Chris Charlton

[RESUMPTION OF DEBATE ON ADDRESS IN REPLY, November 24th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I was thrilled to listen to the member for Welland. I am excited that our region now has another strong advocate for the manufacturing sector, for jobs, and above all for workers and for pensions.

I was interested to hear the member touch on the John Deere plant. As we all know, John Deere was actually a profitable plant. It took the broad-based corporate tax cuts the government has been offering. It took that money, but nonetheless the profitable John Deere company closed its doors and sent the jobs to Mexico.

Clearly the thrust of the throne speech, which was all about offering an increase in broad-based corporate tax cuts, is not helping the companies that most desperately need the help. In fact, as members know, if a company is not making any profits, it is not paying any taxes, so it does not benefit from the tax cuts.

I wonder if the member for Welland could elaborate a little further, because I know workers in his community of Welland have already been paying for the economic crisis we are in, much like ours in Hamilton. They have paid with their jobs. They have paid with their pensions. They have paid through inadequate access to EI, and of course they have paid to bail out the banks.

I think the member would agree that it is time to start helping out workers in Welland. Could he share some concrete examples of how we might be able to do that?

[Petitions, June 19th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to table a petition in the House of Commons today on behalf of a large number of people who are concerned about the skyrocketing gasoline prices and the fact that the government is doing nothing to help ordinary working families who are getting hosed at the pumps.

They believe that my private member's bill, Bill C-442, which calls for the creation of an oil and gas ombudsman, would provide strong, effective consumer protection to make sure no big business could swindle, cheat or rip off hard-working Canadians. The petitioners therefore call upon the Parliament of Canada to give speedy passage to Bill C-442 to help consumers fight the gas price squeeze.

[Health, June 19th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, Statistics Canada says an estimated 4.1 million Canadians aged 12 or older are without a family doctor. Almost 40,000 of them are in Hamilton.

Amazingly, Hamilton is not considered an underserviced area because McMaster University has a medical school. Incredibly, the provincial Liberals are using taxpayer dollars to pay graduates to move away from Hamilton.

This chronic shortage of doctors and nurses puts the health of seniors and hard-working families at risk.

The federal government has to step up to the plate and it has to do it now. After 13 years of Liberal neglect and cutbacks, both wait times and doctor shortages exploded.

Despite the Conservatives' election promise of a wait times guarantee, the shortage of health care professionals is continuing to worsen under the Conservative government. Ontarians probably will not be surprised by this. After all, the federal health minister was mentored by his former boss, Ontario premier Mike Harris, who fired hundreds of nurses and likened the profession to outdated hula hoops.

We need a serious federal contribution to recruit and retain health care professionals and to promote careers in the health sciences.

The health and well-being of hard-working families in Hamilton and right across Canada depend on it.

[Nuclear Liability and compensation Act, June 19th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend my colleague from Vancouver East and the member of Parliament for Western Arctic for doing such an exceptional job in talking about nuclear liability and why it is that we feel so strongly about needing to oppose this bill.

As she so eloquently pointed out, the $650 million cap is an international minimum and is completely inadequate for protecting the interests of Canadians. I think she covered that area extremely well and frankly passionately on behalf of Canadians who want us here in the House to protect public interests.

I know the member could have talked about this for hours. I wonder if I could take her into that other area of the bill which deals directly with nuclear safety. We are in the dying days of the session and suddenly we are in this rush to get through a number of pieces of legislation, this is not the only one, that in a very real way undermine the safety of hard-working Canadian families.

The other example is Bill C-7, where we are talking about safety in the airline industry. The government is very eager to throw caution to the wind in favour of protecting its friends in the industry. I think we are doing the same thing here when it comes to the nuclear industry.

Let me remind folks who are watching today what the bill is about. The bill will shortchange ordinary Canadians who would become sick and/or die from a nuclear accident, or who would lose all they owned because of contamination, or who would lose a family member who would die from cancer or radiation sickness. These are the people we need to protect and we have that opportunity by opening up this legislation.

Our critic from the Western Arctic put amendments in place that would have protected Canadians' safety. I wonder, with whatever little time the member for Vancouver East has remaining in this debate, if she could focus on the safety aspect of this legislation.

[Petitions, June 16th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, finally, I am pleased to table a petition that is signed by residents of Ontario and British Columbia who are concerned about the role of the Minister of Canadian Heritage in promoting and defending Canadian cultural and artistic freedom. They believe that there should be no ability for the government, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, any office of government or government official to make subjective judgments concerning artistic content that limit the freedom of expression.

The petitioners call on Parliament to staunchly defend Canadian artistic and cultural expression, to rescind any provisions of Bill C-10 which allow the government to censor film and video production in Canada, and to ensure that the government has in place subjective and transparent guidelines that respect freedom of expression when delivering any program intended to support film and video production in Canada.

[Petitions, June 16th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am also pleased to table a petition that arises out of my national campaign to fight for fairness for ordinary Canadians and in particular for seniors who were shortchanged by their government as a result of an error in calculating the rate of inflation. The government has acknowledged the mistake made by Statistics Canada but is refusing to take any remedial action.

The petitioners call upon Parliament to take full responsibility for this error which negatively impacted their incomes from 2001-06 and take the required steps to repay every Canadian who has been shortchanged by a government program because of the miscalculation of the CPI.

The petitions are signed by hundreds of people from my hometown of Hamilton as well as Sudbury, Richmond, Ottawa, Kamloops and Saskatoon. The petitioners are all people who have worked hard all their lives and have played by the rules and now are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet. All they are asking for is a little bit of fairness from their government.

[Petitions, June 16th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I have three petitions today. The first one that I am pleased to table is a petition on behalf of hundreds of signatories in my riding of Hamilton Mountain who are concerned about the government's changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. The petitioners believe that these changes are deceptive, damaging and irreversible. They also do not believe that the changes will help to address the backlog of immigrants. Finally, they believe that the extraordinary power that this legislation gives to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration is dangerous and that it will deny Parliament its crucial role in setting immigration policy.

The petitioners, therefore, call on the Government of Canada to abandon the changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and to deal with the immigration backlog instead by increasing staffing at overseas visa offices, stopping the expansion of the temporary foreign workers category, and increasing Canada's immigration target to 1% of the Canadian population. It is a privilege to table this petition on their behalf.

[Food and Drugs Act, June 10th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I have never been accused in the House of being anything other than reasonable, and I certainly want to continue that tradition now.

I have no doubt that the government consulted on this legislation. I just doubt the breadth of that consultation, because I have had the privilege of sitting in the health committee and I know that most of the presentations that I have heard about, albeit second hand, were consultations with big pharma. That is not who I am talking about needing to consult.

We need to talk to the consumers of natural health products in our communities. Those are the people who are flooding our offices with mail each and every day suggesting that they actually do not feel that they have been adequately heard. Yes, by all means, let us do the consultations, but let us do them right and let us not be selective in terms of whom we listen to.

The parliamentary secretary suggested that this bill does not need to be defeated because the government is going to bring in a ton of amendments that will allay all my fears. In typical government fashion, the member is suggesting that I should just trust him on that. If the government already knows that it needs to bring in substantial and substantive amendments to the bill to allay fears, then the government itself is admitting that the bill as it is currently before us is flawed. The vote at second reading is a vote on the principle of this bill. You are asking me to support the principles of a bill that the government says is flawed. I for one am not prepared to do that.

Indeed, the member said the serious concern that natural health products consumers have about those products not being considered drugs would be dealt with in the amendments to this bill. I am not willing to take the government at its word. I am willing to accept that the government has now seen that its current legislation before us is flawed, so I would happy if it withdrew the bill, introduced one with all of the amendments already in place so we could then have a vote on second reading of a bill that is in the form the government wants to see it. We could then make a considered decision on second reading.

[Food and Drugs Act, June 10th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today and participate in the debate on Bill C-51, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

At the outset, that I will be voting against the bill at second reading. I am taking this position for a number of reasons, including the view that it may open the door to direct-to-consumer advertising for pharmaceuticals, that it gives an inordinate discretion to the minister on a number of fronts and that it may be a thinly veiled attempt to bring natural health products under the rubric of drugs.

It is particularly the latter concern that I want to focus on in the limited time I have in the debate today.

No bill in this sitting of Parliament has generated as much public interest in my riding as Bill C-51. Both producers and consumers of natural health products have expressed serious misgivings about the bill. It is no wonder that Canadians are expressing a healthy dose of skepticism about the government's agenda in bringing the bill forward.

This is the fifth attempt in just a decade by successive Liberal and Conservative governments to overhaul the Food and Drugs Act. The Liberals made four of these attempts and each time they failed. Why? They failed because each time the community spoke up.

Producers and consumers both demanded more accountability from government and wanted much clearer answers with respect to the new regulatory authority that government was assigning to itself. This time some of the same misgivings persist. Will the bill maintain regulation that is distinct from that of pharmaceuticals? Is the enforcement appropriate, with checks and balances against abuse? Is the process free from the minister's arbitrary intervention? These concerns are legitimate and must be addressed by the government.

The NDP has always believed that natural health products are a fundamental element in disease prevention and treatment. They are an element with distinct characteristics that distinguish it from both food and drugs, a distinction that merits a separate regulatory framework in ensuring its safety and efficacy. This is the position that I continue to advocate as we scrutinize Bill C-51.

My constituents in Mountain have said loud and clear that the bill, as it stands now, is unacceptable. Significant and necessary changes cannot and will not be made before the second reading. Therefore, the bill will not have my vote or I believe the votes of any of my NDP colleagues at second reading. Furthermore, I cannot accept a bill that undermines Canadians access to safe, reliable natural health products and one that favours multinational corporate drug interests.

To be fair to the government, there is a misperception that Bill C-51 would require consumers to get a prescription to access natural health products. I have studied the bill closely and I do not believe that is the case. Bill C-51 would not affect prescribing requirements.

The public's concern about this aspect speaks volumes about the unease that this legislation is creating about the government's true intent with respect to natural health products and it speaks volumes about the need for the government to clarify its intentions so there is no room for doubt with respect to any of the sections that apply to natural health products.

Proper consultations may have been able to alleviate some of those concerns, but those consultations did not happen. That is why there is such a huge disconnect between the government's rhetoric on the purported intent of the bill and the community's understanding of what is really at stake.

At a cursory level, the provisions of the bill purport to enhance consumer and product safety protections, a goal which we all share. In fact, as hundreds of emails and letters from people in my riding of Hamilton Mountain made clear, they simply want to ensure and I quote “that natural health products are treated fairly”.

In fact, allow me to share with members of the House a lengthier quote from correspondence that I have received from one of my constituents, whose sentiment is shared by literally dozens of others. The constituent writes:

I am writing you to express my growing concern about the impact of Bill C-51.

This proposed new law has major ramifications for the natural health products I depend on. I am very worried about potential impact this bill could have on the future of natural health products. Bill C-51 restricts the choices Canadian people have when it comes to their health.

As my Member of Parliament, I need your help in ensuring that natural health products are treated fairly. What is needed is a legislative framework that treats natural health products as a third category for Health Canada. This is something promised by previous Ministers of Health but never delivered.

Please review Bill C-51 and fight to make sure natural health products are not eliminated as a viable consumer choice in Canada. Did you know that more than 70% of the Canadian population uses natural health products? This bill opposes the desires of most Canadians and restricts our freedom of choice.

Members will have noticed that the concerns expressed by these constituents are entirely reasonable. My constituents are simply asking that natural health products be treated fairly. Their concerns are measured, balanced and they deserve to be resolved, but the only way to have them resolved is through dialogue and meaningful consultations. However, here we are in the last few days of the session before the House rises for the summer and the government is trying to rush the bill through to a vote. Why not slow things down?

This chamber is supposed to deliberate on legislation that is brought here by the government. Deliberation suggests thoughtful debate, with give and take in shaping the final product. That means that we need to have enough time to hear the concerns of our constituents, reflect on them and give voice to them in the House. That is what representation is all about. Yet with the government's rushed timetable, I am one of the few MPs who will get an opportunity to represent my constituents here.

Thankfully, natural health product consumers in my riding are well informed and know that they can get in touch with me any time if they have concerns about what happens in the House of Commons. And they have. However, thousands of other Canadians share their concerns and their members of Parliament either cannot or will not represent them in this chamber. That is a bitter pill to swallow.

If the government is so certain that Bill C-51 is benign, why would it not allow all interested parties to participate in the careful scrutiny of this bill? The mere fact that the government is unwilling to engage in this kind of dialogue just serves to increase further the concerns in the community.

I have already said that not all provisions of the bill are flawed. It deals with a broad range of issues, aside from natural health products. In many respects, the government has moved a significant distance from the days of the Liberals. However, that does not change the fact that the bill still has many problems.

Greater consultation might have been able to resolve these problems and allay community fears, but because that input was not sought and because of the potentially dangerous ramifications and provisions of the bill, I now have no choice but to oppose the legislation as tabled. Yes, I am voting that way because of the concerns around natural health products. I am also doing it because I have serious concerns about advertising, adverse reactions and life cycle licensing. Above all, I am concerned that the bill, as a whole, is premised on the Conservatives' risk management approach to safety rather than the do no harm principle.

For all of those reasons, I will be voting against Bill C-51 in the upcoming vote. I am happy to do so on behalf of my constituents of Hamilton Mountain. Their concerns will be represented in the House. I just hope the members of the other parties will do the same so, together, we can go back to the drawing board.

The government has already signalled that it will need to introduce numerous amendments to fix the bill. In other words, it agrees that the current bill, as drafted, is flawed. Therefore, let us do the right thing. Let us vote it down at second reading, allow the health committee to do full public consultations and then introduce a new bill that addresses the concerns of hard-working Canadians. Our constituents deserve nothing less.

[Canada Pension Plan, June 4th, 2008]

--had to pay $5,400 more for one spouse's nursing home care. Another will lose her GIS.

Seniors cannot afford high priced accountants to save them from the government's false advertising, and now they have to pay a penalty if they want to reverse the pension splitting on their tax returns.

Will the government do the right thing and waive that penalty today for the 2007 tax year? Will it at least do that?