James Rajotte

[Sponsorship Program, February 25th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, based upon the information tabled by the current President of the Treasury Board, we know that the current industry minister received 28 grants totalling over $3 million between 2001-02. The industry minister must stand up and defend herself on this fact.

Of the $3 million given, how much of this total went to Liberal-friendly advertising firms?

[Adverse Drug Reactions, February 20th, 2004]

Madam Speaker, I want to take this opportunity to congratulate you on your new position.

I want to follow up on the comments by my colleague from the NDP who just spoke. Whenever the Conservatives and the NDP can agree on anything it must be a good thing for Canada.

I appreciate the opportunity to address the motion, which calls for the mandatory reporting of serious adverse drug reactions. I want to begin by saluting the intent of the motion, which is to raise awareness and increase reporting of such events so that Health Canada can act in a more timely manner.

Before I get into the details of the motion, I would like to pay tribute to the hon. member for Yellowhead, who is my colleague in the Conservative Party and our health critic. He has done an excellent job of raising awareness, certainly on these issues, but on many other issues in the health field. He is one of the hardest working members in the House and I salute him for putting this forward.

By way of background, I would like to explain what I mean by an adverse drug reaction. An adverse drug reaction is any unintended response to a drug, whether it is a prescription drug, a non-prescription drug, a biologically derived product, such as a vaccine, or a herbal product.

The food and drug regulations in Canada define an adverse drug reaction as a “noxious and unintended response to a drug which occurs at doses normally used or tested for the diagnosis, treatment or prevention of a disease or the modification of the modification of an organic function”.

Reactions may be evident within only minutes or may be delayed by years after Canadians initially use a product. Adverse reactions to drugs could be considered minor, such as a skin rash, but some very serious reactions have occurred, from heart attacks within days of drug use to long term liver damage.

According to Health Canada, 51% of drugs will cause some side effects. According to the CBC news on February 17, 2004--it has been doing a special, we should know, on this whole issue--the number of children in Canada harmed by suspected adverse prescription drug reactions has tripled in the last five years.

Even after 10 years on the market, new information on the public's adverse reaction to drugs can impact the use of a product.

For example, Merital, an anti-depressant that had been available in Germany since 1976, was approved in the U.S. in 1985. At the time of U.S. approval, the American food and drug administration was aware of less than 20 cases of anemia associated with the use of Merital. Hemolytic anemia is an anemia resulting from an increased rate of red cell destruction.

When the FDA began collecting data on the drug for domestic and foreign adverse drug reaction databases, it discovered that these anemias caused by Merital might be fatal. As a result of this research, the manufacturer announced the worldwide withdrawal of the drug a year later.

The exact motion before the House states:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should considering making it mandatory for health care professionals to forward to Health Canada information on all “serious” adverse drug reactions within 48 hours of their occurrence.

I think that is important to know. I think the motion gets my Liberal colleague's support because it says that the government should consider. It is not exactly a directive but obviously the intent of the motion is to make it mandatory. However I think it should be broad enough to include members who possibly do have concerns about how this will be implemented. The fact that the motion is more general than a specific piece of legislation should also cause more members to support the motion.

The reporting of adverse drug reactions by both health care professionals and by individual Canadians is extremely important. The fact is that many Canadians are unaware of the adverse drug reaction database that currently exists. Part of this problem is because the reporting system is voluntary. National adverse reaction reporting activities are co-ordinated by the marketed health products directorate of Health Canada. Yet how many Canadians actually know that we have a marketed health products directorate in Health Canada? It would be interesting to actually know that.

That is why the motion is being introduced. It is why an editorial in the Globe and Mail today describes the reporting of adverse reactions to certain drugs as haphazard. There is no system in place that covers all these reactions.

While manufacturers are legally responsible to provide Health Canada with any important safety information for health products they sell in Canada, doctors, nurses and health care professionals are not required to make any reports.

The information gap that exists could be contributing to preventable illnesses and even deaths. Health Canada estimates that only 10% of adverse drug reactions are reported. If more physicians, pharmacists and ordinary Canadians reported reactions, it would certainly save the health care system money.

I want to address that issue, and I know the hon. member for Yellowhead has talked about this a number of times. The health care system should be moving forward. In Alberta they are moving forward with what is called a personal electronic health care record, which, hopefully, will improve the way in which health care services are delivered. It will also have the complementary effect of making Canadians more aware of their health care and the benefits they are receiving because it will allow personal records to follow with the patient. This will allow physicians and pharmacists to compare and contrast notes to ensure that the drugs their patients are receiving are complementary, that they are not receiving one drug that could have an adverse effect if taken with another drug that they have been prescribed.

I see the motion as working hand in hand with that type of a system of moving toward the personal electronic health care system.

Before I conclude I want to address the concerns of the member of the Bloc Quebecois who spoke about provincial jurisdiction. I think, quite frankly, that the motion does not interfere with provincial jurisdiction. One could, I am sure, get the consensus of all the provincial health ministers with this motion. This is essentially a motion to improve the reporting and look after the health and safety of Canadians, whether they are in Quebec or in any other province. We should not let this get caught up in a federal-provincial debate here.

I would like to emphasize that the intent of the motion is certainly beneficial and we in the Conservative Party will be supporting it, and we hope all parties will as well. It would be beneficial for all Canadians to be aware of this database and to use it more frequently, and that is why we think that making this mandatory would be a good step. The bottom line is that only good things can come from such a database if it does have more information, if there is a more systematic information system in place. Hopefully we can prevent some of the tragedies we have seen from adverse drug reactions.

Again, I encourage all my colleagues to support this excellent motion of my colleague, the member for Yellowhead.

[Industry, February 20th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the fact is that the former industry minister confirmed this in September 2003. This investigation involving the RCMP has been ongoing since August 2002.

At least three employees have been fired. At least half a million dollars and perhaps $25 million is at stake. The government has a responsibility to come clean on this issue. Canadian taxpayers deserve to be told when the investigation will be completed, how many employees were involved and how much taxpayer money was lost through bribery and fraud.

[Industry, February 20th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, in September 2003 the previous industry minister confirmed in the House that there was an internal investigation into bribery and fraud in the industrial research assistance program and promised to report back as soon as possible.

According to the Globe and Mail this scandal involves at least half a million dollars, and three employees from the National Research Council have been fired.

The government has had plenty of time to get to the bottom of this scandal. Will the government finally table the full results of this investigation?

[Sponsorship Program, February 19th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, we are not the ones making the allegations. It is a Liberal candidate in Edmonton. It is a former head of Liberal research that is making these allegations in a May 2002 article.

He said that Mario Laguë was discussing ways to “thwart access-to-information requests, and strategies to divert attention from negative aspects of the Auditor-General's reports”. The public does not believe that the Prime Minister does not know. He must stand up and restore his credibility.

The only way that he can do that is to come clean on this issue, explain exactly what he knew and when, and take action against cabinet--

[Sponsorship Program, February 19th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the problem with the Prime Minister's defence is that it leads right into his office.

We are quoting from an article written by Jonathan Murphy, a former Liberal candidate in Edmonton and a former Liberal research director. He said that top Liberal functionaries from ministers' personal staff were meeting with Mr. Laguë, then assistant secretary to cabinet, to discuss ways to “thwart access-to-information requests, and strategies to divert attention from negative aspects of the Auditor-General's reports”.

Will the Prime Minister stand up today and explain exactly what Mr. Laguë was doing and what has he done since? The road leads right into the Prime Minister's Office.

[Resumption Of Debate On Address In Reply, February 16th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I know that area well. I have driven that highway many times. It is one of the most beautiful areas in the country, perhaps the most beautiful.

No, it should not come out of the parks budget. The parks budget is stressed enough. It should come out of this infrastructure fund. It should come out of a fund set up to address specifically these types of needs. That would be our suggestion.

It is very disappointing it was not in the throne speech. The government has had 10 years to do this. All we hear is that the government might consider it. Frankly it needs to be done and it needs to be done now.

[Resumption Of Debate On Address In Reply, February 16th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I was struck by that as well. I do not know if the member opposite, the former minister of transport, knows of anything that exists outside of Toronto. His focus was exclusively on the Toronto area. Toronto is very important in our nation obviously, but the fact is that we are a nation from sea to sea to sea of communities of various sizes. Just focusing on the extremely large cities is frankly not good enough.

Our party's proposal is to take a portion of the federal excise tax on gasoline, perhaps 3¢ to 5¢, negotiate with the provinces and transfer it to the lower levels of government for them to address their infrastructure needs.

That means it would hit the smaller communities because it addresses the highways that they rely upon. A lot places in the member's own constituency do not have GO trains. They rely upon the highway infrastructure and the water quality and sewer systems. That is what the infrastructure program should be, stable funding, using perhaps up to half of the gas tax and transfer it to the provinces and municipalities to let them address their infrastructure needs.

[Resumption Of Debate On Address In Reply, February 16th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question. It was truly astounding to see the Liberals, I believe for the 85th time, invoking closure and cutting off debate again.

It was interesting that during the debate the government House leader said, “We do not want to talk about process. We want to talk about issues and policies”. Obviously the Conservative Party does as well.

That motion was actually about reinstating Jean Chrétien's old legacy bills. It was not about the government or the Prime Minister introducing their agenda. He has wanted to be Prime Minister since he was five years old and the best he could come up with in his throne speech was to regurgitate all of Chrétien's old bills.

It is funny that we had about a day and a half of debate about reinstating about five to 10 bills. The government decided that was enough debate and shut it down. It shows that the fundamental problem in Canada today is the centralization of power within the Prime Minister's Office. Look at the way the Prime Minister has set up the cabinet with a myriad of secretaries of state. What he is doing is actually centralizing power in his own office. The science adviser now reports to him.

Frankly that is the biggest problem. He needs to devolve power to parliamentarians and citizens. The fact is that the Prime Minister and the government will never do that because it is not in their nature to do that. They simply do not trust citizens and parliamentarians enough to do that and that is why frankly we do need a change in government.

[Resumption Of Debate On Address In Reply, February 16th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure today to respond to the Speech from the Throne.

I want to begin by talking about an issue that was absent from the throne speech. It is amazing that the government and the Prime Minister failed to address what I think is perhaps the greatest crisis facing Canada today: the beef issue. It is certainly a crisis of a national issue and one that affects western Canada.

The Prime Minister said that his mission was to address concerns in western Canada but the fact that he failed to address the issue of mad cow even once is such a failure on his part that it is inexcusable.

The fallout from this disease has made beef, feed and the slaughter of livestock a national crisis. The Liberals, frankly, have mishandled the issue since the first case was discovered in May 2003. The border remains closed. Confidence in the beef industry has been shaken, which is truly heartbreaking. Thousands of Canadians are losing their jobs and their way of life because the Liberals have overlooked this plight. The Liberals have overlooked the fact that the beef industry is the third largest contributor to our gross domestic product.

We must encourage the government and the agriculture minister to get active now to address the problem. We do not have months to address the problem. We have anywhere from 1 million to 3 million head of cattle in Canada that will be surplus if the border is not opened. The situation will be catastrophic if the government does not act.

I should point out that I will be sharing my time with my colleague from New Brunswick Southwest.

The second issue I wish to speak to is the Kyoto accord. In the throne speech the Prime Ministers says that he will go above and beyond Kyoto, whatever that means.

I want to give some background for people. In the summer of 1997, Canada and 160 other nations met in Japan and agreed to targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The agreement that set out these targets and the options available to countries to achieve them is known as the Kyoto protocol. Canada's target is to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 6% below 1990 levels by the period between 2008 and 2012, which, considering that our economy has grown since then, is about a 30% reduction from today's standards.

Five years later the government brought forward a motion in the House of Commons and ratified it in December 2002. What happened at the time is that members, on this side of the House especially, were demanding an implementation plan of how the government would reduce our emissions and possibly our production by 30%, especially when the Canadian manufacturers and exporters predicted that 450,000 jobs would be lost in Canada if we were to actually achieve those targets.

What did the Prime Minister do? When he was out of cabinet he criticized the then minister of the environment and said that the government had no implementation plan. It was at a Liberal leadership debate where he was debating the former finance minister and former deputy prime minister and said that the government had no implementation plan whatsoever, which was a direct criticism of the former minister of the environment.

What does the Prime Minister do when he assumes office? He reappoints the same Minister of the Environment who has done such a lousy job on this entire issue to the same position. Then the Prime Minister says that we will go above and beyond Kyoto. The government does not know how it will do it but it will say it because it thinks Canadians want to hear it.

The fact is that the government has no plan on Kyoto. It had better produce one because a lot of Canadian jobs are at risk if it does not produce one and it tries to achieve these targets.

We at the industry committee have asked two fundamental questions on this issue for months and we have not received a response. What questions have we asked? First: Who will measure the emission reductions or increases according to companies and industries? This is a basic question because different companies say they have reduced emissions by different amounts. The answer we get back is that the government does not know who will measure the emissions.

How will Canadians know if they have achieved targets if they do not know if they are actually meeting the emissions because we do not know who is actually going to measure them?

The second question is very important to many industries and companies. When the government signed Kyoto in 1997 a lot of companies, such as NOVA Chemicals in Alberta, took some fundamental steps in addressing and reducing their emissions. They got what they called low hanging fruit. They reduced their emissions as much as they could between 1997 and 2002. They are still waiting for an answer on whether they will get credit for reducing emissions based upon their good faith at that time. The government still has not said yes or no to giving the company credit for those early emissions. It is absolutely inexcusable.

The third area I want to touch upon is the whole issue of corporate welfare. I want to quote what the present Prime Minister said when he was finance minister in his famous budget speech of 1995. He said:

Across government, we are taking major action to substantially reduce subsidies to business. These subsidies do not create long lasting jobs. Nobody has made that case more strongly than business itself.

It is now clear that that statement means nothing because the government in fact has doled out billions and billions of dollars, particularly through Industry Canada and certain other agencies, in business subsidies. In fact, it does not apply even to the Prime Minister's own companies because as we know he received about $160 million in government grants.

I want to use the example of Technology Partnerships Canada which is run by Industry Canada. It is a perfect example of what is wrong with corporate welfare. Less than 2% of the money that has been loaned out since 1996 has been repaid. Therefore, of the $1.6 billion of hard earned taxpayer money given to various companies that the Liberals deemed fit, 2% has actually been paid back.

Industry Canada no longer keeps track of jobs created or jobs maintained through this program. It said that it was for job creation. Now it has even removed that from its website.

Our own calculations show that it costs Canadian taxpayers $625,000 to create one job under the program. That is absolutely amazing. It is impossible to tell whether this money is being spent on research and development or if it is just subsidizing certain activities within the various corporations.

The fact is that generation and development of new scientific knowledge is pivotal to the growth and prosperity of the Canadian economy. We in the Conservative Party are absolutely committed to that. We are committed to improving Canada's capacity to perform research but that does not mean getting involved in corporate welfare and giving money to companies across the country that are Liberal friendly.

I would also encourage the government to reassess its R and D tax credits. The member who spoke before us bragged about how much the government improved it. Almost everyone in the sector, and in small business across the country, say that it does not work, that is too regulatory and too administrative to even fill out the forms. They want to see it reformed.

The previous member spoke to the science agenda. In a sense I compliment the government a little on the appointment of Dr. Carty as the national science adviser. However I want to offer some comments. This is another example of the Liberal government taking a good idea and not implementing it fully.

It was at least five years ago that this party and in particular Preston Manning, a former leader, and the member for Kelowna who still sits in the House with us, called for a chief scientist. It is heartening to see that the idea has finally reached the government's benches, but our concern is that this person will again report to the Prime Minister. This is another example of the centralization of power in Canadian politics.

What should happen is what happens in the United States. The chief science adviser actually sits at the cabinet table as a full cabinet minister and is a very high profile person. Even better than that would be the example set in the United Kingdom where the chief science adviser has a full budget and reports to Parliament so that parliamentarians of all parties can access this person's information and ask him for advice on issues like Kyoto and so on. We should have a chief scientist in Canada who actually reports to Parliament.

I want to touch on one more science issue. Preston Manning wrote in the Globe recently about the difficulty of scientists across the country accessing government funding. They have to go to various sources. We should have one funnel where scientists and researchers can go to one government agency or one department to get approval for their big science project, such as the synchrotron in Saskatoon, and then have the government decide how to fund the particular project.

I want to finish up on the biggest issue in my riding over the past week or so, the sponsorship scandal. What is most disturbing to me today is the continuing pattern of absolute disregard and disrespect by the government for Canadian tax dollars.

I was listening to Rex Murphy on Cross Country Checkup yesterday. A lady from Calgary said it best when she said “This government simply does not treat our tax dollars as taxpayer funds in trust. They treat it as their own to do with as they see fit”.

That is fundamentally wrong, which is why we need a change in government.