Debates of Dec. 8th, 2021

Supplementary Estimates (B), 2021-22

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Madam Chair, I want to inform the minister that I am my party's health critic.

It is 79 days after the election and 43 days since he was appointed, but the minister has not yet received the statement of priorities of his mandate. How does he explain that?

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Québec, QC]

Madam Chair, I assure my colleague that I am well aware of the priorities of my mandate. The first is to help our country definitively recover from the COVID‑19 crisis. The second is to repair the damage this crisis has caused to our health care system. The third is to build our health care system for the long term.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Madam Chair, the election was supposedly necessary and urgent. For those people watching us who do not know, I want to make it clear that it is the Prime Minister who sets out the new ministers' priorities in their mandate letters.

The Minister of Health claims to know what the Prime Minister expects of him, so it would be great if he could table his mandate letter in the House soon after he receives it so that we, too, can find out what his priorities are.

Having said that, has the minister seen the Standing Committee on Health's work on the pandemic?

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Québec, QC]

Madam Chair, the first part of my colleague's question is about mandate letters. In 2015, the Liberal government was the first government in history to make mandate letters public.

To answer the second part of his question, I invite my colleague to look at the Liberal Party's election platform from the last campaign. He will see that health care was a huge part of it.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Madam Chair, the throne speech was so empty we had a hard time understanding anything about the government's priorities other than its plan to interfere in areas under provincial jurisdiction.

Since the minister avoided answering my question, I have to assume he is not aware of the work of the Standing Committee on Health. If he were, he would have known that all the experts confirmed that chronic underfunding, thanks to his government and its predecessors, made the health system so fragile that, when the pandemic hit, all the weak links snapped.

Dr. Champagne from Quebec's association of hematologists and oncologists said, “we really need to be concerned about these [diagnostic] delays, because patients and society will pay the price. For 13 of the 17 cancers that were studied, a four-week delay in diagnosis increased the risk of mortality by 6% to 8%”.

The pandemic has created two types of victims: COVID‑19 patients and other patients. The latter are collateral victims. Why is the minister failing to see the urgent need to increase health transfers from 22% to 35%?

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Québec, QC]

Madam Chair, I am very grateful to my colleague for the question.

I will quickly share two numbers with him. During the COVID‑19 pandemic, the Canadian government invested $55 billion in addition to the $43 billion under the Canada health transfer, not to mention part of the $11 billion that has been invested since 2017.

That is a lot of resources invested in a short amount of time, without waiting for an agreement. If the member consults our election platform, he will see that it talks about an additional $25 billion to repair the health care system not in the long term, but in the very short term.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Madam Chair, the minister says he wants the pandemic to end as soon as possible, but does he know that at the end of the third wave the lack of cancer screening meant that 10,000 people went undiagnosed? Does he know how many patients were waiting in the middle of the third wave according to the Fédération des médecins spécialistes du Québec, the FMSQ? I would like to note that we have reached the fifth wave.

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Québec, QC]

Madam Chair, I commend my colleague on all his contributions and I would remind him of another number. The number of surgeries that were delayed these past months because of the COVID‑19 pandemic is estimated at 780,000. The extraordinary partnership we saw between the governments during the pandemic can be just as important in the short term for cleaning up that mess.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Madam Chair, once again the minister is sidestepping the question.

The minister wants to impose standards, but he does not have the answers to questions about what is happening on the ground in Quebec. There are 200,000 patients waiting, and some are past the recommended wait time.

The good Dr. Legault, of the FMSQ, said that it will take at least 10 years to clear the backlog. He stated, “The federal government quickly allocated significant funds to cushion the impact of the health crisis on the economy and on the public. We hope that the federal government will be able to provide additional funding to the provinces” to “address the needs of the health care system”, whose sustainability he believes is at risk. He added that “this crisis will not go away in one year or two. It will persist for a long time.”

Does the minister realize that the longer his government waits to invest and transfer money to health care, by which I mean the $28 billion that everyone has agreed is necessary, the more health care costs will skyrocket and the more patients will suffer?

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Québec, QC]

Madam Chair, I congratulate my colleague once again.

I will add another statistic. In Quebec alone, approximately 1.5 million people do not have access to a family doctor.

I will now add two more figures. We did not wait, and I believe the member is fully aware of that. We immediately invested the very significant amount of $55 billion during COVID-19. We should not forget that $25 billion was invested very quickly after the commitment made by the Liberal Party during the campaign. All that is substantial.

We could talk about all the other commitments that the government has made over the past few years and that will continue to contribute to this very important collaborative effort, whose value we came to appreciate during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Federalism and the Canadian federation are a source of great solidarity, especially during a crisis when there are such significant challenges to be overcome.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Chair, I would like to congratulate my hon. colleague on his appointment. I look forward to working with him to build health care for all Canadians.

In the 2019 throne speech, the Liberal government pledged to “introduce and implement national pharmacare so that Canadians have the drug coverage they need.” The 2020 throne speech noted that the government “remains committed to a national universal pharmacare program” and would “accelerate steps to achieve this system”.

The 2021 throne speech contained no reference to pharmacare whatsoever. Does this omission reflect his government's abandonment of universal pharmacare?

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Minister of Health]

Madam Chair, I thank my colleague for his hard work and his good words.

No, we have not abandoned this. In fact, it is all in progress because of the important advances that we have seen in the past six years. I look forward to describing them in a moment in greater detail as more questions come in.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Chair, the Liberal-appointed Hoskins advisory council called on the federal government to launch national pharmacare by offering universal coverage for essential medicines by January 1, 2022.

Will the federal government meet this deadline?

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Québec, QC]

Madam Chair, in a brief summary of what we are doing and what we have done, first, we are extremely active on the regulatory innovation to make sure that medicine research and development and production come quickly—

[The Deputy Chair, NDP, Carol Hughes]

Sorry. The hon. member.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Chair, it was a simple question: Will the federal government meet the deadline of January 1, 2022, which is less than a month from now? I guess the answer to that is no, it will not.

Can the minister confirm when national universal pharmacare will be in place for Canadians?

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Québec, QC]

Madam Chair, if I may continue, we have announced and already made significant investments in biomedical fabrication and development in Canada, leading to some serious advances in the production of and access to medicines—

[The Deputy Chair, NDP, Carol Hughes]

The hon. member.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Chair, again, I guess Canadians have no answer from the Liberals about when they might get universal pharmacare.

Canada had the highest proportion of COVID deaths in long-term care of any country in the OECD. Will the minister confirm when national standards for long-term care will be in place?

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Québec, QC]

Madam Chair, I have two things on this.

First, it is being developed now, and we started many months ago in collaboration with the provinces and territories and experts. Second, we have announced in the platform an investment of $9 billion to support investments in long-term care.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Chair, does the minister agree that we should end the for-profit delivery of long-term care to our seniors across Canada?

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Québec, QC]

Madam Chair, I understand the concern and share it very much. In my own province, if we add up all those people who died in long-term care centres, we—

[The Deputy Chair, NDP, Carol Hughes]

The hon. member.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Chair, during the last election, the Liberal Party promised to “work towards a national school nutritious meal program with a $1 billion investment over five years.”

Can the minister confirm this investment will be put in place during the fall economic statement?

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Québec, QC]

Madam Chair, I am glad that the member has an eye on the fall economic statement. Our colleague, the Minister of Finance, is going to produce and share a great statement.