Hedy Fry

[Business of Supply, February 28th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, what is fundamental about this opposition day motion that the Liberals are bringing in has to do with democracy. A democratic society has due process, rule of law and all of the fundamentals that come with a democratic society, and an independent judiciary. We do not want to live in a country in which the state has all the power and individuals have absolutely no rights. That is why we reference the Charter of Rights and Freedoms here. It is the main bill under which every single piece of legislation must flow. The charter tries to find a balance, which is what we are talking about here, between the rights of individuals to privacy and their own sense of personal integrity, and the security of the state.

How do we find that balance? How do we, in the name of security of the state, find a way to ensure that we at the same time do not trample on the rights of individuals? That is where process comes in. That is where the rule of law comes in. In any democratic society, there are some very fundamental processes we must look at, such as an independent judiciary, due process and rule of law, as well as freedom of expression and freedom of the media, whether it be the Internet or any other kind of media.

There was a time when a very famous Liberal prime minister spoke about the state not getting into the bedrooms of the nation. We can extend that to say that there has to be a limit to the state getting into the hard drives of the nation. If there is a reason to suspect that individuals are guilty of criminal activity, treason or any other kind of terrorism or act against the state, there is due process. I want to give an example of why this bill goes so far and in fact would violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Recently there was a widely publicized, huge sting operation with respect to a child pornography ring in Canada. The police were highly successful, as 22 people were charged, 75 charges were laid, 25 search warrants were obtained, and 16 communities across Ontario were fingered. However, it was done under due process of law. There was reason to suspect and warrants were given. The police officers found a way to do that under the current Criminal Code, and under due process of law. We know, therefore, the process of law is working well. When individuals are suspected, the necessary tools are there and working.

I have just come back from Vienna where I was at a meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. We were talking about repressive regimes that have flouted due process of law to pick people up on trumped-up charges without any presumption at all or proof of guilt, put them into prisons and torture them. Canada was very firmly opposed to this. A big part of what we are looking at in terms of the OSCE is to create democratic societies.

Canada cannot on the one hand speak against something in the real world, saying that we are opposed to it and support democracy and the rule of law and then on the other hand at home take this insidious way to undercut the rule of law and suggest that there are bogeymen under every bed. We cannot afford to do that in this country. If we are going to have credibility in the world because we stand up for freedom of speech and the rights of individuals, stand against terrorism, support security of the state and do so under due process of law and independent judiciary, then we need to do it here at home. We cannot have two standards. Canada cannot do one thing at home and say another thing abroad. That is what we are talking about.

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms should be a template. It should be a benchmark against which we hold up everything we hope to do in terms of rule of law in this country to see whether it stands up to the charter or violates it. That is what a judiciary looks at when looking at any kind of legislation. The Parliament of a land does not supersede the rule of law. The Parliament of the land is driven by the rule of law. It must succumb to the rule of law itself.

Therefore, we cannot have what we see happening here. When people oppose this kind of violation of the rule of law, we cannot decide that those people are wrong, that they belong with a group of criminals, that they are crooks, pornographers or whatever they call them. There is a standard by which a state must judge its own citizens. We live in a free and democratic society where civil society and opposition parties can oppose what they feel is an infringement of the rule of law, an infringement of democracy. However, when they do oppose, it is not right that they are then subjected to all kinds of suspicious language and people who say that they belong to some kind of subversive group or a criminal activity is going on within those groups.

That is what happens in oppressive regimes, such as in Belarus, Russia and the Ukraine. At certain points in time, their leaders are thrown into jail because they happen to belong to the opposition and disagree with the government. We cannot do that in this country. We have stood as a bastion throughout the world as a country that believes in democratic principles and the rule of law.

There is no need for this kind of bill. We have a process and it works. If the police, a member of CSIS or a minister is suspicious of an activity going on, he or she can go to a judge who will, as an independent person in a democratic society, say that it sounds good and that he or she will issue a warrant to seize. However, to do this at the whim of the police, of the minister or of CSIS, tells us that we believe there are certain institutions that are above the law. There is no institution that is above the rule of law in this country. We also cannot go around as a state spying on our citizens for no reason at all. If we have a good reason, it will stand up to a warrant.

We cannot try this new thing in which a minister would make a decision and then would ask an ISP to have technology to tap into someone's Internet. We do not do that with phone tapping. There must to be a warrant for phone tapping and due process must be observed. I keep repeating the words “due processes” because I am talking about democracy and the rule of law. I am trying to get the government to not run away with the idea that because it has a majority it is bigger than anything else, that it has suddenly become a dictatorship and that it does not need to answer to anyone for anything.

This is one of the things that concerns many of us. We hear that the government, having realized that it went too far, is saying that it will send the bill to committee and listen to the amendments. I must say that, since we have come back under a majority government, the committees have been hijacked by the government. Under the rules of Parliament, the committees must make their own decisions about what they will study and what they will do. They are the authors of their own destiny and their own agenda. This is not happening anymore. If anyone dares to speak out or to bring forward a motion at committee that the government does not wish to have, the meeting immediately goes in camera and nobody knows what is going on. This is government thinking that committees and the institution of Parliament in a democratic society is an extension of government. It is not. It is a democratic entity unto itself and this kind of stuff needs to stop.

The government came into power saying that it would look at smaller government, that it would stay out of the lives of people and that it would not encroach. Here we have a government that is tearing up the gun registry and the names of people. It is cancelling the gun registry because it does not want to get into the private lives of its citizens and yet with Bill C-30 it would be snooping into the private lives of its citizens without due process. This is what we are talking about. If this legislation is actually conforming with the rule of law, it would not violate the charter, which is what it is currently doing.

I would ask the government to stick to the principles of democracy, listen to the amendments, be guided by them and, if they are good, adopt them. It should not try to suggest to the world that it is listening to the committee and having amendments but then voting against them and using its majority to stop any kind of change whatsoever. I appeal to the government to go back to the principles of democracy, start behaving, start listening to what it hears from the opposition and to start respecting Parliament and the rule of law.

[The Vancouver Sun, February 16th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, on February 12, 100 years ago, The Vancouver Sun wrote out its first edition. It has been delivering the news to British Columbians ever since.

Founders, “Black Jack” McConnell and Robert Ford, both Liberals, ran their paper to never “adversely criticize, condemn, or oppose in sprit” the Liberal Party and to counter The Province, a Vancouver Tory newspaper in those days.

The Vancouver Sun evolved, providing British Columbians with intelligent, informative, often controversial but never bland reporting from iconic journalists like Jack Wasserman, Al Fotheringham and Marjorie Nichols.

The Vancouver Sun was one of the first newspapers in Canada to give women hard news to cover and there are tales of female reporters packing guns in their purses as they covered organized crime and the docks in the old days. I do not think Kim Bolan, Barbara Yaffe or Daphne Brahaman do that anymore, though they still do not shy away from the tough stories.

As Stephen Hume, a The Vancouver Sun columnist, wrote:

...a newspaper is, a community having a collective public conversation with and about itself, sometimes an argument, sometimes a commiseration, but always the discourse that is community life.

I congratulate the The Vancouver Sun--

[Public Safety, February 14th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the Supreme Court has ruled that those accused of crimes must be tried within a reasonable time or be set free.

The government's crime bill creates new offences that would add greatly to the already lengthy backlog awaiting trial. It takes a special brand of incompetence to develop a justice bill that would grind the system to a halt and allow more criminals to walk free.

Why will the government not listen to the experts and rethink its narrow ideological approach to justice in Canada?

[Federal Framework For Suicide Prevention Act, February 9th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak in support of this bill by the hon. member for Kitchener—Conestoga because I think it is a bill that all of us can support.

As my colleague just said, this is something that is non-partisan because suicide touches every community, every life, every family and every school. We know that is true but it is important to note that we can prevent it.

When the member talks about looking at a national strategy, I am pleased that he is talking about building partnerships between the federal, provincial and territorial governments, non-profit societies, groups that understand the issue, as well as between communities, schools and local people. It is an issue that can flood every area in which we can look at. That makes it important and it is something we can sink our teeth into. It means that when we have a suicide prevention strategy, everyone will behind it, as it must if it is going to succeed.

As members know, the leader of the Liberal Party tabled a bill in the House on October 4 that talked about a national suicide prevention strategy. All three parties in this House unanimously supported it. Therefore, we are all on the same page here and that is important to remember. We sit in this House and figuratively shoot bullets at each another, argue, debate and become partisan, but I was moved by the opposition day motion from the hon. leader of the Liberal Party. Everyone here was silent, thoughtful and moved. Some members were choked-up and touched by personal experiences. If there is anything we can all put ourselves behind, it has to be this issue.

As a physician, I like statistical data and I like to talk about research, et cetera. Here are some things that I think we need to know. The national rate of suicide in Canada is 15 out of 100,000 people. Now, in 2012, it is 73% higher than it was in the 1950s. For every suicide, there are 100 failed attempts. The rate of suicide is higher among men. We know that 23 out of every 100,000 men will attempt suicide as opposed to 6 out of 100,000 women, although women are three to four times more likely to attempt as opposed to actually complete suicide. It is the second leading cause of death among Canadian youth aged 10 to 24. In fact, the suicide rate for Canadian youth is the third highest in the industrialized world.

We need to do something about that, not only because of the statistical data or because we all agree about it in this House, but we must think of the wasted human potential when young people commit suicide. This is something we need to look at but I do not want to only focus on youth.

It is interesting to note that the leading cause of death in men between the ages of 25 and 29, and 40 and 44 is suicide. In women, it is between the ages of 30 and 34. Therefore, this is not a youth issue only. We now have evidence showing that among seniors, especially senior women, there is a very high rate of suicide. It is not done in as dramatic a fashion but there are high rates of suicide among senior women.

We know that some populations within Canada have a greater incidence of suicide. For instance, those in the armed forces have a three times higher rate of suicide than the general population. Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons have a seven times higher rate of suicide than heterosexual youth. We know that suicide is the leading cause of death in aboriginal males aged 10 to 19. In fact, the suicide rate of first nations is five to seven times higher than that of the non-first nations population. The suicide rate for Inuit youth is among the highest in the world, at 11 times the national average. We know that 43% of respondents to a survey that was done in 2008 in Nunavut said that they had thought of suicide within the last week.

As we well know, 90% of suicides have a diagnosed psychiatric illness behind them. Many people who are depressed and contemplating suicide and go undiagnosed are nearly always the successful ones.

We know this reaches out into every home and community across this country. There is no one who has not been touched by it.

Here is a staggering piece of information. Suicide deaths and attempts cost the Canadian economy over $14.7 billion annually. If we are not moved by the human problem here, we should know that the $14.7 billion could go to other parts of health care to help all kinds of problems, including via measures for prevention, promotion, and setting up of community clinics, et cetera.

However, I think suicide prevention in this country is fragmented. Some provinces do it well; some provinces do not. We heard my colleague say that if we want to look at a best practice, we have to look at what Quebec has done. Quebec has had extraordinary results in suicide prevention.

We know that some of the causes of people being pushed into suicide include mental illness and mood disorders. Amongst youth, stress, anxiety, bullying, alcohol and substance abuse are huge causative factors connected to suicide. Others include the loss of a parent or caregiver in early childhood; the loss or breakup of a relationship; poverty; de-culturization and loss of traditions; and physical, sexual and mental abuse. Also, suicidal acts amongst family, friends or in a school community tend to push others who may be on the brink of thinking about it into actually committing suicide.

I just want to say that in any demographic or in any piece of statistical data we look at, this is an issue that we must deal with urgently. It is not something that we can just sit and talk about. If every day 10 Canadians commit suicide, then every day that we waste, every week that we waste, every month that we waste we should think about it. It could be someone we know or someone who is very close.

I think there are elements of a strategy that we need to talk about that are quite clear. We need to look at research. Let us look at the identification of social or other determinants of suicidal behaviour. We know that it is not only about depression and psychoses. Let us look at how we can identify the risks very early, meaning that we have to move out of medical communities and look to school counsellors, who if properly trained might be able to identify a young person very early before they begin actual suicidal ideation.

There may be a very early warning system that we can put into place. However, this will require public education, individual education of counsellors in schools and social workers and people who work in the community, including those who work with children and families. These people need to have some kind of training. Even though I am a family physician, I also need to say that family physicians need to have some training in early diagnosis and early identification of suicide.

We need to talk about how this moves not just from a medical point of view but also out into the community as part of community support programs and knowledge. We also need to have an open dialogue, because one of the reasons no one talks about suicide is the stigma. Everyone is ashamed to talk about it.

What is happening, as we discussed on the day of the opposition motion, is that it has actually triggered the following response from people across the country. People began to say, “Well, if so and so, an MP, has someone they know who committed suicide or thought of suicide or were depressed or if they have a family member with a problem, this is actually something I can feel comfortable talking about. I do not need to be ashamed.”

It is the shame and the hidden component of this that causes the problem and prevents us from picking up the signs early. Therefore, we need to talk about crisis intervention, a hot line, and early responders. We need to talk about how we build community support for all of these kinds of things. Of course we need to talk about bereavement support in schools and how we can talk about it openly within a school situation.

We know that we do not have anything on suicide prevention in the national mental health strategy. We know that the Canadian Mental Health Commission will come with its report in May or early June. I know it is going to contain something about suicide prevention.

As I said, we know that Quebec has had 50% fewer suicides in the last 10 years. This is because they have consolidated and coordinated their services so they are all moving together in the same direction, doing the same things. They have community and street mental health workers. They have promotional programs about mental illness and wellness in schools. They have police who are trained to identify people on the streets who need help.

Those are important things where we can take a page out of their book. We do not have to recreate and reinvent wheels around here when we have some very good best practices. As I said, Quebec is one of them, but there are other places with best practices too.

We should also think about what the feds can do. Let us set up, if anything, a clearing house of best practices. Look at what works, look at the evidence and let us do something about this before it is too late. I urge all members to please support the bill.

[Airline Industry, February 9th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday I received an urgent email from a constituent. He is concerned about the government's new gender identification requirements in the identity screening regulations to board an aircraft. He will be heading to a convention in San Diego this weekend along with Canadian transvestite and transgendered delegates.

Could the Minister of Transport tell this group if they will be allowed to travel? A simple yes or no will suffice.

[Health, February 7th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, we know the Minister of Health blocked trans fats regulations recommended by her own department and appointed task force. Last year she blocked the sodium strategy agreed to by the provinces and her department. She ignored her expert panel recommendation to list energy drinks as drugs sold over the counter by pharmacists.

Whether it is energy drinks, sodium reduction, or a restriction on trans fats, why does the minister always ignore the evidence and jeopardize the health of Canadians?

[Pooled Registered Pension Plans Act, January 31st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, as I was saying earlier, if the government were really interested in securing retirement income and pensions for its citizens, it would do what the Liberal government did when we looked at the Canada pension plan and secured it for 75 years. We did not send it off to some private sector to look after, but decided it was really important. Because that Canada pension plan is secure now, I would want to know why the government would not look at expanding the Canada pension plan to meet the needs of seniors for their retirement. It could look, for instance, at people who are in the non-paid work force and expand it to them, so that instead of their having to depend on OAS only, they would get a CPP pension down the road. This is the kind of creative thinking that the Conservative government does not seem to care about.

It is easy to dump on seniors. It is easy to cut whatever they are hoping for in the next few years, and there are going to be a lot of people in this House who are going to suffer the consequences of this. If the government were really interested in looking at changes that would benefit seniors and, at the same time, in looking for sustainability in the system, what it would do is to look at the evidence. The CPP is a good example and expanding it might be a good way to go. Let us look at the evidence of Australia, which has, for a decade, this same kind of pooled pension with private sector and insurance and financial institutions running it. After 10 years the Australians discovered that the financial institutions were the only ones that benefited from it.

So did the government listen to the evidence? Does it look at evidence when it is talking about the way to help Canadians? Does it listen to experts? We have the economist Don Drummond saying that if we are going to increase the retirement age by two years, it is going to have a severe domino effect on the workplace across all economic sectors and that it should take about 20 years to phase in. However, the Conservative government does not listen to the experts or to evidence. It is manufacturing a crisis when the OECD and the World Bank has said that there is none.

Here is what the government might be able to do to help Canadians save for retirement. Instead of making the already-rich financial and insurance sectors richer, it might want to look at a non-profit way of doing this. We have been told by the OECD that here in Canada we are one of the lowest contributors to a public pension plan. So here is a way that the government could contribute to the public pension plan if it does not like the CPP idea and if it wanted to look at a non-profit way of doing this. It could do it and it would help a lot of people who are trying to put aside money for retirement.

The argument is that people will be asked to voluntarily save in a private sector plan when they are the same people who do not have RRSPs because they do not have the money to put into them. So where would those savings come from? This is a non-starter. It is a no-brainer. It does not make any logical sense at all.

All I have to think is that it is part of the game. The government says it wants to double the rate at which it pays off its deficit, so it is doing it on the backs of the people who it thinks are the least likely to give it a hard time. The government is doing it on the backs of people like veterans, as we have heard earlier, because we know that the veterans who are suffering with post-traumatic stress disorder are not getting any help from the government. We know that the veterans are having a huge problem with being given a lump sum pension, not knowing how long they will live and how long it will last them, which is putting stress on the people who fought for us. We also look at the fact that the government is cutting health care funding without considering whether that is the appropriate thing to do. Is that an investment in productivity or are jails an investment in productivity, unless, of course, building jails is the government's way of looking at a housing and mental health strategy.

However, the problem here is that good fiscal management, if they are talking about deficit reduction, should be looked at from an evidence base and should not be done on the backs of the most vulnerable. One should look at where one cuts and where one invests. An investment means putting money into programs that will reap, down the road, good jobs and economic prosperity to be shared by everyone. This does not do that. We have seen the government make bad choices with its fiscal management of this country, and so this is something we want to talk about.

When the government says there is a crisis, I would point out that OAS costs 2.4% of GDP today. When the number of baby boomers reaches its maximum in 2031, OAS will cost 3.2% of GDP, and that cost will then begin to drop. So tell me where this crisis is? When is it going to occur? It does not seem that it will occur for a long time.

Therefore, as the government looks at ways to become fiscally sensible and prudent, it should look at evidence and try very hard not to cut the things that will in fact assist people and their quality of life. If pensioners do not have strong retirement incomes, they will need more health care. This does not make sense.

It is about logic. It is about making good financial decisions. However, the government shows that it is incapable of doing any of those things.

[Health, January 31st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, in the 2004 health accord, federal and provincial governments agreed that funding alone would not save medicare and that they had to work together across jurisdictions to make changes.

When the Prime Minister refused to talk to the premiers and unilaterally imposed a new funding formula, he broke that agreement leaving the premiers to deliver health care as 13 separate programs. Some provinces will need to cut services and Canadians will not have access to the health care they need.

Why has the Prime Minister violated the Canada Health Act? Why has he abandoned the agreements in the health accord?

[Alzheimer's Awareness Month, January 31st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, January is Alzheimer's Awareness Month. Five hundred thousand Canadians live with this progressive degenerative disease that destroys brain cells. The number of Canadians suffering from Alzheimer's is expected to double in the next 20 years.

Groundbreaking research is being done by organizations like Baycrest in Toronto in an attempt to understand the underlying causes of Alzheimer's and how to delay its onset.

It is important to recognize the early signs of Alzheimer's, including personality change, mood change, disorientation of time and place, and difficulty performing familiar tasks. Early identification of Alzheimer's is critical to delay its onset.

Alzheimer's puts enormous emotional stress on millions of Canadian families. It costs our health care system billions of dollars a year. If we could delay the onset for as little as two years we could save the system $219 billion over 30 years.

Investing in research and prevention would not only give us savings, but it would improve the quality of lives for many individuals and families in Canada.

[Pooled Registered Pension Plans Act, January 31st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am really glad to stand in the House and speak about Bill C-25 and its pooled pension plan. I know everyone has had various emotional and other responses to it, but first and foremost, I have to be cynical. I suggest that the government is playing games with Canadians' financial security when they retire.

It is playing games because we know that its own consultant, who has been working with the OECD and the World Bank on pensions, has said very clearly that there is no crisis with the OAS at the moment, that in fact we do not need to raise the retirement age at the moment and that we are one of a few OECD countries with the lowest investment in public pensions. Accordingly, there is room for us to look at how we would invest in a public vehicle to help Canadians who cannot afford to retire.

A game is going on here. In the last election we know that the Prime Minister promised the government would not cut transfers to health, education and to individuals. However, it is obvious what a difference a few months and a majority government will make to promises made and promises broken. Slashing health transfers, attacking old age security and raising the retirement age to 67, I can only name as a few of those broken pre-election promises.

I listened yesterday to members on the other side talking about how we must respect the provinces, that we must listen to the provinces and not tell them what to do. I suggest that perhaps the government should heed its own advice to us when the provinces ask it to hold a premiers' conference on health and it does not listen to them. When the provinces tell the government it cannot unilaterally decide without consultation to cut transfers, the government is not listening to them. It is the same when the government forces the provinces to pay for the cost of its omnibus crime bill as well. One cannot speak out of both sides of one's mouth, but the government manages to do it quite well.

When government first announced it was looking at Canadians' retirement security in January 2009, it agreed it would look at expanding the public vehicle, the Canada pension plan, as the way to go, and that it would seek agreement from the provinces. That was not impossible. In the mid-1990s, when the Liberal government looked at the CPP and all provinces were getting very worried about retirement pensions, the Liberal government talked to the provinces. We built trust and listened and looked at securing the CPP for 75 years. The CPP was secured for 75 years, and that was done with the provinces. It is a very secure vehicle that we can now look at as we try to help Canadians to retire with some dignity and some comfort, instead of looking at a private pension scheme as the first tool in the toolbox.