Don Davies

[Business of Supply, October 31st, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I especially enjoyed my colleague's speech when she talked about the crushing need for affordable housing in Canada. I come from Vancouver, which may be the epicentre of the housing crisis in this country, and we have experienced a shocking lack of affordable housing of all types for several decades now. It is quite clear to me and to the people I represent that the market alone is not capable of solving the problem and providing the kinds of diverse housing options that people need.

I am wondering whether my hon. colleague agrees with the NDP when we call for a strong multi-governmental approach to providing non-profit, non-market housing options for Canadians. Does she agree with us that this is critical if we are going to make meaningful progress to ensure that everybody in Canada has an affordable home?

[Business of Supply, October 31st, 2023]

Madam Speaker, over the last 15 years, through our work in Vancouver Kingsway, my staff and I have seen that the family class is one of the most successful streams of immigration in this country. This is no surprise, because families provide support for newcomers to come here.

We have always noticed that the definition of family in our immigration system is very narrow. People can sponsor only their parents, their spouse or their children. We have often and long thought this should be expanded to include siblings and perhaps even aunts and uncles, because that is how the entire world views their family.

If we expand the definition of family, Canadians could sponsor their sisters or brothers, or perhaps even aunts and uncles as part of their family class, if they so wish, to unite their families. Does my hon. colleague agree that it is time to do this?

[Prevention of Government-Imposed Vaccination Mandates Act, October 24th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-278, the prevention of government-imposed vaccination mandates act. To begin, I believe it is important to note that the discussion surrounding this legislation has been highly politicized and riddled with misinformation from the day it was first introduced by the member for Carleton during the Conservative leadership race.

At that time, the bill was promoted by the member as a means to “scrap all vaccine mandates and ban any and all future vaccine mandates”. This is, of course, simply not accurate. The text of the legislation before the House now only references a single disease, which is COVID-19.

Indeed, Bill C-278 would legislatively restrict the federal government's future ability to set COVID-19 vaccine requirements, regardless of the future trajectory of the virus or the development of new vaccines. If a future variant turned out to be extraordinarily deadly and a vaccine was developed that could stop its transmission, this legislation would legally prohibit the government from imposing any kind of requirement to have that vaccine, even if the health of millions of Canadians was put at risk.

The member for Carleton has also incorrectly described to the House the current status of the mandates. The COVID-19 vaccination requirement for federal public servants was lifted on June 20, 2022. Employees who were placed on administrative leave without pay for non-compliance with that policy in force were contacted by their managers to arrange their return to regular work duties.

As of June 20, 2022, the vaccine requirement to board a plane or train in Canada was also suspended. In addition, federally regulated transport sector employers were no longer required to have mandatory vaccination policies in place for their employees. Finally, effective October 1, 2022, the federal government removed proof of COVID-19 vaccination requirements for anyone entering Canada.

With the record a bit corrected, I would like to proceed with what New Democrats believe. We support an approach to vaccination policy that appropriately balances the rights of people who have not been vaccinated and who choose not to be vaccinated with our individual and collective rights to health and safety. We believe that decisions with respect to imposing or suspending vaccination requirements should always be based on the best available evidence, current science and the advice of experts, not politicians speaking from the House of Commons with little or no background in any of those things.

The Conservatives cannot argue that it was wrong for the Liberal government to politicize Canada's COVID-19 response, which I think they did, while simultaneously asking politicians to legislate our country's vaccination policy indefinitely into the future without any evidence.

If the Conservatives sincerely wanted to take an evidence-based approach to COVID-19 policy, then they would have supported an independent inquiry into Canada's pandemic response when they had the opportunity to do so. However, shockingly, when the NDP moved an amendment at the Standing Committee on Health yesterday to legally mandate that a COVID-19 inquiry, under the Inquiries Act, be struck within 90 days, the Conservatives sat on their hands and abstained, allowing the Liberals to kill that inquiry.

I can see why the Liberals might be reluctant to call an inquiry into their own COVID-19 response, but this reversal from the cover-up Conservatives is truly shocking to see. Under the leadership of their previous leader, Erin O'Toole, the Conservative Party repeatedly called for an independent, expert-led inquiry into Canada's COVID-19 response. The Conservative Party pledged to call such an inquiry during the last election. We will need to leave it to the current Leader of the Opposition to explain this departure from his predecessor's position and the party's public pronouncements.

I believe it is unacceptable that the Liberals and Conservatives joined and worked together yesterday to block an independent review of Canada's response to the most severe pandemic in a century, because serious issues remain unexamined. Some of them include the following. We started the pandemic with not enough personal protective equipment: not enough gloves, masks, gowns and respirators. We had no proper national inventory of the personal protective equipment.

Canadians may remember that we had to throw out millions of pieces of PPE because they were expired. We saw no vaccine production in Canada, a shocking omission that has stretched over Liberal and Conservative governments for decades, who watched as Canada's ability and capacity in this regard was left to wither and die.

There was little to no public guidance on infection-acquired immunity. There was a curious dismantling of Canada's early pandemic warning systems. Canadians had no access to whole vaccines, only MRNA vaccines. There was confusing and contradictory information on the impact of vaccination on transmission. The impact and effectiveness of mandates remains a question.

Border controls were inconsistently enforced. Effectively, border controls in Quebec and Alberta were virtually absent. There were ravages through seniors' homes, overwhelmed emergency rooms and ICUs, and uncertainty about the efficacy of vaccines on mutating variants.

Now, instead of papering over previous mistakes or relying on pseudo-science to set public health policy, we must leave no stone unturned to learn from the past and prepare for future threats. Many prominent public health and security experts have called for the federal government to launch an expert-led independent inquiry into Canada's COVID-19 response.

The NDP has proposed an inquiry under the Inquiries Act, because such an inquiry would be independent. It would be led by an impartial person, notably a judge. It would be properly resourced with counsel. It would have the power to subpoena documents and compel the attendance of witnesses. It would be conducted in public. At the end of the day, it should do a searching root-to-branch comprehensive analysis of every issue that Canadians have raised during the pandemic response by the federal government.

Again, the Conservatives had a chance to make that happen, because the NDP and the Bloc were voting in favour of this motion, but they said no. They abstained. Instead, the Conservatives want to legislate science from the floor of the House of Commons. That is irresponsible.

Prominent Canadians, such as David Naylor, co-chair of the federal COVID-19 immunity task force, and the former chair of the federal review of the 2003 SARS epidemic, thinks there should be an independent public inquiry. So does Richard Fadden, former national security adviser to Stephen Harper. Recently, the British Medical Journal, one of the world's oldest general medical journals, published a series that examined Canada's COVID-19 response and called for an independent national inquiry.

Why do the Conservatives not want one? Again, they would rather play politics. The New Democrats do not and will not allow the Conservative Party or the Liberals to play politics with Canadians' health.

The British Medical Journal documented a number of deeply troubling pandemic failures in Canada, including that Canada's emergency response was impaired by long-standing weaknesses in the public health and health care systems. These included fragmented health leadership across federal, provincial and territorial governments. They noted that pandemic performance varied widely across Canada's provinces and territories, hampered by inconsistency in decision-making, inadequate data, infrastructure and misalignment of priorities.

They noted that lacking an independent federal inquiry allows others to step into the frame. We have seen the so-called National Citizens Inquiry, led by Preston Manning, for example, which appears to be fuelled by vaccine safety misinformation and ideological concerns with government public health measures. This is far from the full, national and public inquiry led by independent experts that Canada's pandemic performance deserves.

An inquiry would help deliver on Canada's ambition to be a global leader, and most importantly, it would deliver answers to Canadians, whose confidence has been shaken. At the end of the day, a public inquiry is needed to restore the Canadian population's confidence, to ensure accountability for decisions that have been made and, most importantly, to find out what went well and what did not. Thus, we could better prepare for the next pandemic, as experts tell us that it is not a question of if, but when.

While the Leader of the Opposition pontificates, pretends and politicizes this very important public health issue on the floor of the House of Commons, New Democrats are pushing for what Canadians really want. That is a full, independent, public, impartial, searching and comprehensive public inquiry.

[Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, 2023, October 23rd, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, free trade agreements are one way that Canada can not only improve the economic conditions for our businesses here but also do so on a mutual basis. In many ways, they extend preferential conditions to the recipient host country.

Like a lot of post-Soviet republics, Ukraine has struggled with establishing a strong rule-of-law system in that country and, like a lot of post-Soviet republics, has also struggled with corruption. I wonder if my hon. colleague could point to any provisions in this agreement that may assist the parties in strengthening those institutions, which are very important to establishing credible and legitimate economic relations.

[Pharmacare, October 16th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, millions of Canadians are going without their prescription medications because they cannot afford them. Thousands die as a result. Universal public pharmacare will cover everyone and save us billions of dollars. This weekend, NDP members sent a clear message to deliver it.

The Liberals themselves promised public pharmacare 26 years ago, and their own convention delegates voted for it in 2016, 2018 and 2021.

Will the Liberals keep their word and finally deliver the public pharmacare that Canadians need and want?

[Health, October 6th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, Canada's blood inventory is entering its fourth month of serious shortages. This is the first time this has ever happened. This dangerous situation is putting patients at risk. If collections drop further, elective surgeries may have to be cancelled.

Experts warned the Liberals that privatizing plasma collection would jeopardize our blood supply. Allowing companies to pay donors is clearly hurting Canadian Blood Services. What is the government doing to protect our national blood supply?

[Criminal Code, October 5th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, in March 2023, legislation to extend by one year the temporary exclusion of eligibility for MAID where a person's sole medical condition is a mental illness received royal assent and immediately came into force. This means that persons suffering solely from a mental illness will be eligible for MAID as of March 17, 2024. Bill C-314, the bill before the House today, would remove this eligibility at least until we have satisfactory answers and guardrails to ensure that we can extend this profoundly permanent step with confidence. In my view, we do not have that necessary confidence today, and I think the majority of Canadians and health professionals, and the data, concur.

Data released in September 2023 from the Angus Reid Institute found that a majority of Canadians, 52%, worry that treating mental health will not be a priority when MAID eligibility is expanded to include individuals whose sole condition is mental illness. A vast majority of Canadians, 80%, are concerned with the mental health care resources available in this country, namely that they are not sufficient. Overall, one in five Canadians says they have looked for treatment from a professional for a mental health issue in the last 12 months, and in that group, two in five say they faced barriers to receiving the treatment they wanted. These obstacles appear to be more of an issue for women, among whom 45% of those who sought treatment say it was difficult to receive, and young Canadian adults aged 18 to 34.

A majority of Canadians support the previous rules governing MAID, first passed in 2016 and then updated in 2021, but there was more hesitation when it comes to this next step. Three in 10 say they support allowing those whose sole condition is mental illness to seek MAID, while half are opposed.

I will turn to some of what the professionals are telling us, starting with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. A survey recently of CAMH physicians found a lack of agreement on whether or not mental illness could be considered “grievous and irremediable” for the purposes of MAID and what criteria could be used to determine whether a person is suffering from an irremediable mental illness. The survey also found significant disagreement among physicians on whether or not a request for MAID can be differentiated from suicidal intent. These physicians also highlighted the concerns they had about access to mental health care in the context of expanded eligibility for MAID.

Canada's mental health care system has experienced chronic underfunding, leading to a significant shortage of community- and hospital-based mental health care across the country. Between one-third and one-half of Canadians with mental illness were not getting their mental health needs met before the COVID–19 pandemic exacerbated the mental health crisis and increased the burden on our mental health system and therefore on Canadians. The results of that survey replicate the findings from the Canadian Psychiatric Association's member consultations in 2020 and the conclusion of the Council of Canadian Academies' expert panel working group report in 2018.

Let me turn to the Canadian Mental Health Association, Canada's premier organization dealing with mental health:

CMHA's position, first articulated in a national policy paper in August 2017, and later, in testimony to the Senate in November of 2020, is that until the health care system adequately responds to the mental health needs of Canadians, assisted dying should not be an option....

First, it is not possible to determine whether any particular case of mental illness represents “an advanced state of decline in capabilities that cannot be reversed.”

Second, we know that cases of severe and persistent mental illness that are initially resistant to treatment can, in fact, show significant recovery over time. Mental illness is very often episodic. Death, on the other hand, is not reversible. In Dutch and Belgian studies, a high proportion of people who were seeking MAID for psychiatric reasons, but did not get it, later changed their minds.

Third is the issue of whether this distinction for mental illness vis-à-vis all other types of illness is inherently discriminatory. Denying access to MAID for mental health reasons alone does not [necessarily] mean that those with mental illness suffer less than people afflicted with critical physical ailments.

That is true. The statement continues, saying, “What is different about mental illness specifically, is the likelihood [or not] that symptoms of the illness will resolve over time.”

We do not have the benefit of appropriate guidance from the Supreme Court of Canada on this issue, and that is something we need to take into account.

It is also noteworthy that with only 7.2% of Canada's health budget dedicated to mental health care, Canada spends the lowest proportion of funds on mental health among all G7 countries. For example, in the U.K., the National Health Service spends 13% of its budget on mental health care. According to the OECD's recent analysis of spending on mental health worldwide, it concluded that even that is too low, given that mental illness represents as much as 23% of the disease burden. The historical underfunding of mental health has been most pronounced in community-based mental health services and I think that ought to be taken into account.

According to the Canadian Psychiatric Association, perhaps Canada's foremost experts on mental health diagnosis and treatment, its members are profoundly split on this issue. The CPA's most recent member consultations in 2020 found that 41% of respondents agree that persons whose sole underlying medical condition is a mental disorder should be considered for eligibility for MAID, 39% disagree or strongly disagree, and 20% were undecided.

According to CPA president, Dr. Grainne Neilson:

Balancing the commitment of psychiatrists to provide treatment, care and hope for recovery with a person's lived experience of suffering and right to enact personal choice in health-care decisions, including MAiD, is a fundamental challenge, particularly where death is not naturally reasonably foreseeable.

Equitable access to clinical services for all patients is an essential safeguard to ensure that people do not request MAiD due to a lack of available treatments, supports or services. Poor access to care is particularly relevant for people of low-socioeconomic status, those in rural or remote areas, or members of racialized or marginalized communities.

The Canadian Psychological Association, another very important group in this matter, states the following:

Many mental disorders are managed, not cured. Medications for mental disorders are largely palliative. While it is possible that medications and psychotherapy may successfully treat an episode which then doesn’t recur, it is often the case that mental disorders require management across a lifetime.

In assessing whether a condition is incurable and irreversible, consideration must be given to equity of access to interventions. Wait lists for publicly funded services are long. Services, like psychotherapy offered in communities by psychologists, are not funded by Medicare. Needed services are not always available in rural or remote communities. To fully address whether a condition is resistant to intervention, that intervention must be accessible.

It is not.

The mental functions required to give consent to MAiD are the very ones sometimes impaired with a serious mental disorder, despite the grievous and irremediable suffering the disorder imposes. Consideration must be given to how to assess capacity despite the impairment in thinking that can accompany serious mental disorders.

I believe that we must act cautiously and prudently, and we must take a phased approach in this area. As has been noted by all parliamentarians, this is an intensely sensitive issue with grave moral and consequential concerns.

Adequate time, in my view, is needed to facilitate a comprehensive national conversation about acceptable safeguards and the availability of medically assisted dying for those suffering from psychological or mental health conditions alone, so that we minimize negative impacts on people living with mental health problems and illnesses when they are most vulnerable, and on their caregivers and health professionals.

I think holding that national conversation must involve people living with mental health problems and illnesses, and their experiences because they play a central role. We must get their input into what mechanisms must be there to minimize the risk of wrongful death.

It is going to be my position to support this bill and I think we must move very cautiously. I do not think that we can say that we can never move into this area, but I think we can say with confidence that now is not the prudent time.

[Health, October 3rd, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, speaking of affordability, Canadians have seen what happens when Loblaws is left unchecked: price-fixing and gouging. Now, Galen Weston is turning his sights to health care by expanding Shoppers Drug Mart private clinics. Experts are warning that huge corporations put profits before patients. It is the government's job to prevent this.

What is the Liberal plan to ensure that rich CEOs like Galen Weston do not gouge Canadians for health care like they do with food?

[Breast Cancer, October 3rd, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize October as Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Despite recent progress, breast cancer remains the most commonly diagnosed cancer among Canadian women. Last year alone, some 29,000 Canadians were diagnosed with breast cancer and almost 6,000 died from the disease.

We must act now to improve prevention, early detection, treatment and support for patients and their families. The New Democrats recently pushed the government to launch an expedited review of Canada's breast screening guidelines. Experts have called the current approach outdated and dangerous, and it must change.

I am pleased to inform the House that the health committee has unanimously adopted my motion to study women's health for the first time in decades. This will include a specific focus on breast screening and cancers. Working together we can reduce the number of people diagnosed, decrease mortality and improve the quality of life for all Canadians affected by breast cancer.

[Criminal Code, September 27th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I am glad my hon. colleague brought up the treatment of our seniors during the COVID pandemic, because Canadians were horrified to see so many vulnerable Canadians, our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, living in what were appalling conditions. I am glad to see that her bill addresses that.

On a more systemic basis, we have been promised a long-term care bill. That legislation, according to experts and stakeholders, would mean that we would have to establish binding, mandatory, quality care standards in long-term care homes across this country. That is to protect our seniors.

Would the hon. member agree with the NDP that we need binding, mandatory, quality and enforceable standards in legislation so that we could make sure that every senior in this country is not left in a vulnerable state, as they were during COVID?