Michelle Dockrill

[Supply, May 18th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate but somewhat disappointed given that my first speech in the House in 1997 was with respect to the deplorable health care system from which the constituents of Bras d'Or—Cape Breton were suffering. Here we find ourselves three years later and the only change has been that the health care system has become progressively worse and we are very close to a two tier private health care system.

The Canada Health Act is under attack and the government continues to do nothing. A recent poll showed that nine out of 10 Canadians clearly stated that they believed there should be equal access to medical treatment for everyone regardless of income. What else does private for profit health care do but prevent equal access? This is the essence of the motion we are debating today.

One reason the government has had to backtrack and sidestep Alberta's bill 11 is that the Canada Health Act is not clear. The Canada Health Act needs its own clarity bill and the motion begins the process of ensuring that the government is accountable for what it says.

We hear members of the government talk about health care. They continue to talk about the cost of maintaining a public health care system. I do not think there is anyone, certainly not in the New Democratic Party, who would dispute that public health care is costly. However, as we have heard from my hon. colleague from Kamloops, we just found out this morning that the government has $11 billion more than it had projected. It is not about not having money. The reality is that Canadians have paid for the services and the government is denying them the money to allow for those services.

We are here because the government is still not providing the leadership Canadians want. For months the government waited and waited and continued to tell those of us in the House and Canadians that it would intervene if the health act were violated.

When I talk about health care I cannot help but worry and concern myself about the importance of health care to women. It is not that men do not use the health care system, but it is certainly true that women tend to be greater users of health care services because we live longer and are unfortunately more often in poorer economic circumstances than men. The effect a privatized for profit health care system would have on women also concerns me. Profit means that people will have to pay for services rendered. The percentage of women who live in poverty in Canada is 18.2%. How will they be able to pay for private services? Will they be able to access the same quality of health care that their richer neighbours have access to? I think not.

We have a poverty rate of 25% in my regional municipality. The child poverty rate, I am ashamed to say, is quite a bit higher than 25%.

Eighty-eight percent of Canadians recently polled think it is very important that everybody be able to access the same level of health care no matter what their income. Canadians do not want a two tier system. Why does the government continue to stand by the tiresome excuse that bill 11 does not violate the Canada Health Act?

We are all aware of the link between poverty and access to quality health care. This is only one of the concerns Canadian women have about these possible changes to our health care system. Women will bear the brunt of a privatized for profit, two tier health care system.

Women already fill in where the government has failed to provide the assistance to its citizens that they expect. More and more women are adding the burden of caring for elderly relatives as the system becomes overburdened because of all the cuts to funding. This will not change if bill 11 becomes law and sets the precedent for private for profit health care in Canada. In fact, the burden will probably increase even more. Women already perform two-thirds of the unpaid work in Canada. How much more are Canadian women expected to do?

The government changed the Canada Health Act in 1996. Why not change it again now? Why not make sure that there are more incentives to provide accessible, quality health care than incentives to make a profit? Why has the government not increased transfer payments and earmarked them specifically for health care services to make sure that there is no market or room for foreign companies to come in and begin competing with the health care system that the overwhelming majority of Canadians want us to maintain?

The reason is because the government continues to be influenced by a powerful lobby group that would love to see for profit health care that they could benefit from.

In 1995 the Prime Minister sent a clear message to the provinces that they were basically on their own in their provision of health care because of the steady cutbacks to cash transfers over the years.

When health transfers were folded into the CHST, this government had to make changes to the act. First it had to get rid of the then health minister who wanted to stop the cuts in funding and ensure that the federal government played a leadership role in the enforcement of the Canada Health Act. The government made sure it appointed a successor by the name of David Dingwall who made nine major changes to the Canada Health Act which paved the way for the existence of bill 11.

The NDP is not standing here today saying that there is no work to be done in our health care system. I, as a health care worker, know that changes need to be made within the system. What we are here to tell the Minister of Health and the government is that we are all sick and tired of hearing the government say that we should just sit and wait.

Canadians do not want the government to wait. The government's excuses are wearing pretty thin these days as we see its inability or unwillingness to jump in and show the leadership necessary to protect the Canada Health Act.

Canadians want the Liberals to act now. They do not want the government to pass off the responsibility to the provinces. Canadians are sick of this juvenile game of tug of war.

Nobody should ever make the mistake of thinking that the Canada Health Act is or should be a finished document. It should be open to debate and open to change. Canadians are telling us that there are some basic principles that, in their opinion, are not open to change. Highest on their list is accessibility regardless of income.

The government should act now. It should change the Canada Health Act and do what Canadians want it to do. The government should make sure that bill 11 is stopped and that no other province tries to introduce legislation that so clearly violates the principles, the morals and the ethics behind what Canadians believe their health care system should be.

I urge all my colleagues in the House to support this motion which sends the clear message that private for profit health care is not the kind of health care Canadians want and it is not the kind of health care that we are going to give them.

[Cape Breton Development Corporation Divestiture Authorization And Dissolution Act, May 8th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, all the mindless moralizing, tongue clucking and finger wagging that we are hearing from this side of the House is the same attitude that came with the announcement that 1,100 coal miners in Cape Breton were out of work.

The so-called analysis of the event wafting out of all the ivory towers west of our island could barely contain a content for coal miners, the whole tribe of poor cousins east of the Gaspé. Our sin, to hear the chattering elite tell it, was twofold: first, we were poor; second, and even worse, we were undeserving poor, the kind that is able enough but unwilling to do much for themselves, always expecting others to take care of them.

Where do such ideas come from? I have never met a coal miner who believed the world owed him a living—not my Dad, not my Uncle Ronnie at the bottom of Number 26 colliery, not any of my relatives who went down in the mine, not any of the miners on the street where I grew up, not any of the miners I know anywhere in Cape Breton. But what do I know? I am not a newspaper editorial writer or a television news anchor. I do not get paid to pontificate. I am a coal miner's daughter who grew up in Glace Bay.

I do not have the sensibilities of people who dig abstractions for a living. I know about the men who dig coal for a living in Cape Breton and what I know is that the last thing any of them ever got was a free ride. What I know is that they had worked like hell for every single thing they got and still do.

I know they did the best job in the world, year in and year out, until their bodies were broken by the work. The men took it and came back for more. They battled the bosses when they had to, but always did the work. Whatever it took to dig the coal, they did it. Through the long days of summer they did it. Through the short days of winter when they got up in the pitch black of the dying night to descend into the pitch black of the mines, finish their shift and come up as pitch black as the coal itself to the home in the pitch black of the new night, they did it.

They did it for their wives and the kids and for the almighty company overlords of the British Empire Steel and Coal Company and the Dominion Steel and Coal Company and the Cape Breton Development Corporation and for Canada. They did it to get a paycheque and earn their way. They went into deep, dark holes in the ground where the earth creaks and the pit props groan. They endured dust and heat and wet and cold and noise and vermin in a hell that no devil ever dreamed of. They gasped for air and staggered to the surface after bumps that squashed their friends to pulp or blew them to smithereens, turned around, worked in a rescue, cleaned it all up and then went back underground again. They did it to pay their way and because we counted on them to do it.

When the wars came, we implored them do to it. Coal was life and death. Coal was the margin of victory. Our world ran on coal. Every comfort, every convenience, every essential service was tied to coal and Cape Breton miners provided whole mountain ranges of it. They served us all well. They never, ever got something for nothing.

Clifford Frame, who built the Westray Mine that vaporised 26 miners in the early morning of May 9, 1992, got to walk away to live in the sunshine without a scratch. Miners were not that lucky.

They say Devco is unprofitable, whatever they mean considering the source and however significant such an assessment can be considering our island's political history. To date we have been left with only the word of the federal government. But if it truly is unprofitable, it is not because of the miners. God knows enough of them died trying to make it otherwise.

Taking away our living is an injury all Cape Bretoners will have to bear. Blaming us for the loss is an insult that sears our souls. It is cruel and callous to expect us to submit to the snide chiding of self-appointed pundits who see us as latter day cargo cult civilization, always watching the skies for gifts from the gods of government. Give us the respect we deserve. Do not add the indignity of insult to injury.

We earned everything we ever got. We earned it with our sweat, our blood and our tears—oceans of sweat, lakes of blood and rivers of tears. There was a time when it was enough to earn us a living. It should forever be enough to earn us respect.

[Cape Breton Development Corporation Divestiture Authorization And Dissolution Act, May 8th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask for unanimous consent to share my time with the hon. member for Halifax.

[Cape Breton Development Corporation Divestiture Authorization And Dissolution Act, May 8th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I think you would find that we do not have a quorum.

And the count having been taken:

[Cape Breton Development Corporation Divestiture Authorization And Dissolution Act, May 8th, 2000]

Is it CSL?

[Health, May 5th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, for seven months members of the House, Albertans and all Canadians have been waiting for the answer of the Minister of Health and his government to bill 11. Time has run out; the product is here. Will the minister tell Canadians and members of the House, does bill 11 violate the Canada Health Act? Yes or no?

[Health, May 4th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, today I had the privilege to join with the National Union of Public and General Employees Women's Committee in their call upon the federal government to invest in women's health care initiatives, in particular, funding a Women's health research institute.

In its recent announcements to provide $60 million this year for the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and $500 million next year, the government ignored the majority of users of the system and 52% of Canada's population by not earmarking a single dollar for women's health research.

Lost in the rhetoric and television ads has been the real health concerns of women. Access to timely, quality health care for women is at an all time low while the provincial and federal governments play politics.

The money is there. The time to act is now to improve women's health care, and Canadian women demand it.

[Oath Of Allegiance To The Flag Of Canada Act, May 3rd, 2000]

Madam Speaker, in January a damning internal audit of the Department of Human Resources Development was released. Despite the best efforts by the government to play down the issues, the concerns over misuse of funds surrounding the department continue to multiply daily, with related RCMP investigations and further audits revealing some of the government's deepest and darkest secrets.

Since December of last year I have been trying to get information on a company in my riding which applied for further TJF funding just months before it went into receivership.

This company, Scotia Rainbow, has received almost $20 million in public loans and grants, yet the government has been incapable of answering questions about the financial position of the company and the proof for how many jobs Scotia Rainbow actually created.

With the amount of public and private funding it received this company should have created many more jobs than it did, but why is there no proof being offered to Canadian taxpayers as to how many jobs were actually created with their money? There is no doubt in my mind that most Canadians share our opinion in the New Democratic Party that good job creation initiatives are an essential part of government operations.

Does Scotia Rainbow represent a good return in the number of jobs proportionate to how much funding it received? Is Scotia Rainbow just another one of the government's deep, dark secrets? Why is it at a time when there appears to be no money for our health care system that is in crisis, no money to reduce the debt load for students, that money can be still found to finance a company to the tune of $20 million in an approximate 18 month period which is now in receivership? We may never be repaid.

Can the government explain why neither it nor the company have any financial documents to back up their claims for the number of jobs created at Scotia Rainbow? If the government has the documentation, why will it not show it to Canadian taxpayers?

[Questions On The Order Paper, April 14th, 2000]

For the period covering the last three years, what grants, loans, or interest-free loans have been provided to Scotia Rainbow, Serge Lafrenière, or the Rainbow Group by: ( a ) Human Resources Development Canada; ( b ) Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency; ( c ) Industry Canada; ( d ) Economic Cape Breton Corporation; ( e ) Canada-Nova Scotia Infrastructure Program; and ( f ) Canada-Nova Scotia Cooperation Economic Diversification?

[Questions On The Order Paper, March 29th, 2000]

For the period covering January 1, 1995 to December 31, 1999, what are the specifics of remuneration for members of the board of directors at the Cape Breton Development Corporation?