Don Davies

[Business of Supply, February 16th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I do not disagree that provinces and territories should be sharing information and best practices, but the debate today is about national leadership. It is about the member's government and what it is going to do to help ensure that we not only protect but also strengthen and expand our public health care system.

When the Prime Minister of the member's government is applauding a privatization plan by a Conservative premier in this country, that is not the kind of national leadership we need. We want the government to say plainly to Canadians that every additional dollar of health care funding in this country will go to strengthening our public health care system and not be diverted to private, for-profit care. That would make our public system worse. It would increase costs, extend wait times and make care for Canadians worse.

[Business of Supply, February 16th, 2023]

moved:

That, given that,

(i) during the 2021 federal election campaign, the Prime Minister was harshly critical of the Conservative Party of Canada's proposal to encourage “innovation” in the health care sector by expanding for-profit provision of publicly funded services,

(ii) the Prime Minister has now dramatically changed his position and has lauded as ‘’innovation” Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s proposed expansion of for-profit clinics,

(iii) for-profit clinics would poach workers from the public system and lead to longer wait times,

(iv) there are multiple public reports of two-tier health care in Canada, where people are charged for faster access to care, such as family doctors or surgery,

the House call on the government to:

(a) express disappointment that the Prime Minister has promoted Ontario’s for-profit health plans as “innovation”;

(b) ensure that recently announced health care funding is not used for the expansion of for-profit health care, but instead used to rebuild and innovate within the public system by hiring more staff and reducing wait times; and

(c) enforce the Canada Health Act and immediately move to close loopholes that allow for the growth of two-tier health care in Canada.

Mr. Speaker, Canada's health care system is based on the principle of access to care based on need rather than ability to pay. A well-designed, well-funded single-payer system can provide fair, effective and high-quality care to make this a reality.

Our public health care system is certainly facing some challenges, but the solution lies in strengthening our public health care system, not weakening it.

If we introduce private funding, then need will come second to ability to pay. That would result in less accessibility, longer wait times and higher costs in the public system. It would also lead to increased administrative costs, in other words, more money for insurance companies and less money for health care.

Introducing private payment prioritizes care based on ability to pay, not need. It leads to worse access and wait times, as well as higher costs in the public system. It also leads to higher administrative costs, which means less money for patient care.

There is not only little evidence that private, for-profit investor-owned corporations can provide better quality care or reduce costs. In fact, there are many examples that show precisely the opposite. Those seeking to improve the quality, equality, access, efficiency and equity of health care services in Canada can do so by focusing on strengthening our public system rather than dismantling it.

Proponents of privatization claim that increasing private pay and/or private for-profit delivery will reduce wait times, either overall or for those in the publicly funded system specifically; reduce costs to the public system; and lead to better health outcomes. There is perhaps no more serious and dangerous myth in Canadian politics today than that statement. I want to review the situation today and some of the factors that show this is not the case.

Everyone deserves health care when they need it, no matter the size of their wallet. No one should need to wait in pain because there are not enough health care workers or because the wealthiest jump the queue.

However, under successive Liberal and Conservative governments, today people are waiting in pain for hours, days or weeks, and sometimes months or years. Folks are losing their quality of life while they wait for surgery. In addition, health care workers are run off their feet, burned out and exhausted in every corner of this country.

The Prime Minister could make things better for patients by hiring and rebuilding the public health system. Otherwise, he can contribute to making the crisis even worse by helping to fund for-profit schemes that will poach staff from the public system.

We are not surprised the Conservative Party loves for-profit care. It will make billions for corporations and rich CEOs. This is right out of the Conservative playbook: starve a public service and use that as an excuse to hand it off to the private sector.

A condition of federal health care funding should be investing to fix public universal Canadian health care, not funnelling funds and staff into for-profit facilities. New Democrats want health care to move towards more public delivery, not farther away from it.

If new bilateral health agreements do not result in thousands of new health care workers in our public system, it will fail. Ottawa urgently needs to partner with the provinces and territories to help provinces train and hire more health care workers, respect current health care workers and pay them better, and recognize the international training of thousands of health care workers who are already in Canada and ready to work.

During the 2021 election, the former Conservative leader said that “he would support provinces in introducing privately led health care ‘innovations’”. At that time, our current Prime Minister told Canadians this was evidence that a Conservative government would threaten Canada's public health care system, saying that the Conservative leader “believes in a for-profit, private health care system and he will not tell people what exactly he wants to do with that.”

My, how things change once one is in office. The Prime Minister recently reversed his position by calling Ontario premier Doug Ford's private for-profit clinic scheme an example of “innovation”.

Let us just quickly review the privatization plans by Conservative premiers across the country. Doug Ford has said that he wants to divert funding from his province's hospitals towards for-profit surgical clinics.

His plan includes an expansion of private cataract surgeries, MRI and CT scans, minimally invasive gynecological surgeries, and knee and hip replacements. Ontario's plans to contract out to private for-profit clinics for cataract surgeries is expected to cost the government 25% more per surgery. Moving only hip and knee replacements to for-profit clinics will benefit owners, with an estimated windfall of half a billion dollars annually. The owners of Herzig Eye Institute, one of the top private surgery clinics that lobbied the Ford government to expand private cataract surgeries, have donated thousands of dollars to the Ontario Conservatives.

In a recent throne speech, Manitoba premier Heather Stefanson announced her government's intention to seek out private partnerships to deliver health care.

Saskatchewan is moving forward with plans to reduce its backlog of surgeries by privatizing certain procedures.

In January, Alberta announced that it is contracting Canadian Surgery Solutions to perform more than 3,000 orthopaedic surgeries covered by the provincial medicare plan.

Why are they doing this, and how are they getting away with it?

There are several loopholes here, but I want to itemize one of them. There is a serious loophole in the Canada Health Act. As we speak, private clinics across Canada are advertising to prospective patients that within weeks they can get surgeries that typically take six months or more under provincial health plans. All the patient has to do is pay them $20,000 to $30,000, depending on the clinic.

CIHI estimates that the average cost per joint replacement operation in public hospitals in Canada is $12,223, which means that the private clinics are charging patients roughly double what the surgery costs the provincial medicare system.

To those who claim that private surgery is cheaper, one can tell right away that when one adds profit and extra administrative costs, diverting money to the private system will cost our public system more.

Doug Ford says, “Oh, that is okay. We are still paying for it with public dollars”. Why would Canadians ever tolerate paying twice as much for surgery in a private system than they would in the public system?

The Canada Health Act prohibits extra billing. This means that doctors are banned from charging patients more than the medicare rate for an insured service. However, private clinics are getting around that by operating only on patients from other provinces.

Imagine the loophole in this country where, if one is in Manitoba, one can sell a private surgery to someone from Ontario but not somebody in Manitoba.

This violates the fundamental principle of the Canada Health Act. It is a gaping loophole in our system. We are calling on the government to close that loophole right now if it truly cares about public health care as it says.

It is not only those kinds of surgeries, though. Maple, a Loblaws-funded virtual care business based in Toronto, is charging patients $69 per doctor's visit or $30 per month for 30 visits per year if one wants to go bulk. In-person service would be covered by Ontario's public insurance plan.

Ontario has insured virtual visits under OHIP, but Maple has found a way around the province's rules by connecting patients with a nurse practitioner or physician outside of the province. This is another gaping loophole.

That is not to mention the odious practice that has been going on in this country for years, where people appear at private clinics only to be upsold. They come for cataract surgery but are told that if they want a better lens, they have to pay more. That kind of introduction of private pay and access to health care is a fundamental violation of the medicare system that Canadians hold so dear in this country.

Let us talk about the evidence against privatization. A recent study led by Dr. Shoo Lee, a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto and former pediatrician-in-chief at Mount Sinai Hospital, looked at international experiences to determine what impact private financing would have on Canada's health system. That study found that private financing, both private for-profit insurance and private out-of-pocket financing, negatively affects the universality, equity, accessibility and quality of care.

It is not just that study. A recent study of England's National Health Service found that as outsourcing to the private for-profit sector increased from 2013 to 2020, so did the rates of death from treatable conditions.

I look forward to hearing any questions. Let us stand up for public health care in this country and make sure that every dollar of public funding goes to public health care in Canada.

[Petitions, February 15th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, in the second petition, the petitioners point out that in Canada more than 600,000 social housing units that were created between 1970 and 1994 were provided through long-term agreements with social housing providers. They point out that these agreements are essential to provide affordable housing options to people, particularly tenants, with a maximum of 30% of their income dedicated to rent.

The petitioners point out that the federal government today is still refusing to renew those agreements, many of which have expired. They are calling on the federal government, in collaboration with the provinces and other stakeholders, to renew the funding of long-term social housing operating agreements in order to preserve rent subsidies and provide funds for the necessary renovations for this critically important housing stock.

[Petitions, February 15th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions to present today.

In the first petition, the petitioners note that more than four million Canadians, including one and a half million children, live in homes where the families report food insecurity. They point out that it is important to remember that the health and development of children requires that they have access to healthy food, particularly in a school setting. Canada is one of the few members of the OECD without a national nutritional school food program in place.

The petitioners call on the Government of Canada, in collaboration with the provinces, territories, municipalities and stakeholders, to develop a national school nutritious food program to ensure that all children in Canada have access to healthy food.

[Business of Supply, February 14th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, like my colleagues, one of the issues I have with this motion is that it does not place any emphasis at all on the role that corporate profits have in driving up the cost of living in this country. It is quite clear that this is the case.

Another issue I have is with the Conservative orthodox economic thinking that deficits invariably cause inflation. If that were the case, we would have had rampant inflation in this place when the Conservative government of Stephen Harper ran seven consecutive deficits from 2008 to 2015, which did not happen.

I have heard the Conservatives say it is inflationary to spend money on dental care, yet the leader of the Conservative Party has said he would adopt the recently announced health care accord for the next 10 years, which injects an additional $46 billion into the economy. Can my hon. colleague explain how that is not inflationary if other government spending is?

[Health, February 14th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, for-profit clinics across Canada are selling preferential access to surgery for those with the money to pay for it. They are exploiting a loophole in the Canada Health Act that is costing Canadians up to $28,000 per procedure. Even former Liberal health minister Jane Philpott says this contravenes the principles of medicare. New Democrats believe Canadians should have access to care based on need, not wealth.

Why are Liberals letting for-profit clinics pray on the desperation of patients and allowing two-tier access to care in Canada?

[Health Care, February 8th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians cherish public health care. It is part of our national identity, a social contract that ensures we will be cared for when we are vulnerable, regardless of the size of our bank account. It is an affirmation of our collective commitment to equality and justice.

However, our health care system is in crisis. Emergency rooms are overwhelmed; health care workers are burning out; millions of Canadians lack access to a primary care provider, and patients are facing massive backlogs for surgeries, diagnostics and other procedures.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has undeniably placed enormous strain on our health care system, it did not cause the current crisis; it exposed it. In fact, its roots can be traced back to decades of poor policy choices and underfunding by successive Conservative and Liberal governments.

When our health system was first created, it was based on a fifty-fifty cost-sharing partnership between Ottawa and the provinces, but over the years the federal government’s contribution has declined far below that. This has profoundly shifted the fiscal burden for health care delivery and exacerbated pressures caused by an aging population, technology advances and increasingly expensive treatments and pharmaceutical drugs.

The results of this are clear to see on the front lines of care. Where Canada used to have 6.9 hospital beds per 1,000 people, we now have just 2.5. One in five Canadians cannot access a family doctor, the primary portal into our health care system, and Canada now ranks near the very bottom of the OECD in the number of physicians per 1,000 and wait times for essential care.

Tommy Douglas warned Canadians about the threat posed by this “subtle strangulation” strategy. He understood that opponents of public health care would attempt to starve our system of resources to lay the groundwork for private, for-profit care.

Unfortunately, his prediction appears dangerously accurate. Across Canada, Conservative premiers are exploiting the current crisis to pursue privatization, with the tacit approval of the federal government.

Alberta premier Danielle Smith has brazenly called for patients to fundraise for their own health care needs. Her government is implementing health spending accounts, a Trojan horse to inject user fees and private care into Alberta’s health system.

In a recent throne speech, Manitoba premier Heather Stefanson announced her government’s intention to expand private partnerships to deliver health care.

Ontario premier Doug Ford is planning to divert funding from his province’s hospitals toward for-profit surgical clinics. This move is expected to benefit clinic owners with a windfall of over $500 million.

We know this approach is a false solution that will exacerbate the current crisis. Just last year, in an exhaustive review of the evidence in the Cambie Surgeries case, the B.C. Court of Appeal unanimously ruled that allowing more private care in a parallel system is more expensive, fundamentally unfair and ultimately counterproductive. It found what experts and patients have long known: Privatization means line skipping for the rich, a drain on workers from a public system already short of staff and longer wait times for everyone else.

It is also poor economic policy. For-profit delivery drives up costs in the short term and make us dangerously vulnerable to corporate ransom in the long term. It is a frontal assault on our public health care system, and it must be stopped in its tracks.

Unfortunately, the government has demonstrated a troubling lack of concern in the face of this privatization agenda. The Prime Minister has even called Doug Ford’s for-profit clinics scheme an example of “innovation.” This should come as no surprise. While the Liberals may claim to defend public health care, their record demonstrates otherwise.

After promising to negotiate a new health accord in the 2015 election, the Liberal government instead adopted the very health transfer formula imposed by Stephen Harper. By unilaterally cutting annual federal transfer increases from 6% to 3%, when the need to tread water was 5.2%, Harper had baked in a recipe for systemic decay. The Liberals’ decision to adopt that funding formula has deprived our health care system of over $30 billion to date.

Now, after years of inaction in the face of a growing crisis, the Liberal government has come forward with the bare minimum needed to address this deliberate underfunding.

While initially indicating that it was offering nearly $200 billion for health care over the next decade, a claim repeated by the Prime Minister today in this chamber, it turns out that three-quarters of that money is existing Canada health transfer funding that would have flowed to the provinces and territories without any new agreement. In reality, there is only $4.6 billion per year in new federal spending on the table, and that has to be split among 10 provinces and three territories. To put this in perspective, total health care spending in Canada for 2022 was $331 billion, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information.

While this additional federal funding is urgently needed to help stabilize our health care system, it is far from sufficient to provide the generational fix that we need to the current crisis. It is a band-aid solution for a gaping wound. As Dr. Kevin Smith, president of Toronto’s University Health Network, just noted, “If we look at the demands—the number of new Canadians we’re expecting a year and the aging of the population—it’ll come close to addressing inflation. It won’t come close to addressing massive transformation.” Canada’s nurses are already expressing discouragement.

Most troubling of all, the federal proposal leaves the door wide open for premiers who are pursuing private, for-profit health care schemes. New Democrats have strongly asserted the condition that additional public dollars must go to public care, and yet the Prime Minister did not raise a single concern with the premiers about their privatization plans at yesterday’s summit, nor did he attach a single condition of his funding proposal to prevent it.

Canadians need their federal government to champion public health care, instead of standing back while Conservative premiers and others seek to systematically dismantle it. Real innovation is better support for health professionals, shorter wait times in hospitals and access to care based on need. It is expanded team-based care, preventative care and supports for aging at home. It is universal access to prescription drugs, dental care and mental health care.

New Democrats will never stop fighting to protect, strengthen and expand public health care across Canada. We know that we can deliver a public health care system that is world-class, timely and accessible for all, but this will not happen without national leadership, a full financial partnership and unwavering commitment to equity. The government’s offer yesterday is but a start to what needs to be done.

New Democrats will continue to do our part to build the high-quality public health care system that Canadians want, need and deserve.

[Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Act, February 7th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, it is a real pleasure and a privilege to stand in the House and speak to supply management. At one time, I had the honour of being the official opposition critic for international trade, so I remember well this issue and how deeply it engages so many people who live in this country.

I also recognize the threats that supply management has been under for a long time. This bill, Bill C-282, an act to amend the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Act with regard to supply management, is introduced by my colleague from Montcalm, whom I have the pleasure of serving with on the health committee. I want to congratulate him for this bill, because I think it is a very important and necessary piece of legislation that, unfortunately, is required because supply management has been under threat by successive Liberal and Conservative governments, which have continued to push trade deals that increasingly carve away at one of the key pillars of supply management.

This bill would forbid the minister from promising to make larger percentages or amounts of imported dairy products, poultry or eggs, which are supply-managed products in this country, eligible for lowered or waived tariffs. In other words, it would forbid the minister to reduce tariffs applied to these goods when more than are eligible for lowered or waived tariffs are imported.

It is unfortunate that we even have to do this, because I have stood in the House for a number of years when successive Liberal and Conservative governments have passionately risen and stated their undying commitment to supply management and their commitment to the farmers in their ridings that they would never encroach upon this very well-thought-out and important system, and then have turned around and negotiated trade deals that increasingly give other countries increased quotas to come into our country.

Why is that a problem? I am going to start by explaining just a little bit what supply management is. It is a system that started in the 1970s and that was meant to provide farmers in key industries in this country with the ability to have a stable income and to know how much supply would be provided in any given year. This is the real strength of the system. It is a system that rests on three key pillars.

It was brought in because those farmers were suffering through very wild price fluctuations, especially on commodities: One year they might do very well, but the next year they would face ruin. Many farms experienced great difficulty in planning for the future. We know that if one wants to stay competitive and maybe even have an edge in agriculture, investments in technology and machinery are absolutely critical. Supply management provides that certainty, so that farmers can make those investments with the firm knowledge that they will be able to recoup their investment and sell their goods for a fair price.

The three pillars of supply management are production control, pricing mechanisms and import control. It has been referred to as a three-legged stool. Of course, we all know that if we affect one leg of a three-legged stool, then the whole seating structure is at risk. What has been happening in the trade deals, negotiated and signed by successive Conservative and Liberal governments, is that they have focused on the import control leg of the pillars and they continue to allow more and more goods to be imported into Canada in those supply-managed sectors, which of course threatens the entire system.

What this bill would do is remove the ability of the trade minister, when negotiating a trade deal, to put those supply-managed commodities on the table and to trade off, as it were, supply-managed sector goods for other trade benefits.

This happened in the TPP. It happened in CUSMA. It happened in CETA. Those agreements did allow, first the European Union, then the TPP countries and now the United States and Mexico, to make ever-increasing inroads into being able to get more of their goods into Canada. I will try to put that into perspective, to see why it could be so destabilizing.

It is my understanding that the entire production of milk in Wisconsin would be enough to serve the entire Canadian market. One can only think about those very large corporate farms in the northern United States that, if they were able to have untrammelled access to the Canadian market, would be able to flood Canada with products on an economy of scale that would make it impossible for Canadian farmers to compete.

The other factor that is critically important is that supply-managed sectors also give us the ability to make made-in-Canada regulations around the production of our food. For instance, there are certain growth hormones, certain ways of production and certain chemicals that are permitted in other countries that Canada would not want to have in our food system.

At the end of the day, Canadians, when given a choice, would like to source their food from local producers. Canadians want to know that they are supporting their neighbours, their small towns and rural Canada, and that we are helping those farmers and those farm families to make a decent living. We want to know that our food is produced in humane, high quality, safe and healthy manners. This means that Canada should have control over our domestic food production. Again, most Canadians support that and I know that the vast majority of farmers in supply-managed industries also support that.

I want to just touch briefly on a couple of myths. There is this myth that this artificially increases the price of these goods and the Canadian consumer is somehow being exploited or taken advantage of by the supply-managed sector. Nothing could be further from the truth because what supply management does is provide stable prices. I know that right now in this country we have a crisis in the price of food, but in regular times, generally when someone goes to the store to buy a litre of milk or a dozen eggs over the last 20, 30 or 40 years, they know that they are going to be faced with a stable price. In non-supply-managed countries, they may have extraordinarily cheap eggs and milk one year and then if there is bad production in the next year due to bad weather, blight or disease, the prices of those goods skyrocket. Therefore, what supply management does for consumers in this country is provide a stable source of high-quality, supply-managed goods, including poultry, eggs and milk, at stable prices. That ensures that everybody has access to these excellent products at all times.

I know that I speak for my New Democrat colleagues when I say that we are firm, committed and passionate believers in the supply-managed sector. We know it is a system that works well for rural Canada, for farmers and for consumers. To use the old metaphor, “if it ain't broke, don't fix it.”

We also know that the forces that are constantly wanting to cut this away are not forces that care about Canadian farmers, small-town communities, rural Canada or consumers in Canada. Rather, they represent large agribusiness, usually multinational agribusiness, or right-wing economic ideologues who are just pursuing a free-market frenzy philosophy without any regard for the actual impact that this will have on our community and our country.

Therefore, we are very proud to support this bill to committee. We look forward to listening to the evidence and testimony. I want to again congratulate my colleague from Montcalm for this excellent bill. We look forward to working together to strengthen the supply-managed sector in this country so that Canadian farmers and Canadian consumers have access to high-quality products at all times.

[Business of Supply, February 7th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, at a time when the planet has to reduce its carbon emissions, oil companies are making record profits. Canadian oil and gas companies are forecasted to make a record-breaking $147 billion in 2022 alone.

I want to read a short quote from UN Secretary-General António Guterres. He said the fossil fuel industry is “feasting on...subsidies and windfall profits while households' budgets shrink and our planet burns.” He said that we need to hold the industry and its enablers to account. He said, “I am calling on all developed economies to tax the windfall profits of fossil fuel companies.”

New Democrats believe we should be doing that. I wonder if my hon. colleague agrees.

[Business of Supply, February 7th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, New Democrats support putting a price on pollution, but the Liberals' carbon pricing system lets big polluters off the hook. Under their output-based pricing system, Canada's biggest polluters pay the lowest carbon tax rate.

These loopholes mean that oil and gas companies only pay a tiny fraction of the cost of their pollution. Of their emissions, 80% to 90% are exempt. For instance, Suncor only pays about one-fourteenth of the full carbon price, and we on this side think loopholes need to be closed so that the oil and gas sector pays what it owes.

Does my hon. colleague not agree that these loopholes need to be closed so that the oil and gas industry pay their fair share? Does he think it is also time for hard caps to be introduced on the oil and gas sector so that we can make sure we meet the carbon emission targets we have committed to internationally?