Carolyn Bennett

[International Aid, November 7th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister for International Cooperation. With winter approaching, what specifically is Canada doing to ensure the long term health of those children in Afghanistan and Pakistan?

[Hepatitis C, October 30th, 2001]

moved:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should recognize the month of May as Hepatitis C Awareness Month.

Mr. Speaker, one of the honours of a member of parliament is to be able to bring forward initiatives that were truly created in the community. On behalf of the Hepatitis C Society of Canada, the Canadian Hemophilia Society and numerous other organizations I am proud to bring this motion forward.

We presented the motion on March 19. Since that time the Minister of Health, in response to a question by the member for Hamilton Mountain, has indicated his support. We hope today's motion will bring momentum to the issue such that by May we will have this in effect.

One of the toughest things in health care is dealing with diseases that people do not know they have. It is extraordinarily important that awareness campaigns be launched to seek out people who may be at risk but who do not know they ought to be tested.

At the moment between 210,000 and 275,000 people are infected with hepatitis C in Canada. Only 30% of those people know they have the virus. They are therefore at extraordinary risk of passing the disease on to others.

When I graduated from medical school in 1974 we did not even know of hepatitis C. We had a form of hepatitis that was neither A nor B. It is only since 1989 that we have begun to name the disease and learn more about its epidemiology and what needs to be done in terms of prevention.

Like all forms of hepatitis, hepatitis C is an inflammation of the liver. Some people experience severe symptoms such as fatigue and jaundice and go on to develop cirrhosis and even liver cancer. However many people have no symptoms. It is those people we are hoping to help by designating the month of May hepatitis C awareness month to raise awareness among those at risk.

There is a hepatitis C prevention, support and research program within Health Canada. The program, like the first Canadian conference on hepatitis C that Health Canada supported last May, intends to increase awareness, promote positive prevention behaviours, expand research activity and augment the government's capacity to respond to this health threat.

It is important to understand that at the moment the major group of people acquiring hepatitis C are the people most at risk. Some of us saw the documentary on CBC about Joyceville Penitentiary where 50% of the inmates may have hepatitis C. This is an extraordinary health burden in that it is the greatest indication for liver transplant and therefore a huge burgeoning cost to our health care system.

The greatest risk is of course among injection drug users and people who engage in high risk behaviours such as tattooing, body piercing, acupuncture and even inter-nasal cocaine use.

Current research shows that the risks of transmitting hepatitis C through sexual intercourse or childbirth are low. However it is extraordinarily important to note that we are seeing up to 8,000 new hepatitis C infections each year, of which approximately 2,000 or less than one-quarter are clinically recognized as acute diseases.

Some 10% to 20% of persons with hepatitis C go on to develop cirrhosis of the liver. This can prevent the liver from functioning properly and eventually require a liver transplant to prevent liver failure and death. Some 1% to 5% of people with hepatitis C and cirrhosis can go on to develop liver cancer.

It is extraordinarily important that we understand that although there is a help fight liver disease month and many other months, an awareness campaign for this silent illness would be an extraordinarily important step.

Hepatitis C would not get its due in the regular liver month of March. Because it is unique in its scope a specific awareness campaign is necessary. Otherwise it would be the equivalent of calling AIDS just another immune disease and putting it in an immune disease month. It is extraordinarily important that we focus specifically on hepatitis C because of its serious complications and health burden.

There are no comparable infectious diseases in Canada. Even AIDS at the moment does not have as many new infections on a yearly basis. We therefore need an even stronger emphasis on prevention activities for hepatitis C across Canada. A full month of awareness would be an extremely strong format for that. Health Canada could then launch its awareness campaign within that time and benefit from the month of focus.

There are already many activities happening on May 1, including a candlelight ceremony. It could be difficult to co-ordinate a nationwide shift to March should we decide it should be included in help fight liver disease month. The next Canadian conference on hepatitis C will be in May, if not next year then in 2003 or 2004. We feel strongly that by then we will desperately need a month of focus on the issue.

In 1998 Health Canada committed $50 million over five years to develop and design a prevention, support and research program for Canadians living with hepatitis C. It consists of the five components of prevention and targets programming to prevent transmission of hepatitis C among those currently uninfected, particularly high risk youth and injection drug users.

The program includes community based care and treatment support as well as the extraordinarily important research component. Then there is the program's management and delivery. In partnership with other parts of Health Canada there are other programs, including enhanced hepatitis C surveillance sites, research into hepatitis C among aboriginal street youth and the Canadian Viral Hepatitis Network.

On behalf of these important volunteers who feel their work could be enhanced and made easier by the designation as such, I welcome the minister's support on May 17 of this year. I hope we will shortly hear an announcement from Health Canada regarding the issue.

[Marriage Capacity Act, October 29th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Vancouver East.

It was just over a year and a half ago that we celebrated in my riding the passage of the historic Bill C-23. It was an amazing step in terms of the equality of our gay and lesbian couples, in terms of their common law relationships and being treated the same as heterosexual couples.

It is important now that the member for Burnaby--Douglas has brought to the House the final step in achieving ultimate equality for these couples. It is clear that couples who would like to formalize their relationship would like the state and their religious faith to recognize that commitment.

Our country will only ever be as strong as the individual family units that have decided that they will look after one another. It is extraordinarily important that these units are recognized and have the full right of other couples. To have any less a relationship speaks against the diversity that we welcome in this country. We must move beyond tolerance and into the respect and the true equality that is beyond the kind of discrimination that prevents these couples from marriage.

There are times for parliament to lead and this is one of them. To be spend time and money in the courts when the Canadian public is way ahead of us on this is a shame. It is truly an important time and it is disappointing that the bill is non-votable because some of the small concerns around the bill could have been very easily sorted out in committee.

It is important that we move forward in addressing this discrimination. I, together with the member for Toronto Centre--Rosedale, support the member for Burnaby--Douglas, EGALE and all the people who have worked so hard to achieve this final step in true equality for all Canadians.

[International Actions Against Terrorism, October 15th, 2001]

Mr. Chairman, it is quite spooky here tonight. After almost 25 years in family practice attending to sick patients or getting up in the middle of the night to pronounce somebody dead, I guess we are all here tonight because we are worried that this debate is about life and death.

I think we all know, having visited the knesset, that those are the kinds of debates held in other parliaments around the world but are not debates we often do here.

One of the most important things about being a member of parliament is that sometimes we have to talk about things of which we know very little. When I spoke on September 18 I was worried about the events of September 11. I wondered what would happen. I talked a little about how my father and my father-in-law had gone to war so that my sons who are now 18 and 20 would not have to.

We worried about having peace. In the 50 years since the second world war, we hoped we could continue to use the rule of law, to use our sense of justice around the world and that there would be a way to solve our problems other than through military action.

On thanksgiving Sunday while I was putting the turkey in the oven and being grateful for being in Canada, I was upset to hear that the war on terrorism had begun. It was numbing to think of what it meant to Canada, a country of peacemakers. It was an extraordinarily difficult week in the riding, as the hon. member for Yukon has said. Canadians are worried. They were worried when they looked at the Globe and Mail this morning and saw the headline stating “Ottawa backs U.S. all the way”.

As we often find, however, when we get into the text is that it is not what the minister said. What I think people want to know is whether there is a way to sort out the next steps.

It has been said that the difference between a politician and a statesman is that the politician is making decisions for the next election while a statesman is making decisions for the next generation.

What I have heard very loudly over this last week is that we want to ensure that the Prime Minister of Canada gets to be a statesman and that this is not a coalition where one nation makes all the decisions, particularly as we look forward to what must be the next steps.

Last Thursday was a most difficult evening. In compulsory civics courses now in grade 10 we have some making a difference course that I have done with all the grade 10s in the riding. We had a dinner planned for months for the best 20 essays in the riding about these wonderful students' views of citizens, about apathy and about the role of the citizen and the role of the elected representative. I had asked Ursula Franklin to come and talk to them, who I think has done some of the most amazing thinking and writing on the role of the citizen. Last week she was seriously wearing her pacifist hat. She made all of us think a little differently. She was someone about to win the Lester B. Pearson award for peace. She was concerned I think that 50 years of work could be for naught if we did not try to make sure that the next steps out of this were back under the umbrella of the United Nations.

She reminded us of the important work of Lester Pearson, of George Ignatieff and all Canadians who have worked so hard.

I was reminded of Beijing. Whenever there were things too difficult to handle, a subcommittee would be struck and Canada would be asked to chair it.

I was reminded of the number of ways to look at things. It was an interesting challenge for me to report back to my wonderful staff who seemed to all have degrees in peace and conflict studies. They wanted to know why the scientists were pacifists and if it because there was no evidence that this worked? They wanted to know how to find smart ways of going about the next chapter and how to make sure that whatever we did would not take away the important role of the UN in the future.

When Kofi Annan and the United Nations won the Nobel Prize last Friday, it did not seem ironic. It seemed like a very purposeful decision of the Norwegians to make sure that people would not forget the UN at this time.

Ursula Franklin asked me questions that I could not answer. I was asked if this had happened to China or to India, if the Pudong highrises opposite Shanghai or if the Taj Mahal had been hit, would we be writing blank cheques or giving carte blanche for the people in self-defence?

I have a feeling that we would want a serious role for the security council and I think that we would want to get this back on the rails as soon as we possibly could.

There are many things to look forward to in the next chapter. It is imperative that we have the best brains involved when coming to this decision. It is really important that people understand that culture. We cannot demand that someone be handed over on a silver platter, when that is not the way people in that culture work to save face. Sometimes, with a certain persuasion, accidents happen. There are many ways that people have organized to make sure terrorists can be rooted out.

I want to make sure that the foreign policy which is articulated in these next chapters, particularly by the United States, is indeed a foreign policy. We have some concern that at times foreign policy, which is merely for domestic consumption, is not the best in the long term.

Ursula Franklin said to me “If you have a friend that drinks too much, do you just pour them another drink?” What do we do with people who actually need to work together in the best possible coalitions?

I want to make sure, as we move forward, that we have the ability to set a course that is for the next generation and indeed for the next 100 years.

Today, at the finance committee hearings, there was a fantastic American who chose to live in Canada 10 years ago. She implored me to make sure that we maintained our perfect culture. She said she did not come here for the weather. She came here for the extraordinary sense of community, and she has lived it. She felt it was the greatest gift that she could give to her kids and to herself.

We want to make sure that we move forward in this next chapter with the kind of thoughtfulness that the people like Lester Pearson would want us to do.

As we move into this time together, I hope that we ensure the legacy of the work that Canada has done for the UN. It is imperative that we think of what the next steps are and how to make sure that we are on track.

I hope that domestically we will use our brains, in terms of the kind of information technology it takes to track the money and do the preparedness. I want to make sure that Health Canada and the physicians of Canada get together so that we can prepare a response.

I hope the Government of Canada can show the very best kind of friendship to our American colleagues. A true friend will help them move into the next chapter and embrace the United Nations in a way that we know they should.

[Human Rights, October 3rd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, in recent years we have all heard about the war that is being raged by the Taliban on their own women in Afghanistan, particularly from brave journalists such as Sally Armstrong. We can only imagine how much worse their situation has become since September 11.

It is estimated that by November 1 there will be 5.5 million Afghans who rely on UN food aid, the majority of whom will be women and children.

It is easy for us in Canada to see the situation as hopeless. Canada's National Coalition in Support of Afghan Women has put together a practical action plan. It contains information on how to put pressure on governments that support the Taliban, how to help women in Afghanistan today, how to influence the Taliban and how to promote awareness in Canada and around the world. The information is available at www.yorku.ca/iwrp/afghanistan.htm.

One of the most important things we can do is acknowledge that the protection of human rights should be everyone's responsibility. It is our hope that whatever new government comes into Afghanistan, it will strive to vastly improve the position of the women in its country.

[Health, October 1st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, second hand smoke has proven to be a silent killer. It is for this reason that on October 1 and 2, for the first time ever, Canadians across the country will be able to take part in a real time Internet broadcast of the B.C. symposium “Clearing the Air: Protecting Workers' Health”.

The symposium will bring together employers, workers, medical health officers and managers who will hear from a range of international and national experts. It will be broadcast today from 7.30 to 9.30 p.m. and tomorrow from 8.30 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. at www.cctc.ca.

The symposium is an initiative of the Clean Air Coalition of B.C., the British Columbia Lung Association and the Canadian Cancer Society. It will make scientific and economic facts related to second hand smoke available from coast to coast.

The broadcast of the symposium is made possible by a partnership between the CAC, Cancer Care Ontario and the Canadian Council for Tobacco Control. I congratulate them on a Canadian first.

[Allotted Day--Anti-Terrorism Legislation, September 18th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the answer has two parts. One is that in the traditional tasks of SERT it would never presume that the person wanted to die. We have a very different situation.

I am interested. The member from Nepean who is presenting the proposal for a foreign intelligence gathering agency has an interesting concept. No longer will an organization that only has a mandate to do domestic work be effective in the world as we know it today.

[Allotted Day--Anti-Terrorism Legislation, September 18th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I agree. When we look at the consensus of opinion of what we have to do, we have to be able to get intelligent information about all perpetrators and all with those kinds of ideals and goals. It is important that we have the ability to track who is raising the money and where it is going.

It is important that we co-operate around the world in all of these ways. Some of the international agreements that we have signed have committed Canada to do that. When we look at the International convention for the suppression of financing of terrorism, when we look at the things that Canada has signed on to, it is important that we do this in an international way. As the Prime Minister said, if we need laws to be strengthened to get to that end, I hope that is something the justice committee will look at.

[Allotted Day--Anti-Terrorism Legislation, September 18th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, today as we look at the possible legislative remedies, it is imperative that we seek to examine the context and indeed the definitions. All last week we were numb. We said things like, it is unreal, it is a bad movie. We took calls from citizens trying to find reasons and solutions. Our big brother who sometimes was the recipient of our antipathy, who we felt sometimes bullied us or sometimes just ignored us, all of a sudden was clearly undeniably family. Suddenly American flags were on our lapels and in our windows. Our family member was under attack, as indeed was the world.

When asked whether we are at war, we will pause. What does “at war” mean in 2001? I remember as a little girl sitting on my dad's lap and for the first time feeling the shrapnel in his neck that he had received in Holland as part of Canada's 30th Battery in World War II.

My father-in-law, who had been shot down in the English Channel years after the Battle of Britain this week asked for a copy of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms so he could take it to the school where he will be speaking on Remembrance Day. He wants to explain about the fundamental freedoms that he had been fighting for, nation state to nation state. It is no longer that same kind of war.

When asked last week on CBC whether we were at war, Ursula Franklin, the renowned physicist and pacifist answered, “I don't think so”. She went on to explain however that peace is not the absence of war. She knew certainly that we are not at peace. Peace to Ursula is the presence of justice. Obvious to all of us now is the profound lack of justice. As Canadians we have an overwhelming sense of wanting things to be fair. We want justice to be done. We want to feel safe, but what will it take to allow us to feel safe now in the wake of the attack on America last week? The previous gradual transformation on the concept of security has taken a quantum leap.

Just last December, John Wright of the Library of Parliament in the paper “Conflict and Security in the Contemporary World” wrote:

Human security holds the safety and dignity of the individual to be the primary focus. It reflects the growing belief that guaranteeing the security of states does not necessarily lead to better security for people.

He wrote about the transformation of conflict. He stated:

New conflicts are based more on identities, values and beliefs than on territorial defence or aggression. They are often conducted by actors with few formal or material resources. This makes the conflicts intense and difficult to resolve because values are deeply held, not divisible, and difficult to bargain away. In addition, a lack of political infrastructure often makes building, maintaining, and enforcing agreements difficult.

The stunning magnitude of the terrorist acts of September 11 call into question our very definitions. In 1987 the Senate Special Committee on Terrorism and the Public Safety stated:

Terrorism is the threat of use of violent criminal techniques, in concert with political and psychological actions, by a clandestine or semi-clandestine armed political faction or group with the aim of creating a climate of fear and uncertainty, wherein the ultimate target (usually one or more governments) will be coerced or intimidated into conceding the terrorists their specific demands, or some political advantage.

On Saturday, Marcus Gee in the Globe and Mail revised that. He said:

Terrorism is a deliberate form of political or ideological warfare waged by fanatics with a disposition for unlimited violence. In the case of extreme religious terrorists, whether Islamic or Christian or Sikh, they are engaged in a holy war, a struggle for the fate of the world that justifies any amount of bloodshed.

No longer are there specific demands or just the threat of violence to a specific end. There is just hatred.

How could we have predicted this kind of planning and precision? Our definitions have changed for war, for terrorism. Our definition of peace will remain. We must seek justice. That is not vengeance or retribution. Old fashioned military aggression cannot be seen as an instrument of peace, but what do we do?

In 1996 Wolfgang Koerner at our Library of Parliament wrote in his paper “The Democratic Deterrent to Terrorism”:

In their attempt to deal with terrorism, democratic states are confronted with an unfortunate paradox. The very qualities that make democracies so vulnerable to terrorists are those that make them superior to other systems of government and so worth preserving.

He went on to say:

When dealing with responses to terrorism, the need for the following quickly comes to mind: the co-operative exchange of intelligence data; bilateral and multilateral legal agreements; increased security at countries' entry and exit points; information on the financing of terrorism; the training of specialized personnel for rescue operations; the extension of international law to cover acts of terrorism.

We must deal now with this problem in a comprehensive way. We know that we need more money and resources for deportation of people who have been refused Canadian citizenship, such as the millennium bomber. We now know when we go through the Tel Aviv airport that in opening our bags we have had a psychological assessment by someone who has been in an army and knows how to do that. That person is not a minimum wage worker relying on machines.

What should we do? What should Canada do?

On Sunday in St. Paul's I hosted two of my regular neighbourhood check-ups. We have divided the riding into 17 natural neighbourhoods. The two groups could not have been more different.

The citizens assembled at the Bradgate Arms felt strongly that Canada should be measured and smart about the next steps. They firmly disagreed with the group from our upper village who wanted to ensure that we would give unequivocal support to whatever the Americans wanted to do.

I thought about inclusive decision making and hoped that the best brains from around the world would be brought to the strategy.

The most poignant intervention came from my neighbour across the street, Rob Tyrie. He had been on the 40th floor of the World Trade Center. He lived through it. He knows it was real. He knows it was not just a bad movie. He wanted to make sure that all of us knew and that I would convey to all decision makers how real it was. He wants from us a solution for the next 100 years. He agreed with the Prime Minister's words yesterday: “We must be guided by a commitment to do what works in the long run, not by what makes us feel better in the short run”.

He was extraordinarily convincing in his argument that the perpetrators had spent six years planning this assault on our civilized world. If it takes six years to ensure that it can never happen again, he will feel well served by our government and the coalition it is building. We must do what works, not what makes us feel better for a minute.

He wants us to make sure that we are not acting in hatred. He is begging us to protect our multicultural society where we will all feel safe and secure.

Rob had a co-worker with him in New York whose first name was Mazhar and his middle name Islam. Rob wants to make sure that his friend will not be a victim of backlash based on race.

As the Prime Minister said yesterday, the terrorists win when they export their hatred.

He asked for a national response to the trauma that we have all felt and that some like Rob and the 26 members of his team that were in Manhattan, four in the tower and 20 in harm's way, get appropriate help.

We as Canadians have developed great programs in post-traumatic stress syndrome because of the bravery of Romeo Dallaire. We need to make sure that these programs are available and all health professionals are taught how to recognize it and how to provide the best possible treatment for all victims of trauma and abuse.

Last night Ursula Franklin called upon me as a physician, someone who is trained in healing and well being. We should look upon our situation as an enormous injury, an infection. She wants us to help build up the antibodies, the antibodies of justice and caring.

We must cultivate the antibodies. We must work to create the body politic that resists infection. We need to find interventions that produce resistance. We need an effective immune system in every part of this tiny planet.

Hatred is virulent. It is learned. It is like an acquired affection. It should not be compared to a cancer. There is no gene for hatred.

We must commit to improving the caring, education and justice that will immunize the world against the collective weakness that allows terrorism to flourish. We must begin with our children, the children in Northern Ireland, in the Middle East, in Bosnia.

We must work to support good government around the world which is fair, transparent and takes people seriously. We must use our brains and our technology to deal with this modern lack of justice. We must remember as we seek a solution that will last 100 years, that we ensure that our sons and daughters and grandchildren will live to see it.

My son put it best: we are all just earthlings and we have to learn how to share this rock.

It is now the time for all like-minded nations to work together to make a safe planet for all of us. We must urgently move forward to effect worldwide the presence of justice, a true peace.

[Persons With Disabilities, June 6th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, this past weekend in Montreal I had the pleasure of participating in the Inclusion by Design conference of the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work. The conference coincided with access week from May 27 to June 1.

The goal of this progressive international event was to focus on planning for a barrier free world, one that would include all people regardless of ability and encourage universal policies both within government and in the community at large. This vision of inclusion is shared by the subcommittee on the status of persons with disabilities. As chair it is my hope that the declarations developed over the weekend will be implemented.

The Minister of Human Resources Development reaffirmed the federal government's commitment to ensure that Canadians with disabilities get the supports they need to participate fully in society. The minister stated that we need to focus on understanding the labour market and the challenge it presents to Canadians with disabilities. We must recognize that universal access is fundamentally about human rights and social justice.