Rahim Jaffer

[Canadian Tourism Commission Act, November 29th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I wish to ask the Bloc member if those involved in trade and tourism in Quebec agree with the orientation of this bill, more specifically if they support the creation of a crown corporation.

[Canadian Institutes Of Health Research Act, November 29th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to stand in the House today to speak to Bill C-13, an act to establish the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and to repeal the Medical Research Council Act.

I will begin by congratulating our member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca who has done so much work on the health portfolio of recent, doing battle against the Liberal government which continues to cut funding to the provinces. It is a difficult job to actually look for other alternatives within not only provincial initiatives but here federally to help fix the medicare problems that the government has put on the country. I would like to just take a moment to congratulate our member for all his hard work.

As was mentioned, the CIHR will replace the Medical Research Council and will provide a more direct and systematic approach to research in Canada. The CIHR will provide an annual report detailing the workplan and budgetary expenses of its scientific grants.

If the goal of this particular bill and the new Canadian institutes of health research will be to help direct funding more equally and more effectively to various medical research endeavours across the country, that is obviously a good thing.

I would also point out that the establishment of the Canadian institutes of health research will be a vast improvement on the current system of non-accountability administered by the Medical Research Council. This will in fact create a quasi-independent council that will be able to operate independent of the government and make its first priority research funding.

When looking at this particular effort by the government, even though it is headed in the direction that we in the opposition would say is the right direction, there are some red flags that are thrown up, especially when it comes to the issue of budget.

When I look at the CIHR, I see that it will strive to ensure that only 4% to 5% of its total budget will be spent on administrative costs. A new institute will require a bureaucratic infrastructure to perform the necessary functions. Can the CIHR avoid the trend of having a huge part of its budget administered for bureaucracy and not have sufficient funds to administer the actual research which is dictated under its mandate? That is the question we have to focus on here today. Even though the official opposition will give its support to the bill, will the budget, which is outlined at 4% or 5% toward the administrative costs, remain within that fraction?

I have had the pleasure in the past of talking to various people involved in medical research around the country, mainly in my riding of Edmonton—Strathcona at the University of Alberta. I know you, Mr. Speaker, have travelled across the country and have been to the University of Alberta Hospital. I know you are aware of the wonderful research it does, especially the wonderful research it does with the limited resources it is given.

This is where that red flag has to be thrown up. We have to consider the fact that we know the track record of this government. We know that when it can, it spends, spends, spends and continues to raise taxes to exorbitant levels. Unfortunately, it does not prioritize its spending effectively as we here in the opposition have outlined time and time again in the House, where we would like the government to focus its resources more effectively but that does not happen.

As I mentioned, if there is a total budget of 4% or 5% strictly toward administrative costs, we in the opposition hope that the government will continue to live within that means of spending for bureaucracy and that the spending put toward medical research will go toward medical research.

I mentioned the experience of talking with people involved in medical research at the University of Alberta. I think they would generally agree that the government is heading in the right direction because they would like to see funds more effectively used within medical research. However, in my past discussions with people at the University of Alberta, it was brought to my attention—and I do not have the figures off-hand—that Canada does lag quite far behind when compared with some of the other industrialized countries, especially in medical research funding. This makes it very difficult for many of these institutions, such as the University of Alberta, to meet their requirements of really excelling in research and continuing to be leaders across the country.

One of the issues they continue to bring up with this lack of funding are the problems that do arise. For instance, one issue the advisory board will hopefully address and something the official opposition continues to raise in the House, is the issue of the brain drain that currently exists in Canada regardless of what the government does or does not want to say on the topic.

Many of the people I have spoken with at the University of Alberta and other research facilities have told me that it is difficult to retain the proper talent, attract professionals and continue to build solid research foundations within the country because of the lack of funding in research and the lack of funding that comes from the federal government because of its inability to prioritize.

One of our biggest problems in actually keeping people here is that funding is not available in many cases. Institutions are trying to make ends meet with whatever little funding they have. Some of the biggest research organizations south of the border continue to recruit the talent that exists in this country. They bring them down to the U.S. to work there, pay them well, and obviously give them the research budgets they require to do their research.

That provides an enormous amount of burden with regard to current research budgets within the University of Alberta, for example, that are difficult to meet. As well we have to factor in the element of competition. Nowadays people tell me all the time, especially as I said with respect to the University of Alberta, that they have to deal with bigger institutions, bigger research budgets and the biggest competitors to the south of us. It is very difficult to retain people in this country.

I met with the dean of science at the University of Alberta. I remember specifically his telling me that with the increased research funding outlined in the new advisory board there needs to be a level of tax relief. That was very interesting, coming from the academic community. The official opposition continues to try to convince the government that there has to be a balance in tax relief in the equation of increased spending.

It was fascinating that even the academic community, along with increasing areas of research funding, identified the fact that keeping taxes at a competitive level or keeping taxes lower would actually help to retain many of the talented people leaving to go south of the border. When identifying the issue of brain drain, especially in medical research, the dean mentioned that on occasion he had recruited potential students in his office when dealing with budget issues.

One student had been at the University of Alberta for only two years. The issue of research funding was not the only issue, but when the student came into the office to talk to Dean Peter he produced two forms of budgets and two forms of balance sheets. One dealt with what he would end up at the end of the day in Canada and the other with what he would end up if he went to the U.S. He balanced the issue of how much money the particular institution had to do its research, but because of high taxes, because of the exchange rate and because of many other factors which unfortunately make us less competitive in this country, it was much more enticing for him, as much as he wanted to stay in this country, to go elsewhere, and unfortunately south of the border was where he was looking.

Even a member of the academic community called me to say we in the House have a responsibility not only to look at increasing funding research in this country but at balancing it with tax relief.

There are potential benefits to the particular legislation and establishing the CIHR. There are many good parts to the bill. It appears to be an excellent model of an institute which will remain at arm's length of the federal government and conduct research independent of the government. I think that is very important.

The consultation process for appointments will draw leading experts from conceivable fields of expertise. This should reduce the influence of high ranking government officials and people who are actually suited to do the job. However, these and all the details I mentioned can be addressed before committee when the bill reaches that stage. There is a strong need to consult the scientific and health communities for input on the direction of the CIHR.

Even though we are supporting the legislation we hope that it will be given the right attention in committee where we can make further suggestions on how to make it a useful institution.

[The Environment, November 19th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, it is obvious that the environment minister does not want to listen to the facts. It is obvious that he is just paying patronage to his own previous deputy minister while he was the Minister of Transport. It is obvious that this is a registered lobbyist of Environment Canada, the DFO and the agency panel for which he is the chair.

Under the law, as I mentioned, the minister has an obligation to appoint only panel members who are unbiased and free from any conflict of interest. It is obvious that the ethics commissioner of Ontario and the attorney general are investigating Mr. Mulder. Even the member for Stoney Creek, in his own senior level, has called for the minister—

[The Environment, November 19th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the environment minister denied that Nick Mulder, whom he appointed chair of the environmental review panel for a Hamilton area expressway, is in a conflict of interest. Mr. Mulder is a registered lobbyist for Environment Canada, DFO, and the agency for the panel of which he is the chair.

Under law the minister has an obligation to appoint only panel members who are unbiased and free from any conflict of interest. The ethics commissioner and Ontario's attorney general are now investigating Mr. Mulder. Why will the minister not remove Mr. Mulder from this review panel?

[The Environment, November 17th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, two weeks ago the member for Stoney Creek, who is also chair of the Liberal's economic development committee, publicly called on the government to remove Nick Mulder from the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency's Red Hill Creek review panel. In a November 4 letter he wrote “It appears Mr. Mulder is simultaneously serving as a lobbyist to CEAA and performing contract services for the same agency”.

Why has the government not taken any action in response to serious allegations made by one of its own senior members?

[The Environment, October 26th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, we still have not heard from the minister on the government's position on the UN imposed emission targets.

All we have heard is that the minister will either throw Canadians out of their cars with a gas tax or out of their jobs with a carbon tax.

Will the minister end the mystery today and table the government's proposal to meet the Kyoto emission targets?

[The Environment, October 26th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, we are only a week away from the sixth conference on the Kyoto agreement, and Canadians still do not know how the government plans to meet the UN imposed emission targets. The only thing Canadians have heard from the government on global warming is that it does not like sport utility vehicles or flatulent livestock.

Does the minister plan to break the promise made by the Prime Minister that there will be no new taxes to meet his Kyoto targets?

[The Environment, October 26th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the environment minister may be proud of his green thumb but it is his iron fist that Canadians are worried about.

After his ridiculous statements about the special tax on sport utility vehicles, the minister is now worried about emissions from cows and pigs. That is right. Just when we thought the junk science on global warming could not get any more weird, it just has. Now the ranchers and farmers who raise our tasty four-legged friends are the new environmental villains.

This brings a completely new dimension to the Liberal gas tax proposal. Will the minister introduce an anti-flatulence tax, a dollar for every animal that passes wind?

If the minister is concerned about the global warming myth, I have some advice. Tell his Liberal caucus not to exhale.

[Division No. 6, October 20th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I know my time is very limited, given that we have pulled time allocation on this particular debate, but I want to address the bill very quickly.

The official opposition is supporting the bill, as was mentioned by my colleague from Peace River. My colleague from Essex earlier stood to talk about the merits of the bill. However, she did say that the bill was far from perfect, although a number of amendments put forward by the government would bring it closer. I would argue that if the government chose to support the amendments put forward by the official opposition, the bill would be even closer to being perfect.

I encourage my colleagues opposite to support the motions. I will read them into the record. They are Motions Nos. 11, 14, 18, 19, 21 and 22.

Sitting through the industry committee hearings during the last session I had the time to hear from many different witnesses, a number of whom were from the health care profession. Some of them were health care service providers who had a lot of concern about privacy when it comes to the transfer of documents, especially documents of a personal nature pertaining to health care.

Because I do not have time to expand on the motions, I want to read a quick summary of what the motions deal with, especially in the case of pertinent health care documentation.

The proposed amendments should require organizations to obtain an individual's fully informed and express consent before using personal health information for a new purpose that is substantially different from the purpose for which the information was originally collected.

The Liberals may argue that this protection already exists in the legislation, but our goal is to strengthen the legislation, with respect to health information in particular.

This is not to come into conflict with the fact that health care is a provincial domain, but just to set the tone in order to strengthen information pertaining to health care and the privacy issues surrounding that particular information.

The proposed amendments would also require that any—

[Personal Information Protection And Electronic Documents Act, October 19th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I am happy to speak to this bill, now called Bill C-6. In our last session before we rose for the summer this bill was Bill C-54.

As the previous industry critic, I spent a lot of time on this bill in committee and also talking to industry and other members of the public especially involved in privacy issues. I am happy to be able to speak to it today.

I also want to note that my colleague from Peace River, who is now the industry critic and I think well deservedly, will do an excellent job of representing the Reform Party on industry issues. I want to congratulate him on all the hard work he did in his prior post of international trade. I look forward to working closely with him as we continue down the road of creating a legal framework around electronic commerce.

I had many concerns, as does the Bloc, on this issue, especially on the issue of jurisdiction and how privacy specifically falls under the provincial jurisdiction of powers. Through my discussions in committee and with people in Alberta, I have come to realize that maybe there is not the conflict that the Bloc identifies on these issues.

As I speak on the motions in Group No. 1, I want to clarify that we are opposed to the Bloc motions in this group. We do in fact support the direction of the government on this legislation. My colleague from Peace River will reiterate that as we move to Group No. 2.

To summarize specifically what this bill is trying to accomplish, Bill C-6 creates a legal and regulatory framework that will be applied to the commercial use of sensitive and private information in all areas of business. Reform supports this initiative to protect privacy. Reform supports limited government and free enterprise, but recognizes the important role of government in creating an economic climate in Canada with fair and transparent rules that protect both consumers and businesses.

This is also exactly where my second concern came up during the course of dealing with this legislation, especially in committee. Is the government in creating this legal framework and formulating this legislation going to be too heavy handed on the businesses that are engaging in electronic commerce and respecting privacy currently, thereby actually putting a disincentive on industry to continue with the work it has done to allow electronic commerce to flourish in this country?

This is where we have to separate the two areas of privacy and electronic commerce. Often that gets confusing because both are very important. They have to be treated as equally important, but there are distinct differences between electronic commerce and privacy.

One of things brought to my attention while sitting on the committee was that if one looks at how electronic commerce has developed and begun to flourish, a lot of this has been done with relatively no government intervention until now. Over $1 billion of trade is being done through electronic commerce, whether it is through the Internet or other forms of electronic commerce. This consumer confidence in electronic commerce has begun with almost entirely no government intervention, which is quite phenomenal if one thinks about it.

That is one of the reasons we have to be very concerned, as I mentioned, about being too heavy handed on industries as we develop legislation that tries to encourage electronic commerce to continue. This was one of the points I tried to bring up in committee.

As I said, one of the things we cannot take lightly is the issue of privacy. Some of the companies that have been doing business on the Internet have taken privacy very seriously. That is why customers, consumers who are currently engaging in trade on the Internet, feel confident enough to disclose information on the Internet and purchase services and goods. That is a positive thing because obviously industry is doing its part.

Privacy extends far beyond the provincial jurisdiction, particularly when one starts to use mechanisms of trade that go beyond the national scope and into a global scope. Therefore, there needs to be some sort of legal framework in place which shows that Canada has certain standards when it comes to privacy that the rest of the world has to take seriously.

This is why I would like to share with my dear colleagues in the Bloc Quebecois my opinions and those of my party with respect personal information.

The provincial and federal governments should work together in this area and share responsibilities, because e-commerce is not limited to the provinces, it goes beyond provincial and national borders. It is truly a global matter.

That is the reason I wanted to bring it up specifically in my meetings with the privacy commissioner in Alberta. The Bloc had concerns with how this federal legislation would combine its resources provincially.

The privacy commissioner in Alberta stated that this fall the government is going to be coming up with legislation that is going to deal specifically with strengthening privacy legislation in Alberta. It feels that in doing so it is going to be complementary with the scope of the federal government. The federal government has outlined that once this legislation passes, it will allow a window of three years for provinces that currently do not have privacy legislation to put privacy legislation in place and make it as strong as the provinces wish. The federal government will work with the provinces to respect that.

Even if there is provincial legislation that is stronger in certain aspects of privacy than the federal legislation, it will take precedence over the federal legislation. This is actually encouraged by the federal government which often does not respect much provincial jurisdiction, but in this case there is a bigger scope and I commend the minister on this.

That is where we have to try to focus specifically on this issue. I encourage my colleagues from the Bloc to look at this because if there are strong privacy laws, and I know Quebec is very proud of its current privacy legislation, it will be complementary to the federal legislation. This is one of the big reasons that the Reform Party supports this. Even in Alberta we have the privacy commissioner and others involved with this particular legislation who say it is going in the right direction and we should support it in its current form.

When I spoke about other groups that are looking at this legislation, whether it is industry groups or privacy groups, the general consensus is that there has been a balance reached so far, especially through our deliberations in committee and through the amendments that have been proposed in the House here today. There is balance so far in taking seriously privacy concerns and those of electronic commerce. The focus has to be not so heavy handed. The Reform Party will support this legislation, until we see that the government is turning its tide and becoming too heavy handed in the process.

I will not speak to the Group No. 2 motions yet but we hope at this report stage the government will consider some of the things the Reform Party has put forward when it comes to amending the privacy area especially in the areas of health services and health information. I think most Canadians agree that is very important information and should be treated as such.

I am hoping the amendments I have put forward on behalf of the Reform caucus will be taken seriously. Now that I will be working with my colleague from Peace River we hope we will be taken seriously because we would like to see that area of privacy strengthened.

Bill C-6 includes a two year phase-in timetable after which those provinces that do not have comparable legislation would fall under the federal legislation. Currently only Quebec has this kind of comprehensive privacy protection. Alberta will be coming on board this fall. Other provinces have determined that they neither have the resources nor the inclination to create their own provincial privacy protection legislation and prefer that this be included under the broad federal legislation. The Bloc would like total exemption for any province that has or creates privacy legislation. Under this legislation that concern is taken care of.

The difficulty with provincial privacy protection legislation is that for international and interprovincial trade purposes there should be a national standard for privacy protection. Canadian businesses have asked for this in order to simplify trade rules.

Those are the most important points to mention during this debate on the Group No. 1 motions. We are not really opposed to the fact that there needs to be a balance. This legislation is achieving that. But we need to keep our minds open to look at electronic commerce in a global perspective and see how legislation can be created that works positively with the provinces. This legislation does this and I would encourage my colleagues from the Bloc to consider that and look at ways to strengthen that relationship, especially when it comes to electronic commerce.