Mr. Speaker, this year, 153,000 Canadians will learn that they have cancer. While lifestyle changes can help to reduce some risks of cancer, we have a responsibility to eliminate the causes of cancer before they start.
Yesterday, I joined with Prevent Cancer Now, a coalition of environmental, health, labour and social justice advocates, to urge the government to commit to making primary cancer prevention a national health priority.
A significant portion of the $260 million committed to the Canadian Strategy for Cancer Control must be dedicated to cancer prevention. In the words of Prevent Cancer Now:
We are no longer prepared to grant that cancer has become a recognized disease of childhood; that our women friends are expected to stoically sport scarves and turbans while awaiting an uncertain fate from breast cancer; that young men are increasingly diagnosed with testicular cancer; and that workers in many occupations are dying in order to make a living.