Debates of March 23rd, 2010

Opposition Motion—Maternal and Child Health

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, what is interesting is the government's refusal to acknowledge that contraception and family planning played a role in maternal health drove a rift in the House. It took that position for days on end. Finally it changed its position and did an about-face because of the public pressure from Canadians across the country. That is creating a rift.

I am glad we have come together on that and recognized that contraception and family planning are vital to saving women's and children's lives around the world. However, I want to just focus on the issue of attacking the United States.

When I read this motion, it says:

—that the Canadian government should refrain from advancing the failed right-wing ideologies previously imposed by the George W. Bush administration in the United States...

That says nothing about attacking the United States. It is about attacking an ideology that hurts women. What specifically in that paragraph, if the member could help me understand, does he find objectionable or incorrect?

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Mr. Speaker, first, the member who moved the resolution was a premier of the province of Ontario for five years. I have been here for four years. I have never introduced a motion or a private member's bill in the House that indicated, in any way, shape or form, some reference to what he did to Ontario. He did a lot of bad things to Ontario for five years, but I never, when dealing with an issue in the House of Commons, try to use a previous government from either another province, or worse, from another country.

I do not understand why the member opposite asks a question. He reads this and says that we are not trying to partner with our brothers and sisters in the United States. This is not what it is doing. It is driving us further apart. We do not accept it. We will not support it.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened very closely to the parliamentary secretary's comments. I currently am the House chair of the Canada-U.S. Interparliamentary Group. I know the hon. member serves as one of the vice-chairs. We all work very hard to work with the members of Congress in the United States to try to advance Canada's agenda. We work with them very closely. I know the hon. member has been part of those efforts.

Could he tell us a little more about the damage this type of motion can do?

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I credit the member for the work he is doing as chair of this association.

In fact, let me point out very clearly that the buy American policy, which definitely would have had an impact on this country, and did to some degree, was resolved based on the hard work of our relationship with the United States. We agreed, whether we were Liberals, Conservatives or New Democrats who sat on this committee, that our relationship had to be strong with the United States. This does nothing to make that any stronger.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Vancouver Centre.

Every day almost 7,000 become infected with HIV and almost 6,000 die, mostly because they have no access to HIV prevention, treatment and care services.

In Canada someone in the country becomes infected with HIV every two hours. Women account for one-fifth of Canadians with HIV-AIDS, up from one-tenth in 1995. By the end of 2005, there were 58,000 people living with HIV-AIDS in Canada. Of those, an estimated 15,000, or just over 25%, did not know it.

Today AIDS remains the most serious infectious disease challenge to global public health and undermines six of eight millennium development goals: reduce poverty and child mortality; increase access to education; gender equality; improved maternal health; and efforts to combat major killers, such as malaria and tuberculosis.

My remarks will focus on what can happen when a government fails to implement evidence-based medicine, but instead invokes ideology over science. This happened during the early days of the AIDS pandemic and the response of the United States to it.

Protecting our children is personal to me. I taught infectious disease and women's health at the university. I used to have Casey House, the first free-standing HIV-AIDS hospice in Canada, come and talk to my students. As the years passed, I stopped inviting the organization because I knew I had students living with HIV in the room and the talk would be devastating to them.

My students came to me when they had nowhere else to turn. They confided in me about being HIV positive. They were 17, 18, scared with no hope. They could not fathom how this could happen to them. They did not want to go home. They did not want to tell their parents, and they were afraid to get help.

I heard from the parents. I remember one parent who came to me in desperation. He just kept saying, “If only I had talked about it. It shouldn't have been that hard. The ABC's abstinence be faithful condoms...my baby might not have been infected today. How do I ever say I'm sorry?”

My wish is that no parent, friend, loved one or teacher would ever have to hold a young person sobbing because they have received the terrifying, life-changing diagnosis of HIV positive, at that time a death sentence. We cannot, we must not return to the fear and ignorance that once defined the world's response to the AIDS pandemic.

I remember that first summer in the early 1980s. Radio reports from California and New York drifted in about a small number of men who had been diagnoses with rare forms of cancer and/or pneumonia. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first described the condition in 1981 by detailing the cases of five young gay men hospitalized with serious pneumonia and yeast infections.

By the end of 1981, five to six new cases of the disease were being reported each week. By 1982, a total of 20 states had reported cases and the disease was no longer solely affecting gay men. There were a small number of cases among heterosexual men and women.

Initially the American government completely ignored the emerging AIDS epidemic. In a press briefing at the White House in 1982 a journalist asked a spokesperson for President Reagan if the president had any reaction to the announcement that AIDS was now an epidemic and had over 600 cases. The spokesperson responded, “What's AIDS?” To a question about whether the president or anybody in the White House knew about the epidemic, the spokesperson shockingly replied, “I don't think so”.

While the government took no action, the numbers of infected and dying continued to increase. By the end of 1983, the number of AIDS diagnosis reported in American had risen to over 3,000, and of these, over 1,200 had died. Shamefully, it was not until September 1985 that President Reagan publicly mentioned AIDS for the first time. This was unconscionable.

Public health officials had a model for how quickly a sexually transmitted disease could spread. It was syphilis, which emerged 500 years ago in western Europe during the late 15th and 16th centuries, quickly reaching a prevalence rate of 20% in any urban areas.

The U.S. political sector's slow response to AIDS contributed to the explosive growth of the epidemic. In some instances, federal officials actually ruined efforts to slow the epidemic. Former Surgeon General Koop stated:

Even though the Centers for Disease Control commissioned the first AIDS task force as early as June 1981, I, as Surgeon General, was not allowed to speak about AIDS publicly until the second Reagan term. Whenever I spoke on a health issue at a press conference or on a network morning TV show, the government public affairs people told the media in advance that I would not answer questions on AIDS, and I was not to be asked any questions on the subject.

President Reagan also refused to advocate for safer sex and condom use. Instead, he chose a ban on HIV-positive immigrants entering the United States and then later sexual abstinence as the keys to preventing the epidemic.

At last, in 1986, the surgeon general's report on AIDS was published, outlining what the nation should do to prevent the spread of the disease. The report urged parents and schools to start frank, open discussions about AIDS. Finally, in 1988, the first national co-ordinated AIDS education campaign was launched in the United States. There were 107 million brochures entitled “Understanding AIDS” mailed to every household across the country.

Tragically, nearly 83,000 cases of AIDS had been identified in America and over 45,000 people had died. Six other nations had set up similar leaflet campaigns before America chose to do so. A condom campaign was finally launched by the CDC in 1994. It promoted condom use, the first among government agencies, state and local organizations, and through a series of advertisements on TV networks, cable and radio. In 1997, for the first time since 1981, the start of the epidemic, the numbers dropped substantially.

Harvey Fineberg, then provost of Harvard University and co-chair of the 2000 Institute of Medicine committee, stated: “Thousands of new HIV infections could be avoided each year if we gave greater emphasis to prevention”. The report also criticized government spending on abstinence-only education as there is no evidence that such programs are effective in preventing the spread of HIV.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, almost 60 million people have been infected with HIV and 25 million have died of HIV-related causes. In 2008, 430,000 children were born with HIV.

We have a long way to go to defeat HIV-AIDS and to protect maternal and child health. We must reduce HIV infections, increase access to treatment and care, and reduce HIV-AIDS related health disparities. We must ensure that all people understand that HIV-AIDS is incurable, but that it is also 100% preventable. Far too many people have become infected because they lack basic information about how this disease is spread.

My thoughts and prayers remain always with my student, who is sadly no longer with us, and to the father, I honour my promise, namely, to tell families how they can best protect their children.

Now I call upon the government to respect the words of its Public Health Agency, namely, that condoms are a vitally important way to save lives and protect our health. This is a global public health issue to reduce the spread of HIV-AIDS and save lives. We cannot return to fear and ignorance, which led to infection and death.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague and I have both travelled down the same path in terms of HIV-AIDS and have similar concerns about some things that have happened. My question to the hon. member is how paragraph three, looking at another country and making negative comments, is in any way helpful to Canada and its relationship with other countries. Why is that part of the motion?

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the material that I presented is historical fact. The facts that I presented come from the World Health Organization and from the United Nations. I will take this opportunity to talk about preventing the transmission of HIV-AIDS as stipulated by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

Abstain from sex...until you are in a relationship with only one person, are having sex with only each other, and each of you knows the other’s HIV status.

Talk about HIV and other STDs with each partner before you have sex.

Learn as much as you can about each partner’s past behavior...and consider the risks to your health before you have sex.

[Get tested] for HIV--

Use a latex condom and lubricant every time you have sex.

If you think you may have been exposed to another...STI (Sexually Transmitted Infection), such as gonorrhea, syphilis, or Chlamydia trachomatis infection, get treatment. These diseases can increase your risk of getting HIV.

Do not have sex when you are taking drugs or drinking alcohol because being high can make you more likely to take risks. To protect yourself, remember these ABCs: A = Abstinence B = Be Faithful C = Condoms

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for a very thoughtful and well prepared speech on HIV and AIDS with many principles that we all should agree with. However, I want to bring up that when her party was in power, the former Liberal government promised to meet its target of contributing 0.7% of gross national income to international aid. Yet, year after year that party and that government failed to do so. This became a laughingstock as over a period of decades the Liberals made a habit of making that commitment and never actually keeping it.

Bringing the matter forward to today, were her party to be in government again, would she stand in the House and give a commitment to all Canadians that one of the first things her government would do would be to reach that 0.7% figure, or would it be just more words again?

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this is not a laughing matter and of course we support the increase in ODA, our official development assistance. I also want to take the opportunity to explain that when the condom campaign was finally launched by the CDC in early 1994, the campaign promoted condom use. It was the first campaign involving government agencies, state and local organizations. Through a series of advertisements on national television networks, cable networks and radio stations, the advertisements were frank about sex. In 1997, it was reported for the first time that AIDS decreased in the United States since the start of the epidemic in 1981.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member opposite being engaged in very important comments in terms of public health, there is no question about that. No one doubts the efficacy of her comments this afternoon. But back to the real question in the motion in front of us. As was enunciated by the member for Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, in the third paragraph the terms in the motion are almost incendiary in terms of our relationship to say things like “refrain from advancing the failed right-wing ideologies” in the general sense.

Would the member please clarify why those kinds of comments would show up in a motion like this?

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the material that I presented is based on historical fact. CDC, the Institute of Medicine and the World Health Organization recognized the history that took place in the United States. If action were taken in 1981, the epidemic could have been slowed. Sadly, the word “AIDS” was not even mentioned until 1985.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on this issue because, having been a member of Parliament in this place for 17 years, I have still not lost my roots, which are in medicine. I have delivered 800 babies during the course of my time as a family physician.

This issue is of extreme importance to me. When I look at my own country of Canada, I realize that one in 11,000 women die in childbirth here. In the developing world, one in three women die in childbirth. There is an enormous number of stillborn children. There are many children who are born and, within 42 days, fail to thrive and actually die.

A country like Canada professes to care. This is at the root of the decision to sign on to the millennium goals for 2015. We do care about others. First and foremost, we do not apply quality of care to other countries or to developing nations that is less than what we would give to our own people. Being a physician and accepting that we cannot be second best for the people of the developing world, I think we have to consider that this motion speaks exactly to this issue.

The concepts behind millennium goals four, five, and to some extent six, are all about maternal and infant health. It is about preventing the toll of extraordinary death. I just want to cover a couple of facts quickly. Every minute of every day, a woman dies from pregnancy-related complications. That is more than half a million women each year and 99% of those deaths in pregnancy and childbirth occur in the sub-Saharan region.

Almost half of all women in developing countries deliver their babies without a nurse, midwife or doctor present. We know that that has to do with pregnancy itself. However, for those of us who have delivered babies and studied this issue of obstetrics all of our lives, we know that mortality and morbidity, meaning the illness accompanying it, does not begin the day a woman becomes pregnant. It begins when the woman is in her childbearing years.

Let us look at the millennium goals. They are pretty clear. In 2000, they were developed by 189 countries, some of them developed and some of them from the developing world. All of these countries came together and decided that, by 2015, they would look at a set of measurable and concrete goals, specifically under millennium goals four and five, to decrease maternity-related deaths, perinatal deaths and infant deaths.

In fact, that commitment was made and sworn to by all of the countries attending. Canada was one of them. They swore that they would uphold and commit to those goals and to the action plan for getting there. This is not an action plan that was drawn up out of somebody's head because it sounded good. This was based on good practice. This was based on knowledge of evidence-based medicine. This was based on knowing what contributes to maternal mortality and to child death. Therefore, it looked at clear guidelines that were based on knowledge, evidence and scientific information.

One of the first pieces of the concrete, measurable goals was that, by 2015, 58 million couples will have access to contraception and family planning. That was one of the goals. It was a clear and measurable goal. This is not rocket science. If a woman has many pregnancies and they are spaced less than two years apart, the ability for that woman to remain healthy and the ability for that woman's nutritional status and body to be able to carry pregnancies is immediately compromised by that frequency.

Here in Canada, I myself used to have one or two patients who would want to coalesce their births all in about three years. They wanted to have all their kids as quickly as possible. I would have to tell them that, if they wanted to have children under two years between the last one or under a year and a half between the last one, given that women's health status here is a lot better than in the developing world, it would create a higher level of risk for them during childbirth and for the child itself.

We know this here. It also applies to women in sub-Saharan Africa and the rest of the developing world. Women are not different anywhere in the world. The same physiological and pathophysiological processes apply everywhere regarding the issue of giving birth to children.

The House will please forgive me for being a little graphic here but when the uterus does not have time to go back to its old strength, to the thickness of its walls, it is very easy for it to rupture and for post-partum hemorrhage to occur, which is the major cause of death in childbirth.

We cannot separate the concept of family planning, of planning the number of children, of planning the distance between each child, which has an impact on the actual occurrence during pregnancy and childbirth for that maternal death and fetal morbidity to mortality occur. As I said before, this is not rocket science. It is very clear. We know this for a fact and this is what we need to apply.

I am concerned as a physician and, of course, as a member of Parliament to note that the concept of family planning and contraception, two of the key measurable millennium goals of goals four and five, are considered to be options. I think the Prime Minister said that he would keep those options open and not close any doors. This is tantamount to saying that he does not buy the knowledge gained over medical care for centuries, that he does not buy the fact that these two are linked and that he will consider whether his government will do this or not.

We need to base everything we do on evidence-based care, on knowing what the outcomes will be and knowing how to prevent those outcomes. If we do not, then we are doing quackery on people in other countries and treating them less than our own people.

We cannot say that we will consider the options. We need to say that these are clear guidelines set out by the goals and a concrete action plan that we are committed to following. We cannot cherry-pick it.

I would not be so bold as to say that this is ideological but I would be so bold as to say that this is not good medical care, nor is it good medical practice. This puts the lives of women at risk. We know what many women in the developing world need to resort to. We know that 20 million women each year have unsafe abortions and that 70,000 of them die from unsafe abortions.

Good family planning and good contraception is the most important step in preventing abortion. One of the key goals of the 2015 millennium goals is to halve the number of abortions in the world, and that is an extraordinarily important priority. This is not about morality. This is about preventing something that most of us do not want to see used as a method of birth control.

Those are important things that we need to talk about. We need to understand the medicine of this and the clinical practice that we are embarking on here.

Every year, 500,000 women die from pregnancy-related diseases. I listened to the minister responsible for CIDA say that the government was only interested in preventing deaths and therefore was only focusing on the pregnancy and the few days post-pregnancy when most women die. It is a fact that most women die at that particular time.

However, to suggest that the cause of post-partum hemorrhage and all the reasons for maternal death only occur during pregnancy is like suggesting that we decided to decrease the number of deaths from heart disease and that we will only focus on that during open heart surgery. It is like suggesting that prior to heart disease we do not care about obesity, smoking or trans fats. However, we do care about those things. We have debated in the House the issues of obesity, trans fats and smoking and we know those things contribute to cardiac disease.

There is a whole spectrum of things that we must do for the sake of women around the world who leave orphaned children when they die and for the sake of children who grow up with HIV-AIDS or hepatitis C. I will not elaborate on that because my colleague just spoke to the issue of sexually transmitted diseases and the fact that they cause chronic morbidity and maternal death.

I ask the government to please consider following the course that is already set based on good clinical guidelines.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to hear the words of my hon. colleague who is a doctor.

I recall that doctors take the Hippocratic oath of do no harm. If the member opposite is really concerned about the health and welfare of women in other countries, as are most members in this House, how can she support a motion that includes in it the words “that the Canadian government should refrain from advancing the failed right-wing ideologies...”? It also goes on to talk about a past leader of another country.

Why is she not focusing, as this House should be, on a noble mission to improve the health and welfare of mothers in other countries, instead of muddling it with something like this? How can that be considered doing no harm, adding those words to a motion in such a noble cause?

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as someone who took the oath and who understands the ethics of medical practice clearly based on the ethical code, it is not just doing no harm. It is to consider first the well-being of the patient, which is something that we must consider.

I did not stand here and speak about ideology, although it must cause some of us here who understand that when the World Health Organization, the UNFPA, the United Nations, physicians and health care providers around the world have developed a clear, concrete strategy, one of them being good contraception, and a government ignores that, we need to ask ourselves if it is going to forget good clinical practice and resort to ideology. That is a common sense question to ask.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for a very progressive speech. We hear that a lot from Liberals in opposition. They talk a great line in opposition.

I remember when they were in opposition they talked about the red book promises. They said that they would get rid of the GST, cancel the helicopter contract and bring in a national day care program. For 40 years, those same Liberals have been talking about contributing 0.7% of gross national income to international aid. As of this day, we still have not achieved half of that.

I have a question for which I am trying to get an answer, just as my colleague, the member for Vancouver Kingsway who asked the previous speaker, the member for Etobicoke North, tried. Will the member commit, if and when she does become part of the governing party, that that particular government will live up to that 40-year-old promise?

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am really disappointed that when we are speaking about the lives of women and children that we need to resort to this sort of “what did you promise x years ago” question.

When it was in government, the Liberal Party never talked about preventing access to contraception. We understood that this was key. I was at the Beijing conference in 1995 when we talked about women's rights being human rights and reproductive rights being at the forefront of women's rights.

Therefore, we have committed to this. We have done this. On international aid, we have considered and given assistance to contraception and to assisting women in understanding this issue.

The idea of committing to doing something when we do not know what the state of the treasury will be when we get there is something that we can hope to set as a target. We are committed to the target but whether we can do it in the first year in government is not an answer that I am prepared to give.

We should stick to the issue and not to cheap political tricks.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am reading from the G8 health report from Italy. Under maternal health, it does confirm that due to complications associated with childbearing, a women dies every minute, and the chance of dying during childbearing and delivery complications amounts to 1 in 16 in developing countries compared with 1 in 2,800 in developed countries.

It has been suggested in some of the speeches that 30% of this problem could be dealt with by family planning. It states here that a woman dies every minute. What percentage of all of those maternal deaths could be prevented by contraception or abortion?

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, all kinds of figures are floating around, 60,000 being one of them, but I would suggest that about 30,000 women currently die in maternal morbidity. The concept of contraception is a preventative measure. Everyone knows that one of the first principles of good public health is prevention.

As I said before, in cardiac death, we would not ignore obesity, trans fats and smoking. Therefore, prevention is the key to preventing the frequency of pregnancy. Women also need help in planning their pregnancies so that all babies born in the developing world will be wanted.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to inform the House that I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for La Pointe-de-l'Île. I will have to be sure not to forget it.

It is a pleasure for me to rise and speak in this debate.

I am obviously an unabashed supporter of the motion being debated today in the House. I too think that the government’s G8 maternal and child health initiative for the world’s poorest regions must include the full range of family planning and sexual and reproductive health options, including contraception.

I too think the government’s approach must be based on scientific evidence.

And I too think that the Conservative government should refrain from advancing the failed right-wing ideologies previously imposed by George W. Bush in the United States, which made humanitarian assistance conditional upon a global gag rule that required all non-governmental organizations receiving federal funding to refrain from promoting medically-sound family planning.

I do not think any of this is very surprising. International maternal health assistance should be based on a scientific, open-minded, non-ideological approach. Family planning should obviously be included.

But opposite us is this pitiful Conservative government, fuelled by right-wing ideology, that hears family planning and immediately thinks abortion and contraception, that hears abortion and immediately sees the hell fires burning.

This government is Manichaean in its ideology and incapable of drawing fine distinctions. Everything is seen in terms of good and evil. Good is the freedom to have a nice little weapon; evil is terminating a pregnancy.

We need to remember whom we are dealing with here, remember it was this government that made pay equity a negotiable right and it was this government that cut the funding for the Canadian Federation for Sexual Health, which does family planning and is affiliated with the International Planned Parenthood Federation. We need to remember that this government has done virtually nothing for aboriginal women and we should remember the women’s program, the court challenges program, the closing of the Status of Women Canada offices and the government’s close ties with REAL Women. We need to remember what this government is.

The Minister of International Cooperation said yesterday in question period that the government was not going to open a debate on abortion. But who in the House is bringing up the abortion issue? Is it the opposition? I do not think so. Who introduced Bill C-484? Was it the opposition? I do not think so. Who said that the purpose of the government’s G8 initiative was to save lives, thereby excluding family planning? Was it the opposition? I do not think so.

What I believe is that when this government says it does not want to have a debate on abortion, it means it has a closed mind on the matter. It means it is refusing to talk about it.

Do the Conservatives want to avoid a debate that might displease our American neighbours? Who knows? Do they want to avoid taking a stand and showing their real face to the world? Who knows? All we know is that they will not revisit the debate.

Studies on this issue are clear. In 2007, the medical journal, The Lancet, stated that of the 42 million abortions performed around the world annually, 35 million of them take place in developing countries. In 2003, 48% of induced abortions happened without any medical assistance. This is a 4% increase since 1995. The authors, including Iqbal Shah of the WHO, wrote:

In developed regions, most abortions (92%) were safe, but in developing countries, more than half (55%) were unsafe...

It is estimated that 97% of unsafe abortions were performed in developing countries.

In Africa, where abortion is highly restricted by law in nearly all countries, there are 650 deaths for every 100,000 procedures, compared with 10 deaths per 100,000 procedures in developed regions. In Liberia, it is common to see lethal complications resulting from illegal abortions that were induced by herbs or unsterilized sharp objects. Such abortions are very common.

Knowing that, who would dare say that abortion is not a public health issue? Who would dare say that professional abortion procedures, in proper hygienic and medical conditions, do not save lives?

Abortions are performed in developing countries, but they are not performed safely. We have the choice of improving medical conditions or doing nothing.

Women are dying. They are bleeding to death because there is no professional support.

Knowing that, should we be taking the abortion debate to the G8? Should we be telling our partners that we are more than willing to support family planning, contraception and abortions, wherever necessary, and ask them to support it as well?

Obviously we should. Not doing so would be akin to not helping someone in danger.

But I am delusional. I forgot who forms the government. I forgot its dogmatism and ideology.

The Conservatives will not put all the options on the table. They will not re-open the debate on abortion. They do not want to upset their fundamentalist base.

I am so very tired of this debate. It makes me so bitter. For the Conservatives, it is not a question of public health or international aid. It is a question of values, their values.

It is easier to change the government than to change the values of the government we have.

And so I would like to personally apologize to the women who are unlucky enough to be born, grow up and become pregnant in a country without proper medical care. I apologize because the government where I live is doing nothing, despite knowing the facts.

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Lévis—Bellechasse, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the member across the floor. She must not have been listening when the Prime Minister said that we have an obligation to help the women and children living in the most difficult conditions around the world. That will be the focus of the G8 summit.

I would like to talk about the women and children of Quebec who are the victims of human trafficking. Newspapers are reporting more and more on this growing threat.

The hon. member had the opportunity to rise here in the House and put aside all the dogmatism and ideology she spoke of. I do not know whether she was talking about separatist ideology. I do not think that is a valid reason to refrain from standing up for women and children and opposing human trafficking.

Why did she vote against minimum sentences for criminals in our country, people who are a threat to women and children?

I hope she will be able to answer my question and, more importantly, recognize that the Conservative members of the House are standing up to defend women and children in Canada and around the world.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am especially pleased to hear the question asked by my colleague from Lévis—Bellechasse. He probably does not know that I was the person who brought about the arrest of the first person charged with human trafficking in Quebec. To avoid talking drivel, one must be sure one knows all the facts first.

The Bloc Québécois has always fought against human trafficking and will continue to do so, but in a concrete way. We will not do so simply to put on a good show during an election campaign, only to do nothing afterwards.

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for speaking out for the women in developing countries. I would add that many of the things she was talking about apply to women in aboriginal communities and the first nations, Inuit and Métis women here in Canada.

She spoke at length about abortion. In my opinion, abortion may be one aspect of reproductive health, but there are others. I would like my colleague to talk to us about reproductive health and what it might entail.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for Laval—Les Îles for her question.

It is true that abortion is not the only subject being debated in the House today. However, it is a very important subject. It is true that contraception is also very important and that it can help young women and young girls. In Liberia and other African countries, young girls age 9, 11 or 12 are married and have no choice. They do not have access to contraception and family planning resources. They end up pregnant and die in labour because they are not physically mature enough to give birth to a child.

It is true that other points of this motion are also very important. The Bloc Québécois is pleased to support this motion. We believe that every tool should be offered to women who in live in developing countries.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

The hon. member for Burnaby—New Westminster has less than 30 seconds.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I really enjoyed the speech given by the member for Laval. We are in the midst of a global crisis: 30,000 children and 1,400 pregnant women will die in the next 24 hours.

Stephen Lewis, the former ambassador to the United Nations, stated outright that what the government was trying to do was rooted in crass, political opportunism. He believes it is just smoke and mirrors. These measures are not practical and these resources will not help resolve the situation of women and children.

Why does the government not understand the importance of also providing resources?