Charlie Angus

[Veterans Hiring Act, June 2nd, 2014]

That is exactly what he said, Mr. Speaker. You are going to hear that all night.

[Veterans Hiring Act, June 2nd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague. I wonder if he would share the view of the member of Durham who just stood in the House and said that he was offended by veterans who are speaking up on the fact that they have had to take a class action lawsuit. He said that they were not sincere.

I would like to ask this of the member about Kenneth Young, who served with the Royal Canadian Regiment. Is he not sincere? There is David MacLeod, 27 years with the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry and served in Afghanistan. Is he not sincere? We have Mike Blais, veteran of the Royal Canadian Regiment. Is he not sincere? How about Mark Campbell, severely injured by an IED in Afghanistan and now involved in a class action lawsuit? Is he not sincere?

When the member for Durham stands up and says that they offend him, is it that they are offending him because they do not follow the government's pitiful line on the treatment of veterans? Will the government show them some respect?

[Veterans Hiring Act, June 2nd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my hon. colleague to explain a little further about the class action lawsuit. The Government of Canada and all of the ministers in the front row stood and had their pictures taken, for all of their propaganda purposes, with our men and women and sent them overseas. When those men and women came home, that same government said that it did not have a moral obligation to follow through on that social contract, which has existed in our country since the First World War: if they serve our country, they will be looked after. The government takes the position that is only there when it is good for the photo ops, but let the veterans stand up for those rights and to take it to court.

Would my hon. colleague explain what he thinks about this attitude of using our men and women as props when it supports the government and then telling those men and women to take it to court when it comes to the moral contract?

[Veterans Hiring Act, June 2nd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my colleague. I was here when the New Democrats forced the debate on sending our troops into Kandahar under Operation Enduring Freedom. We asked simple questions at that time. Where were our allies? Where was the support? What would they be faced with? We were thrown slogans about boots on the ground and how we were like 21st Neville Chamberlains. We heard this machismo sloganeering that showed that the government had no real plan for what would face our troops in Kandahar.

Now we see this bill, which we support, but I hear the same kind of sloganeering from the government about how it is part of the solution, and sometimes governments should get out of the way.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague this. Government sent these men and women to put their lives at risk. Government had them have their limbs blown off or suffer PTSD. They did it for the government. Therefore, when I see the government members talk about how government can be part of the solution, that the government should step out of the way, it was the government who put these people, our brave men and women, in these situations. It is the government that has the entire responsibility to work with the private sector and others, but fundamentally it is a government responsibility.

What does my hon. colleague think about these slogans he hears from the Conservative government with respect to its continual refusal to meet its basic obligations to the men and women who served our country?

[Committees of the House, May 29th, 2014]

Five minutes, 54 seconds.

[Ethics, May 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I would advise my hon. colleague from Markham that if he was worried about taxpayers, he would be talking to the Minister of Justice, who uses a Challenger jet as his own personal taxi service to Halifax on the weekend.

Speaking of poor judgment, remember Bruce Carson, the convicted fraud artist who is now up on influence peddling charges? Canadians tried to figure out how this guy ever slipped through security checks. Mr. Carson tells us that the Prime Minister knew about his criminal record and invited him into the inner office anyway.

A simple question: why would the Prime Minister hire a convicted criminal to be his chief adviser?

[Ethics, May 28th, 2014]

We enjoyed the fiction show over there, Mr. Speaker, but let us talk about how the Conservatives preach belt-tightening for others while we find more evidence of Conservative ministers flying their friends around the country on the Challenger.

At least before, they used to declare who was flying on these trips, but now they say it is a state secret. When they hide the flight manifest, it means Canadians cannot tell whether it is government officials or cronies of the Conservative Party who are along for the ride.

We know the Prime Minister's buddy, Mark Kihn, used to ride shotgun on these airborne Cadillacs. Who else? What are they trying to hide?

[Protecting Canadians from Unsafe Drugs Act (Vanessa's Law), May 27th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened with great interest to my colleague. She has such immense experience in the issues of the need for a national health care strategy in this country and the need for the federal government not to walk away from its long-standing role in the delivery of health care.

I would like to ask my colleague about the issue of prescribing practices.

I raised the issue earlier of when OxyContin was first put on the market. In Ontario, in particular, I noticed that it was being prescribed for all manner of reasons. People who would go in with a back problem or people who would go in for surgery were being prescribed sometimes large amounts of OxyContin. The impacts, the very addictive impacts of this drug, were not fully explained to the physicians who were prescribing, and it was certainly not explained to the people who received it. We saw spikes of addictions all across the spectrum of society. People ended up becoming addicted to this very addictive drug because there had not been the proper explanations. In the end, there was certainly a backlash on the whole use of OxyContin.

The Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health has an optimal use program around the issue of prescribing and awareness amongst doctors.

There is an attempt to raise awareness, but there are concerns that there is not enough work being done to ensure that physicians are fully informed, independent of the drug companies' claims, of the potential impacts before they start to prescribe.

I would like to ask what my hon. colleague thinks of this.

[Protecting Canadians from Unsafe Drugs Act (Vanessa's Law), May 27th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague and I was very interested in the litany of fines that have been paid out by big pharma.

There was a real eye-opener for me one night when I was at a restaurant that a friend owned. The friend was putting on a dinner for doctors. It was a private function. Someone showed up at the door of the restaurant with an envelope containing $500 cash. The restaurant owner asked him what he was doing there, and he said he was paying for the booze. It was a salesman from a drug company.

The restaurant owner said, “I am sorry; this is not something I am supporting. You can leave if you are going to pay money to anybody to promote your drugs. If you want to promote your drugs, do it outside my premises”.

I was very shocked by that. I had no idea whether this was a common practice or not, but it certainly struck me.

I ask my hon. colleague if she could drill down a bit more for people listening to this debate about the kinds of fines that have been paid by these companies, because these fines really raise questions about basic standards of putting public interest ahead of the very large profit margins that may be at stake.

[Protecting Canadians from Unsafe Drugs Act (Vanessa's Law), May 27th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague and the points she raised in this important discussion on ensuring that we have the protocols in place to protect health in dealing with drugs that are being put on the market.

One of the questions that has been raised is the importance of public disclosure of clinical trial results. Currently the results of many clinical trials are never published or made publicly available in Canada. There has been a move to have these reports, good or bad, put out there so that patients, physicians, and researchers have all the information they need to deal with new drugs being put on the market.

In 2005, the World Health Organization stated its support for the requirement to register clinical trials, to develop worldwide standards for trial registration, and to encourage sponsors to make their data public. I would like to ask my hon. colleague what she thinks about the importance of making the clinical trial information on the drugs being prepared available to the public.