John Bryden

[Public Safety Act, 2002, November 5th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I know the member for Churchill is afraid of another question, but could she please at least get on topic?

[Public Safety Act, 2002, November 5th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the member who just spoke condemned much of the bill, but she said that the authorities ought to find other means to identify people who are security risks. What other means would she propose?

Surely the collection of intelligence on foreign nationals, or whomever, who are coming into the country via our airlines is an appropriate method to gather intelligence to avoid security threats. If she feels that is not appropriate, then how would she propose that our police and security people obtain the information that would identify people who are a threat to the national security of this country as they enter the country?

[Committees of the House, October 31st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly agree that election of committee chairs is probably a positive thing. I do believe it has to be done openly, but what concerns me is this prospect of electing chairmen by secret ballot.

To me it is an ethical issue. I think that Canadians expect of their members of Parliament to always be seen to make their decisions on behalf of the people who elected them in an open fashion. I have long deplored the practice in the House whereby MPs who feel they cannot support their party hide behind the curtains or abstain or do not enter the chamber to vote.

I am happy to say that there has been a very positive evolution on this side over the years that I have been here. Fewer and fewer MPs do that on this side, and more and more when they feel, by their conscience, that they cannot support the government's or the party's position they will stand up and be seen to be voting against the government. I apply that to the House in general.

I believe, passionately indeed, that the people who elect us are entitled to see us publicly take our positions, whether they are for the government or whether they are against the government. I submit that if we have a secret ballot at committee that is an invitation for Canadians to lose confidence in the members of that committee because it will be interpreted that they are afraid to stand up for their principles when they vote at committee. That would apply not only to government MPs but also to opposition MPs.

It is fundamental. I think what we are dealing with here is an issue that could erode Parliament in a very significant and dramatic way. I add that I am opposed to the secret ballot for the election of the Speaker as well, but that was something that was introduced before I came to the House. I think it should be changed. While I think that we can reform the system, in the end I think it is our absolute fundamental duty in everything we do as members of Parliament to do it openly and to be seen by Canadians to be taking our positions one way or another.

I ask the member opposite, when he finds himself in a position of not agreeing with his party during a vote in the House of Commons, does he hide behind the curtain or does he come into the chamber, take his place and be seen to vote against his party? Similarly, does he need a secret ballot at the committee level in order to feel free to express his opinion, which may actually be against his party? Does he need a secret ballot to express himself at committee? Does he need to hide behind the curtains in order to express himself if he does not agree with his party in this House?

[Committees of the House, October 31st, 2002]

Madam Speaker, through you to the speaker who just spoke, I want to say that first, a committee makes recommendations to the House so it is fitting and proper to have a debate and the final decision is that of the House. However I cannot support the idea of a secret ballot.

I have been here for nine years and I have never shirked a vote and I have never hidden from a vote. I think the precedent that would be set by having committee members have a secret ballot would be a deplorable one. We as MPs are expected by our constituents to stand up and be counted. I agree that the election for Speaker should be by open ballot. That procedure was brought in before I came to this House. However I cannot support, from my heart of hearts anytime, standing in this place and not being counted no matter what the party discipline or no matter what the consequences from the whip. I voted against the government about six times. It is precisely as it should be. The people should see when we vote against the government or when we vote on principle. We cannot see people voting on principle when it is a secret ballot.

I would like the member's observations on that. Does he not think that there will be a loss in public confidence if MPs were seen on committee to have to resort to the secret ballot for the simple election of a chairman?

[Health Care System, October 28th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for New Brunswick Southwest for correcting the remarks of the New Democratic Party member for the record.

I want to make a point that, when it comes to transparency, we have to bear in mind that the salaries of hospital administrators are huge as well. The chief administrator for Hospital for Sick Children makes $500,000 a year. There is nothing requiring the CEOs, the paid executive staff of the hospitals, to even report the truth to their board of directors. There is this gap of information.

In the end transparency and accountability is the way to go. We should really look at the possibility of extending legislation like the Access to Information Act to institutions like hospitals. They should have nothing to hide. They should be open for public scrutiny and it would save lives.

[Health Care System, October 28th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I would rather worry about lives than how long the grass is. That aside, the fundamental point here is this. Do not ask for more money. Do not put more money out before knowing how that money is being spent. We cannot see how hospitals and these institutions are spending money. The losses, when we talk about $75 billion, must be enormous. I do not see why any institution in this land should be afraid of transparency and accountability, especially as it will save lives and money at the same time.

[Health Care System, October 28th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I always thought the whole point of this place is to exchange in a debate and so I am commenting in debate on the suggestions made by the Leader of the Opposition and all the subsequent members of the opposition.

To finish my thought, and hopefully without any further interruption, all the Leader of the Opposition said is to put more money into health care from the federal government but without raising taxes and he did not suggest how to get that money.

We learned from the member for New Brunswick Southwest that a minimum of $5 billion more is required for an infusion into health care, according to Senator Kirby's report, but in fact to cure the problems in health care delivery it is probably many billions of dollars more than that. I would submit that the answer is not more federal money and I am personally opposed to adding more federal money into the health care situation because I believe the savings and the money can be found elsewhere

That brings me to the Leader of the Opposition's second point. He suggested that we should consider the Alberta model of the private corporation delivery of health, in other words private clinics. The genesis of that point was the idea in Alberta that perhaps the public provision of health care delivery, which is usually by charitable non-profit organizations, could be more efficient if some of these services were provided by for-profit organizations, the idea being that the profit motive creates certain efficiencies.

I do not think we should discount that particular suggestion. It is a legitimate suggestion and the Leader of the Opposition was careful to point out that it would still be public care, that everyone would be entitled to equal care. The question would only be if in some instances the health care delivery would be better delivered by a private organization.

I suggest however that before we ever get to that point what we need to do is to make the health care delivery institutions more transparent and accountable. We would save, if we did that, all the money we need, in order to upgrade the current health system.

Mr. Speaker, you may not be aware of this but the $75 billion of government money that goes out to the health care institutions to provide health care delivery is not managed in any way that is legislatively transparent and accountable to the public. Hospitals which spend billions of dollars are not under the Canada Corporations Act save as a regime of guidelines of corporate governance. They do not operate under legislated standards of corporate governance.

Consequently if we talk to senior health care professionals we find them telling us that there is no administrative standard governing hospitals or health care institutions all across the country. In other words, one hospital may be operating effectively. Another hospital may not be operating effectively but there is no interchange of ideas. There is no parent standard from the national government or even the provincial governments.

Even in research hospitals have their own institutes of research and there is no peer exchange of ideas in the research that these institutes do. In other words, we have a situation where individual hospitals may be running a research institute operating as a charity or receiving money from a charitable foundation but there is no peer review of the actual work they are doing, other than when they finally come out and produce a paper and there is no coordination of the actual practices.

I point out that this extends to health care delivery, this problem of transparency and accountability. The Canadian Institute for Health Information, which was created about eight years ago by the health ministers federally and provincially, has disclosed all kinds of problems in the health care delivery system which all has to do with the failure to keep proper records and exchange information.

I will give just one example of the Canadian Institute for Health Information. It found in its research that there is no Canadian data on follow-up procedures in hospitals. It also estimates that there are 10,000 infection and non-error medication deaths in hospitals. The error basically boils down to when a doctor or nurse prescribes the wrong medication and the person dies. Because we are not a society in which litigation surrounding our medical practices is the norm, as it is in the United States, these accidents occur and for years and years there has been no follow-up and no central collection of data on these accidents.

While we all would like to believe that we have some of the best health care delivery in the world in Canada, the reality is that because of the lack of transparency in major hospitals and other health care delivery systems, only now are we beginning to realize that perhaps our health care delivery is not anything like as efficient as we would like to believe.

The analogy is very apt. If that is the case in health care delivery, where there are huge inefficiencies because of the lack of reporting, the lack of transparency, the need to exchange data, the lack of public accountability, then it is easy to conclude that there must be the same situation with the delivery mechanisms of hospitals and other health care institutions. In other words, if one does not have to tell anyone what one is doing, there can be nepotism and every kind of inefficiency imaginable.

If the total bill is $75 billion dollars a year of taxpayer money going into health care delivery and we have no way of knowing how administratively efficient that health care delivery system is, then I would suggest that at the very minimum, at a 10% minimum, we would get $7.5 billion to add into the health care delivery system. I would say that is just a minimum.

Therefore it becomes a no win game. When the federal government gives money to the provinces and the provinces give money to the health care delivery systems or institutions, and even the provinces cannot be sure how that money is being spent, what happens anecdotally is we occasionally find a situation where money is going out, which hopefully was to go toward some sort of magnetic resonance system or some other important piece of hospital machinery, for lawnmowers and garden care.

That is precisely the problem. We could save the money. We could reform the health care delivery system. We could do it all without an additional cent of money, if we brought hospitals and health care delivery systems under the Canada Business Corporations Act, where they would be forced to conform to proper standards of corporate governance, and finally under the Access to Information Act, because I suggest that if transparency is good for government, it is also good for those institutions that spend government dollars.

[Health Care System, October 28th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I would begin by saying that I have followed the debate today right from the very beginning and I heard the Leader of the Opposition speak first. I note that one of the techniques around here, if we want to find out what the opposite side's viewpoint on an issue is, is to listen to the leader and we will find everything else echoed by the subsequent speakers. I expect there is an exchange of information that enables subsequent speakers in the opposition to basically echo that which their leader said.

I listened to the leader's speech very carefully. I noted that despite 25 minutes of condemnation of rhetoric from the government's side, in fact the Leader of the Opposition made only two concrete suggestions in his entire speech which took about 35 seconds, each one of those suggestions. I would like to deal with them.

The first suggestion was that we should spend more money for health care. The federal government should put up more money and it should not raise any new taxes in doing so. That is very laudable but we do note that the opposition is asking the government to spend more money on defence and is asking the government to spend more money in a variety of areas. I do not know about the practicalities of what is suggested by the--

[Health Care System, October 28th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to pick up on a comment that has been made several times by the opposition during the debate, which is the reference to the fact that the United States spends more on public health care per capita than does Canada.

I point out, given the fact that the U.S. health care system is not universal, that there are enormous numbers of people left out, this very statistic that the opposition is citing all the time indicates that public health care delivery in the United States is hugely inefficient, much more inefficient than in Canada.

[Health Care System, October 28th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. With the greatest respect to the colleague who is speaking, a question was asked. I wonder if, in the interests of debate, the member could give us an opportunity on this side to ask other questions.