Judy Wasylycia-Leis

[Health, November 17th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, last evening Premier Klein went on TV to tell Albertans that he will openly defy the principles of medicare by allowing the development of a private, for profit hospital system. He said he intends to allow public tax dollars to be siphoned off directly into the pockets of private health corporations.

Surely that was not the intention of the architects of medicare. Surely this is not Canadians' interpretation of the Canada Health Act.

I want to ask the health minister, does he believe that for profit private hospitals are consistent with the principles of the Canada Health Act?

[Organ Donation Act, November 16th, 1999]

The Reform member has corrected me. It is only 12.1 donors per million.

That rate of donation is appallingly low. The rate could be much higher if we had a government that was prepared to work with Canadians and provincial governments to advance a workable, reasonable strategy to encourage Canadians to indicate their wishes at an early opportunity, and to ensure there is a mechanism to follow through on the wishes of the donor and the donor's family.

What is the situation? The Liberals are treading water while our need for organ donation is growing.

The Reform health critic mentioned the situation with respect to dialysis. Figures released this summer by the Canadian Institute for Health Information show that we are headed toward a crisis in kidney dialysis unless some relief is forthcoming from organ donation. Dialysis needs increased by 14% in one year between 1996 and 1997. What does that cost? It costs $50,000 per year to maintain each patient. The number of patients is at 12,000 and is rising.

We can look at this from the human point of view and talk about the stress on individuals and families who are waiting for organ donations. We can talk about the unnecessary deaths that occur because this country does not have a good system for encouraging organ donations.

If that does not work for the government, at least look at the costs. Look at the economic factors. Look at the financial burden this is creating for our society today, at the very time when we should be trying like we have never tried before to ensure efficiencies in our health care system so that we can do everything we can to preserve our universal health care model.

The public will support it. We heard the witnesses before our committee. We heard Canadians everywhere say that they are supportive of a system to increase the rate of donations. They cannot do it by themselves. We need a system that ensures we can implement the recommendations of the studies we have heard time and time again.

What is preventing us from moving ahead? Why are we debating this again in the House? It is undeniably the Liberal government's unfathomable reluctance to act. If it was consciously trying to stall, it could not be moving any slower. I hope the member will take that message back to his caucus, to the cabinet and to the Minister of Health.

All of us submitted minority reports in response to the health committee's final report on organ donation. Why? Because it was missing a very important central element: a national organ donor registry. Thank goodness it is before us again today. We can keep the debate going, but we still come back to the question of why we have to debate it. Why was it not already in place, up and running and working?

When this country does not have a national organ donor registry and there is not a meaningful system to encourage donations and ensure we can meet the demand, the human costs are unbearable. People die. Families suffer.

On top of that, we are also creating a climate for xeno transplantation to take hold. It could go forward without any kind of public debate or consultation, without any kind of regulatory framework, without any ethical considerations being given to the whole question of using animal organs to deal with human needs for organ transplantation.

Department officials told the health committee that xeno transplantation was not taking place in Canada. That was in February 1999. What did we find out after that? That animal transplants were actually taking place in hospitals in this country.

An article came out this past summer in This magazine. It showed that transplantations using animal organs in humans were done as far back as 1994 in Montreal. It was done again in 1997, and there was a third case in 1997. All three were done at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. This government says it does not have a clue that anything is going on and there is no plan in place to deal with it.

Given those factors, the time to act is now. I hope we can get on with the task at hand and ensure that we move forward with a national organ donor registry.

[Organ Donation Act, November 16th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to participate in this debate and to join with others in the House who have indicated their support for Bill C-227.

I too want to congratulate the member for Port Moody—Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam for bringing this matter before the House.

At the very outset I want to indicate our strong support for this bill. Why do I support the bill? Why do my colleagues in the New Democratic Party support the bill? Why do all members in the opposition parties support the bill? It calls for something that was recommended to the member's government many months ago. It was the logical step required by the government to deal with a very critical situation.

One wonders, if this bill had been votable, where the Liberal members would have stood. Would they support this bill given the past record, the agony, the kind of deliberations and intensive study all of us have been through over the last six months to a year?

This bill calls for a national organ donor registry. It is something that was recommended by many witnesses before the health committee, which went through six months of deliberations. That idea was supported by every opposition party in the House yet it was vetoed, wiped out, stamped out by the Liberal majority on the health committee. The question we all have today is why? Can the member who has brought forward this bill not make a difference in terms of his own caucus and get through to the Minister of Health to put this item on the agenda today? Why do we have to continually wait and debate something on which there is a clear consensus and an absolute need?

Madam Speaker, you will sense the frustration of opposition members around this bill. It is not because we do not support the idea. It is because we know that this idea could have been implemented at least six months ago when the Standing Committee on Health completed its deliberations following six months of studying the matter. We express frustration today because there are models the government could have used to implement such a strategy which are already in the works in the country.

The member referred to the B.C. NDP government's registry. Other governments are looking at this as a model. The Yukon government feels very strongly about adopting something similar. I am sure provincial and territorial governments right across the country would only be too pleased to join in the creation of such a registry, except that we do not have a federal government that is prepared to show some leadership, put some money on the table, show some political will and get this thing moving.

My colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca also deserves some credit for advancing the public and political agenda on this matter. His private member's motion got the ball rolling. It could have been acted on very quickly, but the Liberal government decided it needed to keep the health committee busy reviewing the same studies that have made the same recommendations for the last number of years.

None of us regret the time we spent talking to witnesses and discussing the important issues around organ donation and transplantation. However, we all thought that when that process was over we would at least march forward with a clear plan of action. Fundamental to that plan of action was a national donor registry.

I wanted to mention the work of the Reform Party's health critic in this area. Again I express regrets over the inaction of the federal government on this very important matter.

We have heard the stats over and over again. Canada has one of the lowest donor rates in the western industrial world. Our rate of donation is about 14.5 donors per million.

[Genetically Engineered Foods, November 16th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Health.

Canadians have clearly indicated that they want to know what they are eating. They want the government to fulfill its statutory obligation to require labelling of genetically engineered foods. By predetermining that labelling will be voluntary, the government has pre-empted public input on this issue and has dismissed Canadians' legitimate concerns about food safety and about consumer choice.

Will the government reverse its decision on this matter, do what Canadians want and agree today to immediately implement a process for mandatory labelling of genetically engineered foods?

[Health Care, November 16th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, with the health care system disintegrating around them, Canadians anxiously await federal Liberal action and leadership. Instead they get more of the same empty promises and vague commitments.

There is no sign that the Liberals' two-pronged attack on medicare and health protection will ease up. The government simply replays its last budget mantra about investing in health care, but Canadians know that with the Liberals in charge, it will take five years to get back to where we were in 1995.

The Liberals replay their election promise on home care and pharmacare but there is still no legislation. They promised to fix food safety, yet they dump food inspection into the hands of a marketing agency.

We are clearly in a rut under the government, headed for two tier health care and a loss of our health protection system. Meanwhile children are dying from E. coli bacteria, infected carcasses can still enter our food system, and the government still will not give a choice to Canadians about genetically engineered foods.

Today Canadians say loudly and clearly that they do not want more hollow promises, they want action.

[Petitions, November 15th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition from constituents in Winnipeg and other communities in Manitoba regarding the abolition of the Senate.

The petitioners believe that the Senate of Canada is an undemocratic institution composed of non-elected members that are unaccountable to the people.

They believe that the Senate costs taxpayers more than $50 million per year. They believe that the Senate is redundant, given the roles played by the supreme court and the provinces in protecting minority rights and providing regional representatives. They also believe that the Senate undermines the role of MPs in the House of Commons.

Therefore they call upon parliament to undertake measures aimed at the abolition of the Senate.

[Canada Health And Social Transfer, November 15th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance.

Provincial and territorial finance ministers are meeting as we speak. They are calling on the government for the full restoration of federal transfer payments for health and education. The premiers have already done the same.

Canadians have said time and time again that health care is their first priority. They know that at 12% or less federal funding, we will not be able to ensure medicare for very long into the millennium.

Can we count on the government to do the right thing and ensure the full restoration of the Canada health and social transfer in the next federal budget?

[Banking, November 15th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians thought they had won a victory when they convinced the government to say no to monster banks and merger mania. They were sadly mistaken.

The big banks have just found another way to accomplish the same objective and Liberals just stand idly by and watch. In the interest of increasing already obscene profits they are closing branches, killing jobs and destroying the access of Canadians to reasonable banking services.

In my constituency alone, which is a community of inner city residents and older neighbourhoods, bank branch closures have become an annual affair. In fact, we have two more to come in just the next month.

People are fed up. They are fighting the CIBC's decision to close branches that seniors and low income residents depend on. They are dreading the impact of the announcement of the Bank of Montreal of more layoffs and closures. They feel abandoned by the banks and deserted by their federal government.

Why do Liberals stand idly by when the big banks sacrifice human needs and devastate already hard pressed communities? It is time for the government to say to the big banks that they have been charged with a public trust and they have the responsibility to reinvest in the very communities which gave them their success.

[Canada Health Act, October 28th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, since when did access to universal health care in the country depend on where we live and how much we make?

A Canadian study in today's New England Journal of Medicine shows that our chances of living through a heart attack depends on how rich we are. If we are wealthy we are 20% more likely to get high quality treatment.

Another study leaked two weeks ago shows that Windsor residents have higher death rates and suffer more from 22 serious illnesses, including birth defects and heart disease, than other Canadians.

Where are the Liberals? The silence is deafening. Even worse, the government is contributing to two-tier health care through wilful neglect and a refusal to enforce the Canada Health Act.

Today, let us make a real commitment to end this agenda of silence and complicity and to ensure that every Canadian has equal access to a healthy life no matter where they live and how much is in their pocketbook.

[Tobacco, October 25th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, a report released today shows that the 1994 Liberal rollback of cigarette taxes and the cave-in to the tobacco industry is killing our kids. More young people are smoking today than when the Liberals took office. What a legacy for the millennium.

I know the Minister of Health has had his own trouble standing up to the tobacco industry but it is not too late to start standing up for young people.

What level of taxation on cigarettes is he recommending to his cabinet colleagues? What measures is he taking to ensure that the government has a policy for linking pricing and prevention?