Colin Carrie

[Budget Implementation Act, 2016, No. 1, May 5th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the minister for his elegant speech. I want him to know that I share his pride in our country and look forward to a very bright future. I am paraphrasing, but he said the budget gives meaning to the commitment made by the government. One of the commitments it has made was to palliative care.

I was the parliamentary secretary for the minister of health for many years and I was here in the House during the economic downturn and I fought to make sure that there was no cut in transfers to the provinces. As a matter of fact, we continued to put more new money into health care.

I think Canadians want the priority of the government to be for people who are suffering, but frankly, there was absolutely no new money in the budget for health care, absolutely zero. The Liberals have been saying they have committed to $3 billion for palliative care. Our concern this week is that they have used closure on a bill on assisted suicide, a bill that would support an early death for those Canadians who are suffering and have no other choice without the same commitment or priority to alleviate the suffering of those Canadians while they are still alive.

I know the minister sits on cabinet and I was hoping we could get a commitment for some type of support today. Where is the $3 billion for palliative care? When will it be delivered? How does the government define its vision for palliative care?

[Vision Health, May 3rd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, May is National Vision Health Month. Given that 75% of visual impairment is preventable if detected and treated early enough, I would like to share a few facts on what this is costing Canadians and why immediate government action is required.

One in four school-aged children in Canada has a vision problem. Vision loss costs Canada $19.1 billion or $550 per resident, costing Canada more than diabetes and cancer combined. It extends right across the economy. Higher absenteeism, lower employment rates, loss of earnings, premature retirement, and premature death are more common among people with vision loss.

Despite the alarming costs of vision impairment, the Liberals have no plan and no money to deal with vision health. While countries like Australia and the U.K. are formulating strategies to promote eye health and prevent avoidable blindness, Canada remains on the sidelines.

I urge all members of this House to join me in calling upon the Liberal government to take a leadership role in promoting vision health.

[Health, May 2nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals have abandoned regulations that would require generic drugs to have tamper-resistant properties. This decision has put the health and safety of Canadians at risk.

Not only does the decision allow for drug tampering and misuse to continue, but doctors themselves are now hesitating to prescribe these drugs to those who need them, fearing the drugs will end up on the illicit market.

Will the Minister of Health listen to physicians on the ground and reintroduce tamper-resistant regulations?

[Marijuana, April 21st, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is widely known that tobacco products are deadly and for decades, Health Canada has called for stricter policies against smoking. Marijuana has the same carcinogenic potential to cause harm to the body.

How can the Minister of Health, the minister responsible for promoting good health to Canadians, throw out decades of scientific research by Health Canada and promote the recreational use of marijuana?

[Communities with Brooms, April 15th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, several years ago, my office joined a group of community stakeholders known then as the Safe City Oshawa Partnership. One of the projects we decided to try was called Communities With Brooms, an initiative that would bring together Oshawa's downtown community for an annual clean-up in the spring of each year.

I am proud to say that next Friday, April 22, Oshawa will come together once again to participate in our eighth annual Communities with Brooms event. Every year, this initiative sees a diverse group of community members from local schools, churches, and businesses along with individuals who band together to make our streets safer and cleaner. Following the clean-up, volunteers drop by my office for an appreciation barbecue.

I want to thank the numerous volunteers who make both the clean-up and the barbecue happen year after year. I also want to encourage my colleagues to take Oshawa's success story back to their communities because when we all work together, great things can happen.

[Situation in Indigenous Communities, April 12th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for the question. We all realize that he is on the ground. I think his participation tonight, and also asking for this debate and allowing us to discuss it, helps to bring this issue to the forefront.

I know, being a health care professional, that he is absolutely right. We have to ensure that the dollars are being utilized properly on the ground, and we have to be open to looking at things in a different way.

I know from my travels to remote first nation communities that what is important is that we start to put forward the importance of respecting culture and historical ways of moving these communities forward. I think with the understanding and compassion of learning what has been done in the past and what has worked successfully, we maybe have to take a step back so we can embrace these things moving forward into the future. I thank my colleague for that.

[Situation in Indigenous Communities, April 12th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Winnipeg Centre for his comments. I also want to thank him for his advocacy for children in his community and communities across Canada. He brings forward a very important point, in that the way we have been doing things has not been working.

My wife had a friend whose young child committed suicide. I cannot imagine the feelings of a mom and a dad who have lost a child, someone who had their entire future ahead of them, a child who thought there was no future and no hope.

I think all of us present in the House realize that we cannot continue doing what we have been doing in the past and that we need to work together. It is comments such as the comments from my colleague, the member for Winnipeg Centre, which add to the knowledge of the House and help us work together to develop programs. They will help us work with local communities to come up with programs so that we can prove we are committed to doing better. I thank him for his comments.

[Situation in Indigenous Communities, April 12th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I want to take this opportunity to thank you for allowing us to participate in this debate, and to thank all members in the House for being here this evening.

My heart goes out to all those who have lost friends and loved ones to suicide, and those individuals who have been affected by the recent crisis that has unfolded in our northern communities, such as Attawapiskat.

In response to the state of emergency, I think everyone in this House understands the tragedy of suicide and the need for all of us to do more. However, to understand what we need to do in the future, we need to understand what was done in the past. Therefore, I would like to bring to the attention of those here tonight some of the things that have been done in the past, so that we can understand what we need to do in the future.

I will talk a bit about the commitments that were made under previous governments with the co-operation of Health Canada, aboriginal communities, and additional stakeholders. That will be to better understand suicide and mental health to aid those who feel the internal pain that leads them to believe there is no other option.

With initiatives such as the ones made by previous governments, Canada is becoming better equipped to help those who need it, and to renew hope. Obviously there are still significant gaps, particularly with our aboriginal communities. However, these initiatives are in part helpful aids to the current government to help it continue the work that needs to be done on mental health research and suicide prevention in Canada. As we all realize, even though Canada invests significantly more now than ever before in mental health initiatives, more can and needs to be done.

The previous government had taken a strong stance, for example, on innovative research related to suicide and its prevention. We recognized the very real impact that mental health conditions have on families. We all have a role to play to improving the mental health of all Canadians.

Since 2006, our past Conservative government had invested over $32 million to support over 130 aboriginal community-based suicide prevention projects. These are the projects that we work in a partnership that is necessary to get to the root causes.

There has been $1 billion invested in mental health and neuroscience research since 2006. We helped to establish the Canada brain research fund, which provides matching funds to complement funds that have been raised by private contributions for research in brain disease and mental disorders.

Additionally, our government had increased health transfers to the provinces to unprecedented levels, by 70%, accounting for close to 25% of the federal government's total spending. Ontario alone received increases, from approximately $10 billion a year in transfers, to close to $21 billion.

Furthermore, I was very proud that our government, during our mandate, had the opportunity to help establish the Mental Health Commission of Canada in 2006. The commission has been able to help communities work together and find solutions for mental health and suicide prevention.

The commission has proudly trained 100,000 individuals to support good mental health, in addition to the following initiatives:

1. Promote mental health across the lifespan of Canadians in homes, schools, and workplaces, and prevent mental illness and suicide wherever possible.

2. Foster recovery and well-being for people of all ages living with mental health problems and illnesses, and uphold their rights.

3. Provide access to the right combination of services, treatments and supports, when and where people need them [across our country].

4. Reduce disparities in risk factors and access to mental health services, and strengthen the response to the needs of diverse communities and Northerners.

5. Work with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis to address their mental health needs, acknowledging their distinct circumstances, rights and cultures.

6. [And, of course] mobilize leadership, improve knowledge, and foster collaboration at all levels [of government].

The Mental Health Commission of Canada continues to advocate for opportunities to establish initiatives of suicide prevention. In response to the Prime Minister's wishes for his ministry to focus on suicide prevention as a top national health priority, a proposal was made and presented to the finance committee that had detailed a community-based suicide prevention program. Unfortunately, the national suicide prevention project did not receive funding in the 2016 budget.

The national suicide prevention project would have focused on specialized support, including a range of prevention and crisis services, such as crisis lines, support groups, and coordinating, planning and access. It would have provided training and networks to better equip community gatekeepers, such as physicians, first responders, nurses, human resource staff and managers, and teachers, by providing access to training and ongoing learning opportunities. Public awareness campaigns in each community via posters, brochures, and social media would have been included.

It recommended means restriction, by helping communities to identify hot spots, the methods or places where a high number of suicides occur, and restricting access to them by building barriers on bridges or railway crossings; and protocols for medication access.

Also recommended was research, to increase the suicide prevention evidence base. This would have included setting research priorities and evaluating the model itself.

I hope that the current Liberal government takes the wise advice of the Mental Health Commission as it continues to address this state of emergency and starts moving forward to come up with a more permanent solution. At the end of the day, it is about a permanent solution.

Further initiatives that were moved forward by the previous government include an act respecting a federal framework for suicide prevention, which was introduced by my colleague, the member for Kitchener—Conestoga. He will have the opportunity to speak during this debate on his private member's bill, which achieved royal assent in 2012. The member has been committed to addressing the difficult issue of suicide, and I welcome his experience and insight during the debate this evening.

I am proud to have been part of a government that saw no reductions in aboriginal mental health services. Indeed, they were at an all-time high. Over $200 million had been invested annually for aboriginal mental health services. As a matter of fact, since 2006, we invested over $2 billion to improve mental health and wellness of aboriginals across Canada. These included building communities; developing community-based mental health programming; the brighter futures program, which supports mental health and illness prevention programs; and 10 mental health and wellness teams for aboriginal communities, increasing access to services.

However, we all know that money cannot do it alone. Additionally, we did work to increase the flexibility for Canadian student loan forgiveness for doctors and nurses who work in remote areas. The nurse recruitment and retention strategy recruits nurses from schools and supports graduate integration. There were investments of over $25 million into the pathways to health equity for aboriginal peoples project. This innovative research has ensured that primary health issues are addressed.

In the wake of this recent crisis, I would like to mention that a timely response is essential when handling a state of emergency, especially to preserve the lives and well-being of a community. We applaud those who have moved forward in this approach.

The minister has confirmed the commitment of $300 million in funding that is aimed toward the health and well-being of aboriginal communities, enabling the continuation of health and wellness of aboriginal communities like Attawapiskat. However, there is more that has to be done. In addition to an emergency response, there is a need for the government to develop a long-term prevention strategy that will help communities receive the necessary tools that a national framework for suicide prevention can deliver.

Again, I applaud the efforts of all my colleagues in the House, especially my colleague from Kitchener—Conestoga, whose private member's bill received royal assent. I ask the government to table a framework to avoid further states of emergency related to suicide.

[Canadian Chiropractic Association, March 8th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, members of the Canadian Chiropractic Association are on Parliament Hill today to raise awareness of the impact of back pain and musculoskeletal, or MSK, conditions on our workforce and Canada's overall competitiveness.

More than 11 million Canadians are affected by MSK conditions every year. These conditions rival cardiovascular disease as an overall health burden and are the second leading cause of reasons for doctors visits. These conditions impact Canada's productivity, as up to 85% of workers will suffer from back pain at least once in their lifetimes. MSK conditions make it more difficult to stay physically active, which can help to prevent and manage many chronic conditions.

I invite my colleagues in the House to join me in welcoming CCA members who have come from across the country to meet with government decision-makers.

Canadian chiropractors, as spine, muscle, and nervous system experts, help relieve MSK conditions by providing evidence-informed, conservative care options, and play an essential role in the continued health of Canadians every year.

[Income Tax Act, March 7th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I want to add to the comments made by my colleague with respect to the Liberal plan not being revenue-neutral and in particular to the proposed carbon taxes the government wants to bring in.

I will quote Greg Sorbara, a former Ontario Liberal minister of finance and someone who would know a bit about this. In talking about what was done in Ontario, he stated, “Although the minister said there are no tax increases, the fact is that there's a $1.9-billion increase, which I call a flow-through tax, that will ultimately affect consumers. Cap and trade is a system where the government sells to industry an imaginary product called carbon credits, and those industries pass the costs—$1.9 billion, in this case—through the system, and it gives rise to higher prices at the gas pump, for gas that heats homes, and ultimately for every single product that we buy. The issue that I have with it.... I mean, it's an interesting way to raise money and say at the same time that you're not raising taxes. The issue that I have, and I'm not sure, because there's no evidence anywhere in the world that the cap and trade system actually does work to significantly reduce carbon emissions....”

My question to my colleague is this. The Liberals are addicted to all of these new taxes, and we have talked about the pension tax increases. However, what would this cap and trade plan do to the competitiveness of Canada when we are competing aggressively for new investment, especially in places like Oshawa, where I come from? What would these new taxes that are not revenue-neutral do to our competitiveness internationally?