Pauline Picard

[Supply, April 29th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I would say this to the Reform member: When you are out to protect victims, you make sure you have the best means of protecting them, and the best way of protecting them is prevention. To my way of thinking, protection outweighs cure.

Reform members opposed the bill on gun control, which, to my mind, is not the way to prevent violence.

[Supply, April 29th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the Quebec Crime Victims Compensation Act provides for a plan to compensate injured victims of crimes. Compensation is also provided for families of individuals killed. This legislation does not prevent civil law suits against an assailant for material damages or bodily harm.

It meets the objectives for compensation of victims of crime, particularly because requests for compensation are examined by a commission for victims of crime, which ensures that victims receive sufficient, just and equitable compensation. This is the effect of this law.

[Supply, April 29th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I think that our colleague from the Reform Party is mixing apples and oranges. Nobody is trying to drag sovereignty into this motion. As I said earlier, the Bloc Quebecois is clearly in favour of protecting and compensating victims of crime.

What we are saying is that the administration of justice comes under the exclusive jurisdiction of the provinces. I will tell him again why that is so. This area of jurisdiction cannot come under the federal authority over criminal law set out in section 91 (27) of the Constitution Act. It comes instead under property and civil rights, which are under provincial jurisdiction, pursuant to section 92 (13) of the Constitution.

[Supply, April 29th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to take part in the debate on this motion. It asks the government to direct the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs to draft a victims' bill of rights. If the committee determines a right to be a provincial concern, the Minister of Justice would have to initiate consultations to establish a national standard.

The Bloc cannot join the Reform Party in supporting this motion, and I will explain why. However, I would first like to make it very clear that the Bloc Quebecois supports the protection and compensation of victims of criminal acts. This is basic, as my colleague for Portneuf pointed out. However, victim compensation is clearly a matter for the provinces, and the federal government has no reason to get involved in this area of provincial jurisdiction.

This right is a matter for provincial administration of justice. In fact, this cannot be a matter of federal criminal law under section 91(27) of the Constitution Act. It in fact comes under provincial property and civil rights under section 92(13) of the Constitution. I think this is clear.

Therefore national standards in this area would be a flagrant encroachment on areas of exclusive provincial jurisdiction. Twice the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the court of final appeal before its abolition in 1949, recognized the jurisdiction of the provinces over matters of victim compensation.

First, in 1920, in the matter of the Canadian Pacific and the British Columbia Workmen's Compensation Board, the Privy Council recognized that, in the case of victim compensation, even if the company involved were under federal jurisdiction, section 92(13) of the Constitution Act applied. This too is clear. The court concluded that the laws of British Columbia applied in the case of victim compensation.

In another ruling in 1937, in the Reference on Unemployment Insurance , the Privy Council reaffirmed exclusive provincial jurisdiction over compensation of victims. Clearly, from these rulings, compensation of victims is a provincial matter. Accordingly the motion by the Reform Party directly contravenes their party policy, which advocates greater decentralization of the federal system and full respect of exclusive provincial jurisdiction.

It is surprising as well to see the Reform Party defending victims' rights, when it voted against the bill on gun registration.

The Bloc believes that prevention is the best way to protect victims. In other words, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, as everybody knows.

With its contradictory positions, the Reform Party is revealing the inconsistency of its policy on crime.

You cannot properly defend the rights of victims when you refuse to prevent crime by voting against the mandatory registration of guns, a measure aimed at preventing an increase in violent crime.

Another reason this motion must be rejected has to do with the throne speech. Following the throne speech, the Liberal government made a commitment to stop spending and encroaching on areas under the jurisdiction of the provinces without their approval. Accordingly, before the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs is asked to consider the matter, the approval of the provinces would have to be sought. It would in all likelihood be denied by most of them.

Quebec is the leader with its Crime Victims Compensation Act. This legislation provides for a plan to compensate injured victims of crimes. Compensation is also provided for families of individuals killed. This legislation does not prevent civil law suits against an assailant for material damages or bodily harm.

This act fully meets the necessary objective of compensating the victims of criminal acts, especially since claims for compensation are examined by a commission which will ensure that the amount of compensation awarded is sufficient, fair and equitable.

The provinces have no need of the federal level to administer areas over which they have exclusive jurisdiction, particularly since Quebec's legislation on the treatment of offenders and victims is far more open and far less repressive than elsewhere in Canada. But when there is a desire to impose national standards, not only must the areas in which the standards are to be imposed come under federal jurisdiction, but also the government must have the necessary funds to invest in the undertaking.

At the present time, the federal government no longer has the financial capacity to invest in encroaching on areas of provincial jurisdiction. On the contrary, the financial hole the future generations will have to get themselves out of is due, in large part, to the massive federal invasion of areas that are the exclusive jurisdiction of the provinces.

The federal government has used its financial clout to impose national standards on the provinces by sharing program costs. This centralizing trend is running down at this time, simply because of the financial irresponsibility of the federal government, which has sought to add to its power by thumbing its nose at the division of powers imposed by the Canadian Constitution.

In conclusion, it is clear that the federal government has no place in the area of victim compensation. Federal invasion of this area would constitute an unacceptable encroachment into provincial jurisdictions and would run directly counter to the Liberal government's promises in the throne speech.

[Drummond's Economic Performance, April 24th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, a recent report by the Société de développement économique de Drummondville shows that, in 1995, our region broke industrial investment records, with the creation of 43 businesses for a total of 13,000 jobs.

These figures clearly highlight the entrepreneurial spirit of the industrial community in Drummond and result from the various local stakeholders' successful partnership to promote economic development.

I wish to point out that our region boasts the highest rate of entrepreneurship in Quebec, with 51 manufacturing businesses per 10,000 people, compared to 17 for all of Quebec. With a rate that is three times the provincial average, our region is more than ever Quebec's industrial heartland.

[Department Of Health Act, April 22nd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, we are here to discuss Bill C-18, not raw milk cheese. I think the hon. member is out of order.

[Earth Day, April 22nd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to point out that today is Earth Day, an event celebrated throughout the world and whose theme this year is health.

We have all learned at our expense that our health and that of our children are inextricably linked to the quality of the environment that surrounds us. Urban pollution, the presence of heavy metals in water and the thinning of the ozone layer are only a few of the problems that affect our lives.

We must all realize that government regulations, laws and policies alone will not ensure the sustainable development of our economy and of our society.

Each person, community and business must undergo a change of attitude in order to stop jeopardizing the health of future generations. Each has the means to act quickly. It is up to us to make good on our commitments.

[Department Of Health Act, April 22nd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. This is not the first discussion of duplication.

It is true, the Office des personnes handicapées du Québec is to be found in my riding. Rather than take into account what is

happening in each province and the programs each has set up, as I was mentioning earlier, the federal government steps up with its spending power and, in the name of good government, says: "There seems to be a problem with seniors-or with people who have a handicap". And it assuages its conscience by putting money into a program, setting up a program that already exists in some provinces.

Why not support the programs the provinces have already set up? The provinces know the health care requirements in each of their regions. After needs have been assessed, programs are set up to help people, with the help of experts in health care. Seeing that the program is running well, the government, as I mentioned earlier, injects money into the program to justify itself and to assuage its conscience.

And if it is such a good government, why does it not support these programs by paying subsidies instead of cutting transfer payments, instead of tightening things up, instead of dumping its deficit onto the provinces and cutting transfer payments?

[Department Of Health Act, April 22nd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his question.

We have reviewed the history of the national forum on health time and time again. Where does it fit in here? I see it as nothing more than smoke and mirrors.

At this time, and it can never be repeated too often, the provinces arre the ones managing health programs within their borders. As I have always said, I do not in any way question either the quality or the experience of the people on the national forum, but what use will their expertise be put to? There is not a single provincial representative on the forum.

All of the provinces are busy restructuring at this time. We can see that in Quebec, where the minister, Mr. Rochon, is in the process of reviewing and restructuring, with a view to managing the health system in a new way and to ensuring quality health care, while taking into consideration our aging population, technological innovation and drugs costs.

The provinces are the ones who know what their needs are. What can the national forum contribute in addition? Once again, the federal spending power is being used to start up new things, to waste time and money.

This is not the first time we in the Bloc Quebecois have said that the national forum on health is, in our opinion, just smoke and mirrors with which to convince the people of Quebec and of Canada that this is a good government.

[Department Of Health Act, April 22nd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be able to speak once again to Bill C-18, which was introduced as Bill C-95 before the recent prorogation of the Houses. The bill's purpose is mainly to establish the federal Department of Health. It also amends and repeals certain other acts.

Such a bill is absolutely unjustified. There is no reason to pass such a measure since health is exclusively a provincial jurisdiction. It is crystal clear in the very constitution the government wants to impose on Quebecers. I said it before, I say it again and I will go on saying so. It seems hard to understand, but health is an exclusive provincial jurisdiction.

With its spending power, the federal government retains the possibility of interfering in all areas of provincial jurisdiction as it pleases and without consideration for the distribution of powers guaranteed in the Constitution. To prove my point, I quote Alexander Galt, one of the Fathers of Confederation, who stated that the distribution of jurisdictions as described in the British North America Act of 1867 did not give provinces enough money to enable them to properly administer their areas of jurisdiction.

Alexander Galt's comments leave no doubt as to the initial intentions of the Fathers of Confederation as well as of another author of the 1867 act, who said that eventually the provinces would become nothing more than big municipalities under federal supervision and largely dependant on the central government.

It might be difficult for some to admit today that this might have been the goal of those who thought up the British North America Act. Difficult to believe that the act which gave birth to Canada provided, even at a very early stage, for an increased centralization of powers in Ottawa.

The point of my little aside was to show that, contrary to what some would have us believe, nothing has changed. We can see that the same centralized approach giving the present central government an overwhelming importance is permeating not the discourse, heaven forbid, but the actions of today's main federal leaders. The best example of this can be found in the health care area in which the federal government has continuously interfered in an increasingly more persistent way. Bill C-18 before us today is a case in point.

The Constitution Act gives the provinces general jurisdiction over health care by including generally all matters of a merely local or private nature in the province. Anyone can read this under subsection 92.16. Moreover, subsections 92.7, 92.13, and 92.16 of the same act give the provinces exclusive power over hospitals, the medical profession and the practice of medicine as well as health care in general in the province. I might add that this is an area of exclusive provincial jurisdiction because it pertains to property and civil rights.

Accordingly, it seems clear that health is under provincial, not federal jurisdiction. However, the federal government has been intruding in this area for many years now, and in various ways. The Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act, the Medical Care Act and, more recently, the Canada Health Act, which combines the other two and sets so-called national standards, show clearly what this federal government thinks about shared jurisdiction.

The will or temptation to intrude on health is not new. It goes back to the end of the second world war. The federal government

had taken over all main taxation areas to make sure it would control most of the taxes normally levied by the provinces.

At the end of the war, the federal government had a bright idea: instead of returning powers of taxation to the provinces, why not redistribute the money through grants subject to standards it would set. This was a clever way to intrude even more in aareas under provincial jurisdiction, at a time when it seemed that the Privy Council in London, which then played the role now assigned to the Supreme Court, wanted to limit the federal government's centralizing tendencies.

Since then, the federal government has been using established programs financing to transfer money to provinces for health and post-secondary education. The amounts given to provinces under that program are transferred partly in cash and partly in tax points.

Transfers were computed from expenditures for a base year, 1975-76, and were supposed to be indexed on the average GNP per capita over the last three years. Basically, since its implementation in 1977-78, established programs financing has been characterized by a unilateral partial withdrawal on the part of the federal government.

Implemented in 1977, the established programs financing structure has remained unchanged. However, for the last ten years or so, its intended rate of increase has not been respected. This is where the shortfall for provinces and Quebec in the area of health comes from. This is a good example of the damage that a government can do when it refuses to acknowledge that it cannot substitute itself to other levels of government everywhere.

In 1986, the federal government reduced the growth rate of transfers by 2 percentage points, which means that health expenditures had to grow 2 percentage points less than the GNP. That was the start of a long series of cuts in payments.

In 1989, there was another cut in the indexing factor of 1 percentage point, which meant that by now growth in health expenditures had to be 3 points below the growth of the GNP.

In 1990, Bill C-69 froze transfers at the 1989-90 level for an anticipated period of two years, regardless of inflation, when actual health costs were continuing to rise.

In 1991, the federal government announced that it was extending the freeze for another three years. During most of this sad period for health care, the opposition party was outraged. It clamoured that this could only lead to ruin for the heath care system. Yet, that same party, now the government, continues to weaken the system.

The result is that between 1977 and 1994, the federal contribution to health care went from 45.9 per cent to 33.7 per cent, a drop of 10.6 per cent that Quebec and the provinces had to deal with to the best of their abilities. Unfortunately, forecasts for 1997-98 indicate that the federal share will drop to 28.5 per cent.

Over the years, as Ottawa withdrew from health financing, it is almost $8 billion that Quebec alone did not get, that the Quebec government had to manage to find elsewhere. We can add to that amount the cuts expected in the Canada social transfer, that is $308 million for 1995-96 and more than $587 million in 1997-98.

According to a study by the C.D. Howe Institute, from 1988 to 1992, while spending for transfer payments remained unchanged, spending for other federal programs increased by 25.5 per cent. Consequently, cuts in health transfers to the provinces went to reduce the federal deficit. The federal government went on spending too much, while telling the provinces to tighten their belts.

The leeway the Canada social transfer is supposed to give is in fact nothing but an opportunity for Quebec and the provinces to decide for themselves where they will make cuts to make up for this unilateral withdrawal. That is the vision the present Liberal government has of decentralization. That is what it means when it talks about flexible federalism. Thanks, but no thanks. We are not interested.

Last Spring, the National Council of Welfare, an organization whose mandate is to advise the federal health minister, had this to say to the minister: "It would be extremely hypocritical to reduce contributions to the provinces while increasing the requirements they would have to meet". Yet, the National Council of Welfare is not known for its sovereignist leanings.

As I mentioned earlier, sections 92.7 and 92.16 of the British North America Act state that health and social services are exclusively under provincial jurisdiction. Yet, the federal government also has a health department.

Next year, it will cost taxpayers more than $1 billion, $1 billion wasted to do what the Government of Quebec and the governments of other Canadian provinces could very well do by themselves.

Moreover, this redundant department that employs more than 8,000 public servants allocates significant amounts for programs and projects that already exist in Quebec and in the other provinces. I can give you some examples from Quebec, where there is duplication in programs. Here are a few examples: the strategy for the integration of persons with disabilities, the family violence initiative, the new horizons program, the seniors secretariat, the program to reduce smoking, the anti-drug strategy, the strategy against AIDS, the pregnancy and child development program, the children's bureau, and so on.

It is this kind of duplication the federal government should have cut, instead of stubbornly trying to have its say in every area; the disastrous impact of this on government finances does not seem enough to make it face reality. It shifts the deficit onto the provinces by cutting transfer payments for health care, and people are paying the price.

There is another federal initiative shows the government's determination to meddle in health care without the provinces' consent: the national forum on health, aimed at taking a critical look at our health care system as a whole and proposing ways to compensate for the ever increasing costs in this area. According to several analysts, the federal government could even take this opportunity to tighten the criteria and requirements in the Canada Health Act. Moreover, every single province openly criticized the federal government's attitude, which in this instance is pushing aside those with legal jurisdiction over health matters.

In this regard, on September 27, 1994, the current Minister of Immigration told La Presse : ``The federal government's actions make no sense. How can it contemplate a review of health care plans without the participation of the provinces, which are responsible for providing services? This is clearly unacceptable''. I would be curious to hear the Minister of Immigration's current position on the national forum.

Another extremely wise comment on this Liberal government's failure to honour provincial areas of jurisdiction was made by Thérèse Lavoie-Roux, who, when she was still a member of the other place, asked why the provinces had not been invited to participate in the forum. "Are they not the main players in the area of health? Does the government leader think it is appropriate for the government to act unilaterally in an area that comes under provincial jurisdiction?"

Now, looking specifically at Bill C-18, it is clear that, instead of showing good faith by withdrawing from this area over which it has no jurisdiction, the federal government is doing its best to encroach little by little on provincial jurisdictions for its own benefit. This bill was not presented as a bombshell, as a megabill; it was presented to us as an innocuous and inconsequential bill, while in fact it is definitely not so.

Paragraph 4(1) sets out the powers, duties and functions of the health minister. It suggests that the powers, duties and functions of the minister extend to and include all matters over which Parliament has jurisdiction relating to the promotion and preservation of public health. There certainly is room for clarification here.

The following clauses are more subtle. Paragraph 4(2) lists particulars concerning the minister's powers, duties and functions, including the promotion and preservation of the physical, mental and social well-being of the people. The people in question are the people of Canada. This clause would give the federal government the authority and right to interfere in an area under exclusive provincial jurisdiction.

Paragraph 4(2) goes on to include the protection of the people against risks to health and the spread of diseases. There was nothing to that effect in the original act that Bill C-18 seeks to replace. This opens the door to the federal government stepping in to protect the health and ensure the safety of the people by invoking the national interest or peace, order and good government.

Paragraph (c) of the same clause provides that investigation and research into public health, including the monitoring of diseases, come under federal authority.

This creates a problem, since later on, in clause 12, it is stated that nothing in the act or the regulations authorizes the minister or any officer or employee of the department to exercise any jurisdiction or control over any health authority operating under the laws of any province.

How does the Department of Health intend to monitor diseases without having access to the necessary information? Under the Health Services and Social Services Act, health care institutions are governed by provincial legislation.

Is this a real problem? Does clause 12 adequately restrict federal involvement in the health care sector, or is it just a front to reassure the provinces, one that the federal government will easily remove at will, as it has done so effectively in recent years?

Clause 4 can certainly be interpreted in a very wide and generous way. We definitely have to wonder about the real meaning of this clause, which can be interpreted in several ways, and which may reflect a number of intentions.

It is typical of the federal government to use a seemingly simple and inoccuous bill to intrude on fields that come under provincial jurisdiction. However, nobody is gullible to the point of not seeing what is going on.

Bill C-18 is another typical example of the federal government's sneaky and quiet way of doing things, without making waves. It acts like this because it knows full well that no one agrees with its way of doing things in the health care sector. Instead of admitting that it is in the wrong and taking corrective action before it is too late, the federal government persists in a sneaky way, so that no one will realize what is going on until it is too late.

Clearly, federal interference in the health care sector has a very negative impact. It is also obvious that the federal government stubbornly refuses to recognize the fields that come under provincial authority and also continues to reduce transfers without

making national standards more flexible. We are headed towards the death of the health system as we know it.

No more sad claims that Canada holds the only insurance policy for a health system such as ours. Yes, we are proud of our health system; yes, we want to hang on to it and even to improve it; no, Canada is not an insurance policy for this system, far from it; and no, Quebec's sovereignty will not spell the end of our health system, quite the contrary.

The only real threat lies in the lack of vision of a federal government that no longer has the money to match its centralist ambitions and that should, as soon as possible, turn over full authority, including financial authority, in matters of health to the provinces, at least to those which have asked for it. The health of Canadians and Quebecers can only improve.

It goes without saying that for all these reasons, and for many others that I will raise at a later time, it is impossible for the Bloc Quebecois to support Bill C-18 in any way.