Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for all of the comments so far in the House on this debate. I thank the member for St. Catharines for his eloquent comments on this. It is great to have such a hard-working colleague, like the member for St. Catharines, support this bill.
There were some concerns raised by the member for Vancouver Centre from the Liberal Party. I realize that her submission was that there should be language that said “a best clearing house”. I just want to explain that, as much as we appreciated her amendment and suggestions, we felt that the language was already in the bill.
However, I am heartened that members of the official opposition have supported this bill throughout the process and that the member for St. Paul's, who initially spoke to the bill on behalf of the Liberal Party, did so enthusiastically. I think these are the types of issues we can rally behind. There was no intention to ignore the amendment from the member for Vancouver Centre. It is just that the language was already there. I am a big believer that it is important that we not be redundant in terms of having multiple paragraphs in a bill that stipulate and say the exact same thing.
I believe we have a bill that works in the best interests of breast cancer patients. The reason I selected this as a topic to push here in the House of Commons is because where I come from in Barrie, for the entire time that I have been involved in elected politics, and I was elected to city council in 2000, the number one issue in Barrie was building our cancer centre. it will finally open on May 17 but it has been an 11-year fundraising campaign and something that I know is incredibly important to Simcoe county. When I asked members of the community what type of bill I should work on, the resounding response was something cancer related. This is something that our community has really rallied behind.
Members of the medical community and friends here in Ottawa who worked within Health Canada gave me suggestions but this was a suggestion we thought we could tangibly make progress on and tangibly move forward. I really believe this is an issue that is not partisan at all. It is an issue that every party can get behind and support because when it comes to trying to increase the survival percentages of breast cancer patients, it is something that is important to every community in Canada.
There has been tremendous progress in Canada. Having survival rates of 80% is an accomplishment for Canada but I believe we can go even beyond that. Embracing new technology, raising awareness and ensuring that we have best practices across Canada for dense breast tissue will enable us to reach new levels of success in beating breast cancer.
I appreciate the support of my colleagues in the House and I hope it will pass in this House very shortly.