Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to speak to Bill C-30 and talk about some of the spending issues that are involved in the bill as well as the vision that it puts forth.
I have received a number of concerns, as a member of Parliament, from my constituency as well as from several hundred Canadians who have already e-mailed, phoned, faxed or provided some documentation to me about what has been pronounced by the government.
I want to first say that there are some good provisions for some things in Bill C-30. To get up and say that absolutely all of it is bad would not be right. One of the things that I do want to point out is the fact that there would finally be the elimination of environmental fines as tax deductions or business write-offs. That is one thing that we could not believe was happening. It was causing a national embarrassment.
I was getting correspondence from American elected officials about pollution coming from the Canadian side of Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River and other areas, that spilled out from Canadian factories and other sources. At the same time, companies were able to apply for a tax deduction on that, let alone the cleanup and the effect that it was having upon our American neighbours.
It is interesting to note that the government talks about improving relations with the United States. The first thing would be for our side to stop poisoning the water and to provide all kinds of progressive steps to clean the system up in partnership. The United States has actually been far more progressive in the Great Lakes by investing in their renewal in a couple of different fashions. It has been doing it, not only through its government, but through other means, for example, Robert Kennedy Jr. and his efforts have been through the legal system in order to provide some of the improvements that have been happening.
We have actually created some of those things on our side of the jurisdiction of the Detroit River with our river keeper announcement, from the public point of view, without the assistance of the government as an initiator of the project.
We saw the budget come out with basically an ideological attempt to reduce expenditures just for the sake of scoring political points.
The government did a set up here. It wanted to appear that it was shifting to the right to deal with the Conservative agenda but what it has done since then is to go out to the public to announce different projects in the multimillions after the actual budget was released.
It is a classic attempt to try to have it both ways. Quite frankly, it has been very good at getting it both ways until now because Canadians are starting to recognize that they each have different choices about things and they should be making those choices based upon principles as opposed to wishy-washy behaviour.
We are watching the privatization of health care. The New Democratic Party is really concerned about the fact that there were no new health care transfers.
The Prime Minister had plenty of time to address this as a former minister of finance and during the time of his leadership run-up. He talked about these issues a lot of times and said that it was very much a priority, but at the same time he did not actually have an action plan in his first official budget.
That is unfortunate because we believe that the Roy Romanow solutions that were proposed should have been specifically mentioned in the budget. There should have been advancement because Canadians are looking for accountability. They are looking for a single system of medicare that is not going to introduce a level of profit that will certainly mean a loss of service for people. It will make people who are vulnerable susceptible to longer lineups.
The lineup is important to note because I know of a community that is under serviced because the infrastructure has not been provided for the medical society to provide the actual services that are necessary on the ground floor. We are not getting the specialists and we have long waiting times.
That is important to note because specialists also relate to the quality of life and the productivity of the citizens we have in our community. If people are waiting for an exponential period of time to have their knees scoped or to have some type of minor operation, it certainly is a negative derivative when we look at the economy. We have more people who are off on sick leave. We have people who can further injure themselves and we also have family situations that become more complicated.
Whereas, if the investment were there, we would see the benefit of people returning to work earlier and have a healthier environment. I think that would be more productive for our economy and our country. We also have people who need those types of services in order to stay physically active in our society. The investment of that accountability and the investment in reducing waiting times would allow them to stay active and healthy.
I know of many seniors who have had to wait far too long to receive operations. It is unacceptable and unfair to them because their health deteriorates in the meantime. They have contributed a significant amount of money into the health care system over the years and they have certainly contributed to our economy. They have also been productive family members. To be in one's golden years and not have a required operation creates a lot of problems as it is stalled from month to month. That threatens their physical well-being as well as their mental well-being. The stress and the anguish that goes along with that is difficult as well.
I was out the other day talking with a constituent whose husband, a young worker, was waiting for a minor operation. He is now into his fourth week of waiting. He had to wait a series of days just to get an MRI done on his broken leg. If his leg is not treated properly, it could lead to a permanent injury. This is a result of long waiting lists.
A good investment for Canadians would be to have more money and accountability put back into our health care system in different ways such as those outlined by Roy Romanow. That would be a way of rebuilding this country.
I want to talk a bit about some of the things that could have been done in this budget and would have been influential in lowering the price of medications and eventually the costs associated with our health care system.
Last year, the industry committee spent a lot of time on notice of compliance, that is the evergreen that happens. Evergreening is when the 20 years in the pharmaceutical industry is extended by an automatic stay of injunction by the patent holder. This then delays the actual generic version of the drug being available on the market.
We saw delay after delay as these automatic injunctions compounded year after year. These injunctions prohibited generic companies from introducing a lower cost drug and which would have actually reduced the cost of medications in Canada. That money could then have been put back into health care and toward addressing other issues related to waiting times and services.
It has been quite amazing to see what has happened. A progressive Liberal, the member for Ajax--Pickering, sat on the committee. I give him credit for being so active on this case file. Some other sympathetic Liberals were also there. They were part of the Chrétien era, I suppose. After Chrétien resigned from his position, a new Prime Minister came in, and he has changed the committee. I am virtually the last member of that committee that is still talking about reducing the cost of medications, or at least trying to raise the issue.
It is unfortunate because a lot of time and taxpayers' dollars has been spent in having witnesses come forward and research done. A lot of time has been spent trying to get the Minister of Industry to respond. We have seen nothing yet. We are watching these studies become basically outdated. The studies that have been done are sitting on a shelf like so many other studies, even though the Romanow Commission noted that Canada should be doing something right away to lower the cost of prescription drugs.
It is also important to tie that in to the fact that we would like to see Bill C-9 passed. That bill would allow developing countries access to patent drugs, or generic versions of them, so they could address some of their horrible conditions of malaria, tuberculosis and HIV-AIDS. It would also assist those developing countries in dealing with their poverty issues.
One of the things that was outright shocking in the budget that I was very disappointed about, coming from an auto town, was the fact that it did not contain an auto policy or at least some indication of what was going to happen. There was no indication in the Speech from the Throne either. I immediately asked questions about that as did my colleague from Windsor as to why the auto industry was not mentioned in the Speech from the Throne. There are one in 7.5 Canadian jobs affected by the auto industry and one in 6 in Ontario. That was left out of the Speech from the Throne which was very shocking.
Mayors of municipalities have formed a committee to talk about this. The Province of Ontario, even though it is drowning in debt and complaining about its costs, has had to come up with $500 million for an auto investment strategy because there has been no national auto policy. I want to acknowledge the fact that the government had to admit that it still has one-quarter of the border funds available.
A community like mine is waiting for announcements, waiting for those improvements like the truck ferry service, for example, that can take trucks off the city streets and move them across the border to help our economy and our trade. We want to have the grid-lock taken care of, something that can happen in a matter of months. The Liberals do not have any resources or support for that; only the projects for their friends and the lobbying that has been happening.
With that, I want to say thank you very much for the opportunity to respond to the Speech from the Throne, subsequently the budget and Bill C-30. I look forward to seeing better progress. This was disappointing to building Canada which needs to happen now as opposed to giving it away.