Dick Proctor

[Supply, May 17th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, there were a couple of parts to that question. Let me deal with some additional thoughts on the Le Dain Commission.

Gerald Le Dain, who headed the commission, held serious consultations on the negative impacts of the Canadian drug policy back in the late 1960s, which focused mainly on the non-medical use of drugs. As the member would know, he was the former dean of the Osgoode Hall Law School of the University of Toronto and former justice of the supreme court. He took the view that politicians were the ones to blame over the years for not seizing the initiatives on this issue at the beginning of the 1970s. In fact in an interview about three years ago Mr. Le Dain stated:

It was a hot potato for all the parties and they didn't want to run any risk. The position adopted by the politicians was to do nothing. We saw at the hearings the public was worried about their kids. The public saw those current laws as a tremendous injustice.

I think all parties and all governments stand accused of not doing this. It is unfortunate that time has elapsed.

With respect to the decriminalization of all drugs, I am not an expert. I would hope and think that would be part of this study. I tend to agree that we should decriminalize marijuana. That happens to be our party's policy. I really do not have a view on whether we should decriminalize ecstasy, or heroin or cocaine. I suspect we are dealing with more addictive drugs, at least that is what I am given to understand. That would be something a special committee of the House would look at, and I rather suspect the other place is looking at that as well.

[Supply, May 17th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased, as always when I get an opportunity to speak in the Chamber, to take part in the debate today.

We are voting on whether to strike a special committee of the House to investigate factors underlying or relating to the non-medicinal use of drugs in Canada and to make recommendations regarding ways the government can act, alone or in relation with governments at other levels, to reduce the problem.

The issue is timely in the sense that we see in the newspapers and on television an increasing interest in it. There was an article yesterday in one of the Ottawa newspapers outlining the pros and cons of decriminalization. Last night counterSpin on CBC television devoted its hour to vigorous debate, as it usually does, on the pros and cons of decriminalizing some of the softer drugs, particularly marijuana.

I will begin with a synopsis of what Dr. John Hoey, the editor of the Canadian Medical Association Journal , had to say on the subject. He said recreational use had proven fairly harmless over the years but that he was increasingly concerned, as are many folks in the Canadian Medical Association, about simple possession and personal use leading to a criminal offence being left on a person's record throughout his or her life.

Members of the CMA take the position that possession for personal use should by decriminalized. According to Dr. Hoey there are minimal negative effects to the estimated 1.5 million Canadians who use marijuana in a recreational way. He says the real harm is the legal and social fallout from charges of possession for personal use. He adds that 50% of all drug arrests are for simple possession.

It was interesting that members of parliament recently received a little pocketbook from Statistics Canada, “Canada at a Glance”. It was sent out in connection with the May 15 census day. According to the section on law enforcement, we are at a 20 year low in terms of criminal code offences. In virtually every category but two, and there are roughly 12, there are decreases, many substantial. For example, property crimes went down by 14.7% between 1994 and 1999. Sexual assault was off by almost a quarter in the same period.

However there are two exceptions. There was a slight increase in motor vehicle theft between 1994 and 1999. It went up 1.2%. Drug charges went up a whopping 32.8%, almost a one-third per cent increase, from just over 60,000 charges in 1994 to just under 80,000 charges in 1999, the last year for which statistics are available.

Clearly Dr. Hoey and others are saying that there is a problem. If it is true that 50% of charges, which would be some 40,000, are for possession for personal use, then there is a clear problem and a clear mandate for parliament to look at the issue in a serious way.

I was not a member of parliament in 1996 but it is unfortunate that an opportunity at that point to strike a special committee in both Houses to examine the issue was turned down. It was voted down and rejected for whatever reason. I have not yet had time to investigate why but it was turned down.

As a result, a Senate special committee on illegal drugs is well underway. It is scheduled to report next August. That would be several months before the amended date that has been proposed, which is November 2002. It is unfortunate that we will be duplicating what the other place is doing if we agree to support this. As far as I understand, all parties in the House are supportive of the motion of the hon. member for Langley—Abbotsford.

I suspect we will be attracting the same experts to come and testify and will be meeting many of the same people. It is unfortunate, when people are concerned about spending money wisely, that we did not seize the initiative in 1996 and have one committee rather than two.

The special committee on illegal drugs being run by the other place has quite a comprehensive series of references. It refers to the Le Dain commission which began its work in 1969 and finished in 1972. Virtually 30 years later we are still debating the issue.

The Le Dain commission, we may recall, held serious consultations on the negative impact of Canadian drug policy in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It focused mainly on the non-medical use of drugs. It concluded that hundreds of thousands of Canadians found guilty of prohibited drug possession saw their personal freedom restrained for the rest of their lives because of a criminal record.

The commission also concluded that the huge police resources used to fight prohibited drug trafficking and consumption were aimed mainly at young people. Under the circumstances, the Le Dain commission recommended that sanctions against drug users be gradually eliminated, that the use of marijuana be decriminalized and that control methods other than criminal justice sanctions be used. That was the essence of what Le Dain had to say 30 years ago.

More recently, the U.S. national academy of sciences' institute of medicine published the results of a study commissioned by the white house director of drug control policy. The study dealt with the medical use of marijuana, which I appreciate is not part of the debate today. It is interesting that despite this academic finding the U.S. supreme court recently voted 8 to 0 against allowing the medical use of marijuana. I am pleased that is not the position of the government opposite and that we are proceeding along. The government's position is commendable.

We are not talking about decriminalizing marijuana. To refer to the member for Langley—Abbotsford, we are not saying that there should be no offences for use but that we should take it out of the criminal code. Even the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police acknowledges that it makes sense to decriminalize possession of small quantities of drugs, including heroin, without actually legalizing them. That is one side of the issue but there are at least two sides.

Half the editorial page in the Ottawa Citizen dealt with the current city of Ottawa police chief who says that the decriminalization of marijuana or soft drugs for personal use is not a road he wants to go down. He sees the effects of drug abuse each and every day and says that it attacks the fabric of society.

He argues that marijuana and other cannabis products have much higher levels of THC than they did in the 1960s and 1970s. I do not know whether that is the case. Someone on counterSpin last night argued very vigorously that it was not. It is something the special committee could look at if the resolution passes. I suspect it is something the Senate committee will look at or may already have looked at.

A couple of other points are worth making. I wonder, given that we are going down a slightly different path than the United States, how much flexibility Canada will be allowed.

Within the last year stories have come out of British Columbia about police departments looking the other way with regard to small amounts of drug use. However we have also heard and read stories about American law enforcement officials prepared to chase suspected drug users beyond the Washington border into British Columbia and try to force the Canadian government to take a stronger position against drug use.

On the relationship between Canada and the United States, the front page of today's Ottawa Citizen features an interesting story about how high tech military spies in Ottawa have joined the United States' war on drugs by eavesdropping on South American drug lords.

With globalization and the intertwinement of our two countries, one wonders how much freedom Canada will actually have in areas like this. We obviously know that the current U.S. president and most of his predecessors have been very hawkish on trying to eliminate the importation of drugs into the United States. One could hardly imagine that they would take a softer policy north of the 49th than they would take south in Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America. That would be something which would merit attention by any special subcommittee that is established.

I would also like to make reference to my colleague, the member for Vancouver East, who has spoken out on the subject of drugs and the particular plight of people in her constituency in the downtown Vancouver area. She has been pressing the government on its response to the health crisis that results from drug use, its over use and the safety of citizens. In fact the member has raised this issue ever since she arrived in the House in 1997.

She reported that there are experts out there, including from the city of Vancouver, but the leadership and action on this issue over a long period of time has been so slow. She has called on the Minister of Health to adopt multi-centre heroin prescription trials, safe injection sites and better housing and social support.

These are some of the things the member for Langley—Abbotsford asked the colleague from the Bloc about when he referred to the places where users lived. They were places in which we would not want to put a dog. I am sure that that is absolutely true and something that needs to be looked at. Perhaps if we were to take some progressive steps here we could get beyond some of those deplorable conditions that exist now and make not only the users safer but the non-users and the people who are on the streets safer. We think, and my colleague from Vancouver East believes, it would reduce crime. We have seen examples of that in places like Europe and Australia, which have been a little more avant-garde than Canadian politicians have been.

In conclusion, the New Democratic Party welcomes the opportunity to debate this issue. We will support it. We regret that a special committee of both Houses of parliament was not struck in 1996 when this matter came up. It seems that the Senate is already well down this investigative road on the illegal or legal use of drugs or the decriminalization thereof. We are just starting down this road.

Having said that, we cannot go back to 1996. It is unfortunate we did not have one committee. We will now have two, but we will be supportive of this policy and this motion.

[Petitions, May 16th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to present a petition signed by many people throughout Saskatchewan who are concerned about changes to the Employment Insurance Act. This petition notes that the federal government has taken about $30 billion out of the EI fund.

The petitioners call upon the government to re-establish employment insurance as an earnings replacement program that once again supports unemployed workers, their families and their communities.

[Grain Transportation, May 10th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, in fact the minister promised an 18% reduction. What producers have received is actually less than 2%.

Most of the money has obviously gone to the railways and the grain companies. It is a sad commentary, not only on their commitment but on the commitment of the government, that there has not been more assistance for the producers. Railway profits last year of $1.47 billion exceeded all the net farm income for prairie producers.

Given all this, how can the minister justify the 3.5% increase in the grain transportation rates which will come into effect on August 1?

[Grain Transportation, May 10th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, one year ago today the Minister of Transport announced that there would be more competitive grain handling transportation. In fact he predicted that the average reduction would be $5.92 a tonne.

Of course we have come nowhere close to that. In Saskatchewan, for example, it is less than one-tenth, a measly 53 cents a tonne. Since the bulk of the money did not go to the producers, my question is very straightforward. Who did it go to?

[Patent Act, May 7th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I want to follow up on the question that was asked a minute ago by the Liberal member and I would like a comment from the member for Winnipeg North Centre.

I was astounded in doing research on this issue to learn that more than $350 billion U.S. in brand name pharmaceuticals is sold around the world annually. As an aside, HIV and AIDS drugs account for approximately $4 billion of that, a very small percentage. I am assuming, and I know that the member who is our health critic will undoubtedly know the answer, that there must be a vast majority of pharmaceutical companies around the world that would be realizing that combined total of $350 billion in brand name pharmaceuticals.

I ask the hon. member to comment as well because in her speech she did talk about this having been snuck in through the Senate. Maybe it is just a coincidence, but this is the second bill that we have had today in the House that has come in via the Senate. I wonder if the member sees a pattern in this.

[Patent Act, May 7th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question, and yes, I think all of us in the House could probably point to examples of people who have diluted their prescription drugs in order to make them stretch a little further. Sometimes that can complicate their health and well-being. Instead of helping, it often adds to their difficulties.

What my colleague is talking about is the need for a concerted effort by government to campaign for cheaper medicine. Some countries, and the name of Brazil has come up a couple of times today, have basically thumbed their noses at the multinational drug companies and have said that they will do something, that they will provide drugs for people who are victims of HIV and AIDS. The South African example has been instructive on that topic as well. These are the sorts of things and the kind of leadership we are looking for.

In the case of South Africa, the decision of the drug companies to drop the case amounted to a huge victory for millions of people who are suffering from treatable diseases. It is all well and good to talk about being on the leading edge and coming up with drugs that will cure very nasty and lethal diseases. However, if the vast majority of people in the world can in no way afford to buy those kinds of drugs, what does that say about a public health care system such as the one that has been pioneered in Canada over the years? It was pioneered first by the CCF and then by the New Democratic Party in Saskatchewan and extended to the rest of Canada.

I think Canadians are desperately looking for leadership in this area and the drug patent protection of 20 years is not the way in which most of them want to see the country continue.

[Patent Act, May 7th, 2001]

Indeed, what a disappointment. The current government House leader, the member for Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, read into the record on November 16, 1992, a stack of postcards. He guesstimated them to be four or five inches thick. One postcard read:

“On June 23, 1992, the federal government introduced Bill C-91, legislation intended to extend retroactively to December 20, 1991, patent protection for brand name pharmaceuticals and eliminate Canada's system of compulsory licensing. This legislation will result in significantly higher drug prices in Canada and its retroactive provisions will cripple the Canadian owned generic pharmaceutical industry”. This is not what I said. This is what hundreds and hundreds of Canadians have said.

He used to care. That was then and now it is another day.

The current Solicitor General of Canada, the member for Cardigan, also entered the debate at that time and quoted from Green Shield. He said:

The average cost of a prescription claim has risen at a rate in excess of 11% compounded annually for the period 1987 through 1991, well above the CPI rate.

The Minister for Veterans Affairs and Western Economic Diversification, the member for Saint Boniface, said:

When I talk about Canadians who will need assistance with drugs and medicine, I am of course referring mainly to seniors. Except in rare cases, the need for medical attention tends to increase as we grow older. I suggest it is unfortunate that legislation such as this be allowed to cause hardship to the elderly.

There are those who are sick often, sometimes over the course of several years, and who will require medicine during most of their lives. Costs are already prohibitive. We suggest, and there is evidence to back this up, that they will only go higher with this legislation. I find it is absolutely irresponsible on the part of this government to go ahead with this

He wound up his diatribe against Bill C-91 by saying:

—I have no choice but to say no to Bill C-91 for those Canadians who will need medication and in particular the seniors and those who have need of medication because of their medical condition.

The chief government whip, the member for Ottawa West said:

I think it is important to reiterate what this bill is all about. It is not about extending patent protection for pharmaceutical drugs. It is about completely eliminating, for the entire 20-year patent period, the right of any generic manufacturer to produce a drug that is under patent and to compete with that drug on the open marketplace.

What is the impact going to be? The impact for Canadians is going to be higher drug costs. Right now, generic drugs being produced while the original is still under patent cost 53 per cent of the cost of the patent drug. That is a saving of 47 per cent for Canadian consumers.

What we have in Canada is branch plant drug companies. We do not have basic research. We do not have the kind of foundation that this country wants to see in this industry that is the most profitable in our economy and it does not deserve the kind of protection that this Conservative government is now proposing to offer.

This bill would limit competition. It says that for 20 years one does not have to compete against anyone else.

She concluded by saying:

If NAFTA tells us what we can and we cannot do to provide health care for Canadian citizens then we do not need NAFTA. That is just one more reason to vote against it.

There was one more dissertation that I would like to acknowledge and that is the member for Kenora—Rainy River currently the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. The minister said in December 1992:

It is a fact that Americans pay 62% more for prescription drugs than the average Canadian citizen. If we were to follow that through, that means by the year 2010 we will be on a level playing field with the Americans. Our drugs should rise proportionately to the point where we will be equal to the Americans as far as the price that we pay for drugs.

The question has to be asked in this place. That is why we are debating this, not because we are the loyal opposition and we disagree with the legislation. It is our responsibility, as members of parliament, to put the facts before the Canadian people so that they can decide whether the legislation that the government is presenting today is a good piece of legislation for the good of all Canadians.

We have the minister who negotiated the free trade agreement and is now the Minister of Industry negotiating on our behalf another agreement, the legislation we are talking about. His negotiating skills are what we are talking about today. The minister of Indian affairs also said:

—Canadians, as consumers, are going to give up roughly $4 billion out of their pockets for higher drug prices because now what we are talking about is going from the Canadian system to a level playing field similar to the American system.

We can see from that lineup that this is one reason we are very concerned about it. The flip-flop by the Liberals on this issue is absolutely breathtaking.

In Canada today we spend more on drugs than on doctors. Prescription drug costs are the fastest growing cost of health care forcing provincial and territorial governments to pay more, causing fewer families to be able to afford the drugs they need.

I had the opportunity on Saturday night to hear from a well known physician in the Saskatoon community, Dr. John Bury, who was talking about the impact that prescription drugs have had. He recalled the drug benefit plan the Saskatchewan government put in place many years ago that worked so well for such a long time. Essentially it was eroded because the government in the early to mid-1990s could not afford to continue as drug prices increased by the 344% that I talked about earlier. His point now is that there are people in Saskatoon who are unable to afford to purchase drugs. Drug prices have risen so much they are now out of the reach of many ordinary and poorer Canadians.

A personal friend of mine is in hospital recovering from a stroke brought about, almost certainly, by the fact that she neglected to have her blood thinners upgraded or the prescription renewed. In some ways we are putting additional costs on our medical health system by examples such as that.

In a country with $100 billion to spend on tax cuts, one in ten Canadians do not fill prescriptions because he or she cannot afford it. Since 1990 drug prices have risen by 87%. If drug prices are not brought down increased health funding will not go to patients but to multinational pharmaceutical companies.

Public health care needs to get its fast rising costs under control. Families need lower prices to afford the drugs they need. However that is not what the government has been offering. It chose to break promises it made as recently as 1997, let alone in 1987 and 1992 in its red book on a national pharmacare plan. It chose to ignore new ideas for health care like a national bulk buying project that would bring costs down. I note that Australia has such a program.

It chose to keep Mr. Mulroney's drug patent law, Bill C-91, which provides for longer patents. When in opposition, the Liberals promised, as I have tried to point out in my speech, to rescind the law. The Liberal government chose to support more powerful trade agreements even though these agreements make it harder for Canada to use cheaper generic drugs. It chose to accept one trade ruling that made it harder for Canada to use cheaper drugs.

All of this leads me to recall the old Irish proverb, and we have seen it time and again over the years since Confederation, “You can vote for whichever party you want but the government always wins”.

[Patent Act, May 7th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this important debate today on Bill S-17. I listened carefully to the member for St. John's West who just spoke on behalf of the Conservative Party.

It is important for people who are listening at home, as well as members in the Chamber, to know that we are talking about part of a bill which would extend patent protection from 17 years to 20 years. It is not a question of a company coming up with a new discovery for AIDS, for example, and the next day a knock-off of the drug is put on the market by a company that specializes in generic drugs.

We were talking of 17 years worth of patent protection. Now the WTO has come along and said that Canada is not in compliance with that. Therefore, in order to comply with the WTO, we have to add another three years to make it a full 20 year patent protection act.

I listened to the Minister of Industry say that this would only involve about 30 patents, but he neglected to say those were worth an estimated $200 million that will be absorbed by Canadian consumers as they purchase higher priced drugs.

The WTO found Canada not to be in compliance with the idea that a generic drug company could manufacture and stockpile drugs so that on the day the patent protection ended they could have their products on the market and ready to go. This too has been termed illegal by the WTO and is dealt with in the bill. We are rushing against the clock to come up with a bill by August 12 of this year to comply with yet another adverse ruling by the World Trade Organization against the Government of Canada.

In 1987 a number of significant changes were made to the Patent Act. Five years were added in 1992 when the infamous Bill C-91 passed in the House of Commons. A number of concerns were expressed at that time by provincial governments about the impact Bill C-91 would have on prescription drug prices.

Shortly after that bill became law I had the privilege of working in the department of health in the province of Saskatchewan, the province which pioneered prescription drug cost and benefits for its people. The government at the time felt that it had no alternative except essentially to gut that legislation as a result of the changes brought about by Bill C-91.

We have seen the costs of prescription drugs increase by several hundred percentage points over the last number of years. They have increased to the point that now, as the member for Burnaby—Douglas noted in his remarks, it is the single biggest expense on a line item as to what any province pays for its medicare system. It is far more than doctors, far more than the cost of hospitals. Prescription drugs now top the list.

That was not the way that it used to be, but that was then and now is now. Some members have done some serious somersaults on this issue over the past 10 years. I will get into that in a few minutes.

Predictions are that prescription drug prices will soar even higher under trade pacts like the one being negotiated now and scheduled to come into effect in 2005.

From heart drugs to chemotherapy, essential medications represent the fastest growing expense in health care today. In the past 15 years, from roughly 1987, Canada's prescription drug bill has jumped by 344% according to a study last month by the Canadian Institution for Health Information.

There are many reasons for the increase. As the member for St. John's West indicated, new drugs have been approved for everything from arthritis to Alzheimer's, adding to the total drug bill. We recognize demographically that an aging population is demanding and requiring more essential medication. International trade deals like the agreement on trade, related aspects of intellectual property rights, or TRIPS as it is known by its acronym, have strengthened the patent protection enjoyed by big name pharmaceutical companies.

The TRIPS deal has allowed these companies to keep their prices high for the 20 year lifespan of drug patents. It has helped pharmaceutical companies net unbelievably high profits on billions of dollars on research into new medicine. The argument goes that without the profits derived from those patents innovative medicine would languish. I do not think there can be much doubt.

Scott Sinclair, a trade policy analyst, put it well when he said that there was no coincidence escalating drug costs occurred during this period of excessive patent protection. He went on to add that 20 years was a very long time, particularly when we are talking about access to essential medications.

Other comments were made by Médecins Sans Frontières and Dr. John Foster, a principal researcher at the North-South Institute. They are also very concerned and urge the countries in the free trade area of the Americas agreement not to bow to pressure from pharmaceutical companies to strengthen further drug patents.

According to some of those opposed, pharmaceutical companies are not interested in making drugs that help poor people, and most of the people in the world are poor. They say that it is a matter of political will that we can put solutions in place but political will is very weak from what they have seen. We in this caucus would certainly agree with that.

There are members on the government side who were on the opposition benches 10 or 15 years ago. It is a veritable who's who. In some of the time I have remaining I would like to make some reference to them. The Minister of Industry, as member for Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, talked about the changes that were brought in by the Mulroney government. He asked this question:

Are they really serious when they say that the sick, the poor, the elderly, and those who live on fixed incomes have to subsidize R and D in Canada?

Are they really serious when they say that the only way the universities, the post-secondary institutions, the centres of excellence of Canada will have any money for R and D is if we take it out of the pockets of Canada's senior citizens and Canada's sick.

Those were comments of the Minister of Industry, the minister who is piloting the legislation through the House of Commons.

[Food And Drugs Act, May 7th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this private members' hour on genetically modified organisms and the need for mandatory labelling. I congratulate the hon. member for Davenport and say at the outset that certainly this private member's bill has the full and unconditional support of the New Democratic Party caucus in the House of Commons.

In fact, at a convention in August 1999 we introduced a resolution that substantially supported what is now contained in the member's bill. It passed overwhelmingly at our national convention.

What is genetically modified food? It is the splicing of a gene from one organism into a plant or animal to confer certain traits that are not inherent. The purpose can be manyfold. It can be to increase the yield of the product, to prolong shelf life or for crop resistance such as, for example, something that perhaps would be more resistant to drought.

I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the work that has been done in this area, as my colleague from the Bloc Quebecois noted in her speech, by Madam Hélène Alarie, who was the member of parliament for Louis—Hébert in the last parliament and did an enormous amount of work on this, and by my colleague from Winnipeg North Centre, who also has a private member's bill on this topic.

I recall in the 36th parliament that at one point in our deliberations in the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food we were to have struck a subcommittee between the Department of Health and the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food to deal with the whole business of genetic modification, labelling, et cetera. I still to this day do not know quite what happened, except that the then chair of the committee reported at some point that the notion of a subcommittee to look at it had fallen through. Fingers were pointed as to which caucus was responsible. I and my colleague from the Conservative Party who sits on the committee simply do not know what happened. However, I think it was an important opportunity missed and I certainly hope the government is going to learn from that lesson.

I recall that the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food did look at the question of labelling. People from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency were before the committee about a year ago. I recall what I thought was a bizarre exchange at the time. Someone from the food inspection agency was asked how a product listed as organic would be dealt with by the CFIA. The answer was that the agency would look at it very carefully to determine that it was indeed an organic product and met all the criteria and guidelines.

We then asked what would happen if the CFIA were handed a product to test that may contain genetically modified food or organisms. The answer that we got back at the time was that it would not consider it at all because when it was tested one day it may contain GMO, and when it was tested the next day it would be GMO free. That flies in the face of what most Canadians want to see in terms of the labelling process.

We have not heard from government members, but I suspect that when they get up to speak they will be opposed to the bill, although for the life of me I do not understand why. We talk a lot in the House about democracy and transparency. Public opinion polls indicate that in excess of 90% of Canadians believe they should have the right to know what is in the food they are ingesting. I have difficulty understanding why the government has been dragging its heels to the extent that it has on this issue.

One of the reasons consumers are interested and concerned about this issue is that they believe genetically modified foods may contain allergenic, toxic or even carcinogenic aspects. They do not know and they darn well want the right to know.

The issue the member for Davenport is specifically concerned about in the legislation is that of labelling, whether it should be voluntary or mandatory, which he clearly demonstrated in his remarks. Consumers associations, health and environmental groups clearly want mandatory labelling. The government and, admittedly, some agricultural organizations prefer to go in a voluntary way.

With voluntary labelling, and this is part of our concern, consumers still cannot be sure the food they are buying is safe and farmers will not know if the crops they are planting will be marketable. The member for Davenport talked about the fact that Canadian canola farmers have been shut out of the European market because more than 50% of the canola produced in Canada now is genetically modified and the European Union has a ban on that.

We have had the Canadian Wheat Board and other organizations talk about the need to prohibit the commingling of products. We could very clearly have non-GMO products and products that have been genetically modified so that we can market our crops around the world, and not be shut out of markets in the way that it is happening today.

We do favour mandatory labelling. We have called on the government to take immediate steps to implement a labelling process that will make consumers aware of all genetically modified products, produce and components in processed foods.

The other matter that needs to be touched on is that there was a lot of emphasis six or eight months ago on the government telling us to wait for the Royal Society of Canada to make its report. That came down earlier this year and amounted to a scathing condemnation of the practices of the government on the question of food safety. The report says that Canadians do not know that genetically modified foods are safe because the process of approvals by the government is so flawed and problematic.

Given those concerns, we have been asking for months, as the private member's bill indicates, for a process of mandatory labelling of all genetically modified foods so that Canadians know what they are eating.

When we talked about this at committee, we had the bizarre argument that if we had to put labelling on a product that was genetically modified, we would end up with a label on an eight ounce jar that was perhaps two feet long. That would be ridiculous. I submit that in this day and age it would be relatively easy for a company that had a genetically modified product to be able to say that the product contained GM food. They could send people to their website for details on the product without increasing the size of the label in any way.

I have basically summarized the New Democratic Party's position on the bill. I congratulate the member for Davenport for introducing the bill. This is the first of three hours on the bill and other members of the New Democratic Party will be speaking in favour of the bill at subsequent opportunities.