Penny Priddy

[Health, January 30th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, if this scheme is allowed to proceed in Quebec there is no doubt that the tide of privatization will sweep across Canada. The minister's actions speak volumes about the Conservatives intent on private health care. They are simply going to close their eyes.

Working families do not want the government subsidizing the privileged. Is this how the government is planning to reduce the wait time list, by privatizing it?

[Health, January 30th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, public health advocates are worried about a wait times plan in Quebec that will have far reaching effects. The new legislation would create a new industry in Quebec: for profit hospitals being paid for by public money. The health minister must immediately take steps to protect our public medicare system. What action has he taken so far?

[Homelessness, January 29th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I stand in the House today to bring attention to a serious problem in my riding of Surrey North.

Today there are people in Surrey who find themselves with no roof over their head. Many of my neighbours are just one or two paycheques away from losing their home.

Homelessness affects too many people: working families, people who cannot find work, seniors, single parents, people like us. As many as 25,000 people in this country will experience homelessness in 2007.

Last year I asked the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development what the Conservatives were doing to ensure that people in my community had a decent place to live. Not surprisingly, the answer is that the Conservatives are not doing enough.

The NDP has always fought to make life more affordable for everyday Canadians and we will keep fighting until decent, affordable housing is a right, not a privilege, because everyone in Surrey needs a safe place to sleep tonight.

[Health, December 13th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the clock keeps ticking and time is running out for the Minister of Health.

The minor pilot projects he has announced so far are not what Canadians had in mind when they were promised reduced wait times across the board. That is why the Wait Time Alliance report card in November gave the Conservatives a D for failing to establish a timetable for achieving targets.

Will the Minister of Health ever keep the promise made during the last campaign or should Canadians expect another lump of coal from the Conservatives in their Christmas stockings?

[Health, December 13th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister promised that patient wait time guarantees would be one of his government's key commitments. Since the election his Minister of Health has been invisible and ineffective. The Wait Time Alliance today reminded the Conservatives about their most famous broken promise.

There are only 18 days left to announce a meaningful commitment to Canadians who are waiting for treatment and surgery. Will the Minister of Health make an early new year's resolution and pledge to meet his own deadline of December 31?

[Brain Tumour Surveillance, December 12th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to support the motion.

There is no question that this country does not have a surveillance method for brain tumours, either benign or malignant. It is important at the beginning, because when people hear the words “brain cancer” or “brain tumour”, they think of a malignant cancer. While a benign tumour is not cancer, it nevertheless can cause a great deal of damage to an individual.

Unfortunately, people who read a bit about medical terminology may hear the word “benign” and not pay much attention, because they think benign means it is okay and they do not have to worry. For example, if someone was suspected of having breast cancer and the result of the biopsy was that the tumour was benign, the person would sigh with relief, because benign to most people means that everything will be fine.

There has been less focus in the area of benign tumours, less focus on surveillance, less focus on follow-up and less focus on the kinds of supports that need to be in place for children or adults who may be diagnosed with a benign tumour. Whether a tumour is benign or malignant, with treatment, people can be very lucky with malignant brain tumours and may do well.

With benign tumours, we know that while the tumour will not spread, it may recur and in point of fact, does recur. It is not at all uncommon. I can think of three people in my life who have recurring benign brain tumours. For at least two of those individuals, the surgery and the treatment for the benign brain tumours has caused permanent physical disability. One person has lost most vision. One person has a number of facial movement and speech disorders.

When a breast tumour is removed, damage is not done to the surrounding area. When a benign brain tumour is removed, there is the potential for damage to the surrounding area, depending on where it is, because of the closeness to all those areas that control thought, smell, sense, movement and all of that.

It is important to have surveillance on both. I thank the member for moving the motion, because most of the focus has been on malignant tumours. If surveillance is done, there is an opportunity to determine if it is consistent across the country. Are there provinces or parts of provinces where this is seen to a greater degree? The federal government needs to know that and we need to be able to share that with other provinces.

In the case of neurotubular disorders, when surveillance was done, suddenly we saw a far larger number of children with neurotubular disorders. Although one should never see any, the statistics said that we would see a larger number of children with neurotubular disorders in areas where spraying was going on.

It helps us when we look across the country to see if there are places where we need to have a closer look at the environment in which children or adults who are developing tumours live.

It provides us with an opportunity to look at what happens after treatment. We do not currently provide enough support after treatment. The benign or malignant tumour has been treated and halted but there are no support programs in place that provide for education, job retraining, any health care that might be needed because the individuals do not fit into the existing categories. They do not have particular challenges for which programs have already been developed. They are often simply at home with no support or they are out of school or have to stand back from their jobs which supported their families. There has not been a focus on post-treatment supports that those individuals would need.

I would agree strongly with the member from Dartmouth that we have a health care system in which we believe that nobody should be denied treatment. The better the surveillance that is done, the more likely we are to be able to get more causal information and the better we are able to respond not just to the tumour but to what kind of support people need after the fact.

People in rural areas obviously need more support than people in urban areas because they have to travel for their treatment. That support has to be in place.

It also allows us to look at what we see in terms of population groups. Are we seeing more adults? Are we seeing more children? What percentage of them are children under five, teenagers, or older adults? What are we seeing around age? What are we seeing around cultural background or ethnic background? Do we see more people from a particular ethnic background than another? That would let us do a far better surveillance. It would also let us know more about genetics. Do we think it is familial or not? Surveillance allows us to identify that kind of information as well and then to be able to set up in the way that we have done with other kinds of cancers and whether there is a familial characteristic to a particular kind of tumour.

This may very well require more funds, not just funds for surveillance but because programs are significantly lacking after treatment, there are going to have to be more dollars for health, education and training certainly from the federal government and perhaps provincial governments. We need to make sure that once people are identified as having particular needs, they are not one offs and they are provided with particular programs that meet their needs.

There is a funding issue. We know that provincial governments are struggling for health care dollars now. They cannot meet the needs of everybody, with rising drug costs, wait times and growing populations. Having been a health minister, I know how hard it is to meet everybody's needs within a health budget.

I would like there to be a federal government responsibility to look at surveillance in a more overall way. I do not want people to have to bring a motion to the House every time somebody has a disease on which we need to do surveillance. It is a very cumbersome and ineffective way of doing surveillance.

It is not that I do not support the member's motion; I do. In terms of how we do surveillance on illnesses across our country, I do not want it to be a one-off approach just because a member can bring forward a motion because it is important to the member. I would like the approach to be done in a more organized, systematic, efficacious way than we currently see.

[Committees of the House, December 11th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, could the member shed some personal experience on the issue that we are discussing?

Many of the people in my community of Surrey who came here from Vietnam are the economic drivers in our community. They own restaurants, hair styling parlours and make investments in the community.

When people say that governments are inflexible, this is a perfect example of what makes people say it is inflexible. People can see this and understand these people who have been disenfranchised for so long.

I heard the government member say that the government did not have the resources. I wonder if the member could comment on, in his experience with the people from Vietnam, whether it would take great resources to bring those people to this country.

[Violence Against Women, December 7th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday we rose in the House to remember and recommit to stopping violence against women. I rise today because this commitment is something we must do every day.

In the city of Surrey, we have seen the murder of three South Asian women in a short period of time. After these tragedies, there was a large public forum where many South Asian women spoke of their personal experiences of violence in their families. This led to considerable public debate about the South Asian community and violence.

It is important for me to say today that there is violence in every community, regardless of country of origin, and it must be stopped everywhere. I do know that naming, shaming and blaming any particular cultural community will not lead to change.

We must continue to follow the path of listening to women. We must provide education and supports that meet individual needs. These are our sisters, daughters, mothers and friends. When a woman's life is lost to violence, we are deprived of their love and support and their special gifts and talents.

Let us recommit ourselves daily to stopping violence in our communities.

[Bank Act, December 7th, 2006]

Let's do what is right.

[Health, December 6th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, that clinic is now saying it needs more money from the government. It is the job of the Prime Minister to protect ordinary Canadians from getting charged extra fees for medical service. That is what medicare is all about. It is about ensuring that everyone, regardless of their economic status, has access to the best medical care, not just those with money.

The previous Liberal government refused to protect patients. As a result, privatization and P3s have grown across Canada. What will the Prime Minister do to ensure these private clinics in B.C.--