Madam Speaker, it is important that we have this debate today on Bill C-11, An Act to—allegedly—promote safety and security with respect to human pathogens and toxins.
There is a paradox right in the title the government has given this bill. This government is talking about the safety of pathogens, and yet in a media release dated April 29, 2008, when Bill C-54, the predecessor of Bill C-11, was introduced, the Minister of Health at the time said: “The risk to Canadians posed by the presence of human pathogens and toxins in labs is low .”
In 2008 they were saying that the risk to the public was relatively low. And now the government is introducing a bill to promote safety and security with respect to human pathogens and toxins, as if there were numerous risks.
So what does the bill that is before us do? First, it makes the guidelines that have been presented by the Public Health Agency of Canada mandatory. Second, it makes it mandatory that licences be obtained for regulated activities, so that existing pathogens can be monitored, to determine where they are and to know who has them. Third, it institutes a scheme of offences and penalties.
We are not opposed to oversight of these pathogens. That is a basic principle: the risk has to be managed, we have to ensure that the precautionary principle can be applied, of course.
In reality, however, what impact would the implementation of this bill have? It would create operating methods in workplaces like universities, research centres, clinics and hospitals. It seems clear to me that these sites are under Quebec’s authority. And today we have a federal government that would use the Criminal Code to get directly involved in how our hospitals and clinics operate, in the name of criminal law.
As I said, the precautionary principle must be applied, of course, but at the same time, the federal government has to understand where its authority to act begins and where it has to end.
We on this side of the House are not the only ones who think the government is going too far. This is an excerpt from a letter written on April 6, 2009, which makes it very recent, barely three weeks ago, by the Minister of Health of Quebec, Yves Bolduc, to the federal Minister of Health, concerning Bill C-11:
Quebec notes that the measures proposed in the bill would have a significant impact on the organization of medical laboratory and diagnostic services, which are normal services within Quebec's health system. However, these services fall under the jurisdiction of the government of Quebec.
Health Minister Yves Bolduc wrote further:
Accordingly, the Government of Quebec is calling on the federal government to reconsider its approach to ensuring the biosafety and biosecurity of human pathogens and toxins, rather than pursuing the parliamentary work currently underway. It is important that that approach better reflect the respective roles of both levels of government in this matter.
This is a letter dated April 6, which the federal health minister has received. Unfortunately, our colleagues on the Standing Committee on Health, who merely tried to get the government side to approve an amendment to ensure that the provinces would be consulted during the development of the regulations, got a resounding no for an answer.
Not only did the minister not deign to withdraw her bill but the members of the government party and some opposition members refused, I firmly believe, to make sure that at least those concerned by the application of it, that is the Government of Quebec, the hospitals and research centres, were consulted. It was a categorical no. The federal government is trying to use the terrorist threat in order to meddle in areas of provincial jurisdiction. That is the reality.
The federal government has all the tools it needs to handle pathogens of this kind. It can do so under the Terrorism Act. At least three countries have done so. The United Kingdom decided to take action under its terrorism act to regulate pathogens of this kind. But the government refuses to use the legislative tools at its disposal. It decided to go further and meddle directly in areas of provincial jurisdiction.
There is clearly a constitutional problem with the bill. This is not the first time this has happened. The government already used its power to legislate in the area of criminal law to make some laboratory biosafety guidelines obligatory through the issuing of licences. However, the bill exceeds the federal jurisdiction, as happened as well in the case of the federal bill on assisted reproduction, among others.
On June 19, 2008, the Quebec Court of Appeal handed down a judgment in the reference from the Government of Quebec on the constitutionality of sections 8 to 19, 40 to 53, 60, 61 and 68 of the Assisted Reproduction Act. The Court of Appeal stated that the sections in question exceeded the authority of the Parliament of Canada under the Constitution Act, 1867. In short, the judges said that the basic, overriding purpose of the part of the act that was challenged was to protect health and not to right a wrong. The provisions that were challenged could therefore not qualify as pertaining to criminal law under the Constitution Act, 1867.
There are precedents, therefore, for the federal government trying to use its power to legislate in the area of criminal law to introduce bills concerning health that are obviously outside its jurisdiction. Workplaces, universities, clinics and hospitals are clearly provincial jurisdictions.
We would have hoped today that the government would listen to reason at the stage the bill is at and withdraw Bill C-11, as requested by the Quebec health minister.