Peter Adams

[Health, March 7th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, when the results of election polls are published, the nature of the poll and its proponents have to be clearly stated. This gives Canadians a chance to assess the merits of the poll and the political bias of the pollsters. I believe there should be a similar rule for the publication of the results of research of all kinds, particularly health research.

If, for example, someone announces that research has shown that drinking beer is good for me, it is important that I know if the research was sponsored by a brewing company or someone else. If it was conducted by independent medical researchers, I can go on and drink beer with a clear conscience. If it was sponsored by a brewing company, it may still be pretty good news but I should take care to read the fine print about how the research was conducted.

Many medical and other scientific journals now require that the sponsors of research be clearly stated in any article that is published. Common sense suggests that this should be the case for all published results of research, especially health research. I urge that we move towards this as a standard practice, and I wish to thank Dick Jones for my fine Canada-Wales tie.

[The Budget, March 7th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I heard my colleague mention huge surpluses. Would he give us some indication of what he thinks these are? My sense is that the surpluses of recent years have been 3% or 4% at the very most. I do not think we have reached 5%.

How does the member think the government should be run? Should we try to run on a deficit? Should we aim for a balanced budget or should we aim for these tiny surpluses, a few per cent, so that we can deal with the debt?

As the member knows, the government's largest single payment in this budget, in the last budget and in the budget before, in times of very low interest, was the $35 billion payment on the debt. Where are these huge surpluses that he is talking about?

[Supply, February 22nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to what my colleague had to say. I share his concern about privacy, both personal privacy in a very general way and particularly, as he expressed it, privacy in this incredible technological age.

The hon. member mentioned miniaturization. The University of Alberta is the national centre for nanotechnology. People are working on their own advances in miniaturization, making things much smaller than they were, also providing our national centre expertise in how we deal with these matters.

In thinking of privacy, we can pass laws against this or that, but in the end we cannot put a bag over our head and in that way protect ourselves from advances in miniaturization and in nanotechnology, which goes on around the world.

In the end the only way we can deal with the privacy aspects of these stunning advances in technology is by having people on top of those advances. The 12 or 13 science foundations, which are the main focus of the motion, are our way of doing that. They are a way of implementing a long term, teaching and research project reaching out over eight or ten years, something that cannot be done within the lifetime of a government. Thereby the country and our citizens can be in a position to protect themselves properly from the dangers of technology, and take advantage of them.

I would urge my colleague to express his support for these foundations and to continue supporting the area of public policy which they represent, which is to keep Canada on the forefront of technology in the 21st century.

[Supply, February 22nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I heard the member say “let us have a look at the records”. There could not be anything more public than the records of these foundations. These are very sophisticated organizations working in a very sophisticated and important part of our society. They have websites which are the best in the country, designed by the best people in the country. My colleague can go and see every grant and he can see the administrative expenses and so on.

As my colleague has explained, these foundations regularly appear before parliamentary committees. Partly because, in my view, they understand that in this very fine way, as the Auditor General has quite rightly said, they do not have to report to Parliament, they go to great lengths to go to parliamentary committees. I would recommend to any member of the House to phone one of them and there will be a faster response than from any of our government departments, which are in theory fully responsible for this House.

I wanted to apologize for a mistake I made in my last intervention. I misspoke myself. I said that nobody on the Conservative side had defended this critical area of public policy. It truly is critical. People do remember the brain drain, but it is now a thing of the past. If Canada does not keep up and maintain its intellectual capacity we cannot keep up in the productivity race around the world. We have done so; there has been a revolution since these foundations.

My question to the member is this. I misspoke myself because one member of the Conservative Party, Preston Manning, was a big supporter of these things and the party over there kicked him out. Would my colleague not agree that Preston Manning was the last real defender on that side of this important area of public policy?

[Supply, February 22nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is very important to put this motion into context. The Conservative Party and its predecessors, the Alliance and the Reform Party, have consistently shown no interest in this area of public policy.

The member who just asked the question about the Trudeau Foundation illustrated that fact. This is not one of the foundations we are talking about. We are talking about the research capacity of the nation. In the mid-1990s, the brain drain, which we heard from that side and throughout all of the country, was a serious problem. Our level of productivity as a nation and the productivity of each individual Canadian was very low. The government of the day had to do something about it.

The party over there consistently, whenever lists of grants are produced from the granting councils, goes through the grants and criticizes them one after another despite the fact that they were allocated according to a peer review process. These foundations, not the foundation my colleague referred to, were set up to deal with that matter, to bring young Canadians back, scientists, teachers, and professionals, and to keep young Canadians in the country, and to raise the productivity of the nation. That has happened. A very large piece there was the long term effect of these foundations.

Ask the members, Mr. Speaker, I know you know some of them, whether any college or university in their ridings does not like and appreciate what the Canada Foundation for Innovation and these others foundations have done for them. They have done great things. They are accountable, as my colleague has said. I accept the fact these foundations are accountable. They are not technically accountable to Parliament, a very fine point, but they are fully accountable. Does she not agree they have done wonderful public work?

[Civil Marriage Act, February 21st, 2005]

Madam Speaker, this is a huge and complex program. We have, by the way, accepted that various aspects of it should be reviewed and they are being reviewed.

I want to remind the member of the initiatives that we have already accomplished. The maximum benefit period for EI, parental and maternity benefits was increased from six months to a year, as the member knows. The premium rate was decreased, as I described. To ensure that claimants can accept lower paying jobs without reducing the benefit amount to which they will be entitled, we made the small weeks provision a permanent and national feature of the program.

In addition, we increased the threshold from $150 to $225. We brought in the new six week compassionate care leave program. We introduced the two year pilot project providing five additional weeks of EI benefits to claimants in regions with high unemployment rates.

We will continue to review with interest the recommendations of the committees which I mentioned and the Prime Minister's task force, and we will report back to Parliament within the prescribed period of time.

[Civil Marriage Act, February 21st, 2005]

Madam Speaker, this government has a long history of ensuring that the employment insurance program remains responsive to the needs of all Canadians.

As the member knows, we are giving careful consideration and will respond to a variety of recommendations concerning the program. We have two reports from the standing committee on human resources, of which my colleague is a member, the report from the public accounts committee and the Prime Minister's task force on unemployment. We are looking at all those recommendations, which include the aspects of employment insurance that my colleague mentions.

We have in fact been reducing the premiums every year for 11 years. As a result, the premium rate dropped from $3.07 in 1994 to $1.95 in 2005, the lowest level since 1940. Our objective is to balance revenues and expenses and we believe we will achieve that this year.

In setting the premium rate for 2005, the government took into account a number of factors, including the EI chief actuary's estimate of the break-even rate.

We have also made commitments in the Speech from the Throne to look at employment insurance and to propose improvements to the program.

We are looking at changes to further reduce disincentives to work and to ensure we are targeting our joint skills development efforts with the provinces to the right people.

Employment insurance continues to provide a temporary income support to people who involuntarily leave their employment. For example, in 2002-03, 1.4 million people received $8.2 billion in regular income benefits. According to the 2003 monitoring and assessment report, 88% of employed workers would have been eligible for EI benefits if they had lost their jobs with just cause.

Employment insurance helps Canadians re-enter the labour force. Nearly 640,000 people participated in active employment measures and 222,000 people returned to work.

It comes as no surprise that the Speech from the Throne referred to employment insurance. It clearly shows that the government is fully aware of all that has to be done to resolve the problems that affect all parts of the country, including the Atlantic provinces, which my colleague represents so well.

May I remind the member for Acadie—Bathurst of all the changes this government has made to the employment insurance program so that it can continue meeting the needs of Canadians and a rapidly changing labour market. For example, the intensity rule was repealed. The clawback provision was amended and no longer applies to Canadians who seek temporary income support for the first time. As well, the parents who re-enter the labour market after staying at home to take care of their young children can establish eligibility benefits by accumulating the same number of hours of employment as other workers.

This government has understood what Canadians need, which is why we continue to make improvements to this program.

[Employment Insurance, February 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, all of the aspects of EI that my colleague has mentioned are dealt with in the reports, in particular, with the report that was received within the last 10 days or 2 weeks. The government has 150 days to respond to those reports. The Liberal members on the committee concerned worked very hard on them and the government will respond very favourably to changes in EI.

[Employment Insurance, February 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the government is seriously considering all three reports that it has received from committees on employment insurance. It is looking at the reform of EI in a most serious fashion and will respond to all the items in those reports at the appropriate time.

[Heritage Day, February 21st, 2005]

Madam Speaker, each year, on the third Monday of February, Canadians from coast to coast celebrate Heritage Day.

This year the theme for Heritage Day is Spiritual and Sacred Places, a theme firmly rooted in the soul and strength of community. I invite Canadians to reflect on the spiritual and sacred places in their lives as well as to honour the sacred places of others.

We can all do this by learning about, for example, Saint Joseph's Oratory in Montreal, the Al-Rashid Mosque in Edmonton, Canada's first mosque, and the many and diverse sacred places of Canada's first peoples by browsing Community Memories at the Virtual Museum of Canada or simply by visiting a nearby spiritual place.

Let us celebrate Heritage Day.