Jean Crowder

[Patent Act, February 9th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, first I wish to congratulate the member for Windsor West for bringing the bill forward. It is an important element for the House to discuss. I would urge all members to consider voting in favour of the bill and getting it to a committee where we can have a transparent and open discussion about the impact of the current legislation.

A number of people have spoken about the government proposals. We have a number of difficulties with them. In part, the discussion on many of the proposals that have come forward has occurred behind the scenes. There has not been an open and very public dialogue about the impact of these particular regulations.

There are some fear that these regulations are stop gap at the very best and that they would not address some of the current abuses that are in place. It took seven years to get these changes into place but there is no mandatory review and no real guarantee that they will work this time. The government thought the regulations were going to work last time and they clearly have not.

The CGPA has done some very quick estimates of the cost of increased data protection. Had these current proposals been in place over the last five years, it would have added a further $600 million to prescription costs in Canada. That is just at a minimum. Those kinds of numbers contribute to what we are talking about in terms of the spiralling drug costs in this country.

Who is hurt the most by these drug costs? We are in a climate where we are putting profits before people. Drug therapy costs are second only to hospital expenditures and they are slightly larger than expenditures on doctors. There is no indication that these drug costs will change any time soon.

Provincial governments are demanding changes as their drug benefit plan costs increase at about 14% annually. With an aging population it is very difficult to see how these drug costs would go down substantially over the foreseeable future.

Canadian taxpayers are paying twice in our current system. They not only pay for our public, universal health care system, but they are also paying again at the pharmacy counter. These kinds of doubling up of costs for Canadians cannot go on.

The current regulations have multiple impacts. One impact that they have is on the drug benefit plans. Green Shield Canada's analysis of drug claim costs from 1997 to 2001 indicated that maximizing generic use was important in controlling costs.

Green Shield also indicated before the industry committee in 2003 that because of the rising cost of drugs they were being forced to change their standards of coverage and by doing so they were having to delist eligible drugs, increase co-payments and increase deductibles, which were having a direct impact on its patients.

It also impacts on employers and employees. Unions negotiate health benefits to fill gaps left by our health care system. Many unions have vocally asked for a public pharmacare as there is increasing conflict at the bargaining table over the costs of health plans, particularly drug plans.

[Quarantine Act, February 9th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to support the bill. We have been through the bill clause by clause, and it is an important bill to support.

There are a couple of concerns. We need to be very proactive around dealing with things like the SARS crisis, and perhaps the bird flu. We need to be very conscious about developing regulations around this. We have seen that it can be an incredibly slow and tedious process. Therefore, it is critical that we get off the mark on it.

The use of screening officers is a major concern. It appears that we will be forcing customs officers to take on another role, that of medical professional. This would be on top of their present duties, including enforcing the Customs Act, looking for potential terrorists and stopping material that could harm our flora and fauna. It is too much to expect one group to enforce that many rules effectively. We need close consultation with our colleagues at customs.

The Canadian Nursing Association pointed out that the emerging diseases often have unique symptoms. Screening officers will have to be continually trained and supported to ensure they know what to watch for. A bad cough is not only the sign of a potential epidemic. The bill does not explain how this system would be supported over time.

One lesson we learned from the SARS epidemic was the lack of coordination and official communication responsibilities during the crisis. Again, the Canadian Nursing Association recommends that the chief public health officer and the Public Health Agency of Canada should have a critical role in any epidemic or suspected epidemic. They were not included in the bill because enabling legislation to create that position and organization is still being written.

We urge the government to act quickly on the legislation. Everyone who spoke to the committee emphasized how important it was to have a clear authority.

[Petitions, February 9th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition, as other members have noted, is a petition with respect to autism. The petitioners urge Parliament under regulations to implement the therapies and the academic chairs as outlined in the petition.

[Petitions, February 9th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I have two petitions to present today. The first petition urges Parliament to implement the motion on eliminating trans fats from Canada's food supply.

[Pay Equity, February 9th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, on February 14, the Pay Equity Network, a group of national, provincial and local women's equality-seeking organizations, will launch a campaign, calling on the Liberals to introduce federal pay equity legislation.

The Pay Equity Network was established because of the government's inaction when it comes to ending the salary discrimination faced by women in the country.

The work has already been done. In May 2004 the federal pay equity report was issued. It concluded that pay equity was a fundamental right. Yet Canadian women are still waiting. The time has come for the government to take action and implement its own report.

The Pay Equity Network has requested meetings with the Ministers of Labour, Justice, the Minister responsible for Status of Women and the Prime Minister to present a call for action which has been endorsed by over 150 organizations across the country. I encourage the ministers and the Prime Minister to take time and meet with them.

The message to the Liberals is clear: this Valentine's Day, show her that they really care; give her equal pay.

[Food and Drugs Act, February 7th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I too am rising to support the bill. It is a sad commentary though that we are debating this issue once again. We previously approved a motion, with overwhelming support from the House. What we are seeing is a lack of action. We need to urge the government to do something with the bill, and hopefully it will pass.

I quote from a previous health committee meeting on April 26, 2001, where the former health minister said:

In connection with this, I want to draw attention to the motion adopted by the House of Commons only the other day, which was presented by my colleague [from Winnipeg North]. Her initiative, supported as it was by [the member for Mississauga South] and members of our own party, has focused attention again through another means on this challenge of FAS/FAE. I want to assure the committee—and particularly my friend, the member for Winnipeg North—we shall follow through with a sense of urgency on this issue.

If a sense of urgency means that three years later we still have no action on labelling, I am concerned about the government's definition of what is urgent.

Since 2001, if the estimates are correct, on average 3,000 children a year have been born with FAS-FAE. What does this do to our overall society and our health care costs? We continue to not take action on this initiative, which has been well identified and well supported by a number of people in the country, including medical associations and other organizations that work with children and women. We are dealing with one of the most preventable birth defects in our society, yet we are continuing to drag our heels. That it is a shameful statement on our commitment to our children. One has to ask why we have been unable to move forward on this.

Warning labels are not a panacea in and of themselves. Warning labels are simply part of a larger and overall strategy to educate and raise the level of awareness of the impacts of FAS-FAE. People who are going to drink anyway will not leave the bottle on the shelf just because of a label. However, what we have seen with other education and awareness campaigns is it broadens the level of awareness in society as a whole, so it does put peer pressure on people. The drinkers themselves may not look at the label but perhaps their friends will, and they will encourage them not to take that drink.

It is important that we also look at this in an overall education and awareness strategy. I know money is being committed right now to FAS-FAE. In fact, in my community a active FAS society is working very hard with the public in terms of education and awareness. One pub owner in my riding of Nanaimo--Cowichan has voluntarily put labels on all alcohol sold through the Cold Beer and Wine Store. This very progressive and forward-thinking pub owner should be commended for being concerned about alcohol and unborn children.

Yes, there has been a labelling campaign, which is interesting to me, although my colleague from across the House talked about the study of the U.S. labelling campaign from 1989, indicating that there was no demonstrable impact. I would argue that sometimes those numbers can tell us whatever they want to tell us. If a country like the U.S. could go ahead and label alcohol, since 1989 I might add, without any noticeable decrease in the industry, I would argue that Canada could do the same thing.

We have a number of tools at hand to increase education awareness around alcohol consumption, and labelling is an important part of that. Consumers should be made aware of the possible impacts of their behaviour through things like labelling. It certainly has been done in the tobacco industry for a number of years. It just seems reasonable that we follow through and have the same kind of initiative in the alcohol industry as well.

This is a very important initiative that could go a long way to continuing to raise the level of awareness, and we would like to see it included in a continuing overall education and awareness strategy about the impact of alcohol on unborn children. I would urge all members of the House to support this very critical and important initiative, and then I would urge the government to actually implement it.

[Supply, February 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the minister for being present during this very important debate. I think that is a valuable commitment to the agricultural policy.

I agree that we do have a framework in place, but I hear from farmers in my community that it does not meet the needs, particularly of the small farmers. My community is primarily small farmers.

I think the situation of the alpacas is a really good example of where the policy fails. It does not recognize some of the spinoffs and the diversification. The policies like CAIS and those on BSE have completely failed them. They are not even on the radar when we talk about recognizing the fact that they are in an economic crisis as a result of the BSE crisis.

It is great to have a broad agricultural policy, but I think it has to include many more of the small farmers' voices at the table in a very meaningful way. I think that then we would get a policy that works on the ground.

I am fortunate enough to come from a province that does have an agricultural land reserve, but we are watching that policy being eroded as well.

[Supply, February 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I think the question speaks to a bigger issue, which is the fact that we often overlook small business generally. We do not have a really effective small business strategy and that relates to our small farming communities. Vancouver Island is a really good example of a thriving small farm community, yet I am watching our farmers gradually having to sell their farms and go out of business because we do not recognize the value, the diversity and richness of their operations.

I encourage the government to take a look at small farms as the backbone of our agricultural economy, instead of the agribusiness.

[Supply, February 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Sault Ste. Marie.

I rise today to support the motion, but with some caution. It states:

That, in light of the numerous recent disasters affecting agricultural communities across Canada and the government's failure to deliver timely financial relief to struggling farmers, whether by the Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization (CAIS) program or other programs, the House call on the government to immediately drop the CAIS deposit requirement and honour the commitments it has already made to Canadian producers.

Many of my colleagues have already spoken today of the challenges faced by our farmers and our farming communities and how a well-intentioned program can cause great harm instead of helping those it was intended to aid.

Many of our farmers are in an absolute crisis. I come from a rural community on Vancouver Island that has been adversely affected by any number of current government policies, including its indifference around BSE.

I would like to speak a bit more about the people affected by the BSE crisis and, in particular, talk about how the government's spotty record of supporting our farming industry is really hurting our farmers.

Our rural and agricultural communities are the backbone of Canada. There are many small farms in my riding of Nanaimo--Cowichan run by farm families trying to find niche markets to build a successful business. I want to talk about two of those families.

I first met Auke Elzinga when he stopped me at our local farmers' market to talk about BSE and how it affected him as a dairy farmer. Mr. Elzinga has been a lifelong farmer in our community, but I must point out that Mr. Elzinga has actually had to retire from dairy farming in the year since the BSE crisis started. He was faced with the problem of having dairy cows that had reached the end of their productive years as milkers. Those cattle would normally have been sent to slaughter as cull cows and Mr. Elzinga would have got back some of the money he invested. That stopped being the case once the border closed since our slaughter capacity was too low to handle the overflow of beef cattle, never mind cull cattle from dairy herds.

Mr. Elzinga found he was only getting 2¢ to 4¢ per pound compared to the $1 per pound American farmers just over the border were getting for similar cattle. This is a shameful experience when farmers have invested their entire lives in farming.

One problem with CAIS is that it has never dealt with the systematic problems for our farmers. It could not help a farmer who had built up a herd regain the money he invested over the years and it certainly could not keep that farmer in the business.

The government needs to step back and look at the agriculture sector as a whole and stop responding only to crises. What it has failed to realize with some of these policies is the importance of food security in our country. We must protect our farmers so that they can continue to be in business.

I would like to share another example with the House, also involving my riding, and one which I do not think has been discussed in the House previously. I want to thank Pacific Sun Alpacas in Duncan for making me aware of this issue.

Alpacas are part of our farming community. For those who do not know, alpacas are a fibre producing animal from the Andes Mountains in South America. They grow a lovely soft fleece wool that is very popular. Many of my colleagues may recognize alpacas from the regular commercials on Newsworld after Don Newman's political show.

Growing alpacas is a small and relatively new industry in Canada and the many farmers involved are actively trying to build the Canadian herd to provide a wide genetic variety in sufficient numbers to support the herds here, but that takes time and the closing of the border with the BSE crisis has stopped any trade in alpacas because the U.S. government included them in the ban on ruminants.

This group of farmers has not been recognized in any of the support programs that have been forthcoming and many of them are on the edge of going out of business. This happened even though alpacas are not food animals. We do not eat them. They do not enter the food chain. They are not true ruminants but camelids. There has never been a case of BSE in alpacas.

Alpaca breeders in Canada have not been able to increase their herd size or quality because no live alpacas could cross the border. This new and growing industry has been held back. The government continues to talk about the importance of diversifying our economy, and yet when farmers try to diversify, roadblocks are put up all over the place.

As I said, this new and growing industry has been held back, but since there has been no “loss”, as defined by the government under the CAIS program, this industry has not been given any help to weather the BSE crisis. This is another failure of the CAIS program. My letter to the Minister of Agriculture on this issue still has not been answered. The alpaca industry feels abandoned by the government.

As globalization increases the costs while driving the profits in conventional agriculture, many farmers are turning to smaller niche industries to survive. They are going organic, finding new products like alpaca fibre or developing local markets in which to sell their goods, but our federal farm policy works in favour of agribusiness, not agriculture.

The CAIS program is simply another example of this attitude and policy direction. Demanding that farmers pay a deposit to the government in the hope of perhaps receiving some future benefit may help large farming businesses, but small family farms do not have $10,000 sitting around to throw toward a CAIS deposit. That money is rolled right back into the farming operation and is desperately needed in many of our small farm operations.

CAIS certainly does not support small business farmers like the ones in my riding of Nanaimo--Cowichan who are diversifying and trying to find of mix of farming practices that will help them weather a crisis in any one area of their operation.

My support for the motion today is given with some caution because I do not think simply removing the demand for a deposit will help our farmers stay healthy in our current economy. We need a long term agricultural policy, one that is proactive instead of reactive so that we can start supporting our farmers instead of patting their hands and saying, “There, there, it will all be over soon”.

[Shipbuilding, February 3rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, here is more talk about shipping our jobs overseas. The Liberals love their flags of convenience on lapels or on ships. This offshore outsourcing does not stop with pins. This Liberal government is destroying the shipbuilding industry in this country, bolt by bolt, rivet by rivet.

This minister allowed ferry contracts to be shipped out of his own province overseas. Will the industry minister commit to collecting the millions owed in duties on these foreign built ships?