Peter Adams

[Petitions, May 19th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I must say, as a member of the House sitting here at the moment, I have not memorized the Standing Orders and I think it is important we know what Motion No. 52 is.

[Petitions, May 19th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to present two petitions from citizens of the Peterborough area who are concerned about kidney disease.

Over the years I have received tens of thousands of signatures of people who are concerned for those on dialysis and for those who have other kidney problems. They greatly appreciate the work being done by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the fine work being done by the Ottawa institute.

However they point out that kidney disease is a huge and growing problem in Canada and that real progress is being made in various ways of presenting and coping with kidney disease, in particular the development of the bio-artificial kidney.

The petitioners call upon Parliament to make research funding available to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research for the explicit purpose of conducting bio-artificial kidney research as an extension of the research being successfully conducted at several centres in the United States.

I have two more petitions. I want to thank, in particular, Ken Sharp of Peterborough who has spearheaded this movement to increase the emphasis on kidney research in Canada.

Ken has been on kidney dialysis all his adult life. For him, the bio-artificial kidney offers an opportunity for mobility and full living which is not possible on dialysis.

The petitioners call upon Parliament to support the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and have an institute for the explicit purpose of conducting bio-artificial kidney research as an extension of the research being successfully conducted at several centres in the United States.

[Employment Insurance, May 18th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I am here and pleased to answer questions on employment insurance, which is of great concern to the government. Matters such as this should be left to other forums.

I will repeat, EI has been improved by the government. The government, in the report that was tabled as recently as yesterday, makes even further improvements. We can be proud of what we have done and we continue to improve EI for the benefit of all Canadians.

[Employment Insurance, May 18th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the minister is very grateful to the subcommittee for its recommendations. It is very grateful to the Prime Minister's task force of Liberals who made similar recommendations.

As I mentioned, the department has tabled a report on this matter. That report is now available to all members of the House.

[Employment Insurance, May 18th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned, steps have been taken to make the fund more independent. Also, in the last budget an additional $300 million was applied in the general EI area. We now calculate the benefits on the best 14 weeks. It is much easier for workers on benefits to work without losing their benefits. We have extended the benefits in high EI areas where unemployment is over 10%.

[Employment Insurance, May 18th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the government has made considerable changes in EI, including changes in the independence of the commission. I believe a report was tabled yesterday in the House dealing with these matters.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, May 16th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I know my colleague is well informed about these things and I know he will have followed the 18th century and 19th century debates in legislatures across the country about public schools and universal education, and how important it was in those days, as the industrial revolution was moving along, to have an educated population that at least attended elementary school.

I am sure he is also familiar with the debates later on about whether high school should be universal. Now he is talking about early childhood development. In more than two out of three families in this country both parents work. Not just the care but the education which families in the past did is now a matter of public debate. Before elementary school existed it was assumed that families did this for their own children.

I hear him saying there should be choices for parents. I am not exactly sure what he means by that. In the elementary schools there are private options. In high schools there are private options. However we first put in place the public systems and we gave the parents choice through those public systems, through school boards and involvement in school boards, in the process of raising the taxes and actually spending the taxes.

Now he is talking about these children being denied full public early childhood education. It is not a matter of something in the future. It is already late that we as a society are doing this. I would like his comments on that. Would he in the 18th and 19th centuries have been arguing against public education, high school and elementary school, the way he is arguing now?

He talked about the gun registry and gun control. The total cost, as he knows, of all gun control, gun control at the borders and gun control on our streets over 10 years, is at $1 billion. The gun registry is one-twentieth of that. Does he think that that one-two thousandth of the federal budget was too much to give us the control over guns that we have at the present time?

[Hospice Peterborough, May 16th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, in some communities the hospice is a place. In Peterborough it is more than that. It is a group of people who work to enhance the comfort, dignity and quality of life of individuals and families living with or affected by a life-threatening illness or grief.

In the 15 years or so of its existence, Hospice Peterborough has trained over 800 people, of whom 300 ended up volunteering with the hospice. In a very real sense, these volunteers are Hospice Peterborough. I would suggest to members that palliative care volunteers are a very special group of volunteers. These are people who work with the dying and the bereaved in their own homes. As someone has said, “They care enough to connect, laugh and cry...to sit up all night, to gently hold a hand, to share their time and their essence”.

Their contributions to health care are tremendous but the humanity they bring to death and dying is worth even more.

I thank Hospice Peterborough.

[Message from the Senate, May 10th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I must repeat that Canada is one of the very few countries in the world to offer compassionate care benefits for workers. This is still a very new field and Canada is leading in it.

I am very sensitive to the ramifications of cases of compassionate care which could exist out there, but proper management requires that we run this program as we are doing now and that we assess it fully as we are doing now before making considerable changes to it.

The policy review is underway. It is dealing with a number of issues. As I mentioned, those issues include, and because of the work of this member, the range of family relationships including siblings currently recognized by the benefits.

[Message from the Senate, May 10th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to respond to the hon. member. I truly welcome the fact that he has asked for an adjournment debate on this issue. I have followed his interest in this particular matter, a matter that is of interest to all of us as members of Parliament who see these terrible personal situations from time to time.

I welcome the debate because it is important that members of the House and all Canadians understand the government's commitment to ensuring that Canadian workers are not forced to choose between their jobs and caring for their family during a serious medical crisis. That is why the compassionate care program was introduced. Let me remind members that our compassionate care benefit was introduced only last year to help Canadian workers face these tragic situations.

I have to emphasize that even though our program was introduced only last year, Canada is a leader in the international scene in the area of compassionate benefits.

While some countries have income support measures for these types of situations, most are restricted to parents caring for sick children. For example, Denmark and Portugal integrate the provision of income replacement for parents caring for seriously ill or sick children into broader regimes of sickness benefits.

Some jurisdictions in the United States offer unpaid leave to eligible workers, but no income support. The State of California offers six weeks of paid family leave insurance benefits under its state disability insurance. This paid leave is for individuals who take time off work to care for a seriously ill child, spouse, parent or domestic partner. It can also be used to bond with a new child, the equivalent of our EI parental benefits.

The vast majority of Canadians facing these types of crises are caring for a spouse, a parent or a child. These benefits ensure that eligible workers can take a temporary leave of absence from work to provide care or support to a gravely ill child, spouse or parent who has a significant risk of death.

The six weeks of benefits can be shared among family members and can be taken consecutively, concurrently or one week at a time by family members over a 26 week period. This is a flexible program. This provides families with greater choices that will contribute to the care and the quality of care for gravely ill Canadians. The six week benefit was found to represent a balanced approach that would meet the needs of Canadian families and establish a sound foundation for a compassionate care benefit.

An evaluation is being conducted this year. Part of this evaluation will include an assessment of the adequacy and scope of the benefits.

The member should also know that a policy review is now under way which will assess the benefit parameters in a comprehensive way, including the range of family relationships currently recognized under the benefit. The member's points and arguments will be taken into account in that review, which is taking place the year after the benefit was introduced, so it is not a long time. This would direct any program adjustments in the next few months.

Any amendment to the recognized relationships under the compassionate care benefit program is done through regulation. The process for regulatory change takes at least six months in a still new program.

The government is committed to remain a world leader in the area of compassionate care. It is a sound management practice to evaluate any program after a year or so. We have started a full evaluation of a program that has been in operation for a year. Amendments will be based upon that evaluation.