moved:
That, given a national strategy is needed now to reduce the growing human and economic costs of cancer, heart disease and mental illness; the House call on the government to fully fund and implement the Canadian Strategy for Cancer Control in collaboration with the provinces and all stake holders, and given that Canada is one of the few developed countries without a national action plan for effectively addressing mental illness and heart disease, the government should immediately develop and initiate a comprehensive national strategy on mental illness, mental health and heart disease.
Mr. Speaker, today the Conservative Party is introducing what I hope will be an historic change in the way the Canadian government deals with cancer, mental health and heart disease.
The need for national strategies on cancer, mental health and heart disease is obvious. There is a high human and economic cost that must be immediately addressed in a comprehensive, pan-Canadian approach. The costs of these strategies are minimal compared to the looming health and economic costs.
Leadership for this plan should come from experts on the ground, not from government bureaucrats. Canada lags behind many other developed countries in its approach to national disease strategies. The lack of Liberal leadership on the issue has cost Canadian lives.
In our plan, the autonomy of the provinces and territories will be respected. These strategies will allow the provinces to communicate and share knowledge and best practices across Canada and to hook into national and international expertise.
The Council for the Canadian Strategy for Cancer Control has a model for other disease strategies. We understand that the Heart and Stroke Foundation and the mental health organizations will use the cancer strategy as a model for their own programs.
These strategies will operate under full accountability from the moment they are initiated. There will not be more government foundations: funding will be based upon results.
Canada is ideally situated to quickly make progress on a national cancer strategy because we can easily access best practices overseas and improve lives through information sharing. Each province is essentially a laboratory in which trials can take place.
Despite claims made by the Public Health Agency, it has no national cancer strategy. No specific money has been allotted for cancer. The Conservatives are taking the lead on this important health issue while the Liberals hide from making needed decisions.
While the Liberals are up to their eyeballs in corruption and cover-ups of scandals, the Conservatives have a plan for Canadians. The Conservative Party cares about the health and well-being of Canadians. We will not sacrifice them for ideological or political reasons.
Our proposal promotes transparency and accountability, in stark contrast to Liberal apathy. Our plan commits funds to the various diseases while the Liberals say they provide money. As for the small amount of money they do provide, there is no measuring of the effects the funding is supposed to have.
Why do we want a national strategy? Rather than having a patchwork approach for policies across Canada, it makes sense to maximize our gains by pooling and focusing the resources of stakeholders across Canada. These diseases affect the lives of every Canadian.
We also recognize that because of the taboo that surrounds mental illness it is important to finally generate a constructive dialogue on the subject. Just because people do not want to think about or talk about mental illness, there is no reason not to deal with the issue. The Conservative Party is taking the lead on mental health and mental illness.
The Liberals have ignored the human and economic costs of these diseases. The long term costs of cancer, mental illness and heart disease will run into the tens of billions of dollars, if not hundreds of billions. It is important that we implement these strategies immediately. The Liberals have had 12 years to do this and have not done so.
The Liberals have shown a profound lack of leadership and accountability on these issues, particularly in their funding models. For instance, today there is no way to track the money that is spent on cancer. Instead of a national strategy, the Liberals have bought off various advocacy communities with small amounts of money that have had little effect on the problem. They hide behind the excuse that disease specific strategies are ineffective and only a chronic disease strategy will work.
In short, this is nothing but ridiculous. In reality, disease specific strategies have worked remarkably well in numerous countries, such as Britain, France and many other EU countries, to name a few. These policies are at the forefront of each government's health policy framework.
The Liberals claim that implementing national disease strategies would be too difficult due to the complexities of federal-provincial relationships. However, the EU has been able to coordinate through a number of separate nations. We should surely be able to do it within Canada.
It is interesting to note that the Council for the Canadian Strategy for Cancer Control has brought in all stakeholders in the cancer community and has buy-in from all these stakeholders. The Liberal health minister promised the Council for the Canadian Strategy for Cancer Control that $26 million would be allocated in this year's budget, with increased funding in subsequent years. A week later, on budget day, not a penny was given to the cancer strategy. The health minister's promise to cancer stakeholders was broken, which is not a surprise, unfortunately, when dealing with the Liberals.
We are calling for specific moneys to be allocated to the Canadian strategy for cancer control in the amount of approximately $260 million over five years. The funding would make Canada a world leader in cancer control.
The Public Health Agency, which sits as a board member on the CSCC council and has funded the group's strategy, abstained from approving the plan just two weeks ago. Essentially, it paid for advice on cancer and then refused to accept the advice. Even the cancer experts working with the PHA have no idea what it bases its decisions on or what the plan is.
The Conservative Party supports the leadership of the Canadian Mental Health Association, the Canadian Cancer Society, the Canadian Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health and the Heart and Stroke Foundation. Instead of creating yet another layer of bureaucracy, these groups should take the lead in developing and implementing specific national disease strategies. They are in a far better position to do so than government officials. These groups are composed of experts in their respective fields and involve thousands of volunteers.
We call on the government to implement these comprehensive strategies as they are presented, not by cherry-picking only what it likes and implementing each in a piecemeal fashion. Comprehensive strategies are needed now. All that is required is the political will to commit the funds to these plans.
The funds needed to implement the plans are relatively small in light of the long term costs associated with mental illness, cancer and heart disease. The Liberals have doled out nearly $20 billion in the past two months and yet have done nothing to adequately combat diseases that will affect the lives of every Canadian and strain government resources in the decades to come. The longer they wait, the higher the long term costs for Canada will be.
What will a national cancer strategy buy? We will get: a national cancer prevention strategy; system change for greater investment in supportive and palliative care; improved surveillance and analysis; a common data and technology system to facilitate national standards; a centralized national database of clinical practice guidelines; a national human resources database; and a long term research agenda.
I would like to also take a moment to acknowledge Senator Forrestall, who has been instrumental in spearheading action on cancer and cancer research. Unfortunately, the senator is ill. I would like to express my hope that he will soon return to good health and continue his fight in Parliament.
Because I am splitting my time with my colleague from Yellowhead, I do not have time to get into all the specifics, but the bottom line is that we have an opportunity to do a great thing for Canadians. We have an opportunity to deal with the cancer crisis, the mental health crisis, and the heart disease crisis we have and to deal with them now, because this is just going to get worse.
The Liberals had the opportunity to implement a national strategy and they have not done so. If we talk to any of the cancer associations, they will agree with that statement. Though the Liberals will deny it, the fact is that leadership on this issue is coming from the Conservative Party of Canada.
We look forward to working with the stakeholders to ensure that the health of Canadians remains and is preserved into the future.