Carolyn Bennett

[Health, June 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, first and foremost we want to ensure that Canadians have access to safe and affordable drugs. We want to find ways to reduce the potential threats to supply and cost originating with online pharmacies. The Minister of Health is the first one who can take action to protect the safety and health of Canadians.

I can assure the hon. member that Health Canada is currently looking at ways to achieve this objective soon.

[Health, June 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the Government of Canada has invested tremendously in the health human resources plan with the help of the Canadian Medical Association. We are also exploring many different ways of primary care.

In Beechy, Saskatchewan, where there were once three physicians, two have left. Now one doctor and three nurse practitioners equally look after those 4,000 patients.

We need to look forward to a new way of delivering health care, using telemedicine and everything else. With our partners in nursing and medicine and by working hard--

[Health, May 31st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, as you know, there is an agreement. The Minister of Health has been very clear that we will enter into this agreement and we will try to get these people the money they need as soon as possible. As well, there is the judicial process and the justice who will guide us in these deliberations.

[Points of Order, May 10th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to state that in my excitement about returning from Nursing Week and the fabulous public health nurses in Ottawa, I ran into the House and reflexively stood up to vote. My vote of this morning should not count.

[Quarantine Act, May 5th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, increased population mobility and its relation to the rapid spread of disease is a heightened concern in today's globalized world. Our recent experience with SARS, the arrival of an avian influenza, and the looming threat of the influenza pandemic are stark reminders that public health is a cross-border issue of growing importance. A serious communicable disease can now spread to any part of the globe in less than 24 hours.

Although the principle of uncertainty prevails in global public health, officials do know that economic and psycho-social upheaval is contingent on how virulent the virus is, how rapidly it spreads from one person to another, the capacity for early detection, and how effective preventive control measures prove to be.

The challenge is containment, and the ability to block the disease in question will depend on vigilant monitoring activities at the borders. We will also have to depend on efforts by out-of-country partners for such things as health care delivery, hospital isolation of infected persons and quarantine of potentially exposed individuals.

Although the present public health system has served Canadians well, the time has come to update our legislation so that it better reflects the changes required for preparation and emergency intervention in this 21st century.

In response to this new risk and this threatening environment, the Government of Canada has moved promptly to modernize the Quarantine Act, which is one of the oldest pieces of Canadian legislation.

Bill C-12 plays a paramount role in the management of emerging and re-emerging threats to public health. Administered at Canadian points of entry, it is the first line of defence in protecting Canadians from the importation and spread of a communicable disease. It provides the Government of Canada with modern tools and additional authorities to ensure a rapid and effective response capacity in the event of our next public health crisis.

Members may recall that the Standing Committee on Health made significant contributions toward strengthening this bill. During the examination process members listened to the issues raised by external stakeholders and put forward amendments to reflect their areas of concern. Acknowledging the efforts and commitment of our committee members, the House passed Bill C-12, as amended, on December 10, 2004.

In keeping with the parliamentary process, the Senate of Canada recently completed its legislative review of Bill C-12. As a result of this process the Senate Standing Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology introduced amendments pertaining to the tabling of regulations before Parliament.

Simply put, the Senate of Canada passed Bill C-12 on the condition that the Minister of Health lay proposed quarantine regulations before both chambers. This amendment reflects equal status for both Houses in parliamentary oversight of the regulation making process.

Further, the governor in council may only make a regulation under section 62 of the newly proposed quarantine act if both Houses have concurred in reports from their respective committees approving the proposed regulation, or a version of it amended to the same effect.

In the spirit of collaboration, it is my hope that members of the House of Commons will find merit in the work previously undertaken by the Senate of Canada and will concur with the adopted amendments to Bill C-12.

With this said, I wish to demonstrate continued support for this very important piece of health protection legislation. Today I stand before my fellow colleagues imparting that it is our collective responsibility to move Bill C-12 forward in the global interests of public health and the health and safety of Canadians.

[Citizen Engagement, May 3rd, 2005]

Madam Chair, on the first piece, I guess it is a sort of a chicken and egg thing. My feeling on going to electoral reform, and I think I probably got it backwards, is that we cannot really go to electoral reform until the parties are truly democratic. In order to put people on the list, it has to be done in a fair and transparent way. We need to know how that list would be arrived at. It would have to be something that one would feel comfortable with as a party. In France on the parity issue, they passed a bill saying that for every other person on the list it should run woman-man-woman-man or the parties would have to pay a fine. All of the parties paid the fine.

I think one needs to feel that there is a buy-in in terms of what one is trying to achieve, whether it is a parity law or whether it is proportional representation. I guess it is an interesting challenge now. I think the Globe and Mail editorial this morning was fabulous in terms of understanding the risk of some of the methods of proportional representation, which will not achieve the advent of more women and more of the under-represented people but will tend mainly to diminish the effect of political parties.

Second, the blog has been fabulous. What they talked about in the Congress Online project was a sort of anticipatory approach. For example, on same sex marriage, two summers ago at the Ontario Superior Court ruling, as soon as I had five letters on it I was able to put up what I thought, which people feel can deter other letters or can encourage letters from the people who disagree.

I found in the last election that the content I created for the website over those years of just writing what I think about things became a sort of documentation, which I actually then used in election brochures or certainly on the issues part of the site. It is not a formal blog, but I have been doing this now for three or four years, I think, and it is interesting.

In terms of the text messaging and cellphone piece as well, it is interesting in terms of how we have to be like Gretzky and skate to where the puck is going to be. I was at a blogging conference at Westminster a couple of summers ago when they changed the date, the time and the place of the meeting and everybody was there at the right place at the right time just because of text messaging. It is interesting. I have not figured out how to blog from my BlackBerry yet, but we are working on it. I find it very satisfying.

Also, even when I am being introduced as a speaker, quite often the introducer will remark on what I have blogged. I remember that when I got back from Israel Don Newman on Newsworld commented on comments about what I felt in Israel, comments that came straight from my blog, which beats the two year old biography that is on most of our websites.

There is no question about it, though, that when I became a minister the department and my staff were quite worried about me just blogging away. But I feel that one puts up what one believes in, along with comments linked to articles one has liked and all of that sort of thing. I do not have the formal blogging software that automatically makes the links. I have to make the links myself in an HTML format. By doing it myself, though, I have found out that no one on my staff can say they cannot do it.

[Citizen Engagement, May 3rd, 2005]

Madam Chair, there is a number of different things.

I have divided my riding into natural geographic neighbourhoods. We do a neighbourhood checkup on any topic that people want.

When we do the town halls we tend to have a very topical issue that has come out. I have to admit that the best meetings we have had have been the ones with real partners in the community who help get the people out as. The meetings we had on Sharon Carstairs, on end of life care and palliative care, the Hospice Association helped and cohosted them. Those seemed to work. I think it is about those sorts of partnerships.

Even with the ones where the turnout was small, I would begin them with the attitude that it was my briefing and that I had invited the three people whom I really adored and wanted to know what they thought of things or to debate issues. It was like a briefing for me. Even if nobody came, I still got the briefing from the panel in the same way.

Once in my office I ended up in this fabulous discussion. I thought that everybody else should be able to hear it. I would also love it if at some point we were able to webcast the town hall meetings. People who did not want to attend could quietly watch at home, in much the same way as my MSN chat on Sunday nights operates. There are what the kids call lurkers who are there listening to the chat, but do not feel quite comfortable participating in the chat.

It is a matter of our changing our ideas on how many it takes to have a good conversation. I think I have had over a hundred since I have been elected and I do not think there has been one in which I have not learned something.

[Citizen Engagement, May 3rd, 2005]

Madam Chair, I thank the Minister responsible for Democratic Reform, since the debate this evening is very important.

Citizens are engaging in record numbers, but they are simply not engaging with politicians. They have written us off. Some are not even voting. Many believe it does not matter.

As an antidote we must ensure that the template or structure for citizen engagement at all levels is intelligent and genuine. Citizens are right to be cynical. Countless exercises in public consultation have been pro forma, a sort of occupational therapy for citizens. Governments have simply treated consultations as a box to check off, having already decided what to do anyway.

Citizens can tell the difference, particularly the savvy young ones who can sniff out manipulation and people wasting their time. We need at all times to keep our cynicism thermometer in full view and ensure that everything we do is driving the red mercury down. The legitimacy of a genuine process should be palpable. The process must utilize all the modern technology that all generations will use.

The case history is clear. Polling conducted by Earnscliffe years ago rated listening to Canadians as the third most important issue facing this country.

The signs and symptoms are clear. There is decreasing voter turnout, particularly among younger voters. Only 11% of Canadians have contacted their elected representatives, written a letter to the editor or anything like that. It is the decline of deference among Canadians as has been described by University of Toronto political scientist Neil Nevitte. The diagnosis has been the democratic deficit, but there is a treatment. The treatment is democratic reform.

Stephen Coleman, a professor of e-democracy at Oxford, talks about a two way accountability between citizens and their elected representatives. I see democratic reform in four ways: one, electoral reform; two, the necessity of party reform if electoral reform is entertained; three, parliamentary reform; and four, citizen engagement.

I will leave numbers one and two alone for now, but numbers three and four together are what Toronto Star columnist Carol Goar calls “democracy between elections”. Stephen Coleman has made it clear that it is this two way accountability and civic efficacy. “People don't want to govern”, he says, “they want to be heard”.

Being heard, however, means that those listening, the elected representatives, are themselves heard when they present their ideas to government. There is no point in citizens wasting their time talking to members of Parliament or parliamentary committees if the centre of government ignores them. If the view of the centre is that MPs are nobodies, the point of the exercise is defeated. When a deputy minister in this country was once called in Parliament “a minor process obstacle”, one has to say that we need some attitudinal change in this place.

Citizen engagement means absolutely nothing without the attitudinal shift that is at the heart of parliamentary reform. As former House of Commons Clerk Robert Marleau observed, “the problem is not the rules, it is the culture”. The culture is determined by attitude.

If Parliament matters, better people will run for office. Parliamentary reform is critical to improving the quality of those who run for public office, in that good people will not waste their time as rubber stamps for decisions predetermined by unelected officials. I thank the minister responsible for democratic reform for all of the changes and all of his proposals in making this a reality so that the new generation of parliamentarians will welcome the role of mediator between citizens and their government and be able to demonstrate their ability to truly make a difference.

Empowering MPs will strengthen democracy using all of the tools available in six ways. I see that we as parliamentarians operate in six ways.

One, we operate in our riding. Two, we operate in our non-geographic constituencies, for example, women, persons with disabilities, business, whoever sees the MP as their person on the Hill. Three, we operate in committees. Four, we operate sometimes in collaboration with government. I very much enjoyed the online consultation that was conducted years ago between MPs and the Department of Canadian Heritage on whether there is a Canadian way and what is the role of government in online chats. Five, we also operate as party members. Party policy development is also very much part of our role as members of Parliament. Six, we operate internationally sharing best practices with colleagues around the globe.

The collaboration between MPs and citizens can ultimately lead to better public policy, as unusual coalitions work together in presenting real solutions with real buy-in of those affected. It results in better legislation and better implementation.

Citizens help parliamentarians keep government accountable. Their input results in better questions, in better analysis of budgetary estimates, priorities and planning exercises. There is no question that the ongoing dialogue will result in better relationships between citizens and their elected representatives. Our ultimate goal is a democracy between elections that will not only persuade citizens that their voice really does matter and that they should vote, but that they may even decide to get involved in the political process and consider running for office or getting behind someone who will.

Parliamentary reform means taking up Dr. Coleman's challenge and asserting the emerging role of Parliament as a mediator between the public and government. It is about redefining representative democracy using the new tools and acknowledging that citizens have a lot more to offer than their voice every four years.

As a family physician it was clear to me that the patient had to be a partner in his or her care. Taking this patient as partner approach to the work in my riding has been one of the most rewarding aspects of being the member of Parliament for St. Paul's. From town hall meetings to neighbourhood checkups, to the grade five classroom, to the interactive website in my blog, to my Sunday night MSN chat with my young voters, I learn a great deal from the engaged citizens of St. Paul's.

We, as parliamentarians, must believe that we will indeed get better policy by consulting Canadians. The Prime Minister raised the bar as finance minister with the prebudget consultations. It was clear he respected that the expertise was in the trenches. The ideas would come from those who worked in those areas, unlike those who would dismiss engaged citizens as special interest groups.

As chair of the subcommittee on persons with disabilities, it was clear to me that the parents of children with disabilities were indeed experts. They could better delineate the gaps and duplication in supports and services than any policy analyst or academic. The Prime Minister demonstrated that respect and his ability to harvest the best ideas and solutions through these consultations.

The OECD wrote a document in 2001 called “Citizens as Partners” which identified three levels of citizen engagement. It is really important that whenever we engage citizens we let citizens know what level we are asking for. One, are the citizens simply being informed, a sort of transparency, the typical dad approach of government, decide, announce, defend? Or, are they being consulted? Do participants understand that the parameters include timing, budget constraints, federal-provincial realities? Or is it indeed a deliberative democracy exercise and is the government prepared to live with the results? Citizens, the OECD argues, must always be clear about the level in which they have been asked to participate.

Many of us realize that the third level of government may be a little bit more relevant, the municipal level. Carolyn Lukensmeyer demonstrated this in the replacement of the twin towers after 9/11. She used a fabulous process in which citizens actually rejected the first three architectural designs and sent them back to the drawing board in order to find a more therapeutic design which was the Libeskind model.

It was clear in the Romanow commission that the input of Canadians was essential. At no time did Canadians in that process feel like a process necessity. It was genuine. The title of the report “Building on Values” represented the might of thousands of Canadians. Canadians note that they are citizens of a community, a province and a country. It is only through putting citizens back at the centre of the debate that we will avoid the ridiculous jurisdictional squabbles that are so tiresome and counterproductive.

The 2003 success of the e-consultation on the future of CPP disability by the subcommittee on persons with disabilities set a benchmark for all parliamentary committees. The subcommittee's report recommended that all committees have an expanded information based website and consider e-consultation in much the same way as they consider travel, videoconferencing and other tools.

As a minister, I find that we are able to engage in this same wonderful process on the public health agency at www.healthycanadians.ca. I am very aware that the resources that I have as a minister of the crown in the government are way too big compared to that available to individual members of Parliament.

After tonight's debate I hope the minister will understand that there is huge support for basic websites and online chats as basic tools for a member of Parliament. The ability to host town hall meetings is imperative. The webcasting of committees is important, as is increased resources to the Library of Parliament so that we can have personnel to do the estimates on an annual basis, to create the content that is necessary in terms of citizen engagement in civic literacy, such that we can always know that the committees will get better and newer information than what is there as a government.

If I may, I just want to tell one tiny story about a constituent of mine, Lembi Buchanan, whose work as a truly engaged citizen was reflected in this year's budget. Lembi arrived in my office to tell me about the disability tax credit and how it was not fair to people with mental illness. We took that problem to the committee on status of persons with disabilities. We ended up with a unanimous report. When the government of the day did not do what the report said, we ended up with a unanimous vote in the House of Commons. We ended up with a technical advisory committee on which Lembi B sat.

All the recommendations of that technical advisory committee are now in the 2005 budget. It is huge to say that from riding to committee to the House to an advisory committee of government that this citizen and everything that she was working on worked.

The change consists not only in admitting the democratic deficit exists and in describing it, but also in showing how Canadians can work together with the members of Parliament to eliminate it by using all the tools available for this purpose.

I thank the minister for the opportunity to bring Parliament and citizen engagement into this century.

[Canada Grain Act, April 18th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food conducted extensive consultations in the week of January 17 in western Canada on the government's proposed implementation.

As I outlined, a wide range of stakeholders were consulted. They included farmers, producer organization, the general farm groups, elevator operators, the railways and the private grain companies. Some stakeholders were broadly supportive of the government's proposed approach. While some concerns were heard in regard to the impact of these changes on grain handling systems, stakeholders seemed assured that the changes would have little or no impact on the current system in the short term.

The Parliamentary Secretary for the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food is well known for his frankness and he has responded extraordinarily well. He has been able to say that what he heard was unbelievably strong support for Canada to meet its WTO obligations.

Transport Canada consulted with the Canadian Pacific Railway and Canadian National on the proposed changes to the revenue cap provision. CPR has expressed concern about the potential impact on the proposed changes on its revenues from the U.S. operations and on its capacity during peak movement periods. CN officials indicated they did not have any concerns with the proposed changes. The officials have let me know that they really do not anticipate any big changes in terms of U.S. imported grain.

The province of British Columbia has reiterated its concern that the revenue cap is discriminatory and should be changed since it applies to domestic movements at Thunder Bay, but not to domestic movements of feedlots in the B.C. Lower Mainland. The government resisted previous pressures from B.C. in 1995 and 2000 to extend the coverage to domestic movements due to its objective of reducing, not increasing, regulation.

The CGC consulted the Western Grain Elevator Association, representing the major licensed primary elevators and terminals of western Canada, the Inland Terminal Association of Canada, representing the producer owned primary elevators of western Canada, the Canadian Special Crops Association and the transfer elevator operators.

Terminal and transfer elevator operators had expressed concern about the potential comingling of non-registered varieties. They feel the grain producers should not be penalized by the CGC for misrepresenting varieties. The CGC does not have the legislative authority to penalize producers, but I think there is a feeling that as long as the grain is labelled mixed, this will meet the obligation.

[Canada Grain Act, April 18th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I am unable to tell the member that. I know the minister will be happy to tell the House as soon as he is able.

The issue for all farmers, even for those of us in downtown Toronto, is that we want fair trading across the planet. What is very unfair is when countries do not change in compliance with WTO rulings. It weakens the whole system and it weakens the playing field for all farmers, particularly in Canada. We must honour our WTO obligations, in the same way we expect our partners around the world to honour them.

We have had every assurance that this will in effect make very little change if no change in terms of grain farmers. This is a matter of coming into line with our trade obligations, both out trade and in trade, and ensuring that it is okay.

We also are confident that this in no way changes the grain quality system or the integrity of the system in Canada. The parliamentary secretary's tour on this was during the week of January 17. A wide range of stakeholders were consulted, as I said in my remarks. There were some general concerns in terms of the impact of the changes. I think assurance was given that there would be huge support for Canada to meet its WTO obligations. For us not to meet our WTO obligations, puts us with no moral authority to insist on other countries honouring theirs.

A number of core groups were consulted directly by Transport Canada or the Canadian Grain Commission. They included the Western Grain Elevator Association, the Inland Terminal Association, Canadian Special Crops Association, Transfer Elevator Operators, Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Railway.

The parliamentary secretary in his groups met with Agricore United, Alberta Grain Commission, Alberta Soft Wheat Producers Commission, Canadian Pacific Railway, Canadian Wheat Board, Canola Council of Canada, Inland Terminal Association, Prairie Oat Growers Association, Saskatchewan Flax Development Commission, the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, the Western Barley Growers Association, the Western Grain Elevators Association, Weyburn Inland Terminal, Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan, Canadian Federation of Agriculture, Wild Rose Agricultural Producers, Grain Growers of Canada, Manitoba Corn Growers Association, Canadian Canola Growers Association, Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association, Alberta Barley Commission, BC Grain Producers Association, Keystone Agricultural Producers, National Farmers Union and the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities.

That is an extensive consultation. We believe overall that meeting our obligations of the WTO is in Canada's best interest for the whole agricultural sector.