Bill Casey

[Business of Supply, October 5th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I am very honoured to be the chair of the Standing Committee on Health, and the member for Vancouver Kingsway is one of the more active members. He has done a lot of work on the committee and made a great contribution to it. However, I honestly feel, and I am sure he knows, that we are not at the stage where we can say we can start a national pharmacare program.

He said that the PBO brought the study forth. It is an excellent study. We asked for that study, and were very grateful for having the study. However, there are so many questions left unanswered. I wrote down what the member said, and he said that Canada would spend $20 billion on pharmacare if we had a national pharmacare program. We do not know whether that $20 billion would come from the federal government, the provinces, or who. There are just so many questions.

We have a meeting scheduled on October 17 to bring the parliamentary budget officer in, and I am sure the member for Vancouver Kingsway will have lots of questions for him. After he asks those questions and we have the answers from the parliamentary budget officer, then we can maybe consider a model for the plan.

Of the $20 billion that Canada would spend, as the member just said, how much would come from the federal government?

[Committees of the House, October 5th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, it is my distinct honour to present, in both official languages, the 12th report of the Standing Committee on Health in relation to Bill C-45, an act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other acts. The committee has studied the bill and has decided to report the bill back to the House with amendments.

I want to commend all the members of the committee for their contribution to this study. We did a marathon session. We had 109 witnesses and we did a lot of work. The amendments provide for two more steps, one in one year, and one in three years. It is an improvement. I want to thank all the members of the committee for their good work.

[Breast Cancer, October 2nd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, as a cancer survivor myself, I know the importance of remembering that this is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Let us pause to remember all of the mothers and daughters, sisters and friends who have lost their lives to this terrible disease, but let us also celebrate the great strides in detection, prevention, and treatment that have been made in the past decades. As with all cancers, early detection is essential to maximizing the chances of survival. I believe that early detection just simply saved my life.

Those who have a mother or a sister should encourage them to do regular screening. Those who employ women should ensure they have the time and opportunity to be screened. Let us do everything we can to ensure that fewer women succumb to breast cancer while scientists continue to search for a cure.

[Royal Canadian Mounted Police, June 20th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, there is no question about the quality of the policing service we get, but there would be a question about the quality of the police service we get if there were no way for them to communicate with each other, which would be the case if both of these communication centres were shut down.

When I brought this up last week in the House, I asked about it, and was told that our own police force here, that provides us with protection, is arranging for an offsite location away from this location, so they would ensure redundancy in the event of a disaster after what happened with the armed gunman. Communications actually failed in that case, because there was no way to communicate.

Again, we have three reports all saying that redundancy is so critical. Our own House is saying redundancy is critical. Can the parliamentary secretary confirm that redundancy is a critical part of this decision, not just money?

[Royal Canadian Mounted Police, June 20th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I rise with a follow-up to my question earlier about the 911 communications system in Nova Scotia.

Currently, as members know, there are two main facilities in Nova Scotia that deal with 93% of all ambulance, fire, and police emergency calls, dispatching the RCMP and so on. One of these facilities is in Truro and the other is in Dartmouth. They are an hour apart, which provides for redundancy. In the event that something happens in Dartmouth, then the Truro office can pick up the load, and if something happens in Truro, the Dartmouth office can pick up the load, which is providing that necessary redundancy.

Recently, the RCMP has suggested it may close the Truro office and move it to Dartmouth where the other police communications centre is located. I was concerned at first because of the jobs, but lately I have become aware that it is a safety issue as well.

Through access to information, I was able to access a report that the RCMP did, which states, “It is not recommended that the two largest police communications operations in Nova Scotia be placed within the same metropolitan area.” That is exactly what the RCMP is proposing to do.

The RCMP report goes on to say, in recommendation number three, that the RCMP “not locate their primary OCC within the Halifax Regional Municipality.” Again, that is exactly what it is proposing to do.

The same report goes on to say that the primary service delivery site should “be outside of HRM due to risks of placing two largest police communications centres in proximity tp each other.”

This is about redundancy. Therefore, there should be a separation between the two centres so that, in the event something happens in Dartmouth, Truro could pick up the load and vice versa.

I went a little further because I needed to know more about this. I did not want to say anything that was not accurate. Therefore, I contacted one of the major police forces in Canada and I asked what it used as a manual for emergency measures. It referred me to the Homeland Security manual that it uses. This police force serves seven million people. This is from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA. It confirms exactly what the RCMP report said. It states, “Organizations should have adequate, separate locations to ensure execution of their functions.”

That same police force also provided me with another report from the National Emergency Number Association. These are reports that this police force and most police forces in Canada use to set up their emergency measures program. The report says that the document is prepared solely for the use of 911 system service providers. It states, “It is desirable to have at least two layers of redundancy for each major component of...[an emergency services office].”

Here we have three reports saying that to consolidate these emergency measures communications centres into one municipality puts Nova Scotians at risk. In fact, in this case, they would both be located in Dartmouth if the RCMP goes ahead with this. The decision has not been made yet. Hopefully, it will not make that decision, because this is the opposite of what everybody else is doing. It is reverse redundancy. Most places are going for redundancy and trying to make sure they have separate locations for their communications. If the RCMP does this it would be reverse redundancy and will put Nova Scotians at risk. The word “risk” is in the RCMP report.

Therefore, my question is this. If the RCMP decides to contravene and contradict its own recommendations, who would be held responsible in the event of a disaster when life and limb are lost?

[Royal Canadian Mounted Police, June 13th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the RCMP are considering a proposal to consolidate Nova Scotia emergency communication centres into one area. However, its own RCMP report says, on page 36, “It is not recommended that the two largest police communications operations in Nova Scotia be placed within the same metropolitan area.” Then on page 37, the RCMP report says that primary communications sites should “be outside of HRM due to risks of placing two largest police communications centres in close proximity to each other”.

How can the RCMP even consider a proposal that their own report says would put Nova Scotians at risk?

[Business of Supply, June 12th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, one of the comments by the hon. member was that we are phasing out the energy sector, but I think perhaps he is out of sync. I was just reading something on my iPhone from the managing director of Mercedes, predicting that electric cars will become mainstream by 2020. He went on to say that solar production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, and he said that last year more solar energy was installed worldwide than fossil.

Energy companies are continuing to convert from fossil fuels to solar, wind, tidal, and the other options. Do you not think that it is the Conservative Party that is a little out of sync here?

I have one other point on the softwood lumber issue. This is my fifth softwood lumber negotiation. I have been on that side and on this side, and often there is a compensation plan involved when there is a problem after the Americans take exception to what we do. We end up winning in the end, but meanwhile the lumber producers and labourers are suffering, so there are compensation plans. In previous negotiations, compensation plans have been applied by both parties.

[Committees of the House, June 9th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 11th report of the Standing Committee on Health, entitled “Report on the Public Health Effects of the Ease of Access and Viewing of Online Violent and Degrading Sexually Explicit material on Children, Women and Men”.

Pursuant to Standing Order 109, the committee requests that the government table a comprehensive response to this report.

I want to thank the committee and the witnesses for their good work on this. Although it was a wide-ranging subject, with a lot of interest, we attempted to stay focused on the issue exactly as outlined in the reference to the committee. I think we succeeded in doing that. We look forward to the response from the government.

[Health, June 9th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, having lost my oldest brother Brian to a stroke a few years ago, and as a heart attack survivor myself, my family, like thousands of other Canadian families, has experienced first-hand the awful effects of heart disease and stroke. On Wednesday, the Heart & Stroke Foundation released its “2017 Stroke Report”, which indicates that the number of Canadians living with a stroke could almost double.

Could the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health inform the House of the government's actions and plans to support those recovering from a stroke, and their caregivers?

[Cumberland-Colchester Constituency Youth Council, June 7th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, last fall, 14 bright young people representing every corner of our riding formed the Cumberland-Colchester Constituency Youth Council. They kicked off a study on youth retention and outmigration in rural Nova Scotia. They approached it like a parliamentary committee, heard from many witnesses and held lively discussions.

Their final report calls on governments to invest in the kinds of infrastructure that rural Nova Scotia needs for economies and communities to thrive, things like broadband internet, cellphone service, small schools, support for entrepreneurs, recreational infrastructure, and tourism. Their report is now in the hands of every municipal councillor, MLA and MP in the area.

These young people showed a great thirst for knowledge about civics and politics, and I want to thank them for their report. I also want to thank my executive assistant, Joel Henderson, for organizing and monitoring the entire process. I want to thank you as well, Mr. Speaker, for allowing me to talk about it.