House of Commons Hansard #163 of the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was s-5.
This summary is computer-generated. Usually it’s accurate, but every now and then it’ll contain inaccuracies or total fabrications.
Connected Care for Canadians Act Second reading of Bill S-5. The bill requires health information technology vendors to adopt common standards and prohibits data blocking, aiming to let patients and authorized providers securely share medical records, improve care coordination and support research. Members broadly endorse interoperability but raise questions about privacy, cybersecurity, implementation costs, vendor oversight, innovation and provincial jurisdiction, particularly Quebec’s. Conservatives support the goal while calling for scrutiny of implementation and accountability; the Bloc opposes the bill without stronger protections for provincial authority. 36300 words, 4 hours in 2 segments: 1 2.
Financial Statement of Minister of Finance Members debate Budget 2026, which the Liberal government presents as a plan for economic growth, affordability, housing, sovereignty and cultural investment. Conservatives criticize its deficits, borrowing and accounting framework, while the Bloc raises concerns about Quebec’s health transfers, asylum costs and jurisdiction. The NDP questions spending priorities, and the Green Party and Bloc criticize climate measures. 13200 words, 2 hours.
Kevin Lamoureux LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons
Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8)(a), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's responses to five petitions. These returns will be tabled in an electronic format.
Patrick Weiler Liberal West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC
Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the seventh report of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, entitled “Review of the Fisheries Act: policy and legislative considerations and recommendations”.
Pursuant to Standing Order 109, the committee requests that the government table a comprehensive response to this report.
Mel Arnold Conservative Kamloops—Shuswap—Central Rockies, BC
Mr. Speaker, I rise to present the official opposition's dissenting opinion for the seventh report of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Ocean report, entitled “Review of the Fisheries Act: policy and legislative considerations and recommendations”.
Conservatives of the official opposition were motivated to submit this dissenting report to ensure that Canadians are provided the whole story of the evidence we received and the whole story of the harms caused by the 2019 changes.
When the Liberals introduced these changes, they said the changes were necessary to restore lost protections, yet when they were asked what harms had been caused by the supposed lost protections, the Liberal government provided no proof. The Liberals charged ahead with changes that have not only hurt harvesters and supply chains that depend on fisheries, but they have also undermined Canada's national interest in our sovereignty and our independence.
At a time when Canadians are concerned for independence and progressive growth, the reality is that major projects and even the government's own strategies for energy emissions reductions and natural resources are directly hampered and put in limbo by Liberal legislation like the 2019 changes to the Fisheries Act.
Conservatives appreciate all participants in the study, especially those who spoke honestly, despite facing possible retributions. I thank all Canadians who participated in this study, because they care. Conservatives also care, and we urge everyone to read this dissenting report. We have made recommendations to strengthen the Fisheries Act and allow for a stronger and more independent Canada.
Brad Vis Conservative Mission—Matsqui—Abbotsford, BC
Mr. Speaker, since 2012, the First Nations Education Steering Committee, British Columbia and Canada have worked together on the British Columbia Tripartite Education Agreement to promote successful education outcomes for first nations learners.
The petitioners note that education is a fundamental human right, and the BCTEA is the primary source of funding for first nations students of schools based on the public education system in British Columbia. It was expected that renewed funding commitments would be confirmed in the spring economic update, as the agreement is set to expire on June 30, 2026. Canada instead confirmed that the funding for the proposed renewed BCTEA was not secured and that the status quo funding was confirmed for only a one-year extension.
Therefore, the petitioners in Mission—Matsqui—Abbotsford call upon the government to approve the proposed renewed BCTEA and associated funding commitments for a 10-year term in the fall budget to ensure that the education of first nations students is not needlessly disrupted.
Gord Johns NDP Courtenay—Alberni, BC
Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to table this petition on behalf of constituents of my riding.
The petitioners cite that Canada's national inventory identifies more than 1,300 wrecked, abandoned and hazardous vessels, including more than 900 in British Columbia. These vessels pose serious risks to marine ecosystems, fisheries, indigenous food harvesting, coastal communities, navigation and public safety.
The petitioners highlight that coastal communities continue to experience vessels grounding, sinking or breaking apart in sensitive marine habitats, resulting in pollution and fisheries closures. Preventing vessels from becoming environmental hazards is safer and less costly than emergency response, salvage and remediation after they sink or break apart; that existing federal vessel removal and disposal programs are inadequately funded, limited in scope or have expired; that Canada lacks a comprehensive strategy and sufficient infrastructure for the responsible retirement, recycling and disposal of end-of-life vessels; and that Washington state demonstrates a proactive approach using dedicated vessel registration revenues to help address vessels before they become abandoned or hazardous.
The petitioners call on the government to establish a permanent national strategy for the prevention, removal, recycling and responsible disposal of wrecked, abandoned and hazardous vessels; create a self-sustaining vessel retirement and turn-in program funded in whole or in part through vessel registration fees; restore and expand federal funding for timely vessel removal; and improve federal procurement and response processes so qualified regional marine contractors can be deployed quickly to prevent environmental damage and invest in Canadian vessel recycling and disposal infrastructure, including capacity in coastal British Columbia.
Kevin Lamoureux LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons
Mr. Speaker, I would ask that all questions be allowed to stand at this time.
Questions on the Order PaperRoutine Proceedings
Marjorie Michel LiberalMinister of Health
moved that Bill S-5, An Act respecting the interoperability of health information technology and to prohibit data blocking by health information technology vendors, be read the second time and referred to a committee.
Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to speak to Bill S-5, the connected care for Canadians act. Timely and secure access to personal health information is critical to saving lives and improving care for Canadians. This act is part of our government's plan to build up and protect the health care system and empower Canadians to have more control over their health.
The main focus of Bill S-5 is patient safety. When health care systems are not interconnected, they are not only inefficient, but they also pose a clinical risk for Canadians. Things like undetected allergies, incomplete medication history and lost or delayed test results can lead to misdiagnosis and potentially life-threatening consequences.
Even today, fewer than 13% of Canadians say they have electronic access to all their medical records. In Canada, in 2026, the fax machine remains the primary means for sharing health information between health care facilities. Only 52% of health care providers say that they share their patients' health information electronically outside their office. The main obstacle they cite is a lack of interoperability. Consider what that means for patients.
Patients should not have to remember their entire medical history or repeat it every time they consult a new health care provider. Furthermore, health care providers should not have to rely on incomplete information to make clinical decisions. A survey by the Canadian Medical Association found that 92% of practising physicians in Canada said that the lack of coordination between health care systems was hindering their ability to provide care. That is unacceptable, and it needs to change.
Through Bill S-5, we can make technology work for Canadians, improving lives, improving care and building a more efficient health care system ready for the future. Australia and the European Union have already implemented similar legislation or regulations. Their residents have benefited from connected health care for years. If we act now, we can ensure that Canadians have access to the connected care they need and deserve.
I would like to clarify what this bill would do. At present, the sharing of health information in Canada is hampered by the lack of common standards across the country. Bill S-5 would promote interconnected health care by requiring IT vendors in Canada's digital health sector to adopt common data standards. It would also prohibit data blocking.
Data blocking means restricting access to, use of or sharing of health information among authorized parties, such as patients and their health care providers, when privacy laws would otherwise permit it.
In other words, Bill S-5 would help identify the barriers preventing patients and their health care providers from securely accessing the health information they need, when they need it.
All of this would be achieved while preserving existing privacy protections and personal information safeguards.
Access to health information is not a matter of convenience. It is a necessity. Data saves lives, especially when a full medical history is needed in an emergency.
Let me share the stories of real patients and their families. They have experienced the devastating consequences of disconnected care in Canada. Theresa lost her son, Dan, who was only 17, after two visits to the emergency department. She believes real-time access to his file would have helped the family flag critical details sooner.
Another patient requiring an urgent surgical procedure outside her home province was compromised because the local medical team could not access vital records from her home province. Without this essential medical history, clinicians were unable to safely perform the procedure.
There is the story of Greg Price, whose legacy has been an inspiration for many of us working on this legislation. Greg was a healthy engineer from Alberta who faced systemic failures in our health care system. Like many others, he experienced delays due to poor coordination and inaccessible health information. He died of cancer in 2012. He was 31.
This is why today's legislation is so important. We need to break down those silos, so we are changing the rules and we are building the health data infrastructure Canadians deserve.
Bill S‑5 would also reduce the day-to-day administrative burden on our health care professionals. According to a survey conducted by the Canadian Medical Association, physicians report that they waste an average of 86 minutes a day searching for patient data. That is almost an hour and a half a day. Time spent printing and sorting documents is time that health care professionals do not spend on what they should be doing and what they want to do: caring for people.
Several OECD countries modernized their data laws years ago to allow for the secure transmission of health data, but Canada is lagging behind. This is important not only for patient care but also for the future of innovation within our health care system.
Canada has implemented a near-universal medical records system. Things have to change, especially in light of artificial intelligence. Realizing the transformative potential and the growing importance of artificial intelligence, the Government of Canada recently published Canada's new national artificial intelligence strategy, known as “AI for All”. Health and life sciences are one of the priority sectors under the strategy, given AI's potential to improve patient care, accelerate diagnostics and support the development of new treatments.
However, AI's effectiveness depends on the quality of the data it uses. To unleash AI's potential in the health care field, it must have access to anonymized, standardized high-quality data that can be used responsibly and shared in total safety.
With Bill S-5, we can create the standardized database that is essential to a modern health care system.
Fragmented digital health systems lead to costly requirements across various regions. Health information technology vendors have to build customized models to make their products work in every province and territory. This limits their ability to grow in the Canadian market. Vendors have been clear about the need to address interoperability challenges in Canada.
By establishing clear and consistent national requirements, Bill S-5 would make Canada more predictable and attractive for businesses in the digital health sector. Rather than having to adapt to different requirements in each province and territory, vendors could operate within a single internationally harmonized framework. This would reduce complexity while encouraging innovation and investment. It would also help Canadian businesses grow domestically and compete globally.
Canadians must also be able to trust that their personal medical records will be secure and protected. That is exactly what Bill S-5 aims to do. The bill would not amend federal, provincial or territorial laws governing the use of personal health information. Access to personal health information would continue to be governed by existing privacy laws, and only authorized users would be able to access their patients' medical records.
It is important to note that Bill S-5 also respects indigenous data sovereignty and will in no way alter the ownership, control or governance of the health data of first nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples.
As technology evolves, it is essential to protect Canadians' privacy. That is why our government has also introduced Bill C-36, the protecting privacy and consumer data act, to modernize Canada's private sector privacy legislation for the digital age. Bill C-36 reinforces our commitment to responsible innovation, economic growth, and the protection of Canadians' rights in the digital age.
Co-operation with the provinces and territories is key. I am already working with my provincial and territorial counterparts to develop the regulations. However, the federal framework will not apply to provinces and territories that already have similar conditions. I welcome our shared commitment to interoperable digital solutions that enhance connectivity in our health care system.
Gaps in access to and sharing of health data create unnecessary and unacceptable risks. Canadians continue to face challenges when navigating the health care system.
Canadians strongly support change and want better access to their own health data.
This bill is part of our government's plan to build up and protect the health care system and empower Canadians to have more control over their health.
This is great news for our country. That is why I am calling on all members of the House to work together to pass Bill S‑5.
I want to thank the Senate for voting to pass it.
Tamara Kronis Conservative Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC
Madam Speaker, I was really struck by my colleague's comment that 92% of practising physicians have been hampered by lack of access to information about their patients. The Canadian Medical Association and other medical organizations have been calling for this for a decade. The Competition Tribunal, in June 2022, identified the behaviour of electronic medical record providers as being anti-competitive, and of course we had Bill C-72 before the previous Parliament.
My question for the minister, given that the Liberals let Bill C-72 die on the Order Paper when they called an election last January, is, what took them so long?
Marjorie Michel Liberal Papineau, QC
Madam Speaker, what I can say is that when I took office, work had already been done on the bill. It had died on the Order Paper, but I immediately revived it. We started discussions with the provinces and territories to ensure that we could move the bill forward. The bill was first introduced in the Senate, and now that the Senate has passed it, we are moving it forward in the House.
I understand what my colleague is saying, and I agree that this has taken too long. However, I think now is the time, and we cannot wait any longer. Given all of the technological advances, such as AI, if we do not have good data, then we will be at risk, and Canada will fall even further behind.
Mario Simard Bloc Jonquière—Hébertville—Pays-des-Bleuets, QC
Madam Speaker, I admit that the bill's objective is laudable, but there is a major problem here. I am sure members know what I am going to say next. This bill fails to acknowledge that health falls under the exclusive jurisdiction of Quebec and the provinces. Quebec already has laws that implements proposals similar to the ones found in this bill. I do not see how the Bloc Québécois can approve a bill like this unless it is amended to explicitly acknowledge that health falls under Quebec's jurisdiction and that it is Quebec's responsibility, not the federal government's.
I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on that.
Marjorie Michel Liberal Papineau, QC
Madam Speaker, I was expecting a question along those lines. My colleague did not hear my speech, but I made it very clear that any provinces and territories that already have their own regulations will not have to opt out of Bill S-5. The federal government will not interfere with the delivery of health care services by the provinces and territories. The law is complementary, applying only in cases where a province or territory does not already have comparable legislation. At present, Quebec and Ontario already have their own legislation in place.
Gord Johns NDP Courtenay—Alberni, BC
Madam Speaker, Dr. Margot Burnell, the past president of the CMA, stated:
When personal health information can travel freely and securely between patients, clinics, hospitals and labs, people will have better health outcomes and doctors will have more time to focus on care. It also makes it easier for patients to manage their own care in partnership with doctors and other health professionals.
I know this is echoed by the new, incoming president.
The government has been working on a pan-Canadian interoperability road map for years. What is the difference this time, and what concrete timeline would the government commit to so Canadians are not still hearing about the promise of connected care in five years or 10 years from now? This is something the NDP has been calling on for a long time, and I have been working with the minister on it.
Marjorie Michel Liberal Papineau, QC
Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for working with us to move this bill forward. I know how important this bill is to him.
Today is a positive step forward. The bill has already passed the Senate and is now before the House, which will refer it to a committee. Once the bill has been passed, we will be able to develop the regulations. We have already started working with the provinces and territories, but this will allow us to formalize that work. While it will still take several months to put the regulations in place, if the bill is passed quickly, I expect the entire process could be completed in less than a year.
Jean-Yves Duclos Liberal Québec Centre, QC
Madam Speaker, I would like to begin by congratulating my esteemed colleague, the Minister of Health, for all her leadership on this issue. I can tell her that, yes, we have been waiting a long time for this bill, but now we are truly moving in the right direction, and we are doing so quickly. The Canadian government is playing a leadership role. It is not responsible for managing hospitals, but it has a role to play in health care and public health.
I would like her to elaborate on an issue that we do not talk about often enough: the fact that data is important to health research, which is, in turn, important to clinical care, benefiting both patients and health care professionals.
Marjorie Michel Liberal Papineau, QC
Madam Speaker, I have been talking about data ever since I became the Minister of Health.
Reliable data is essential to making good health care decisions with respect to both service delivery and research. When data is harmonized, researchers can collect it in the same way across the country. This bill will help us do that. It will harmonize how data is collected. All the data will speak the same language, and researchers will be able to analyze it in a consistent fashion. This bill will be beneficial in that regard.
Matt Strauss Conservative Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
Madam Speaker, I was interested in the point the minister made about Ontario and Quebec already having legislation that this legislation would not supersede.
This interested me in particular because, as a physician practising in Ontario, I know that the clinical notes from one hospital that I worked at over the last few years in Guelph, Ontario, could be viewed in the region west of Toronto, but I also worked in Kingston, Ontario, over that time, and clinical notes from my other work in Guelph could not be viewed in that region. Even Ontario has not resolved this problem within the province.
I wonder if we are talking about whether Ontario has legislation that calls for this, or about whether Ontario has a reality of interoperability between all the regions in Ontario. Would Bill S-5 affect Ontario as it stands today or not?
Marjorie Michel Liberal Papineau, QC
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question because it allows me to clarify a few things.
Yes, Ontario and Quebec already have a legislative framework in this area. However, the data is still blocked by the vendors. Unblocking this data will allow us to share it, and that is what makes all the difference, both within a single province and between provinces. Bill S-5 will still have an impact in Ontario.
What I meant to say is that Ontario and Quebec have already adopted legislation to improve the interoperability of their own health care systems. They have already started putting procedures in place. However, Bill S-5 will require vendors to unblock data, and sharing the data is going to change things.
Luc Thériault Bloc Montcalm, QC
Madam Speaker, my colleague's question is important. Earlier, the minister quoted a passage stating that the bill will not a apply to provinces that have their own system.
Could she table that wording? I cannot find it in the bill.
Danielle Martin Liberal University—Rosedale, ON
Madam Speaker, I want to thank the hon. minister for her leadership on this very important bill. We all know that this bill is going to save lives across Canada.
I would also like to ask the minister a question about access to our own health data. We know that Canadian patients want access to their own medical records.
How might Bill S-5 facilitate that?
Marjorie Michel Liberal Papineau, QC
Madam Speaker, nearly 25% of Canadians currently have access to their health data, and the same mechanism will apply here. Bill S-5 will require vendors to unblock data, which will enable the various health care systems to make the data available to doctors and patients.
Matt Strauss Conservative Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON
Madam Speaker, the minister's enthusiasm for the bill is very well appreciated. The issue of health information technology is very near and dear to my heart, and not always in a happy way. Without naming any names of any particular institutions, one of the hospitals that I worked at for a long time foisted on physicians a health information technology solution without asking the physicians, the pharmacists or the nurses if they should do this or whether it was a good idea. They spent millions of dollars on it, and it frankly ruined our professional lives when it did not work at all.
It is important to have good intentions. It is important to be enthusiastic about those intentions, but it is really important that the solutions that end up hitting the ground actually work for the people who use them and for the people those professionals serve. We have to be really careful about a bill like this. The possibility of causing more problems than it solves is a real and present danger.
It is always a great honour to be in the chamber. It is always a great honour to speak on behalf of the people of Kitchener South—Hespeler. It is a great honour to give the Conservative response to the minister's speech. This is, I believe, the first piece of legislation pertaining to health care in the 45th Parliament.
It has been a long time coming. It has been a year and a half. I am a bit sad to say this is a bill that is warmed over from the last Parliament, when it somehow did not make it through. It has been years coming, and for that reason I would hold it to an even higher standard than if it were invented de novo.
The bill before us today, Bill S-5, has the admittedly laudable goal of making it illegal for health information technology companies to engage in what the bill defines as data blocking, that is, stopping the exchange, or impeding the exchange, of personal health information between authorized health information technologies.
In sharp contradistinction to many of the government bills that we have been debating over this past month, or even this past week, this is a very short bill. I commend it for that reason. It is perhaps only five pages long, in one language. Even though it is easy to read the bill, which I am grateful for, it is very difficult for me to understand how it could, in fact, work.
I spent 95% of my clinical career in hospitals. There are three electronic medical record vendors that hospitals in Canada use very commonly: Epic, Cerner and Meditech. All three, I am sorry to say, are American companies. All three are subject to a 2016 law passed by the Obama administration called the Cures Act. My understanding is that the Cures Act is very similar, both in its intent and its operations, to the bill before us today, Bill S-5.
Of course, it would be ideal, internationally, that all three of these systems be able to transmit patient health information between each other, obviously with the consent of the patient involved, but it is a really hard problem. This morning, for instance, my office printer was on the fritz. I was unable to send data, this speech, from my computer to the printer in my office. I had to get a friend in the lobby to print it for me, and that is a much simpler problem than all of the health information in all of Canada.
Software vendors and Bill S-5 can have the best of intentions, but the problem of data interoperability is just a hard problem. Let us take, for instance, Meditech. Currently, Meditech has multiple products, multiple product families and different versions of each currently operating in the wild. There is Meditech 6.0, Meditech 6.1, Meditech Expanse, Meditech Expanse 2.1, Meditech Expanse 2.2. Different hospitals may choose to invest more or less money, or use one product family over another. They may choose to update whichever product family they are using often or not, depending on their own IT and human resources.
I imagine it is a full-time job, nay several full-time jobs, at Meditech headquarters just to make sure that its own systems can communicate with each other in an interoperable fashion. That is not for a lack of trying. How much work, how many people and how much money will it take to make the Meditech system talk to the Epic system, to make both talk to Cerner and to make all three talk to the 10 to 15 major players in the European market? How much of a barrier of entry to one day starting a Canadian competitor would all of this entail?
Let us drill down on a small part of the problem to understand the full scale of the problem. In my work as an ICU physician, any individual patient might have literally tens of thousands of data points stored in the EMR from just one day. Just their vital signs, such as heart rate, oxygen saturation, respiratory rate, body temperature and blood pressure, might be recorded and time-stamped continuously, providing thousands of data points before we even speak of medications, diagnostic imaging, clinical notes, blood work, etc.
Each of these data points has to be filed or coded in some agreed upon, legible way in order to be interoperable. Even to zero in on just blood pressure, there are multiple numbers that go into a blood pressure reading and different numbers one might want to store, such as the systolic, the diastolic and the mean arterial pressure. There are different ways of measuring a blood pressure, namely a sphygmomanometer or a blood pressure cuff, or invasive arterial monitoring. Sometimes we are measuring both continuously throughout the day.
One system might store, code and display the cuff systolic and the intra-arterial map every 15 minutes. My system might store, code and display only the cuff three times a day, or when an intra-arterial pressure is available, it might store that, superseding the other. It seems almost impossible to have a government regulatory body come in and say which one is correct. The sphygmomanometer, the intra-arterial blood pressure monitor, the EKG and the pulse oximeter all measure a patient's heart rate, and three of the four measure it continuously. How do we impose a system that ensures that each health vendor will store those in mutually comprehensible ways?
Let us consider a patient on continuous EKG monitoring. Literally every beat of their heart comes with multiple measurable waveforms depending on which EKG is looked at. Each monitoring system will come with different alarms and different ways of storing who responded to each alarm, how long the alarm went off, who turned it off and why they turned it off.
I cannot imagine setting one standard for how all of this ought to be captured. This is not like saying all smart phones have to use a USB-C plug. There are so many more inputs and outputs to a human body that constitute health information. When I speak of monitoring vital signs, I am speaking of a fraction of a fraction of all the forms of data that go into health and health care.
I have just now been speaking about electronic medical records, only one of the types of software we would find in a hospital. There are also prescription management systems, diagnostic imaging systems and scheduling systems, all of which contain personal health information. By the way, health care centres like hospitals are just one sort of organization that uses some classes of devices and some sorts of information technology on those devices.
Bill S-5 seems to seek to regulate all sorts of other devices. For instance, I am wearing an Apple Watch. It went off, and the Speaker got mad at me. It also stores personal health information of mine on it, such as my heart rate. If someone has a CPAP machine at home or a blood sugar monitor, the bill would seem to make demands on those device manufacturers as well.
This is just the present state of things. Health information technology is changing now at a faster and faster rate. A friend of mine runs an AI-powered ultrasound diagnostics start-up company for use by combat medics to see if a soldier in the field has a pneumothorax in real time. It is a pocket-sized device. It is an amazing invention. He worked so hard on it. He employs so many fantastic Canadian scientists who are designing it and making it better every day. I understand that he spends about 0% of his time making sure that whatever data is stored on that device in a battlefield somewhere can talk to Cerner, Epic and Meditech. He is trying to save lives by making something that has never existed before. How can he expect that whatever data his invention ends up outputting 10 years from now will be legible by these legacy systems?
I am hoping that this House will take seriously the scale of the problem that Bill S-5 is trying to make go away. As I said earlier in my speech, the bill closely follows the approach that the Obama administration took in 2016, 10 years ago. Did this approach work in that milieu?
If it pleases the House, I would love to table at some point a paper from November 2025 published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and written by Everson et al., entitled “EHR Interoperability Experiences Reported by Family Physicians”. The scientists surveyed more than 8,000 family doctors, asking them what their experience with health information interoperability has been like eight years after the Cures Act. I am sorry to say that despite the best of intentions, the results in this paper are dismal. Only 8% of the family doctors surveyed reported ideal interoperability. From my reading of the paper, it seemed that a majority of the doctors went so far as to give up on accessing outside clinical documentation. I hope we can talk more about this study at committee. Perhaps we could invite the authors of it to committee, should the bill succeed at second reading.
If it is the case that the U.S. administration, after eight years of trying, largely failed to regulate the big American health information technology vendors I mentioned, Cerner, Meditech and Epic, how can we expect that the Canadian federal government would succeed in regulating those same American health information technology vendors into making their systems interoperable? As I said, most Canadian hospitals use information technology from these American providers. Many of the Canadian hospitals I have personally worked at, however, cannot afford to use the latest systems or subscribe to the most up-to-date features from each of these vendors.
Is it really possible that Canadian regulators will be able to bully these gigantic corporations? Cerner is, in fact, by the way, the health information branch of Oracle, one of the largest tech companies in the world. Are we going to be able to demand that Oracle change what it is doing into solving what I fear may be an unsolvable problem when we are currently shopping in its bargain bin? Is it the case that the federal government has a good track record generally in the field of IT systems management? Who among us here could forget the $2.6-billion boondoggle that we now call the Phoenix pay system? Who could forget the $60-million arrive scam scandal? Who could forget the most recent scandal of all, the $300 million blown on the unworkable PrescribeIT program?
I, for one, am not going to forget the PrescribeIT scandal. I think anyone who is familiar with my parliamentary work knows about PrescribeIT by now, because it has been the biggest part of what I have been working on over the last year. In brief, not to belabour the point, as I know the health minister is very familiar with it, it was a 10-year-long attempt by an organization called Canada Health Infoway, which receives funding both from provinces and from the federal government, to solve a simple problem.
Ten years ago, when she introduced the legislation that gave the money for PrescribeIT, the minister of health at the time, Jane Philpott, called it the axe the fax program. Members are aware, of course, how much Liberals like rhyming three-word slogans such as axe the fax.
Right now, in our country, physicians fax prescriptions to pharmacies. That was the case in 2016 when Jane Philpott introduced the legislation. Canada Health Infoway spent $300 million and took 10 years to make just this small class of health information transfer digitally between a doctor's office or hospital and a pharmacy. We have investigated this matter at committee in some detail. To this day, I do not understand how it is that Canada Health Infoway invented something other than a digital fax, which has existed since 1998. Indeed, by its own admission, it invented nothing. It gave Telus $80 million to provide and manage the software platform, which already existed. That was a good deal for Telus. To this day, our study of this matter at committee having been truncated, I still have no idea what became of the other $220 million. It had a $300-million budget. It bought the software and had Telus managing it for $80 million. I do not know where the $220 million went.
After all of that money and all of that time, physicians and pharmacists in our country, by and large, refused to use the solution. Canada Health Infoway seems to have spent a decade designing, or not designing but ordering, a software solution from Telus, without bothering to check in with frontline workers whether they liked the product or whether they would agree to use the product. The product was free, and still over 95% of physicians in our country declined to use the product. That is really bad and frankly activates my PTSD from my home hospital, which had foisted an information management system on us all those years ago. Of all the dogs that have never hunted, the PrescribeIT dog really did not hunt. It was a free solution that 95% of physicians and pharmacists declined to take up.
With Phoenix, arrive scam and PrescribeIT, there is not a good track record. Maybe the federal government is about to turn over a new leaf and provide IT systems that work and that people want to use. I wish I could believe that, but do members know who it plans to put in charge of Bill S-5? Can anyone in the House guess? It is Canada Health Infoway, the totally corrupt organization that just blew $300 million on a failed solution. I know this is the Liberals' plan by word of mouth, but I also know it from Senate testimony. This bill is called Bill S-5 because it came from the Senate. It has already gone through Senate committee hearings, and that has been the clear message. They had the now interim CEO of Canada Health Infoway give testimony. It is their intention to oversee the regulation of this perhaps unsolvable problem.
For those who have not heard, Canada Health Infoway just fired its CEO because he came to the health committee to answer questions about PrescribeIT. He refused to answer the most basic questions about what he accomplished with his nearly $1-million salary. He would not even answer what his salary was. We had to get that information by other means. Its current CEO is the former vice-president, whom he hired.
The $300-million PrescribeIT boondoggle is not even Canada Health Infoway's total spend over the last decade. I believe the organization was in receipt of $1 billion of public money over this time, yet when we had the chair of the board at the health committee and I asked him what it accomplished with the other $700 million, he was unable to describe a single tangible achievement. This is a big problem. Even acknowledging that PrescribeIT did not work, acknowledging that the CEO of Canada Health Infoway was a big problem and acknowledging the extent to which the health minister took credit or did not for his dismissal, even after all that occurred, she planned to reward Canada Health Infoway with another $50 million of funding this year.
I came to question period week after week and asked why she would give it this money. To her credit, the minister halted that funding, acknowledging that this organization is in a serious state of disrepair. This is a big problem when we talk about Bill S-5. It is, to my understanding, still the Liberals' intention to have Canada Health Infoway lead the charge on regulating into existence a solution that is maybe not even possible when they have not accounted for the last $1 billion they spent.
Do I support Bill S-5 in principle? Of course I do. Of course health information technology should be interoperable. Of course no patient should ever have their care suffer because data transfer between institutions is hard. Do I believe that the government, with its track record of IT boondoggles and its track record with Canada Health Infoway, will succeed in getting this job done with this piece of very short legislation? I fear I do not. I want to hear more about it at committee. I certainly want to hear more from Canada Health Infoway on what its plan was, but I cannot say that I have great faith that it will work out.
Solving a problem like the one I have described is not a matter of intention. For instance, I do not want anyone in this country to be sad. If we were to make a law that no one is allowed to be sad anymore, it would not work. That was the question I asked the minister. She said it seemed to be the case that Bill S-5 would not even apply to Ontario because Ontario already has legislation with this intention. However, the reality in Ontario, as I described in my question, is not that health information technologies are interoperable. In the discussion and debate we have in this House, I would love for the government to explain why it will succeed where Ontario has failed if it already has similar legislation.
Kevin Lamoureux LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons
Madam Speaker, I appreciate that the member clearly indicated that how health information technology is handled is absolutely critical and that he supports the principle of the legislation. I am encouraged by that.
In terms of the whole mismanagement area, it was the Harper government that brought in Phoenix. There is no escaping that. In other words, there are ways in which, no doubt, we can learn from past experiences in order to advance the principle of a good idea.
I appreciate the member's knowledge, I must say. I am quite impressed with his background and his understanding of the urgency of this. I believe that it would be best addressed at the committee stage. I wonder if he could provide his thoughts on whether he thinks this legislation will pass, given that the Senate has already supported it in principle.
