Debates of May 29th, 2024

Department of Health—Main Estimates, 2024-25

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Mr. Speaker, if the New Brunswick government is not co-operating, what will the federal government do to re-establish abortion care in New Brunswick?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

Mr. Speaker, Minister Hindley is retiring and there will be a new health minister. I am talking to Minister Hindley and the incoming minister on that very matter.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Mr. Speaker, breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in Canadian women. One in eight women in Canada is expected to be diagnosed with breast cancer. Early detection, as the minister knows, can improve health outcomes and save lives. Breast cancer advocates and the Canadian Cancer Society have been advocating to lower the breast cancer screening age from 50 to 40. Will the minister commit to updating the screening guidelines so women are able to access critical early-stage diagnosis?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have seen the same science that the member opposite has; it is very compelling, and it compels me that reducing the age to 40 and having early screening is highly effective. We are waiting for the release of a report tomorrow from an independent, arms-length body. Obviously there will then be a consultation period and we will be able to respond to that. However, we have to stay very close to science, and I see that seven provinces have now adopted the lower age standard, and I think that Canadians rightfully expect to see federal leadership.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Mr. Speaker, first nations, Inuit and Métis people often do not have access to health care. As clinics in or near their communities are closed, folks in the far north are frequently required to fly south, often alone and often receiving health care in a language they may not understand. Can the minister explain why the government, including the Department of Indigenous Services, has not responded to the health care needs of indigenous peoples?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

Mr. Speaker, responding to health needs in rural and remote communities is exceptionally challenging. I was just in Nunavut, where we were able to announce, with federal support, a new MRI machine that means that so many folks in Nunavut are not going to have to go south for that care. We still have a ton of work to do. There is a lot of opportunity and potential in remote medicine, and we have to make sure we use the existing potential workforce there for health issues.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Mr. Speaker, 71% of Canadians use natural health products, and many people felt unfairly blindsided by the Liberals' proposal to regulate them. We remember when Stephen Harper tried to force regulations on natural health products.

Can the minister tell Canadians what he is doing to ensure that people who use natural health products would continue to have access to safe and effective products?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, a private member's bill that was adopted today would have a disastrous impact. I hope the committee is taking a look at it. While we can recall a tube of lipstick or a head of lettuce that were contaminated, if a natural health product were contaminated with mould, mildew, feces, arsenic, salmonella or E. coli, the bill would stop our ability to pull it off the shelves. That is totally irresponsible and reckless. We need to make sure we put health first.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I look forward to the dental care update.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am extremely pleased to be participating in this particular debate. I believe that the government has made significant progress, of course with the support of the NDP, to provide more and more services to Canadians. Things like pharmacare and dental care, which I will speak about in a few moments, are long-overdue programs. In my opinion, they are things that I have always thought we should bring into our country and work on with provinces to develop.

I will start by talking about the recent slogan Conservatives have been using. The recycled slogan they are using is “common-sense Conservatives”; they are saying that the common-sense Conservatives will do this or the common-sense Conservatives will do that. They are clapping now.

I am from Ontario. I remember the common-sense revolution of the 1990s. That was Mike Harris's common-sense revolution, and those were dark days for health care in Ontario. Mike Harris slashed health care funding. Mike Harris closed hospitals in Ontario. Mike Harris tried for several years to close the Hotel Dieu Hospital in Kingston. The community fought for years against Mike Harris to reverse that. We were lucky because, unlike the vast majority of hospitals that he attempted to close, that one we were able to save. The forward-thinking, progressive politicians of the day, one of whom shares the same last name with me, were successful in doing that. However, the reality is that it was not the case throughout the province.

The common-sense revolution was about cuts. It was about neo-liberalism. It was about removing social programs. The minister responsible for what was then called “welfare” actually came up with a welfare diet to tell people what they should eat if they were on welfare, because it is what they would be able to afford with their welfare payments. That is what the common-sense revolution was about, but perhaps the most damning part of Premier Harris's common-sense revolution is what happened in the later days of his premiership. Of course, I am referring to what happened in Walkerton.

Seven people died in Walkerton. As a result, it was widely noted that Mr. Harris's cuts and privatization of water testing, privatization of a lot of the things that rightfully belong within a health ministry and environment ministry that should not be left to the public, led to decreased testing. In Walkerton, Ontario, on one day when there was a very heavy downfall of rain, E. coli ended up in the water supply. That led to the deaths of seven people.

Conservatives applaud me when I say “common-sense Conservatives”, but if people in Ontario were paying attention to politics in the 1990s, they knew what the common-sense revolution of Mike Harris was really all about. It was about removing government from absolutely everything possible and leaning on the private sector to provide the agencies responsible to ensure that we had the right protections. Obviously they failed.

Despite the fact that my Conservative colleagues will clap when I cite their new slogan “common-sense Conservatives”, we in Ontario remember what the common-sense revolution of Conservatives was really all about. It was about cuts, about austerity and about privatization of services that should never have been in the hands of private companies, which led to seven deaths in Walkerton, Ontario.

Therefore I am very concerned when I hear Conservatives go on about common sense, including the has-been doctor who is heckling me at the back of the room over there, including—

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

I am going to ask the hon. member to withdraw the comment.

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

I withdraw it, Mr. Speaker.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

I am going to ask all members to please take a moment and pause. Let us get back to the proper way of conducting ourselves in this place, with decorum and respect for each other.

The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands.

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

Mr. Speaker, while I talk about a very serious issue about what a Conservative premier did under the common-sense banner in Ontario and what it led to, which is the deaths of seven people, the Conservatives are heckling me and laughing at it. That is what the public should know.

As before, I will not ask the Speaker to limit the minister's time to the length of my question.

Does the minister share my concern that the common-sense Conservatives could very well end up going down the same path Mike Harris did in the 1990s?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, yes, I do share the concern the member has.

My friend and colleague points out that we have seen it a number of times. In fact, Newt Gingrich also talked about common sense and brought in some of the most disastrous criminal justice reforms that have ever been visited on the United States. He himself afterwards said that it was the greatest mistake of his political life and a dreadful mistake.

It is a terrible thing, when the world is complicated and difficult and is going through as much as it is, to pretend that there is a magic wand, as if all we have to do is take away people's carbon rebate and all the problems of the world will go away. That is the only solution I have heard from the other side. The Conservatives talk about cutting government spending, but they will not say where. We know they will not support dental care. We know they do not support pharmacare. What else are they going to cut?

The major investments we are making in health care are absolutely critical for making sure that our public health system is there for everybody. If we do not have a public health care system, what we wind up with is two tiers of care. The private system will go after the most profitable care, will go after the care that makes the most money, and the public system will be left with the most expensive care. It means that not only will care get more expensive, but those who are left and can only afford the public system will get deteriorating care. There will then be a migration of money and talent from the public system.

That is what we have seen all over the world. I have told this story before, but it bears mentioning again because it really reflects the question of what kind of country we want to live in.

I had the opportunity a couple of months ago to go away for the weekend with my partner. When we were down in the United States, we saw a man collapse. He had some sort of health event that caused him to fall to the ground unconscious. We went over to his side and called 911. When he came to and we told him not to worry because paramedics were on the way, his concern was not for his health; his concern was for how he was going to pay for his health. His concern was that he did not have enough money to deal with the health emergency in front of him. We could say that this is an American-only problem, but we have holes in our system we are trying to fix. We have diabetes patients who are saying they cannot adhere to their diabetes medication.

I will go one further. I met with Dr. Mehta in Scarborough. Dr. Mehta told me he has patients whom he tells, “If you follow this regime of taking your medication and eating the right foods, you're going to stay healthy.” He asked why he is even working as a doctor, because the people in front of him cannot get medication and cannot adhere to it. It means they are going to wind up with a cardiac event or stroke, or they are going to go blind or lose a limb. To me, that is not acceptable. Those are the consequences in front of us.

Either we step forward and continue to fill those gaps to make sure we are preventing bad outcomes or we use “common sense”, which is to pretend snake oil and these solutions of slogans, which are nothing more than the sentences that are tweeted, are going to fix the complex problems we have. We have to meet the moment we are in with real solutions that are going to provide answers.

I am proud that we have health partners and health ministers across the country we can work with. They are putting aside the partisanship and saying, “Let's get it done.” I wish we had an opposition party that would do the same.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to go back to something that I heard the minister say earlier. I think it stems a bit from what he was saying toward the end of his first answer.

He said something very interesting. He said that observing a problem is easy; it is easy to see a problem. Dealing with a problem and coming up with solutions that require work is something completely different.

Can he expand on that?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I believe it was Teddy Roosevelt who observed that many people sit on the sidelines and cast criticism, and he noted how easy that is to do. It requires no talent or ability to sit from the sidelines and cast criticism, or to mock or attack those who try to make things better.

I think it is owed to every Canadian that every member in the House stands in their place and offers solutions. I can tell members that when it comes to health care, I have heard nothing. The only thing I have heard from the Conservatives is what they will not do. They will not do dental care. They will not do pharmacare. They have not said what they are going to do with the investments we are making elsewhere in the health system in mental health and other areas. What is their plan for those who are uninsured? What is their plan for those who are in need? What is their plan when 70% of chronic disease and illness in this country, most of the things that fill our hospitals, are preventable?

They have no plan. Their only plan is to criticize our action, to phone around and hope they can stop a dentist from participating so we do not get the political credit of a senior getting dental care. Then we wonder why people get cynical about our profession. This should be a place where we debate solutions, where we have, lined up against each other, two plans to make things better in this country.

Their way has been tried. It's the idea of trickling things down, cutting taxes for the most affluent and crossing our fingers for everybody else. We recognized that Adam Smith's invisible hand was not enough. We learned it sometime around the 1800s. We need social safety nets. We need strong health care. We need to make sure that as people are competing and participating in our marketplaces, they are not allowed to fall through the cracks. That does not happen by doing nothing. It does not happen by cutting. It happens through hard work and the courage of action.

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

Mr. Speaker, on the topic of pharmacare specifically, one reason it is so critically important is that if we are going to have a health care program to support people and take care of people when they get to the hospital, which is part of the health care programs throughout the country, we may as well be taking care of them in the preventative stages. If we, as the minister alluded to, set up programs to help people take care of themselves, such as pharmacare and getting them access to the medicine they need, we can avoid having a lot of people end up in the hospital.

Likewise, when we look at these particular programs, we know they are not being fully used. A lot of people, especially seniors, up until recently, because they did not have access to the medicines they needed, may have been making very difficult decisions about whether they should take half the dose they were recommended instead of the full dose because they can save a bit of money there.

Can the minister explain and touch on why it is so critically important to make sure that people are taking the full doses they are prescribed, rather than trying to find ways to save money by reducing their doses?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is one of the most heart-wrenching things in the world. I can go back to my time at the Heart and Stroke when I headed its Ontario mission. I was the national director of children and youth, and I would see folks who had heart attacks and strokes because they did not have access to their diabetes medication and were not following a proper regime. As I mentioned, it can lead to all kinds of other terrible outcomes.

Adherence to these medicines is essential for their health. It is also essential as a matter of cost reduction. It is extraordinarily expensive to allow somebody to get into a catastrophic state. We need to get out of the business of crisis management in health care. We need to be up the stream preventing these things. The Public Health Agency of Canada has done extraordinary work, but we need to do a lot more work on prevention. The future in this country is avoiding illness before it ever happens and making sure that people live long, healthy and full lives by avoiding illness and disease and keeping our hospitals empty because the services are simply not needed.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will split my time three ways.

Fair Price Pharma is a company that got 15 kilograms of imported heroin licensed by Health Canada at some point. Has the minister met with the CEO, Perry Kendall?

[Ya'ara Saks, Liberal, Minister of Mental Health and Addictions and Associate Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, I have not met with the CEO, but just to be clear, we have not granted a licence to Fair Price Pharma. It has not even applied.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is in possession of 15 kilograms of imported heroin as a result of a licence that was granted by Health Canada. Just to be clear, has anybody in the minister's office met with Perry Kendall?

[Ya'ara Saks, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have not met with Perry Kendall.

I will say again that Fair Price Pharma has not applied for a licence, nor does it have one.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, has anybody in the minister's office met with Perry Kendall, yes or no?

[Ya'ara Saks, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, no.