Mr. Speaker, I am delighted this afternoon to have an opportunity to speak on the motion that is before us, and to indicate my personal support and that of my caucus for Motion No. 170 that addresses the desperate need for a national strategy on Alzheimer's disease and related dementias.
I am delighted to have an opportunity to do so because there are a number of things that need to be said if we are serious about making this Parliament work. This is very practical and concrete. It is something that would make an enormous difference in the short, medium and long term for those who are now struggling with Alzheimer's disease. It will also assist support workers who are helping families deal with the disease and over the longer term for those who are working very hard on research to find a cure.
This is something about which I have a great deal of personal experience. My dad died of Alzheimer's disease. It was a great sadness to me. I was born in Ottawa and my father worked on the Hill as the first researcher of the CCF, the forerunner to the New Democratic Party. We moved back to Nova Scotia and lived there. He passed away just before I became the federal leader of the New Democratic Party. Had he still been alive, sadly, he would not have understood what that meant.
It is a devastating disease that literally wipes out memory and cognitive abilities. He was aphasic, could not speak and was immobilized in a wheelchair in his latter days. He was fiercely devoted to health promotion and prevention. Just as tens of thousands, in fact hundreds of thousands of people who have been struggling with this disease and lost the fight against Alzheimer's, the latter days of his life were very difficult.
That experience makes me very supportive of the cry for a national strategy for Alzheimer's disease. I want to pay credit to the member for Thornhill who introduced this motion, as well as to the health critic of the New Democratic Party who is very supportive. We know this is the kind of issue that simply cannot fall prey to divisions of any kind among members of the House.
I am very proud of the research that is being done by an outstanding medical research team in Nova Scotia associated with Dalhousie University. They are doing superb research while also offering amazing teaching to health professionals and support workers who are constantly learning about how best to support patients and families who are dealing with Alzheimer's.
Recently, the Nova Scotia Alzheimer's Society, like similar societies right across the country that have been doing yeoman service with totally inadequate resources, held a breakfast fundraiser, but probably more important than the fundraising potential of that particular event was the community education that was offered.
When I looked at the program, I groaned and thought, “Good heavens, over breakfast we are going to hear six speeches from six medical researchers and we are going to be here all day”. This was an event chaired by Bill Carr, a close friend and colleague, who is the official spokesperson for the Alzheimer Society of Canada, and speaks with enormous passion to the challenges of dealing with Alzheimer's and does it with the most endearing humour that I have never known.
It may be hard for people to imagine. Maybe one has to struggle with Alzheimer's in one's family or someone near and dear to understand why humour is such an important part of the tool kit needed to deal with Alzheimer's.
After a very humourous introduction, Mr. Carr was a very tight MC who allowed each of six speakers three minutes each. Mr. Speaker, you would have been impressed with six speakers who could speak for no more than three minutes each and in that time allotment give us an amazingly clear glimpse of the important research that is being done.
If it were not for the Alzheimer's Society working to drive this agenda all the time, if it were not for the National Advisory Council on Aging and the many others in the broad human services field who have worked together, families struggling with Alzheimer's and Alzheimer's patients today would not be living with improved quality. There have been important breakthroughs in terms of drugs.
One of the things about a national strategy is the importance of our having a national pharmaceutical program, a national drug program. As it exists today, shamefully, there are five provinces in this country that do not make those drugs available under existing drug programs. That is one of the many reasons we need a national strategy. We need a national strategy that deals with the education in the sensitization not just of decisions but all health care workers.
I have personal knowledge of how devastating it is for a family to have the spouse of someone struggling with Alzheimer's go to the family doctor and say, “I really feel there is increasing evidence that my spouse has Alzheimer's”, and have the doctor say, “Well, why do you want me to try to diagnose it? Because you can't really do anything about it anyway. Just live with it”.
That was probably the single most devastating thing that my mother had to live with in the early stages of my father's Alzheimer's. Yet, it is the person, the loved one, the family member closest to the Alzheimer's patient who always can see, usually before the evident memory loss, mood changes, behavioural changes, uncharacteristic outbursts of difficult behaviour, irritability and unreasonableness.
We need to ensure that the educational support is there and is assured across the country. It is not episodic or accidental as to whether every single person working in the health care system, in human services, has that kind of education that allows them to be part of early detection as well as providing the kind of care needed. We need to address the compassionate care leave inadequacy in the current legislation that the government has brought in.
My colleague from Sackville—Eastern Shore must take a huge amount of credit for pressing this issue to ensure that there is a way in which a family member dealing with a victim of a debilitating disease and nearing death can be supported in terms of being able to take leave from a job, for example, if that is what is required and have some income replacement. However, what the government has done is totally inadequate in that regard.
I know the member for Sackville--Eastern shore has already tried to press the government further to deal with the virtual abandonment of the promise and the commitment made. The government has made the eligibility so restrictive that there are family members who want and are able to devote themselves to the care of a victim and a dying family member, but who are outside the narrow definition of what family members can qualify.
Further, the narrow time of six weeks compassionate care does not come anywhere close to addressing the realistic needs of families. We are talking about the dying days of Alzheimer's patients and about the whole range of debilitating diseases that are resulting in death, and where that compassionate care is desperately needed. If we want to make this Parliament work and impress upon Canadians that we are serious, we will deal with the inadequacy of that compassionate care.
Finally, home care was promised in 1993 by this government and in every election since. We still do not have what is remotely adequate in the way of a national home care system. It needs to be part of the national strategy.
We are pleased to support this motion. We hope we can cooperate with early passage to send a clear signal to the government that it needs to get on with dealing with this matter.