House of Commons Hansard #171 of the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was rcmp.

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National Day of the Midwife ActPrivate Members' Business

1:50 p.m.

Liberal

Carolyn Bennett Liberal St. Paul's, ON

Mr. Speaker, it is my great pleasure this afternoon to support a good bill introduced by the member to establish a day in honour of the role that midwives play in births and the health of mothers, newborns and children. This day will raise people's awareness of the work midwives do and the important role they play in our health care system. Nevertheless, they should be authorized to carry out only those functions within their scope of practice.

Midwives have an important role to play in our health care system for low-risk, healthy pregnancies. Women carrying high-risk pregnancies should be triaged. Still, midwives play an essential role overall in promoting health and reducing maternal and infant morbidity and mortality. We need to recognize and promote midwives' potential to enhance the well-being of women, families and society.

Even though midwives play an important role, they can offer only the types of care authorized within their scope of practice. Midwives provide specialized primary care for women whose pregnancies are planned and who are expected to have low-risk births.

It is amazing to be able to support this today, and to remind all members that it was the International Confederation of Midwives that drew attention to the fact that in the millennium development goals we were falling way behind in the area of maternal, newborn, and child health. I remember a round table here, and that we were very pleased that the government was able to attend and to hear the words of the midwives and how important it would be that Canada get behind this important issue of maternal, newborn, and child health going forward. Now we celebrate the work of the midwives in their work around the world, not only in improving maternal and child health, but also in the fight against female genital mutilation.

As my colleague said, midwives have been practising here in Canada for as long as people have lived here. As the immigrants and the settlers brought midwives with them to the new country, it then became a problem. There seemed to be a turf war, and midwives were made illegal. They were practising their craft, but in a very uncertain time.

The Government of Quebec, in 1691, established three autonomous branches of medicine: physicians, surgeons, and midwives. In 1861, in King's College, a school for midwives opened in England. It was opened by Florence Nightingale, but closed two years later. It seems that midwives have somehow always ended up doing just what they do best, but often in an uncertain legislative framework.

It was interesting that it was Sir Wilfred Grenfell, of the Grenfell Mission, who began the first civilian hospital in St. John's, in Battle Harbour. It was staffed by nurses with midwifery skills from Britain, and the British midwives were the nurses who continued to staff other hospitals around the country.

I myself am hugely grateful that in the Canadian winter of 1973, I had the opportunity to go and learn midwifery and obstetrics and gynecology from the midwives in Barbados. I remember being very grateful that I learned these skills first from the midwives in Barbados, who really did believe that birth was a normal thing to happen, before I came back and did my rather medical-model rotation at a hospital where it seemed, in those days, that birth was taught as a disaster waiting to happen.

It has been an amazing relationship with midwives. In 1987 the Government of Ontario published its first report of the task force on the implementation of midwifery in Canada, and I was very proud that I was later asked, as the law came into effect, to chair the midwife implementation committee at Women's College Hospital in Toronto.

As well, at the international convention on midwifery in Vancouver in 1993, we were extremely proud to celebrate what midwives were bringing to us in the research community in terms of qualitative research. Hearing the narrative of women's experience in real qualitative research was of huge assistance to us in changing our ways and being able to move to what is now known as family-centred maternity care, the ability to create an atmosphere centred around mothers and babies, not the convenience of physicians.

After that, I was very pleased to see British Columbia bring in their law in 1998 that allowed midwives to register to practise. We seem to have gone on from there.

At this time, I would like to thank all the midwives who taught me so much. It is so exciting to have this opportunity to thank them. The Vicki Van Wagners and the Holliday Tysons and the Mary Sharpes and other people went on as soon as it was legal. They scattered across Ontario to become professors at places like Laurentian, McMaster, and Ryerson University.

I am so thrilled to have been able to see in practice the new birthing centre on Dundas in Toronto, run by the Seventh Generation Midwives of Toronto, with the beautiful birthing rooms designed by Christi Belcourt, the amazing Métis artist, who was able to put an indigenized approach to midwifery right in the core of Toronto. It makes us all so proud.

Research is imperative, as always. Midwives have always been very keen on the research that accompanies the process. At the centre it was interesting to see the transfer rates, the triage indicators of acceptable clients, and the ability to carry through the birth in a good, safe way being documented. It is extraordinarily good research.

The original goal in Ontario was to give women and their families real choices about where they would want to give birth, whether in their home, in a birthing centre, or in the hospital. Those choices are now there.

As the critic for aboriginal affairs, I was equally thrilled when the first students were admitted into the midwifery program at Tsi Non:we lonnakeratstha Ona:grahsta' on the Six Nations in Ohsweken, Ontario. With this three-year program of 10 months of academic and clinical practice each year, we are finally able to have indigenous midwives practise in indigenous ways, which speaks to the medicine wheel instead of the medical model.

We on this side of the House are very pleased to accept this bill, and we will be celebrating the first national day to acknowledge midwives along with everyone else in this House.

National Day of the Midwife ActPrivate Members' Business

2 p.m.

NDP

Rosane Doré Lefebvre NDP Alfred-Pellan, QC

Mr. Speaker, today, I would like to once again thank my colleagues in the House, including my Conservative colleague from Kootenay—Columbia and my Liberal colleague from St. Paul's. They have just given excellent speeches about what midwifery is, the impact it has on our society and all of the positive effects it has on the health of the mother and the child.

I would also like to thank all of my colleagues who shared their personal experiences. It is really nice when we manage to pass something in the House, and to see that we all agree on a bill that seeks to advance an issue as important as midwifery in Canada.

I would therefore like to thank my colleagues on all sides of the House, on the government side, the Liberal side and all of the independent members. The vote was unanimous. I hope that this will happen again. Let us continue to work together like this on important issues in the hopes that we can continue to make a lot of progress in the future.

National Day of the Midwife ActPrivate Members' Business

2 p.m.

Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Barry Devolin

Is the House ready for the question?

National Day of the Midwife ActPrivate Members' Business

2 p.m.

Some hon. members

Question.

National Day of the Midwife ActPrivate Members' Business

2 p.m.

Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Barry Devolin

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

National Day of the Midwife ActPrivate Members' Business

2 p.m.

members

Agreed.

National Day of the Midwife ActPrivate Members' Business

2 p.m.

Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Barry Devolin

I declare the motion carried.

(Motion agreed to, bill read the third time and passed)

National Day of the Midwife ActPrivate Members' Business

2 p.m.

Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Barry Devolin

It being 2:03 p.m., the House stands adjourned until Monday, February 16, at 11 a.m., pursuant to Standing Orders 28(2) and 24(1).

(The House adjourned at 2:03 p.m.)