteer our time and our physical and monetary resources to assist a family member. I think it is important that we take on this role, but I also think there is a place for government to assist us. I am pleased to see that line in the Speech from the Throne.
London is in southwestern Ontario. We are on one of the busiest trade corridors the country has. U.S.-Canada trade is very important to the economy of the region. I am very glad to see the U.S.-Canada smart border accord coming to fruition. I am glad to see the money that we are adding and increasing in infrastructure over time. I am glad to see the security measures that make our trade safe. No one needs a bottleneck. We certainly need more dollars going into the facilitation of the trade that affects the jobs in our region and that tells our neighbours we are there to share in and increase each other's prosperity.
Many things in the Speech from the Throne interest me. One is affordable housing. Another is helping Africans, because I have been there. I was in Sierra Leone within the last year. Perhaps I could encourage everyone to take the opportunity, when they can, to go and get the yardstick measurement, because I am proud of what we do with our foreign aid and I am glad to see that it will be increasing.
I want to start working on these programs. I am pleased to do it with colleagues from the House. I am pleased to be a member of the House, and I look forward to getting on with the business of implementing over time, in a fiscally responsible manner, the issues that have been raised in the Speech from the Throne.