Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-13. On behalf of my riding of Etobicoke North, the beautiful community where I was born and raised, I must first fight for jobs. It is an absolute priority for me, my office and our community. It is heartening to see some modest employment growth in today's statistics but it does not bring us back to where we were before the recession.
I want members to know that we have helped many residents with resumés. I personally spend hours correcting each line of cover letters and resumés. We help with job-finding skills. We send people to career agencies and we help find them jobs.
I am particularly proud that we have secured a new jobs program to help more people in our community find work. However, it is not enough. The reality is that more Canadians face economic insecurity compared to a few short years ago. This threatens Canada's economic growth and fiscal balance. We need concrete proposals to stimulate job creation right away.
Twenty per cent of my riding is engaged in manufacturing, the second-highest percentage for the country's entire 308 ridings. What new support can the government offer young Canadians? This past summer, it was heartbreaking to meet with so many young graduates who were distraught because they were unable to find work. Many of these graduates were the first person in their family to go to college and university. The only thing harder than meeting with the graduates was meeting with their grandparents who begged for help to find their grandchildren a job. We must reduce the worst youth unemployment rate in a generation.
We must also build the jobs of the future. This means we must shift to a green economy to stimulate growth, create new jobs, eradicate poverty and limit humanity's ecological footprint. It is no longer a choice between saving our economy and saving the environment. It is a choice between being a producer and a consumer in the old economy and being a leader in a new economy. It is a choice between decline and prosperity.
The government should work in partnership with provinces, territories, municipalities, labour organizations, industry sectors, first nations and others to develop a national sustainable energy and economic growth strategy to position Canada to succeed in the global economy. It should develop a clean energy employment transition for Canada with goals for 2015, 2020, 2025 and 2030. This strategy should include skills development, training programs and certification courses.
I will now address environmental, economic and human costs. Climate change is our most pressing environmental issue, perhaps the defining issue of our generation, and it requires both moral responsibility and intergenerational responsibility. Yet the government failed to mention the issue in the throne speech.
This week we learned that the government has reduced climate change reductions by a shocking 90% since 2007. More stringent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions cannot be postponed much longer. Otherwise the opportunity to keep the average global temperature rise below 2°C, relative to the pre-industrial level, is in danger. Serious impacts are associated with approaching or exceeding this limit, including the increased frequency and severity of extreme weather events, shifts in growing seasons and sea level rise.
The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy predicts that climate change could cost Canadians between $21 billion and $43 billion per year by 2050.
Our capacity for managing the impacts to come is adaptation. While it is not cost-free it is a cost-effective way to alleviate some of those impacts. I must then ask why the government is cutting climate impacts and adaptation research at Environment Canada. The group was started 17 years ago. It performs groundbreaking research by examining how climate change affects agriculture, human health and water quality in Canada. Some of its scientists shared part of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on climate change.
My concern is that the government wants as little as possible to do with climate change and wants to pass the buck to the provinces and the municipalities. The reality is that we need research governance arrangements on adaptation at all scales.
I will now turn to human costs and what failure to take preventive action would mean.
Governments worldwide are concerned with the rising tide of dementia. Some 500,000 Canadians have Alzheimer's disease or related dementia. Some 71,000 are under the age of 65 years and 72% are women. Today in Canada one person is diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias every five minutes. The human cost is huge. The economic cost is $15 billion. In 30 years it will be one person every two minutes and a cost of $153 billion.
It is my absolute hope that the health committee will reconstitute the Subcommittee of Neurological Disease which I founded in the last Parliament and will bring back the report which the subcommittee passed.
Moreover, will the government commit to a national brain strategy? Will it commit to a national brain health awareness month and a national year of the brain to raise awareness of brain health in Canada? Will it commit to a national Alzheimer's office within the Public Health Agency of Canada to reduce the rising tide of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias, and provide a national plan with specific goals and an annual report to Parliament? Will it take necessary measures to accelerate the discovery and development of treatments that would prevent, halt or reverse the course of dementia? Will it encourage greater investment in all areas of research?
If we could merely slow the onset of dementia by two years for each affected Canadian we would see a return on investment of 15,000% over a 30 year research effort.
I will finish by tackling another devastating neurological disease, that being multiple sclerosis. It affects 55,000 to 75,000 Canadians, of whom 400 die each year from the disease, and many take their own life. The suicide rate in MS patients is seven times that of the national population.
In May 2010, my colleague from St. Paul's and I brought the fight for clinical trials and a registry for chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency, CCSVI, to Parliament.
Almost a year later, in March 2011, the government announced a registry, although it will not actually start until July 2012.
In June 2011, at last the government announced clinical trials.
I want to be clear. All we have right now is announcements. What we need is action. Canadians with MS cannot afford to wait.
Instead of tracking patients who have had the CCSVI procedure and developing the most appropriate scales to measure any health impacts following treatment, MS patients were left with no follow up and important data was lost post procedure at one, three, six, twelve and twenty-four months.
Since when do scientists fail to collect data or, worse, choose not to gather evidence?
The CIHR is currently recommending phase I or phase II clinical trials for CCSVI.
I would argue that there is no need for a phase I trial, which is usually undertaken to assess safety. Angioplasty is an accepted standard of care practice in Canada.
I would, therefore, suggest that we need an adaptive phase II or phase III trial, for example, clinical trials for the CCSVI procedure in multiple centres across Canada.
I will finish by thanking the people in my riding, as well as the stakeholders in the environment, health and particularly neurological disease.
Finally, I would like all of the people who are living with MS to know that they inspire me every day.