Penny Priddy

[Food and Drugs Act, May 14th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to support the member's bill, but I always find this a surprising debate.

In 1988-89 the NDP member for Surrey North, the constituency that I represent, raised this issue in Parliament at that time. Six years ago, April 23, the NDP member for Winnipeg North had a motion passed in the House, 231 to 11 or a number like that, supporting the labelling of alcohol.

Therefore, I find the debate puzzling because we are prepared to do all of the things that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health spoke of, brochures and so on, but somehow labelling a bottle of alcohol seems to generate all of this debate about the reasons that we cannot.

I am puzzled by that. We can do all kinds of other things. We can spend money on all kinds of other resources, but we cannot ask alcohol producing companies to label a bottle. I just do not understand why this is so hard for people to understand or for people to be prepared to stand up and support.

No one would suggest that labelling an alcohol bottle is somehow the solution for people with alcohol addiction or fetal alcohol syndrome, but there is never in any situation only one solution. This is part of what should exist as a national strategy which has been called for regarding alcohol and a national strategy around fetal alcohol syndrome. Therefore, it is one piece.

I can think of very few products that do not have warning labels on them. Some have so many warning labels on them we are afraid to buy it because it lists 27 things that can happen to us if we take this particular medication or product. We label tobacco packages all the time. That was possible to do. Has it stopped smoking? No. Has it made a difference? I believe it has.

I do not think there is any conclusive evidence that this does not work because I do not know how we would know, having not done it.

The United States, 18 years ago, decided to label alcohol bottles. The labels could be better, but that was 18 years ago and we are still standing here debating about whether alcohol, which we all know has tragic effects on this country, should be labelled.

People talk a lot about fetal alcohol syndrome, the fetal alcohol effect and the effect of alcohol on pregnant moms, and so they should. I think the member quoted 3,000 babies. I do not actually care if it is 3,000 babies or 3, it is too many. Is there some magic number we have to get to before we are prepared to stand up and take a position on this?

We know as well that it is a tragedy for the baby. Anyone who has ever seen a newborn, and I have said this before in the House, suffering from alcohol withdrawal symptoms, I do not think could not stand up and support this bill. It is not something we would ever want to imagine for any newborn who has entered this world, hoping for a wonderful journey, and coming in with a number of challenges already there.

It is not only the “most at risk people” who need to have a label on a bottle of alcohol. I do not know why we would suggest it is only going to be there for the most at risk people. Why would it not be there for any consumer just like labels on medication, or on other things that consumers purchase? This is not only about the most at risk.

The most at risk may not be the people who actually pick it up and look at it, but the regular consumer might be. So this is really for everybody, not only for the most at risk. We know people who are most at risk, but I am not sure we know who all those people are. Maybe people are most at risk if their family has a history of alcohol addiction, but at this stage have had no problem or maybe have never bought a bottle of alcohol. Maybe they are most at risk because there is a particular stress time in their life. We have to expand our definition of who is most at risk and be prepared to put that label on the bottle for anybody.

The financial resources that we need in this country are enormous in terms of people with all kinds of challenges: addiction challenges, health challenges and educational challenges. Many of those are unavoidable. This is avoidable. Why would we not do something to help something that is avoidable when there are, so many things on which we spend our budget that we cannot avoid? We might be able to do something on this one piece as part of a multi-prong that might help us do something to avoid this.

It is not only the further health costs of raising an infant with fetal alcohol syndrome, it is the health costs to the system of people who abuse alcohol. But it is also the health costs to the system of people who are in car accidents, either because they have been drinking or may simply be a passenger in a car, or they may be in the other car that has been hit and nobody in that car has been drinking. There is still a health cost that is related to alcohol.

There are family costs. The cost to a family of having someone who in the beginning did not understand that a couple of drinks after work, or maybe at noon and then after work, was going to start to affect their family life. Any of us can stand here and tell stories of families we know who are in that situation. So there is a huge cost to families.

There is also a cost to children because very often for the people who did not know they were at risk, there is no label. I am not suggesting that would have been the only preventive, but there is no label and the child becomes the caregiver of the parent. We see that in many circumstances, so we have 10, 11 and 12 year olds who are actually looking after their parent because the parent is not able to look after them. Twelve year olds should not be caregivers, they should just be 12 year olds and do what children that age do, at least all the healthy things.

I have heard that it is cost prohibitive to industry. I do not believe it is cost prohibitive to industry, but it is cost prohibitive to this country if we do not do it. Since the Americans are able to do it in the United States, why would it not be cost prohibitive there? The costs that we pay as a country are very prohibitive, so that is a somewhat facile argument.

The member read the list of endorsers and the list would go on and on, including pediatric societies, et cetera. I would not dream of continuing to talk about those, but we do need a comprehensive approach. That is true. We do need a multi-pronged approach, but to say that we are prepared to have a national strategy on alcohol and fetal alcohol syndrome, but we are not prepared to put a label on a bottle of alcohol as part of that strategy makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It is not fair to the consumers in this country, the adults in this country, and children in this country who are future consumers of that product.

[The Economy, May 8th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the NDP is working to remind the Conservatives and Liberals that there is a growing prosperity gap in Canada.

My constituents tell me every day that they are having a hard time making ends meet, and too many people in Surrey North are having trouble making ends meet because they have recently lost their jobs. The Conservatives and Liberals were silent when 700 Air Canada maintenance workers lost their jobs in the Lower Mainland. The Conservatives abandoned mill workers with the softwood lumber sellout and invested nothing in their budget to fight the pine beetle. Last fall the government even cut workplace skills programs.

It is clear that the Conservatives and Liberals do not understand the needs of everyday people.

We need sectoral strategies for keeping jobs in Canada. We need the government to play a leadership role in preventing job losses and in helping unemployed Canadians find new work. We need a real action plan to close the prosperity gap.

I am proud to be an NDP MP from Surrey North and I am proud to be a member of the only party that works to make life more affordable for Canadians.

[Business of Supply, May 8th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to try to bring this issue right down to the folks who live in my riding of Surrey North. In Surrey North, we have many people who drive taxicabs and many who do long haul trucking. How does my colleague think this will affect those particular people who already are having trouble keeping their rigs or cabs on the road? How is this going to make a difference in their lives?

[Business of Supply, April 26th, 2007]

You did it.

[Business of Supply, April 26th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I hope when people read these debates historically and they read the Liberal Party's participation in them, that they will be very careful to note the date on the newspaper or Hansard, because no other position has changed with the regularity that the Liberal position has changed.

The NDP has been absolutely consistent. It does not support counter-insurgency actions that have been taking place. The Liberals have ensured that those counter-insurgency activities will continue to 2009. They had an opportunity to get our troops away from that counter-insurgency and a whole bunch of Liberals got voter virus and were not here for the vote. If they had been here, which was the responsible thing to do, the motion to extend the mission to 2009 would not have passed.

I would like to know how the member would explain the fact that so many of his party's members were not here when they had an opportunity not to extend this activity to 2009. Now they are standing up and saying that they are the people who want to get the troops out. How does the member explain the change in position and the absence of his party's members when they could have made a difference in what is happening there?

[National Blood Donor Week Act, April 24th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to join my colleagues in supporting this bill to declare the week of June 14 national blood donor week, as have 192 other countries around the world. I cannot imagine why anybody would oppose this.

The 192 countries that are members of the World Health Organization have already done this. As a country that cares about its health care and its health care system and wants people to be treated quickly, efficiently and as meets their needs, then we can do no less than acknowledge that.

It is important to look at where we have come from and where we are but also to look at what declaring the week of June 14 blood donor week would really mean and what we might need to do. I think my colleague from Newton—North Delta referred to this earlier.

Let us think about what it used to be like even in 1943 or after the war when blood banks were established and we saw blood being donated and used more frequently in terms of blood donations. We were still seeing babies who died because there was no such thing as transposing blood for a baby who had an O positive mom and an O negative dad and was not able to mix those bloods together. Today we would just do a blood switch, or we could actually treat the mom earlier, but in those days before we had the evolution we have seen now, that baby would have died.

Perhaps members of our families who were in accidents or perhaps in surgeries died from lack of blood being available. It is not that we did not know we could transfuse it. It is not that we did not know it was possible. We had learned that during the war, and actually before that, but there just was not enough. It was not available or the right kind was not available.

We have come a very long way in the last years since the mid-1940s, but what is the current situation today? Let us look at this. We have 192 countries and many provinces that have blood donor days. We celebrate that, but I do not know if everybody truly understands it, because for us in Canada it is a resource that has always been there for us.

In most hon. members' memories, I would think, it has always been there. We have not had to buy it. We certainly do not get money for selling it, as happens in some countries that are actually quite close to us, so we have almost taken it for granted as something that will be there when we need it, but there will be people for whom it will not be there when they need it, particularly when we look at the large scope of what blood products actually are.

I do not know if people really appreciate how little blood people have and how much is used during some major surgeries. Others have referred to this. If one has five litres of blood circulating in the blood system, and if someone has a liver transplant, and I am using a more traumatic event to talk about, one needs 100 litres of blood for the transplant. That means all the blood in the bodies of 60 people is needed for one liver transplant.

I do not think that people understand the full scope of what it takes and the amount of blood it takes to provide quick, efficacious and safe treatment for people who may require a blood transfusion. I have certainly seen this in my own community. When we think that blood is reasonably available, it does not mean that every type is reasonably available.

Can we get O positive most of the time? Sure. Can we get O negative? Sure, but when we start to get into the rarer blood types, it is quite possible for it not to be available even now, particularly if we live in a rural area where there may not be a big enough local population base and blood has to be transported. Certainly that is done, but it does not mean that it is immediately available for everybody.

If our current situation is that only 4% of our eligible population donate blood, that does not mean 4% of all people, so that is a very large load for 4% of the population to carry. If we were to ask 308 people in the House when they last gave blood, I do not know what the answer would be. If every one of us in the House who is eligible to give blood were to commit to do that on a regular basis, what a difference even that would make. What a wonderful commitment that would be. That would be a real celebration of blood donor day on June 14 if the House committed to do that, but this needs a much bigger population than 4% of us.

It becomes a part of everybody's minds when we hear the ad on the radio saying that the long weekend is coming up, particularly in the nice weather, the May 24 weekend and the weekends of July 1 and August 1. The ads say more blood is needed on those weekends because more people will be on the road and there will be more accidents. There is a little surge of people who go in to donate because the ad on the radio has reminded them that they may be able to help. They go in and donate blood, but they do not make it part of their annual routine or every three months or whatever works for people, and that is really what we need to happen.

That is the current situation.

The other thing I would be very concerned about is that we have people who are waiting unconscionable lengths of time for surgery. I would be absolutely appalled if somebody with a rare blood type had to wait a long time for surgery and suddenly the blood needed was not available. I cannot even imagine what that would do to somebody. That would not happen with a more typical blood type, of course.

Another point that we do not always understand is that bone marrow is considered part of blood donation. It is not that we go in and donate bone marrow, but we do sign up. In the community that the member for Newton—North Delta and I come from, we have had major challenges around bone marrow transplants, because there has to be a registry that is large enough to support a very mixed population in Canada today.

That is great, because we have a very textured and wonderful mix of people, but that means people have not in any way been able to find a bone marrow match. We have had several instances of this in the community of Surrey. People from the South Asian community or the Chinese community, particularly children who have a mom and a dad with different ethnic backgrounds, often find it much harder to get a bone marrow match if there is no family match. People die every day because they cannot find a bone marrow match. We see it on TV. We read those stories.

This legislation would allow a much bigger registry. It does not mean that all those people would then put up their hands if they were called and say that of course they would give bone marrow, because that is a very serious decision, but at least there would be more people to ask for that little four year old who is lying in hospital. Her mom and dad and her sisters and her brothers have no idea what will happen and are totally unable to do anything. Anybody who has children knows how powerless it would feel to watch one's child and know there is not a single solitary thing one can do to find a blood donor or a bone marrow donor and find them fast.

Declaring the week of June 14 as national blood donor week is incredibly important, but only if action comes with it, action around awareness. I am not sure that everyone knows the things we have talked about in the House today. We have to get more of that information out.

We have to at least get the information out to younger people. When I go into a blood donor clinic, and I am stereotyping a bit here and it is not to say that everybody who gives blood is older, but I think there are a number of people who have been donating blood for 20 to 30 years. They remember when blood was not always readily available.

As with any kind of education program, we have to start with younger people so they understand. Nobody is asking high school students to give blood, but surely we should be talking about it so that when they are older they will be able to make that decision for themselves.

As others have said, I am not sure everybody realizes as well the number of volunteers who are involved in the collection of blood.

I am pleased to stand and support all of my colleagues in having the week of June 14 declared national blood donor week.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2007, April 23rd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot imagine not taking an opportunity to answer that kind of question because it is so clear it is a human right.

I am very blessed. I come from Surrey, British Columbia, where young women have been wearing hijabs in any sport they like. Young Sikh men wear turbans or head coverings to play whatever sport they like and have been for a very long time. The first RCMP officer ever to wear a turban comes from Surrey, British Columbia.

I would welcome the chance to say the country stands up for the human rights of individuals. In point of fact, these are religious rights. These are symbols of people's religion. We do not deny that in our country to anybody. I would have rushed for the opportunity to answer.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2007, April 23rd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the federal government transfers money to the provinces, but the federal government also has a responsibility for leadership. Surely, it does not pass out money with no accountability attached to it. It brings together health ministers, education ministers on post-secondary education or whomever from across the country. It knows the issues across the country. Surely, it does not put out money where there is no accountability as to whether it is spent on the areas that have been identified. Home care, drugs, tuition costs have been identified as serious issues that impede the progress of people in the provinces.

In this day and age I do not think any business, including government, should put out money with no accountability as to how it is spent or no indication of how it should be spent.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2007, April 23rd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, because this is the budget implementation bill, I tried to look at my riding of Surrey North in terms of what the budget's implementation will mean for the constituency I represent. On average, it is a constituency of fairly low income per family as it relates to the rest of Surrey, although it is mixed.

We have people who do not have homes to go to. We have people who suffer from very serious challenges in their lives, health challenges, drug and alcohol challenges, a variety of challenges. I tried to look at what the budget's implementation will mean for this group. Also, my riding is full of people who want to have hope that there is something in their future that they can hold onto. Every single one of us needs something we can hold onto if not for ourselves, then for our children, our friends or our neighbours.

What does the budget do for Surrey North? I looked at it from a prosperity gap perspective. Does it make the gap wider or narrower between those who have and those who have not? That seemed to be a simple measurement.

One of the things the budget implements is a reduction in services for women who are victims of violence. What does that do? That widens the prosperity gap. Women who are victims of violence have very few financial choices, sometimes no choices. The support services on which they depend for counselling are gone. The women's service organizations that have done some very fine research and projects funded by the federal government are gone. When I look at what it implements for women who are victims of violence, and their children who witness that violence, I see a much broader gap than there was before.

It implements also a feeling of discouragement and disappointment for young people who will not be able to go on to post-secondary education. Nowhere in the budget was there a reduction in tuition fees or a new system for repaying fees in a way that is workable for students when they graduate which is what we called for.

What does that mean? Those bright, excited young people see those who have, the ones at the other end of the prosperity gap, going on to post-secondary education, but the people at the other end of that widening prosperity gap, those who have not, cannot afford post-secondary education. It is not that there are not more seats. There are more seats in many different programs, but if the young people cannot afford to go onto post-secondary education, it does not really matter very much if there are more seats. The gap between those bright young people who can access post-secondary education and those who cannot is growing in Surrey North.

This budget also implements a loss of job opportunities. It expands the gap between people who are able to go into the workforce because they need to, never mind those who choose to, and those who either choose to or do not need to. There are many lone parent families or two parent families where the parents need to have wage jobs just to put food on the table probably about 27 days a month, not even the whole month.

There is a lack of opportunity and a growing gap in opportunity, particularly for women because there is no affordable national child care program, which was promised. People were counting on that. They were excited about it. They saw doors opening for them in the future because there would be safe, affordable child care and they would not have to worry whether their children were all right, because some children are not old enough to talk and to tell their parents.

There will be more women who will not be able to get into the workforce. The gap between those who can afford child care and those who have absolutely no ability to access any kind of safe affordable care continues to grow. The prosperity gap between those who have and those who have not continues to grow in that area.

I have an interesting constituency. I do not get the thousands of phone calls every day that other members say they get. Every once in a while I do get a spate of phone calls about an issue, and the job protection issue is one of them. The CAW layoffs, the layoffs in the forest industry affect Surrey North very much. A lot of people are mill workers. There are the layoffs at the airport as well. These are the issues about which I have had phone calls in my office every single day.

What is there in the budget to help people who have lost their jobs? Nothing. And so the gap grows in my riding, and probably more in my riding than in any other Surrey riding, between those who have jobs and those who do not, or those who have help to get into another job and those who do not.

Nobody is standing up for what has indeed, if we count the forest industry, been thousands of lost jobs, and there will be more because there is no money for the pine beetle infestation. What happens? The gap continues to grow between those who have jobs and those who do not. We will see more people who do not have jobs than those who do.

In Surrey North there is a wonderful organization called Kla-how-eya Aboriginal Centre, which is urban aboriginal people doing extraordinary things. There has not been one bit of support in the federal budget for those people, because they do not happen to live on reserve currently. The access to education, access to the sorts of supports they need to be successful and that the organization needs to be successful are not there. Just as we thought we were starting to close that gap for aboriginal people, the gap will actually grow wider in Surrey.

There is a health gap too in Surrey North, which also relates to a prosperity gap. Many seniors live in Surrey North. Those seniors often require home support in order to stay in their homes, which actually costs the health care system less in the end. Those seniors call an MLA's office, an MP's office, a union office or a seniors adviser and say, “I have two prescriptions here and I cannot fill them both, so which one do I fill?”

The gap between those people who can and cannot afford the medication they need to treat an illness and to stay healthy is growing. We do not have a national strategy or any kind of standard for catastrophic drug coverage across the country. British Columbia is probably better off than many other provinces, but I still see the gap growing in this area. Members should think about what they would do if their grandmothers and grandfathers called them to ask which drug to take because they could not afford to fill both prescriptions.

In terms of how the budget's implementation will impact on the lives of seniors in Surrey North, they will again be part of the growing gap of people who cannot afford the very basic necessities to keep them safe and healthy.

There is a health gap as it relates to the environment. We are right by a freeway. The South Fraser Perimeter Road, a four lane highway, goes right through a small part of Surrey called Bridgeview. The effect on the environment and on people's health will be tragic. That is federal money that has gone--

[Health, April 23rd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, last week the Minister of Health lost his cool in an interview with the Vancouver Sun saying that members of the group Families for Early Autism Treatment are trying to intimidate him.

This is an organization of parents with autistic children. They are trying to get the federal government to provide the support they need to raise their children, but the Minister of Health has labelled them as extremists.

Is this really what Conservatives think of people who try to get their government to do the right thing? Does the minister really believe that advocating for one's child's health and well-being makes one an extremist? Will the minister tell us what other advocacy groups are on his list?