Keith Martin

[Business of Supply, March 23rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague a couple of questions, but first, let us align her government's position with reality and this motion.

The reality is the government wants to reduce maternal mortality and child mortality. It wants a strategic and effective investment of taxpayers' money. In order to do this, we have to enable women and men to be in control of their own reproductive health. The only way to do that is to give them the necessary tools, such as condoms, birth control, and access to safe abortions in countries where it is legal. Failure to do that will result in the death of the mothers, because they cannot space out their pregnancies. They have children too early. They cannot have them too early or too late. They have to be in control of their reproductive health.

When mothers die, more than half of the children under the age of five also die. Also, for every woman who dies in pregnancy, 20 times that number sustain life-altering injuries, including obstetric fistula.

If my colleague believes in life, if she wants to be pro life, will she give women in other countries the same tools that women in Canada have, which is access to a full array of family planning options, including access to safe abortions where it is legal?

[Business of Supply, March 23rd, 2010]

Madam Speaker, it is good that the government is pursuing maternal and child health, but the path that it is taking is completely bizarre, illogical and utterly unscientific. Health systems and trained workers are important, but they are only as good as the tools that they have in their hands. What do they need? Yes, they need diagnostics. Yes they need power. They need access to medications. They need access to a full range of family planning options so they can treat the patient.

I am a physician. I have worked in Africa. I have delivered more than 200 babies. Women have died in hospitals. Why on earth is the government not giving these women and children the option to life that we have in our country?

One of the reasons the number of maternal and child mortalities has been reduced in Canada is that Canadian women and men have access to a full range of family planning options. Why do women need this? If a woman is too old, too young, or has babies too frequently, she is at risk of dying. As the member said, 63,000 women die each year, and 20 times that number suffer life-altering injuries, including obstetric fistula.

In order for people to deal with this and to save lives, they need to have in their hands family planning tools.

Will the government do the right thing and honour the commitments it made last year in Italy to allow that to happen?

[Business of Supply, March 23rd, 2010]

Madam Speaker, let us get to the heart of the matter. This is about saving lives. We need to talk about some facts. As the minister correctly said, if we want to save the lives of babies, mothers and men, people need to have access to trained health care workers and health systems, but tools are crucial to the ability of those workers to do their jobs.

One of the fundamental tools for saving the lives of women is their ability to access a full range of family planning: condoms, birth control and access to safe abortions where it is legal. That is the medical consensus among the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, FIGO and the Partnership of Maternal and Child Health. This is a medical issue and those are the medical facts.

On the abortion issue, let us not reopen the door on abortion but let us honour what exists. Women in Canada have a right to abortions. Why not allow women in other countries to have the same right? The absence of that has resulted in 63,000 women dying of septic abortions. Half of their children under the age of five will also die. Families are destroyed.

Will the minister do the right thing and allow women to have a full range of family planning options, including access to safe abortions where it is legal in those countries?

[Business of Supply, March 23rd, 2010]

Madam Speaker, when it comes to being pro life, does it not mean enabling women and men to have full access to an array of family planning options, including the ability to access safe abortions in those countries where it is legal, the ability to access condoms, the ability to access the education and knowledge they need to protect themselves?

I say this because failure to do the above will only allow a continuation of the 63,000 women who die every single year from septic abortions, and it will not enable us to deal with the HIV-AIDS pandemic that is killing over 2.2 million people a year and leaving a sea of orphans.

In connection to the Conservative member's comments, does my friend not think that family planning is there to allow women and men to have that full range of family planning options so they can save their lives, the lives of their children and their families?

[Sébastien's Law (Protecting the Public from Violent Young Offenders), March 19th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, we know that there is a high incidence of fetal alcohol syndrome/fetal alcohol effects among youth and adults in jails. What is the government's position on working with the provinces to reduce the incidence of FAS/FAE, which is the leading cause of preventable brain damage in children?

If the government really wanted to reduce youth crime, the most effective way to do that would be to implement a national head start program for kids. We need to improve children's access to proper nutrition very early on in their lives. We need to educate parents on proper parenting. We need to encourage literacy. We need to ensure that children are not subjected to violence and sexual abuse. Those things would lead to better brain development in children.

I ask the parliamentary secretary, what is his government going to do in those areas?

[Health, March 9th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, every minute of every single day a woman dies as a consequence of pregnancy. This is also a death sentence for more than half of the children under the age of five who will also perish. Five hundred and thirty thousand women die every single year from five entirely preventable or treatable causes. Twenty times this number suffer from horrible injuries. Remarkably, 80% of the deaths are entirely preventable.

The solution is simple. Enable people to access basic primary health care, a trained health care worker, basic medications, diagnostics, clean water, basic surgical services, micronutrients and a full array of family planning options. Doing this would also enable us to treat 80% of the big killers, including pneumonia, gastroenteritis, tuberculosis and HIV-AIDS.

This year Canada will host the G8 and G20 summit. We have a moment in time. I ask the Canadian government to bury the politics, bury the ideology, do the right thing and invest in primary health care. In this way we will save the lives of women, men and children.

[The Budget, March 9th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, the devil in the details is that we are suffering because of the huge deficit. The government is going to make cuts of $3.5 billion a year. How on earth is the government expected to balance its budget with a $53 billion deficit by cutting $3.5 billion a year?

Does the member not think this is simply Conservative voodoo economics?

[The Economy, March 4th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I want to get back to the crux of the big challenge that we have in the country today and the failure of the government to address it.

All of us are telling the government on behalf of our citizens that its failure to deal with the storm clouds that are before us will result in catastrophic problems economically and socially across our great nation. Those storm clouds are the increasing deficit, increasing debt, the impact upon the inability to pay for the social programs that we need and an aging population that will go from a ratio of 4 workers to 2.5 workers for every retiree.

Is the government's primary responsibility to address the storm clouds of an aging population, increasing demand, increasing health care costs, a contracting workforce and an inability to develop a manufacturing and economic strategy for Canada that would enable us to maximize the economic potential that we have in this country?

[The Economy, March 4th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his speech and his searing commentary on the failure of the government in agriculture. One would hope that the minister or one of his associates will stand up and actually answer the questions that my colleague has put forth.

I would like to ask my colleague a simple question. Regardless of what happens, the gorilla at the dinner table is really the health care issue. Unless we are able to get our health care expenditures under control, regardless of what else we do, that pressure will put an unsustainable demand upon budgets no matter who happens to be in power, federally or provincially.

The government has failed to deal with this, and has chronically failed to deal with this. It appears to be behaving like an ostrich with its head stuck in the sand. The consequence of this is the pain and suffering that patients endure in Canada. They will have to suffer from longer waiting lists as time passes.

The pressure on top of this is our aging population. Right now we have four workers for every person who is retired. In the next 15 years that will contract down to 2.5 workers for every person who is retired. We have this massive pressure of a contracting workforce and increasing demands.

I would like to ask my colleague this. Why does he think the government is not at least grappling with this most pressing issue that it has, and why has it failed to do so?

[Business of Supply, December 10th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, it is interesting that the members from the other side all have the same talking points. They all churn out the same nonsense. They are not willing to utilize their own God-given intellect to be able to deal with a very important issue.

What I would impress upon the members from the other side is to look at this clearly, understand that what they are saying is a bunch of nonsense and to get to the heart of the matter, so that we can resolve this issue and have a proper mission in Afghanistan with a proper structure and proper political solution to deal with this very serious and important issue.