Greg Thompson

[Questions On The Order Paper, March 10th, 1998]

Has the sale of Dunhill cigarettes been prohibited under section 27 of the Tobacco Act and if not, why?

[The Budget, February 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the health minister will leave a sad legacy in defence of our health care system. He caved in to the tobacco giants. He caved in to the liquor giants and once again he has caved in to the finance minister. He is quietly and obediently sitting on his hands, allowing the finance minister to take a wrecking ball to our health care system.

My question is obvious. Who is the real health minister, hapless Allan or heartless Paul?

[Atlantic Canada, February 25th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, not all Canadians are experiencing the economic prosperity the government loves to brag about. Many Atlantic Canadians are hurting and hurting badly. No place in Canada is hurting more than Atlantic Canada.

The Liberals did not get the message in last June's election. Regrettably they have not responded to the real needs of Atlantic Canadians. The numbers speak for themselves. There are record numbers of unemployed. Record numbers of Atlantic Canadians are moving to other parts of Canada and regrettably to other parts of the world to seek opportunities.

We are looking at a record high rate of unemployment in Atlantic Canada. The Liberals have done nothing about it since taking office. With their failure to respond they are crippling the economy of Atlantic Canada. But what else could we expect from a government that was elected with no plan for Atlantic Canada? Yesterday's budget reaffirms this.

[Health, February 20th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, this is incredible. We have heard this story before. We have heard this line before.

I want to remind the House and the Canadian people that the minister did not seek provincial agreement when he chopped $6 billion out of health care, but now he is just simply waiting it out, ignoring the plight of these innocent victims. Again, will the minister show some leadership and act unilaterally and act now to help these people?

[Health, February 20th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, there are more than 30,000 hepatitis C victims looking to the health minister for compensation. I have asked the minister in the past to act unilaterally and we know the minister is reluctant to act unilaterally.

These are innocent victims. How much longer do they and their families have to suffer this torturous wait? Will the minister exercise his constitutional and more importantly his moral responsibility to assist these innocent victims?

[Canada Shipping Act, February 19th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am using the word potentially. If you examine, Mr. Speaker, what happened in question period yesterday, this was the focus of question period all day yesterday.

[Canada Shipping Act, February 19th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I believe that if you look very clearly at the rules of the House we have a parliamentary secretary basically standing up and defending legislation that would put millions of dollars in the pocket of the Minister of Finance. I think there is a collusion of interest here.

[Criminal Code, February 17th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, it has been an interesting day. I was on my feet earlier today on a question of privilege. In preparing for that I went through some debates that were held a few years ago in this place. I went back to 1980 to do my research. There were familiar names of people that I actually sat in the House with a few years ago. I do not think in their wildest dreams they could imagine that we would be debating an issue like this one. I do not think they would believe that science and technology could move as quickly as it has in the last number of years. That is really what we are talking about.

I listened to the members for Thornhill and Winnipeg North Centre talk about major changes that are happening so quickly in society that we cannot cope with them.

Going back just a very short number of years ago, who could imagine that human eggs and sperm could now be manipulated to create new life outside women's bodies? Just imagine.

Children, as we all well know, can be born of women who are not their genetic mothers. Another example is prenatal diagnosis which can detect genetic or other abnormalities in the embryo or fetus before it is born.

Those are the type of things we are looking at: big changes in technology that raise some pretty high moral and ethical questions.

The government that I was part of in 1989 created the Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies in response to some of what members in the House have spoken about tonight. The commission established in 1989 was charged with looking at some of these issues. These issues were responded to by the government in Bill C-47.

As has been mentioned, Bill C-47 died on the order paper with the call of the election last spring. The member from Quebec who introduced Bill C-247 has basically done so in response to the death of Bill C-47. There is no question there are many similarities between the two bills. It is a highly technical bill. To be honest, I do not think any of us in the House are capable of carrying that position forward as best we can in the three short hours allocated to the member's bill.

Here are some of the concerns I have about the bill which have been expressed by people from coast to coast. The commission reported back with some recommendations that were basically based on information the commission had picked up over a number of years of listening to Canadians from one end of the country to the other, many of whom were obviously experts.

We would like to see in the bill protection with regard to sex selection for non-medical purposes. We would like to see restrictions on the buying and selling of eggs, sperm and embryos, including their exchange for goods, services or other benefits but excluding the recovery expenses incurred in the collection, storage and distribution of eggs, sperm and embryos for persons other than a doctor. This prohibition should come into force for a period of time to ease the transition from the current commercial system to an altruistic system. Germ line genetic alteration; ectogenesis which basically translates into maintaining an embryo in an artificial womb; protection of and consideration given to the cloning of human embryos; the creation of animal-human hybrids, which I believe the Reform member has just spoken on; and the retrieval of sperm or eggs from cadavers or fetuses for fertilization and implantation or research involving the maturation of sperm or eggs outside the human body are other areas of concern.

The member for Thornhill mentioned the moratorium that has been in place for a number of years. There has been a lot of good will and faith that this moratorium would work, but what we would like to see, I guess, would be prohibitions that are not contained in the moratorium. That would be the transfer of embryos between humans and other species, the use of human sperm eggs or embryos for assisted human reproduction procedures or for medical research without the informed consent of the donors, research in human embryos later than 14 days after conception, the creation of embryos for research purposes only, and the offer which almost sounds impossible, but it could happen, the offer to provide or offer to pay for prohibited services.

The other thing that I think should happen is a management regime or the development of a regulatory agency or, I should say, component. This should be introduced in any bill that comes before this House. Unfortunately, that is not part of Bill C-247.

What we would like to see is basically an omnibus bill that would take into consideration much of what we have spoken about in this House. None of us are going to disagree with the member who introduced this Private Member's Motion. I think it is time that we raised the debate. It is time that we discussed this in the House. It is time that we hold the minister's feet to the fire in his desire—I wanted to use the word promise, but I will not use it because I'm not sure it was a promise—to bring forth a piece of legislation that we could support on this side of this House.

What we are telling the minister is that we expect him to introduce legislation that would fill the void created by the death of Bill C-47 last year with some of the additions that I have just mentioned. It is a debate that is worthy of consideration. It is a debate that has to be carried out in this place and, obviously, it is a debate where expert testimony in some of these areas, you might say this cutting edge of technology—in fact, it is moving so quickly that a great deal has changed even in the last 12 months.

I believe there has to be an opportunity to discuss that, debate that, but more important, there has to be an opportunity through committee and through this House to bring in the expert testimony that will be needed to confront this multifaceted problem.

We are hoping the minister will reintroduce the legislation, allow this House to debate it and bring in the best testimony that we can, from coast to coast, to debate what I consider one of the most important issues facing Canada at this moment.

[Privilege, February 17th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege which relates to the Minister of Health. He is denying information to members, specifically to me in my role as health critic for the Progressive Conservative Party.

I believe I am also speaking on behalf of other critics in the health field.

What I am talking about specifically is that all ministers routinely provide information to the critics in their legitimate roles in order for them to be able to perform their duties as critics.

Mr. Speaker, you are aware that this House has to operate on the best information available and we are being denied some of that information. For example, the Minister of Health has a budget of $1.5 billion. He has 6,400 employees to provide him with the best information. He is not doing it for the critics.

I am referring specifically to the clippings collected by members of his department from coast to coast every single day. We have always had the courtesy extended to us of having those clippings in our possession each and every day in order to perform in our roles as critics.

I will quote certain sections from Beauchesne's that relate exactly to the point I am making. In chapter two under privilege it states:

The privileges of Parliament are rights which are “absolutely necessary for the due execution of powers”. They are enjoyed by individual Members, because the House cannot perform its functions without unimpeded use of the services of its Members; and by each House for the protection of its members and the vindication of it own authority and dignity—

[Charlotte County Ports, February 11th, 1998]

Mr. speaker, I appreciate the members who spoke on behalf of my motion. I do want to take the parliamentary secretary to task for some of the things he said. I can understand, coming from the Hamilton harbour area, how he might have dredged up some of his remarks. It would not be uncommon. The member has engaged in that type of activity many times in this House.

In his remarks it was only when he deviated from the written word prepared by the minister's department that he got in trouble. When he speaks off the top of his head and he has to speak on his own, he always gets in trouble.

I am going to take him to task on some of the things he said in this House which are not accurate. He buys into every single thing the people from New York and New Jersey have said about this project. Shame on him.

I think it is time he did his own investigative work on this project. What he talked about is the number of jobs that would be created in this deal. Do you know what it would be? Five jobs, as indicated by the first spokesman for the group as represented by the Randy Waterman interests. His name was Wayne Lockhart. In a public meeting he said to a citizens group there would be five jobs. Why? Because it is not labour intensive. It is done by the use of the biggest equipment known to mankind, so there are not a lot of jobs.

That was not good enough. How are five jobs going to get the interest of any community? How is a community going to get excited over five jobs given the fact that they could decimate a pristine historic river? They went back to the drawing board. When they presented their papers to the province of New Brunswick for submission for the project, the five jobs had suddenly grown to 50 jobs on the same project.

This is where the parliamentary secretary should have done his work. The investigation of any quarry site, any aggregate site, based on the amount of volume they are going to do out of this quarry, in North America would be five jobs. They used an exaggerated number of jobs to gain the attention of the province of New Brunswick.

When the loudmouth from Hamilton speaks and claims that I have a conflict of interest because I live in the area, he is absolutely correct. I carried this fight on long before I arrived in this House. I am working on behalf of my constituents. I am not going to lay over and play dead because of the big boys from New York and New Jersey.

I do not know where this guy is getting his information, but I will tell members one thing. It is not coming from the citizens of the area that I represent. He is being fed information directly out of New York and New Jersey to support their case. There is a direct funnel into the heart of the government of the province of New Brunswick via Al Lacey, a former member of the crown.

In this particular case, as the Reform member mentioned, Doug Young, a paid lobbyist, is on the record as working on behalf of these people. A former minister of the crown actually was the architect for the privatization act. If he is going to speak about the project, if he is going to speak about individuals, he should get his facts right.

The environmental process used in the province of New Brunswick is a flawed process. The citizens of the area asked for a full scale independent environmental assessment of the project. That is all they asked for.

What do they have? They have an in-house process that actually flies in the face of scientific information provided. In fact, the citizens of the area hired two certified geologists to examine the area in question. Do members know what they found? Three fault lines in the area, two of which run through the very businesses in the area, which the province of New Brunswick or the proponents of the project have never declared publicly. Why? Because they would upset the very businesses in the area, one being owned by Moore Clark, one being owned by a company called Woodstock Cold Storage, and others.

It is documented by two certified geologists that this project would endanger those very businesses and the infrastructure in the area, information absolutely overlooked by the parliamentary secretary and all the environmentalists on the payroll of the province of New Brunswick.

That tells me there is something wrong when the transparency we are asking for is not evident anywhere in the process. It is absolutely bizarre.