Debates of Dec. 4th, 2024

Question No.3077—

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

With regard to Adobe licenses paid for by the government, in total and broken down by department or agency: (a) how much was spent on Adobe licenses in the last fiscal year; (b) how many licenses does the government pay for and how many users are able to access Adobe products through those licenses; (c) how many licenses are currently unused; and (d) how many licenses are not currently assigned to an employee or full-time equivalent?

(Return tabled)

Question No.3081—

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

With regard to applications for warrants made under the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act between November 20, 2019, and October 26, 2021: (a) how many warrant applications were provided to the office of the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness between November 20, 2019, and December 31, 2020; (b) how many warrant applications were provided to the office of the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness between January 1, 2021, and October 26, 2021; and (c) for each warrant application in (b), what is the date on which the (i) warrant application was provided to the office of the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, (ii) minister provided his approval?

(Return tabled)

Question No.3083—

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

With regard to the pollution prevention planning notices, before issuing the notices: (a) did Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) take into consideration the plastics life cycle assessments conducted by the Government of Quebec, the United Kingdom, or Denmark; (b) did ECCC gather evidence and consider studies related to the greenhouse gases and waste contributions of plastic alternatives, and, if so, which studies and what evidence; (c) did ECCC take into account the increased manufacturing and energy requirements for plastic alternatives; (d) did ECCC take into account the economic impact on Canadian manufacturers and producers; and (e) did ECCC conduct any analysis of social impacts on consumers, including (i) cost increases, (ii) the contribution to inflation, (iii) the contribution to food safety, (iv) the contribution to food security?

(Return tabled)

Question No.3086—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

With regard to Canada-Sudan relations: (a) what are the complete details of development assistance dollars spent with the intention of having an impact in Sudan over the last two years, including, for each spending item, the (i) amount spent, (ii) recipient and any additional delivery partners, (iii) allocation timeline, (iv) amount spent on each item; (b) what are the complete details of development assistance dollars spent with the intention of having an impact on Sudanese refugees outside of Sudan in the last two years, including, for each item, the (i) amount spent, (ii) recipient and any additional delivery partners, (iii) allocation timeline, (iv) amount spent on each item; (c) how many people have arrived in Canada so far through the "Family-based permanent residence pathway for people affected by the conflict in Sudan"; (d) does the government have an estimate of how many people have died as a result of the current civil war in Sudan, and, if so, what is that estimate; (e) does the government have an estimate of how many people will die as a result of the civil war in Sudan over the next year, and, if so, what is that estimate; (f) has the government engaged with the Sudanese Coordination of Civil Democratic Forces (Tagadum), and what is the position of the government with respect to engagement with Tagadum; (g) has the government engaged with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) or the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), and what is the position of the government with respect to engagement with the SAF and with the RSF; (h) what is the position of the government regarding the Sudanese peace process; and (i) what are the complete details of statements and diplomatic representations made by the government regarding the Sudanese conflict since April 15, 2023?

(Return tabled)

Question No.3087—

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

With regard to tanker traffic and Burrard Inlet, British Columbia: (a) what work has been done to date on the creation, implementation and enforcement of safety measures in the event of a diluted-bitumen spill; (b) what are the details of all reports or plans in (a), including the (i) title, (ii) date of publication, (iii) author; and (c) in what ways was the work in (a) informed by recommendations made by the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment?

(Return tabled)

Question No.3089—

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

With regard to federal departments and agencies and the public services which they provide to Canadians, broken down by department or agency and fiscal year since January 1, 2006: which government-owned or rented buildings have been closed due to federal budget reductions or reallocations, and what services or programs were impacted by these closures?

(Return tabled)

The House resumed consideration of the motion.

Health

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a true honour to stand and speak in the House of Commons on behalf of my riding, Peterborough—Kawartha, but many of the issues, obviously, impact Canadians across our country.

What we are discussing, as my colleague and friend from Cumberland—Colchester talked about, is the 20th report from the health committee, or HESA. To give a bit of background for folks watching at home, the report, “Breast Cancer Screening Guidelines“, reads:

That the committee report to the House that the decision by the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care should be immediately reversed and breast cancer screening should be extended to women in their 40s, as this will help save lives; that the Minister of Health urge the task force to go back to the drawing board and revisit the guidelines based on the latest science; and that the Public Health Agency of Canada table to this committee the parameters given to the task force to update breast cancer screening guidelines.

A lot of women watching, a lot of families watching, have been impacted by breast cancer, and this was a very important study brought forward in the health committee. I had the privilege to sit on the status of women committee, where we also brought this forward. For context, so folks will know, under the Liberal government there is the Minister of Health and then there is the Public Health Agency, which designated a task force, and a chair of that task force, to study breast cancer. However, what the chair and the task force came back with was a recommendation that there should not be screening for women under the age of 50.

Now, as members just heard, this had unanimous consent, and it certainly did in the status of women committee, across all party lines, but this is a terrible recommendation from the task force and the chair. It was interesting to listen to witness after witness in the status of women committee testify against the recommendation of the task force.

Here is the thing. I would post these stories and get feedback, I love to hear what people say, and most provinces have already said screening should happen at 40, or self-screening. Those are the provincial rules. However, we have a federal task force, sort of a bureaucratic body, saying no, it should be from 50 and over, which is really bizarre.

I asked this question to a lot of the witnesses: “Why does it matter? If the task force and the chair are saying it should be over 50, but the provinces already have it at 40 for self-referral, which is the recommendation of the provinces, what does it matter what the task force and its chair says?” Every single witness said, “Because it sends a message that you should not get screened under 50, and that is wrong.”

I want to bring members up to speed a little, because the chair of the task force actually wrote an editorial during our study in the status of women committee, doubling down after hearing witness after witness in the committee saying no. I heard the member from the NDP even agree with this. I think everybody at home knows there are not many things we agree on in this House when we go across the floor, but this is women's health. Women are dying because they are not getting screened in time or it is not being detected that they have breast cancer.

However, the chair, Dr. Guylène Thériault, wrote this article while we were hearing testimony from every single witness to change the age of screening. She said, “the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care...conducted a comprehensive review of evidence on breast cancer screening.... The key message is that breast cancer screening is a personal choice, and that women need the full picture so that they can decide what is right for them.”

That makes sense. We should not have to fight and beg our doctor. We should be able to advocate for what we want.

She went on to say, “The evidence did not show a clear benefit of screening for breast cancer in women, especially those aged 40 to 49”.

I will now read some testimony from the status of women committee by experts in the field.

Anna Wilkinson is a medical doctor. I asked her some questions. She said, “First, regarding the expert involvement, the actual task force and working group for this had no breast cancer experts on it.” Nothing about this makes any sense. My colleague, who is a doctor and whose wife survived breast cancer, said it very well. Why do we as politicians have to stand up and tell this arm of the Public Health Agency that it got it wrong? It is just bizarre.

I am going to move on because there are tons of survivors and tons of families. I think it is really important to note that breast cancer impacts not just the person who has been diagnosed; it also impacts a whole community.

Kim MacDonald is a patient advocate for Breast Cancer Canada. She said, “Right now, at stage 0 or stage 1, if it's found that early, as it often is in screening, you have about a 99% survival rate. By the time it gets to stage 4, we're talking about a 31% survival rate.” These are significant numbers. Kim MacDonald also said, “I first want to say how shocked and disappointed I was in the task force recommendation of keeping the breast cancer screening age at 50 and how heartened I am by provinces like Ontario for lowering the age of self-referral to 40.”

Dr. Anna Wilkinson testified again. She said:

My research with Statistics Canada has focused on breast cancer in women in their forties. We found the incidence of breast cancer in these women has increased almost 10% in recent years and that women with access to organized breast screening programs have an earlier stage at diagnosis and significantly increased survival....

Even if we use the task force...and minimize mortality benefits of only one death averted per 1,000 women screened over 10 years, this amounts to over 2,500 deaths of 40-year-old women.

I brought something up to a couple of witnesses. I said that we literally have not heard from one witness who agreed with the task force chair. The task force chair was the only one. Then she doubled down on an article during committee as sort of a passive-aggressive way of saying that she was right and everybody else was wrong.

I spoke to Ms. Alethea Kewayosh. She is a director of the indigenous cancer care unit. I asked her whether she thought the chair should resign. That was one of the things I wanted to ask because we have to write recommendations. The point of a study in any committee is recommendations. We were hearing things and wondering what was going on and whether we should disband the task force. In any other world, the person would resign if this is what was happening. Nobody else agreed with them.

I asked Ms. Kewayosh if she wanted the resignation of the task force chair. She said, “I don't know who he or she is, but he or she is obviously very out of touch with the topic. I'm sure there was a task force struck at one time that created residential schools, and look how well that went over. They need to be more in touch with the topic, then. They need to have understanding of what's happening with community and with people. They need to have their pulse on the hands of what community are saying and what people are saying. They're very out of touch.”

I want to say that we need a lot of help in health care in this country. It is one of the biggest things I get asked about. People cannot even get in to see a doctor. Conservatives have a plan. We have talked about the issue in terms of a policy and a solution. It would be called the blue seal program. I know that my colleague has spearheaded it tremendously, to get all of the doctors who are driving for Uber and who are qualified to practice medicine, in order to have access.

This sends a bigger message. We need to increase our access to the newest technology like thermogenics. Patients need to have choice and informed consent. We need to give back the power to the women who want to be screened for breast cancer so families do not have to bury their mothers, sisters and daughters.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

Uqaqtittiji, I recently sat on another committee, the status of women committee. It was studying a similar study on breast cancer screening. The topic was specifically on first nations' and indigenous peoples' screening.

One of the discussions in the committee was to make sure that there is better access for and representation of indigenous peoples. I wonder whether the member agrees that, with the motion, there also need to be assurances that the task force also focuses its work on ensuring that first nations, Inuit and Métis also get the breast screening they deserve, because for them it is a lot more difficult, especially in Nunavut; my constituents are flown to places like Ottawa, thousands of kilometres away, to have basic access to breast screening, for example.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Mr. Speaker, yes, the study the member is referring to is the one I was referring to in my speech, from the status of women committee, where we were studying the task force recommendations. Multiple witnesses testified about Black women and indigenous women. The research was from the 1980s; it was so outdated. A disproportionate number of women who are Black or indigenous are impacted by breast cancer, but this is not reflected in the task force's recommendations.

Therefore 1000%, again, that is what we say. We need updated evidence. As I answered earlier, the task force chair said that the evidence did not even show a clear benefit of screening, yet nobody on the task force represented any of the groups in question, so it makes no sense.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Mr. Speaker, during my intervention, I did have an opportunity to speak about the consequences of diagnosing late-stage breast cancer in a woman aged 40 to 49. I wonder whether my hon. colleague might like to make some comments around the intrusiveness, the loss of dignity, the loss of employment, the loss of income and, of course, the consequences of treatment inside a family of a woman diagnosed at age 40 to 49 with later-stage breast cancer.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Mr. Speaker, with regard to that age, 40 to 49, I am 45, and I think about the fact that I have aging parents. A woman that age has children. She is trying to make her career. She is trying to pay her bills. She is trying to do all these things, and then, boom, she is not well. She is now not able to go to work or make money. The consequences are devastating.

With respect to prevention, I asked a question to one of the witnesses. I said that I do not understand the recommendation. I asked whether it is a money thing, because that is the only thing I can ever find. I hear things like “Follow the money” and “It costs too much money to do the screening.” The witness talked about how much money we save; Cheryl White, a breast cancer survivor, said, “People talk about the harms of mammograms, but the only harm I can think of is the $75 cost of getting one.”

With regard to the money we would save, in terms of the prevention for women who otherwise would have to access medicine and not be able to go to work, and the families impacted, it does not make any sense. We are going to save economically. The impact would be far worse if we did not get early diagnosis.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Charlottetown. He is the chair of the committee that produced the report, and I will leave it to him to discuss the very important issues specifically as they relate to the report.

What I would like to do with my time is point out some issues that I see with, once again, the manner in which the Conservatives are bringing forward motions just to delay and to prevent anything from happening in the House. For starters, the report was endorsed unanimously by the committee. The entire committee voted in favour of it, that is, the Liberals, the Conservatives and the NDP. There was no dissenting report, to my knowledge. There certainly was not anybody who voted against the report.

One has to ask themself why the Conservatives would bring the report forward when they know it has been unanimously supported. The only rationale, in answering that question, comes from the same place of so many of the reports from committees having been tabled in the House: Conservatives are just putting up concurrence reports, one after another, every day, because they know it burns away three hours of the day. It is so completely disingenuous. I would argue it actually does a disservice to the very important issue being discussed in the motion and the report as it relates to breast cancer.

The speaker before me read out the motion or report. I will read it myself. It is literally one sentence:

That the committee report to the House that the decision by the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care should be immediately reversed and breast cancer screening should be extended to women in their 40s, as this will help save lives; that the Minister of Health urge the task force to go back to the drawing board and revisit the guidelines based on the latest science; and that the Public Health Agency of Canada table to this committee the parameters given to the task force to update breast cancer screening guidelines.

That is the entire report, so I am perplexed. I have been here for nine years, and I have seen so many concurrence reports being tabled and concurrence motions being moved in the last two and a half to three months. In my opinion, it is just another delay tactic of the Conservatives because they are running out of people to speak to the motion on the question of privilege.

Well over 220 people now have spoken to the motion. To give folks at home who might be watching the proceedings a comparison, there have been, in total, about 22 Liberal, NDP and Bloc speakers, so 22 speakers from four political parties that represent well over the majority of the House, and over 220 Conservatives, who have spoken to that particular motion.

Why is that important and why is it germane to the discussion we are having today? It is because the Conservatives have run out of talking points. I think AI has just said, “I'm sorry, I cannot produce another speech for you. There have been way too many requests for a 20-minute speech.” The Conservatives are just at a point now where even moving an amendment that resets their speaking order is not effective anymore because literally everybody has said absolutely everything there is to be said.

Even sitting in here and listening to Conservatives speak on and on ad nauseam, it is very clear that we drift away into other topics routinely. We are even well beyond the point of anybody's calling relevance anymore, because it is absolutely pointless.

I will say that the issue of breast cancer screening is very important to me, and in particular to my wife. There is a history of breast cancer in my wife's family, so she regularly gets screened and tested. When it comes to issues that are so critically important, I do not think we should be using a motion like the one before us, on a report that has been unanimously passed in committee, as a political tool in the House to delay what we talk about and what we do.

The reality is that when it comes to an issue that relates to health, it is so critically important that we do everything we can to support women and the proper screening to protect them from possibly being diagnosed with breast cancer. We do a huge disservice to the seriousness that requires when a motion comes from a committee that was unanimously supported, had no dissenting reports and is used as a political tool in this House to slow this place down and create disorder. That is, unfortunately, what we have seen once again.

No objective person looking at what has happened and the countless number of concurrence motions that Conservatives have put forward over the last three months could possibly ever come to the conclusion that they are being genuine in their actions. They are not. They are doing this strictly for political reasons.

At the very least, I would ask my Conservative colleagues, if they are going to do that, to please pick some issues that perhaps are not as sensitive to so many people and affect so many people in our country. They should not play politics with an issue like this. In my opinion, it is extremely despicable.

In any event, I am going to end there. Like I said, I am sharing my time with a member for Charlottetown, the chair of this committee. I am sure he can provide much more insight into the discussion that took place when this was at committee. I look forward to hearing what he has to say because I am sure that he will be able to fill the House in on some of the very meaningful discussion that was had around producing this report.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, this is commentary on what I just heard from the member for Kingston and the Islands.

Members in the House come from different parts of the country. Many members have constituencies that are very large with lots of varying issues that people really care about. This Parliament would not be paralyzed if the government would just hand over the documents in their unredacted form. Because there is no Private Members' Business or private members' motions, the only other way to raise issues, apart from Standing Order 31, is to use concurrence reports in order to be able to talk about them.

In my family, I do not know of any cases of breast cancer, but my paternal grandfather passed away due to brain cancer here in Canada. That is the reason my family came here from Communist Poland, thanks to a medical exit visa my father was able to get. Cancer touches a lot of Canadians. I think it is disingenuous to accuse us of not having the right motivations. The member heard from two others in the Conservative caucus who gave impassioned pleas for what should be done. This is an opportunity to speak about cancer. I think one in two Canadians, at some point in their lives, will face that diagnosis.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my father-in-law passed away at the age of 67, only about five years ago, from brain cancer. It could very well be the exact same form of cancer that the member just spoke about. With all due respect to him, I am not going to be lectured on taking an issue such as cancer seriously when I lost my father-in-law at the age of 67.

Nonetheless, his argument about what we are discussing today would be great if it was not premised on the notion that this House is seized with the position that it is in because of what the Liberal Party has done. On the contrary, the member knows procedure very well. I know that for a fact. He knows what was put forward, at the direction of the Speaker, was a motion to send something to PROC. He can explain to Canadians why he is participating in a filibuster of his own motion to send something to PROC. He put forward a motion that said we should send this to PROC and then refuses to let us vote on it. I would ask him to please not lecture me on being disingenuous.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this is a sensitive subject. I think I have said it before, and I will say it again. There is no one in the House who has not been affected by cancer one way or another.

When will the government fully implement the recommendations in the committee report and give women a better chance when they are diagnosed, especially with breast cancer? There are also other female cancers that need to be studied thoroughly.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as I indicated in my speech, breast cancer has affected my wife's family, so I am very aware of the need for screening and making sure that breast cancer is caught as soon as possible. However, I would remind the member of the actual report. The member asked me a question about what the government is going to do. However, this report that unanimously passed and that we are debating now is about asking the Minister of Health to urge the task force to go back to the drawing board and revisit the guidelines based on the latest science. Unfortunately, this member is asking me a question about what the government is going to do.

I will say that this report was only tabled back in June. I know it sounds like a long time ago when we talk about the calendar, but it certainly is not when we talk about days in this House. I agree with my colleagues on the unanimous consent for the report and with the committee that this is a very important matter. If the committee members feel that the report is so important, with which I agree, and if they feel that the report should go back and that the the committee ask the minister to go and ask the agency to look at it one more time, then I am totally in agreement with that.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I am the chair of the health committee, so I can probably give the House a bit of the background on how this report came to be and the present status of the issue before the health committee. I am inclined to agree with the member for Kingston and the Islands with respect to the motivation behind bringing this motion before the House for concurrence today. I agree that it is unfortunate and unseemly for an issue as deadly, as personal and as sensitive as breast cancer screening to be used as a tool for delay, as was pointed out by my colleague.

This came before the health committee at the behest of a motion from the member for Fort McMurray—Cold Lake to have the committee engage in hearing from witnesses on the subject of breast cancer screening guidelines. To go a little further back, the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care issued breast cancer screening guidelines in 2018. There have been dramatic developments in medicine and science since 2018, and in May 2024, the task force issued draft guidelines, but those draft guidelines maintained the position taken in 2018, recommending against breast cancer screening for those under the age of 50.

By that point in time, many of the provinces had already caught up with the developments in medicine and science, and were routinely screening patients under the age of 50. The committee heard from nine witnesses and received 15 briefs, and before embarking on its study, the motion that is the subject of the debate today was pre-emptively moved, amended and unanimously adopted by the committee.

The work of the committee, throughout the hearings of the witnesses, was non-partisan, was undoubtedly in the best interests of Canadians and showed a positive bias toward evidence, not politics. It was, in my time in the health committee, one of those studies that I would be proud of because of the way parliamentarians worked together, which I think compounds the discomfort that I feel that it is being used in this way.

The briefs have been reviewed, the transcripts of evidence have been reviewed and the committee now has in front of it a detailed draft report, which we are going to be looking at the second version of tomorrow. At some point, that report is going to be adopted by the committee. It will undoubtedly include significant recommendations that will be reported back to the House. I would respectfully suggest that the time to be talking about concurrence in a committee report on breast screening guidelines would be on a report that is significantly more comprehensive than a motion that was pre-emptively moved before the deliberations on the report even began.

More and more women under the age of 50 are being diagnosed with breast cancer. This is what we heard at the committee. The Canadian Cancer Society reports that one in eight Canadian women will develop breast cancer in their lifetime and one in 36 will die from it. Last year, there were 30,500 Canadian women who were diagnosed, and given those statistics, 5,500 of them will die from this disease. This is not something to be politicized. This is something that parliamentarians need to take very seriously.

One of the challenges we have with any health care issue is that the health care system in Canada is partially federally funded and completely provincially administered. However, the federal Minister of Health has indicated that he is in favour of the measures mentioned in the motion. The overwhelming weight of evidence, along with the overwhelming weight of what we hear from patients, experts and physicians, is that the task force on preventive health care, in its draft guidelines, got it wrong.

The direction from the minister, the evidence we heard and the committee is to send the task force back to the drawing board to give some detail to the committee on a robust procedure for determining who gets to sit there, what its mandate is, the depth and breadth of the consultations and the depth and breadth of the things it ought to consider when reviewing and revising these draft guidelines. The task force, as we heard from the member for Peterborough—Kawartha, has been widely criticized, and it is a bit of a head-scratcher how it ended up in the same place, given how science and medicine has developed.

Part and parcel of the evidence we heard before the health committee on the full report was the need for investment in research and the need for public awareness. This is public awareness for both the general populace and physicians. All of these types of issues are those I fully expect will make their way into the report that will eventually be tabled in the House. As I indicated, that would be something that would provide much more substance for a concurrence motion.

I am going to end it there. I thought that colour would be helpful to the House on this debate.

While I am on my feet, I move:

That the question be now put.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

The motion is in order.

For questions and comments, we will go to the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan.