Pauline Picard

[Social Program Reform, November 16th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, a study commissioned by the Quebec health and social service council shows that the past four years have been particularly hard economic times for Canadians. Everyone suffered from the recession, but the hardest hit were the disadvantaged who were unable to re-enter the labour force.

Commenting on the social reform and emphasizing the fiscal restraints imposed by governments, Pierre Fortin, an economist, sums up the situation as follows: "There is no need to turn everything upside down on account of a temporary slump. The danger is that a system that our parents and grandparents took 40 years to build will be destroyed".

We must not do away with our social security system at the first sign of trouble. In such circumstances, the role of government must be to help the disadvantaged, not to crush them.

[Patent Drugs, November 15th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, obviously, the Minister of Health was instructed not to make her position known, but I want to remind her that she cannot negate her responsibility concerning the certification of new drugs.

Does the minister realize that her refusal to take position on the issue of patent drugs intensifies the climate of uncertainty and implicitly encourages those who do not want protection for new drugs.

[Patent Drugs, November 15th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Health. Yesterday, I asked the minister what her position is regarding the revision of Bill C-91 on the protection of patent drugs, but she let the Minister of Industry sweet-talk us and repeat that Bill C-91 contains a review provision which will come into effect at a given time.

What we want to know of the minister who is still responsible for health is wether she is in favour of the existing protection for patent drugs or whether she advocates a change in regulations as several of her Ontario colleagues do. We want to know what she thinks as Minister of Health.

[Patent Drugs, November 14th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Health. The minister has not yet made her intentions known regarding the Patent Act, following the statements made by some members of her caucus who want to change the regulations pertaining to Bill C-91 at the expense of brand name pharmaceutical companies.

Can the minister tell us whether she is in favour of the existing legislation remaining unchanged or whether she advocates a change in regulations along the lines of what her Liberal colleagues are calling for?

[Decade Of The Brain Act, November 14th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I rise in the House today to support Bill C-239, the Decade of the Brain Act, introduced by the hon. member for London West.

The human brain, a mass weighing more than one kilogram and essentially consisting of nerve cells that control our emotions, reactions and activities, is one of the most impressive and mysterious wonders of creation. This seat of human intelligence, which enables us to control our movements, interpret our senses and interact with our environment, continues to intrigue researchers and scientists throughout the world.

In recent years, science has made it possible to clarify certain aspects of the human brain, but too many questions still remain. How does the brain function? By what is it affected? How can we prevent its degeneration? The rise in diseases related to disorders of the brain means that increasing our knowledge in this field is no longer an option but a necessity and also one of the greatest scientific challenges of our time.

Japan was the first country to launch a scientific program in 1987 to maximize the effectiveness of neurological research. Three years later, the Americans proclaimed the nineties as the decade of the brain and decided to set up a wide-ranging research program. The Europeans followed suit in 1992.

The purpose of Bill C-239 is therefore to ask Parliament to follow the example of other western countries and to declare this decade the decade of the brain and, at the same time, support and recognize the importance of research in this field.

The brain is the seat of many neurodegenerative disorders and diseases like Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's, of mental health problems like schizophrenia, emotional disorders, drug addiction and neurological disorders such as learning disabilities.

Canadians suffer from a wide range of neurological diseases. In 1989, the Canadian Neurological Coalition sponsored a ten-year retrospective survey of the frequency of neurological diseases in Canada. The results of this survey are disturbing: it was found that more than one Canadian out of six is affected by some mental disorder.

Our mental health is a very fragile thing and over a lifetime, a number of emotional problems may affect its delicate balance. We may experience a divorce, the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job, poverty, drug addiction, alcoholism or stress, and one morning we get up and we are in poor mental health. The balance is upset. The very strong are able to overcome such problems but others are not.

More than 50,000 Canadians today are also suffering from multiple sclerosis, the neurological disease most frequently found among young adults in Canada. Researchers have yet to find a way to treat this disease, and there is no explanation for the fact that Canada is one of the countries where the probability of getting this disease is particularly high.

There is also the problem of brain tumours. According to the Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada, brain tumours rank second as the cause of death in children under 14 and third as the cause of death in men between the ages of 15 and 34. The number of deaths caused by brain tumours increased 100 per cent between 1968 and 1987.

And what about Altzheimer's, a neurodegenerative disease that causes the irreversible destruction of brain cells and is one of the main causes of death among the elderly, although we now know it can strike at any age. Today, more than 250,000 Canadians are affected by Altzheimer's and related dementias, and it is estimated that 30 years from now, their number will reach 750,000 30 years from now.

In addition to the social impact, neurodegenerative diseases also have economic repercussions that cannot be ignored. We already invest substantial amounts of money in patient treatment and accommodation. As the number of individuals affected by this disease increases, long-term treatment will put an additional burden on health costs.

According to a study on health and aging in Canada, Canadians spend approximately $3.3 billion annually for the treatment of at least 150,000 people with Alzheimer disease in long-term health care facilities. This figure does not include the costs to families caring for afflicted relatives at home.

It is clear that diseases of the brain, including mental illness, degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and stroke are very costly. By making the public aware of disorders and disabilities of the brain, we will be encouraging increased support for research in this field, and thus stretching our health care dollars.

The decade of the brain has already begun. As I have already mentioned, Europe and the United States have proclaimed the 1990s the decade of the brain, and a number of research centres in Quebec and in Canada are already on board.

The Montreal Neurological Institute will be playing a major role in the upsurge in research resulting from the proclamation of the decade of the brain in the United States, decreed by President Bush in 1990. The Neurological Institute, an affiliate of McGill University, with about sixty professors, neurologists, computer scientists, students and other researchers, is participating in one of the most ambitious projects to come out of the decade of the brain: the creation of a computerized atlas of the most complex organ in the human body, the brain.

This project to map the brain is part of an extensive program being carried out by a large consortium of research centres, co-ordinated by the National Institute of Mental Health in the United States and funded by eleven American agencies. The Montreal Neurological Institute, which is a member of this consortium, is the only non-American institution to take part in this important project, an indication of its reputation.

The Montreal Neurological Institute and its McConnell Centre have become leaders, possibly world leaders, in the field of brain mapping. Although we must recognize their excellent research and their contribution to medical research in Quebec and Canada, we must regret that this work is largely supervised and financed by foreign interests.

In medical and pharmaceutical research, Quebec and Canada have the ability to excel and be leaders and, for that, we must continue to promote research and development. Proclaiming the 1990s the Decade of the Brain would be major support, since it would make Canadians and governments aware of investment in prevention, research, treatment and rehabilitation for those who suffer from various diseases of the brain.

Today, millions of Quebecers and Canadians and their families have the right to hope that science will elucidate the mysteries of the human brain. Following recent discoveries in genetics, with research and exhaustive studies compiled over many decades and extremely sophisticated medical equipment, scientists are about to penetrate one of the most closely guarded secrets of our civilization.

The impact of such a discovery is incalculable. Not only would it help to finally find a cure for the terrible mental illnesses that ravage our society but it would also make it possible to take a new approach and even cure certain disorders, like phobias, addiction and even violent behaviour.

While we support research and wait for further discoveries, we must propose effective prevention programs. We must always keep in mind that as our health care system and its funding are restructured, we must adopt an approach based more on prevention and education.

As health critic of the Official Opposition and as a member of the Bloc Quebecois, I am pleased to support Bill C-239 and to ask this Parliament to proclaim the 1990s the Decade of the Brain.

[Remembrance Day, November 3rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, filled with pride but also with sorrow, we wish to draw the attention of the House today to the tremendous contribution made by women to the war effort during World War I and, more significantly, between 1939 and 1945.

We take pride in the fact that women participated on all fronts and that their contribution was useful, effective and necessary. We feel sorrow for all the suffering, for the loved ones they and their children mourned, for lives that were disrupted and cut short. We also want to voice our hopes.

Like the World Health Organization that supports the elimination of nuclear arms, Canadian and Quebec women want a world free of all wars and hostility and hope other ways will be found to resolve conflicts. They want peace.

[Unemployment Insurance Act, November 2nd, 1994]

As you know, Mr. Speaker, the purpose of this bill is to repeal section 3(2)( c ) of the Unemployment Insurance Act, which stipulates that employment where the employer and employee are not dealing with each other at arm's length is not insurable. The law is clear: Where the employer is related to the employee, he or she must prove that the job would have been given to an unrelated person in similar circumstances.

The vast majority of workers affected by this section of the Unemployment Insurance Act are women who work in a family business. For these women, the law is also unequivocal. Women who work for their spouses must pay unemployment insurance premiums. This is also true for employees who are not dealing at arm's length with their employer and who hold 40 per cent or less of the family business shares.

Since the act was brought into force in October 1990, the Department of Human Resources Development, which is responsible for the administration and the application of the Unemployment Insurance Act, increasingly refuses to pay unemployment insurance benefits to these people.

The Bloc Quebecois denounces such an attitude stemming from the retrograde section 3(2)( c ) of the Unemployment Insurance Act. Yes, Mr. Speaker, this section is retrograde and even discriminatory, since its main effect is to systematically exclude from the unemployment insurance program women who work for their spouses.

The argument most often put forward to prove that the employment is not insurable in the case of women working for their spouses is this: The employer and employee are not dealing with each other at arm's length, hence there is no employer-employee relation. When examining the claims of these women, Revenue Canada may carry out all inquiries it deems appropriate at the workplace, including financial statements audit, analysis of bank statements, and study of the work organization in the plant or the office.

In fact, the department is not seeking to establish eligibility but to prove fraud. I support Bill C-218 put forward by my colleague from Saint-Hubert to repeal this antiquated provision of the Unemployment Insurance Act that is so unfair to a certain category of women. There are 650,000 women in this situation. If they lost their job, these employees who work in a business controlled by their spouse, these workers described as wife associates, would not be eligible for unemployment insurance benefits because of their status.

Again, wife associates represent the vast majority of exclusions under section 3(2)( c ) of the existing legislation, which deprives women of their right to equality in matters related to unemployment insurance. In general, these women perform administrative duties in a family business, whether it is a farm or any other type of small business.

They perform duties such as billing and accounting and respond to requests from suppliers and clients. A family business, like any other type of business, can experience serious financial difficulties. The wife associate can be laid off and stop receiving a salary. We think that, since she contributed to the unemployment insurance program, it would be quite normal that she be eligible for benefits.

This injustice toward women is particularly obvious in agriculture. In 1988, 6,066 Quebec women had titles of ownership in a farming enterprise. In 1993 their number had almost doubled. For their work on the farm, 43 per cent of respondents to a survey say that they are paid, either through a salary or through profit sharing or through investments made in their name.

The survey also shows that 33 per cent of those women earn off-farm revenues. Obviously, women with such earnings make a large contribution to the operation of the family farm. What, then is the difference between women who earn their living in the family business and those who do so elsewhere?

Both groups of women are equally dependent on the farm and pay UI premiums, but their status is different when they become unemployed. Again, that is blatantly unfair to a group of working women.

It is not a matter of whether a wife is dependent on her husband. In any normal couple, the wife is no more dependent on her husband than he is on her. It is a matter of being fair to a group of working women. That is why we support Bill C-218, which proposes that section 3(2)(c) of the Unemployment Insurance Act be repealed. The Bloc Quebecois refuses to wait, as was suggested at first reading, for the Liberal comprehensive reform of social programs, a reform that will never achieve national consensus in any case. I urge all the women in the House, including those in the Liberal government, to support this bill.

[Safety Of Blood Supply, October 27th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Health. Mr. Justice Krever will give groups represented before the commission only ten days to formulate comments and make recommendations and only two days to question the experts, after the report on the blood supply system is tabled.

In the public interest and in order to give groups represented before the Krever Commission a chance to give this report some careful study, will the minister agree to ask Mr. Justice Krever to give the groups more time to look at the details of the report?

[Department Of Canadian Heritage Act, October 26th, 1994]

These are the questions that Quebekers ask themselves and which they will soon be able to answer, among others, during a referendum on Quebec's political future.

In the meantime, the government could have made the best of it and done something significant to prove its good faith concerning what it calls national reconciliation. For all provinces and especially Quebec, jurisdiction over cultural matters is of the utmost importance. Their numerous demands in that sense have always been rejected. For sure, the goal here is not only to put an end to the waste generated by overlap, but also to ensure cultural survival and development. And judging by this bill, the government apparently failed to understand this.

Last week, the finance minister said that we were in hock and that we could not go on like this. According to him, the economic situation of this country is unbearable. One reason for this unbearable situation remains that the Canadian government uses its spending power indiscriminately in areas under provincial jurisdiction. It insists on controlling everything whatever the cost. Well, the cost is unbearable. This is what we have been saying in this House, but to no avail.

With the government threatening to cut social programs by several billion dollars, what is even more unbearable is that the Canadian government has clearly indicated in Bill C-53 that it wishes to impinge on yet another provincial jurisdiction and to ignore every primary rule of productivity and overspend. This is why this bill also appears unbearable to me.

[Department Of Canadian Heritage Act, October 26th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the government is introducing for second reading Bill C-53, an Act to establish the Department of Canadian Heritage and to amend and repeal certain other Acts.

The purpose of this bill is to give legal form to proposals of the previous Conservative government to merge several departments. This exercise is presented as a political and economic measure, that of reducing the size of the Cabinet.

At first glance, one might agree with the economic arguments for this operation. By merging a number of governmental responsibilities and activities, with a view to streamlining operations, we could achieve some savings. However, to do that, the government would have had to limit itself to the mere merging, in one single department, of services scattered in different departments. The government would have had to take this opportunity to do the necessary house cleaning and to streamline its operations while looking for duplication of responsibilities with the provinces.

It did not do that. In this bill, much praised for its economic virtues, streamlining takes a back seat compared to the reaffirmed will to occupy fields of jurisdiction which constitutionally belong to the provinces.

In the area of culture, in particular, the government had a good opportunity to satisfy its stated economic interest while giving Quebec something it had been claiming for years under the Constitution. Unfortunately, it does nothing of the kind, and instead, maintains duplication and overlapping with programs the objectives of which are short-circuiting those of similar provincial programs.

All this at a time when neither Quebec society nor Canadian society can afford such counterproductive and expensive interventions. This operation, which could have been economically rational, is anything but. It perpetuates one of the economic flaws of federalism through continued spending in a field of jurisdiction which is not federal.

With respect to this bill, had the government not wanted to listen to economic reason, it could at least have listened to its own Constitution. In 1867, the Canadian Constitution gave authority to the provinces in the areas of communications and cultural matters. The Constitutional Act of 1867 gave the provinces jurisdiction over all private and local matters and recognized Quebec civil law. Education, which is closely connected with culture, was recognized as a provincial field of jurisdiction.

Section 40 of the Constitution, which was unilaterally patriated in 1982, states that when an amendment is made regarding education or other cultural matters, Canada shall provide reasonable compensation to any province to which the amendment does not apply.

In fact, the constitutional acts are clear and give the provinces exclusive legislative powers over cultural matters. Had it not been for the spending power of the federal government, we would not be witnessing today this futile fight, the main victim of which is the specific cultural identity of Quebec.

With this bill, once again, the federal government fails to recognize the cultural reality of Quebec as a distinct society having, as its main characteristic, its language, which it inherited from one of the two founding nations of Canada.

Instead of recognizing Quebec's cultural reality and taking appropriate action, this bill reflects a pan-Canadian cultural identity based on the theory of a bilingual and multicultural society. The federal government is feeding utopian views which pose a real threat to Quebec from a cultural and linguistic point of view. Bilingualism, in particular, is utopian.

Every report, every study has come to the same conclusion: the use of French in Canada has not improved, quite the opposite. As a journalist, Michel Vastel, so rightly put it, the use of French in everyday life never spread even here in Ottawa, the capital of an officially bilingual country. Twenty-five years after the Official Languages Act was passed, we are still waiting for French to take its place in the sun, beyond mere use in legislation, whether it be in day care centres, at school board meetings, in movie theatres, in hospitals, or in banks.

Sixteen years after moving here, in an article published in the magazine L'Actualité , Michel Vastel sums up his experience of bilingualism in the nation's capital, by stating: ``In Ottawa, only in public buildings will you find the illusion that the two languages are equal. Beyond this facade, Ottawa is like any small, unilingual city in Ontario. Here, people leave French at home''.

This is just one testimony among many that will certainly leave many of my colleagues sceptical. Unfortunately, all the reports tabled by the Commissioner of Official Languages are packed full of such examples which tend to indicate, if one were to read between the lines, that outside our main institutions, bilingualism is still sheer utopianism.

The province of Quebec has realized that bilingualism does not help to preserve and promote its cultural identity. However, Quebec still provides, in many areas, exemplary services to its English-speaking minority. As a French society completely surrounded by the English culture, Quebec has the duty and the historical responsibility to preserve its cultural identity, its distinct identity.

Why not stop beating around the bush and provide the province of Quebec with what the Fathers of Confederation set aside for this province in 1867? Why does the federal government show such sterile and costly stubbornness when it comes to historical demands unanimously approved by every successive Quebec government for decades now, regardless of their political allegiance? For what economic or social reason has the government refused, during constitutional negotiations and again today in this bill, to give Quebec complete jurisdiction over cultural matters?

Mr. Speaker, will you let me finish my speech? It will take me perhaps five more minutes.