Keith Martin

[Sir John A. Macdonald and the Sir Wilfrid Laurier Day Act, September 24th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Canadian Alliance it is an honour for me to speak to this issue about two great Canadians, a French Canadian and an English Canadian. What better time than right now to talk about this in the difficult times we are all faced with today.

These two men, Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir Wilfrid Laurier, were unifiers and builders. They were individuals who saw Canada as a whole, Canada as a nation, Canada as one nation indivisible, a country for all people, embracing the diversity we have; they were individuals who embraced this diversity not as a weakness but as a strength. That is what Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir Wilfrid Laurier would have done then and that is what they would have said today.

These two gentlemen would be rolling over in their graves if they could see what has happened to the unification of our country, if they could see how our federal-provincial relations have been weakened, if they could see how the threads, actually steel, that bind us together have been chopped up and put down in order to support smaller and more parochial interests. These men would not tolerate this. They would say how, in this big country, do we embrace what is strong in our country and how do we actually try to improve and build bridges among all Canadians?

They would abhor the fact that in our country language has been used as a political tool rather than as a unifier. Language, an agent of communication and unification, has been used as a political tool to turn one Canadian against another. What a tragedy it is in a country like ours that is fortunate enough to embrace two great languages, English and French, that these languages have been used as a political tool to turn Canadian against Canadian. Both these gentlemen would find this utterly abhorrent.

They would also find it sad to see that federal-provincial relations have come to a stage when provinces are looking to the federal government as to what they can take and individual responsibilities have been blurred and marred so that Canadians are not getting the best bang for their buck, so that political institutions cannot work as effectively as they should.

What Macdonald and Laurier would want to do, perhaps, is ensure that the federal and provincial governments each do what they are able to do best, that responsibilities are well delineated and that we are able to ensure that Canadians are able to get the services they need when they need them in the most effective way possible and that national standards are adhered to. A Canadian who lives in British Columbia or a Canadian who lives in Quebec or one who lives in Newfoundland should be able to receive pretty much the same types of services.

Unfortunately, with the balkanization of critical services in health care and education we do not see that any more. We see dramatic differences across the country. Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir Wilfrid Laurier would both want to change that. They would both want to find ways to get some equivalency across Canada today.

They would also see in the country we have today that sometimes we focus on what Michael Ignatieff calls “the narcissism of the minor differences”, where we tend to focus on the small things that divide us rather than the great things that unify us. If the tragedy of September 11 has told us one thing it is that we as a country are one nation regardless of where we live, and that the problems we have within our own borders pale in comparison to the international challenges we have. September 11 has shown us that we live in a global environment with global challenges, where our economy is intimately entwined with the economies of countries around the world, where our individual security is intimately entwined with the security of our neighbours and our allies.

This makes it even more important that as a country we broaden our horizons to see that we have to participate in the global economy perhaps better than we have. Canada has to look to ways to improve our economic competitiveness, not by looking within our own borders but by saying that we will compete internationally. We need to break down the barriers to trade that exist within our country and abroad. We need to lower our tax structure to make us more competitive. We need to improve our education system because we know that a child being educated in Canada today, perhaps in Ottawa, is competing not only with the child in Toronto but with children who live in Tokyo, Beijing, Delhi and Cape Town.

As individuals here, we are competing on a global playing field. The tragedy of September 11 also indicated that our individual security was entwined with our allies.

Unfortunately, over the last eight years our defence forces have been gutted. Our ground and troop component is less than 55,000 people, when it was 90,000. From a navy perspective, we only have one frigate that is functional.

Again, from the army perspective the minimum requirement for an international endeavour, such as what we will be asked, is a brigade. A brigade is made up of 5,000 men and women. We have not functioned with 5,000 personnel in over nine years. How are we expected to function? Furthermore, our defence department said that for us to transfer 5,000 people it would take more than three months, and we could not sustain that number for more than six months in the field.

Our airlift capabilities are almost non-existent. As a colonel in the military recently said, it is “a near catastrophe”. Therefore, we cannot transport them without our voting to rent planes from our allies.

Our CF-18 fighters, one of the most potent weapons we have, is in dire straits right now because we have less than 24 of our 120 that could put into the field. There are questions about whether or not those fighters could actually integrate with the Americans fighters because some of the systems on board are obsolete.

We have superb men and women in our military, men and women who are willing to work hard to ensure that our security will be protected. Yet they have not been given the tools to do the job. They will again be asked to go perhaps to a foreign land to lay their lives down to protect our citizens as well as the citizens of our allies.

The war on terrorism will be an international war to root out those individuals who would rather blow up the negotiating table than sit at it. Unfortunately, negotiations for those individuals are over.

Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir Wilfrid Laurier would have ensured that our military had the tools to do the job and that we would be able to meet our commitments, commitments our country made in 1994. Our white paper in 1994 made a whole series of commitments, almost none of which we can meet at this point in time.

Unfortunately, it took a catastrophe to draw our focus toward this, but I am hopeful. We will offer the government constructive suggestions to improve the security of our country, both domestically and internationally.

In closing, the bill is a good bill. These two gentlemen, our former prime ministers, French and English, are true Canadian heroes. We do not do enough to uphold these individuals who were outstanding individuals and Canadians, individuals who tried to build our country.

As legislators today, as we sit here with this great responsibility, we can look back to the past and learn a number of things that will allow us to do our jobs better and more effectively for all Canadians.

[Adverse Drug Reactions, September 18th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I too congratulate the member for Winnipeg North Centre for the intent of her motion. She is dealing with an issue that I struggle with as a physician.

Some of our patients have adverse reactions from time to time through no fault of their own and through no fault of ours. It is an unfortunate side effect of practising medicine. All that we can do to prevent other tragedies like Vanessa's from happening needs to be implemented.

The motion put forward today would initiate an immediate consultation with provincial and territorial governments to establish a system for the mandatory reporting of adverse drug reactions. While the intent is worth while, practically speaking it is impossible to do.

The member would be wise to separate out and focus the motion on the particularly tragic situation of Vanessa Young as being the worst possible case in that someone dies as a result of taking medications.

If we focus the motion on having mandatory reporting for fatal or near fatal drug reactions, the motion has a lot of merit and is doable. However to merely say that the motion would deal with adverse drug reactions would be impossible.

When a patient is having a reaction we do not know whether that reaction is in fact due to a drug, a disease, or whether it is due to something else entirely, so we are unsure.

If we are trying to prevent fatal reactions then mandatory reporting and transmitting the distribution of the information on drugs that may be causing fatal or near fatal problems is absolutely important, and historically we have been able to do that.

The fact that this happened with prepulsid is important because all practitioners knew that it had taken place very quickly. I would like to draw to member's attention to a number of other issues. The question is how much of a problem is it.

Some people quote that 10,000 people die from adverse drug reactions. If we look at the statistics it shows something very different. For example, in Ontario between 1992 and 1997 there were 16,300 admissions per year for adverse drug reactions. How many people died? About .05% of the people actually died from adverse drug reactions. If we look at the country that amounts to about 1,824 deaths per year. That is a lot of people.

However, given the number of people taking drugs and medications, it demonstrates that a lot of people are taking medications and the numbers are a lot smaller than has been actually described at times. Approximately 1,824 people per year died unnecessary deaths. If we can do other things to lessen our mortality figures then we ought to do it.

One thing that we can do is to publish where there have been fatal drug reactions in something like The Canada Gazette . This is a public document to which all Canadians can have access. A good modified motion would include that information about fatal or near fatal drug reactions be published in The Canada Gazette . It would give everyone a red light.

Another thing we need to look at is how drugs are assessed to determine when they are a danger to society or to the patient. As the government has removed a lot of money from the health protection branch of Health Canada, we need to look at the manner in which the safety of drugs is determined. We have some serious questions on whether that has been eroded over the last few years.

The government should make a transparent investigation into the health protection branch to determine the method by which drugs are assessed as to their effectiveness and whether they pose a danger to patients. This examination must be made public.

We should also look at drug costs and how they are passed. We know that the cost of drugs to the public coffers is actually quite large and we need to determine ways in which we can lessen that.

As we age there will be a greater need for medications. With the cost of medications rising, we need to look at ways in which we can decrease costs.

The patent protection that exists now has roughly existed for 20 years throughout the west. However there are a number of loopholes where patents on medications can actually be lengthened. Just before a patent expires, an infringement lawsuit can be brought by a non-generic patent company that would extend a patent for up to 30 months. They can also extend it for periods of six months by changing the patent slightly, such as changing the colour of the pill or some other superficial change to the medication which would actually extend the patent protection over and beyond the expiry of the patent.

Those loopholes need to be closed off because that is not what patents were intended to do. When we allow loopholes, the public pay a much higher cost because they do not have access to the generic medications in a timely fashion.

Serious issues took place when certain companies in the U.S., and I am sure they were in the minority, paid generic companies not to manufacture generic drugs, which extended the control of patent drug companies over a drug. This is also collusion, which is illegal under the laws of the land. We have also seen applications by brand name companies that have actually pushed their control over and beyond what was its intent.

The issue of adverse drug reactions is something that is very much of concern to all health care practitioners as well as the public. As the member for Winnipeg North Centre has put it, the intent is to ensure that the drug reactions that occur and put people in danger are known, not only to the public, but also to health care practitioners and that it is stopped at source. Again, a motion should be put forth that deals with fatal and nearly fatal drug reactions. This information should be displayed to physicians and to the public in a central location. We also need to look at the relationships between drug companies and Health Canada and how drugs are approved.

I have just returned from a trip to West Africa where I had the opportunity to distribute a number of medications to people in dire need in one of the poorest countries of the world. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the research based drug pharmaceutical companies that donated more than $5,000 worth of medication. I publicly thank them for this generous gesture. It is a program that enables physicians travelling abroad to distribute drugs to some of the most impoverished people in the world who essentially have nothing.

[Questions On The Order Paper, June 12th, 2001]

With regard to the tragic civil conflict in Sudan: ( a ) has the Minister of Foreign Affairs developed a comprehensive strategy to engage the government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Army, SPLA, in constructive peace talks; and ( b ) has the minister developed a plan to work with the private sector, NGOs and other shareholders to rewrite the Special Economic Measures Act, SEMA, in order to provide unambiguous guidelines for Canadian companies wishing to invest abroad?

[Questions On The Order Paper, June 11th, 2001]

With regard to the installation of Rogers and Seacoast Communication' towers and transmitters in Colwood, B.C.: ( a ) did Industry Canada comply with their own rules in the granting of approvals; ( b ) if not, has Industry Canada taken corrective action and instructed the owners to relocate their towers; and ( c ) did the Minister of Industry consult with the municipality of Colwood?

[Health, June 1st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, we do not want more reports. We do not want more studies. We want action. These people are dying; 150 Canadians are dying every year and the number is increasing. The government has mud on its face and it had better fix the problem soon.

Again my question is for the minister. Why have they not implemented the solutions in the health committee's report, active solutions that will save lives? Will they ban people from going abroad and purchasing organs from live donors?

[Health, June 1st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, Canadian patients are waiting desperately for organ transplants, so much so that several of them are paying thousands of dollars to Canadian businessmen to go abroad and purchase organs from poor Chinese people.

My question is for the Minister of Health. Why has the government dragged its heels, knowing full well that it has had solutions on its lap for the last two years, including the health committee's report? Why has it not implemented those solutions to save Canadian lives?

[Computer Hackers, May 31st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, on April 27 I asked the Minister of Health a question concerning hepatitis C and why individuals who were infected outside the 1986-1990 border, who contracted hepatitis C through no fault of their own through tainted blood, had not been compensated. The response I received was that the minister was frustrated.

I bring this up again because people who contracted hepatitis C through tainted blood do not need frustration. What they need is leadership. That is what will help them.

Between 1978 and 1986, 14,000 Canadians contracted hepatitis C through no fault of their own. We have to find out who these individuals are. Many of them are unknown to the medical community because the time course for acquiring symptoms can be more than 10 years. It can even be as much as 40 years before any symptoms accrue. Some provinces are trying to find out who these people are, and the federal government ought to help them in that way.

The number of victims who contracted hepatitis C was overestimated. There is $1.1 billion available to compensate victims. Because of the overestimation, there should be a surplus of money which should go to those individuals who have not as yet been compensated.

I do not know why the government has not done that. These people are suffering at home. They do not have the treatment or the medication they require. They have simply slipped through the cracks to live their lives in quiet desperation through no fault of their own.

We all have this problem in our ridings. I am simply asking the Minister of Health to do the right thing. I am asking the Minister of Health, while the money is there, to please compensate those victims who are outside the window of compensation.

This is an issue of fairness, and the money is there. Rather than the money being chewed up by lawyers' fees, because these people are bringing cases to the court, why not make sure it goes to the patients for the care and medication they require.

I also would like to draw to the attention of the members that the number of people who are contracting hepatitis C is increasing because of the explosion of intravenous drug use. We also know that people who snort cocaine through the use of shared straws can contract the hepatitis C virus if they have open sores. This is important for the public to recognize.

In closing, on behalf of the 14,000 plus individuals who contracted hepatitis C through tainted blood that was not checked by tests that were available at the time and as a matter of fairness and compassion to those individuals, I plead with the government to compensate those individuals so they will have the treatment and medial care they require. It is a simple request. It is simple to do, and I hope the government does it as soon as possible.

[International Child Abduction, May 18th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I add on behalf of the Canadian Alliance our support of the motion, which deals with a very important and tragic situation affecting quite a number of families. It is a problem that is largely unrecognized. Therefore we support the essence of this private member's motion and compliment the member responsible.

The motion asks Canada to show leadership in the following ways:

(a) by taking action designed to increase the number of signatory countries to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction; (b) by signing bilateral treaties that include commitments to respect custody and access orders as originally handed down by the courts; and (c) by taking the necessary steps within its own borders to combat international child abduction.

The scope of this problem is significant. In the United States in one year, 341,000 children were abducted from their parents. This is a huge number. In the United Kingdom roughly four children per week are abducted and that number has actually increased by 58% over the last three years. In our country there are similar statistics. We can see that this is not only an international problem but also very much a domestic problem, and the impact upon families is quite significant.

We support the Hague convention that deals with missing and exploited children, but there are some problems with it. I will point out some of them which need to be addressed by our country with the international community. There is a lack of systemic data on the operation of the Hague convention. It does not allow a country by country comparison. There are also wide variations in outcomes that point to systemic problems with the application of the Hague convention in different countries. There is a lot of difficulty in locating children who are subject to this convention and there is a lack of adequate support for the victims' families.

There are also interesting variations among the judicial community, especially judges and lawyers. A lot of people are not aware of this. There are great inter-country variations in regard to knowledge of the convention. I would encourage our country to work with other signatories to the Hague convention, not only, as the motion says, to add more countries to the convention but also to educate the judiciary within the signatory countries about the application and the importance of this convention. There has also been quite a significant lack of enforceability on some of the orders we have seen with respect to the Hague convention.

With respect to our own laws, the motion asks that we take the necessary steps within our own borders not only to combat international child abduction but to ensure that access orders are respected within our own borders.

Many members of the House have spoken to constituents who are non-custodial parents and have court orders allowing them access to their children. Unfortunately many of these court orders are not respected by the custodial parents. As a result, non-custodial parents continue to engage in battles to see their children. There is not enough protection within our own borders today to ensure that non-custodial parents have access to their children. At the end of the day, children need two competent parents, not one, if it is at all possible. If there are two parents, they should still remember, no matter what has come between them, that the children come first. With the safety of the children paramount and where both parents are competent, even though they may not be together, they should both have access to the children, according to court decisions. Too often that is not the case.

A senate report done on custody, access and divorce shows very clearly that Canada is lagging behind in its enforcement of these orders and that many non-custodial parents are denied access to their children. I would encourage the government to review that report. It is an excellent report supported by members from across party lines. The government should fulfil and implement the conclusions within that report. The report contains many excellent suggestions that would help children who have been racked by the divorce of their parents.

In closing, I can only compliment the member responsible for this motion and emphasize that the Canadian Alliance supports this private member's motion. We also encourage the government to work with its international partners to strengthen the Hague convention and to ensure that the signatories are living up to the requirements therein.

[Nuclear Fuel Waste Act, May 18th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure today to speak to Bill C-27, an act respecting the long term management of nuclear fuel waste.

The bill mandates the establishment of a long term management strategy to ensure nuclear waste is disposed of in a comprehensive, integrated and economically sound manner.

The bill has three key elements. The major owners of nuclear fuel must establish and implement a long term management plan for nuclear fuel waste. They also must establish a trust fund and make set payments to the fund on an ongoing basis.

We support the bill in principle although we have concerns. The onus to act should not fall entirely on industry. The government should have an observer capacity and should share responsibility for waste disposal. By and large, however, we support the bill.

There must be checks and balances to ensure waste is disposed of properly and safely. However it is a major challenge. There is an international aspect to the issue which, although not immediately evident, should nonetheless frighten Canadians. We are heading toward an environmental catastrophe not just next door but across the ocean. The impact will affect Canadians from coast to coast.

Radioactive waste is an intriguing problem because it lasts for tens of thousands of years. When we deal with radioactive waste we must make sure it does not come in contact with any aspects of our biodiversity or ecology for 10,000 years. The decisions we make today will affect generations far down the line. It is a very difficult problem.

Fuel rods used in nuclear reactors last about three to four years. Every nuclear plant deposits about 30 tonnes of nuclear waste per year. What happens to the rods? After three to four years they cannot carry on a nuclear reaction. However they still have a great deal of power. A lot of energy is locked away within used fuel rods and they can still be lethal to human beings, animals and plants.

People exposed to nuclear materials can be killed outright. However they also suffer from high rates of cancer, various malignancies and other profound health effects that dramatically shorten their lifespan.

We have about 18,000 tonnes of nuclear fuel in Canada. That will expand as time passes. The challenge is deciding what to do with it. How do we ensure public safety? That challenge will affect us south of the border as well.

A number of principles need to be followed. They are as follows. First, there must be a commitment to safety and environmental protection when disposing of nuclear waste. Second, nuclear waste materials must be accepted voluntarily by the host community. In other words, any community in which we deposit nuclear materials must give its consent.

The decisions that community makes could potentially affect it down the road. We do not know the long term affects of the disposal of this material. We worry about leakage and cracks in the tomb nuclear waste material is encased in. We do not know what will happen to that nuclear material 5,000 years from now when it will still be lethal and dangerous for human beings, animals and plants.

From the outset there has to be open communication of information with the communities involved. There can be no secretive or unilateral decisions made to deposit nuclear waste in areas near human habitation. The communities in the area must be made aware and they must buy into it. In fairness to the host community, a benefits provision in recognition of its service to the community at large has to be recognized.

Some very interesting experiments have been done on the disposal of this kind of material. I will talk about two of them. One is called the nuclear powered turbo reciprocating engine. Rather than burying the nuclear rods in the ground, can we extract the considerable amount of energy contained within those nuclear rods? That is an intriguing question. However the question also poses some very interesting potential solutions on how to use the nuclear rods by extracting energy from them for a longer period of time. That is where the nuclear powered turbo reciprocating engine comes into play.

This engine utilizes some of the remaining uranium within the rods. We use uranium-235 in nuclear reactors. However uranium-238, which cannot maintain a nuclear reaction, is in sizeable proportions in the effete rods. The rods can be bombarded with atoms which will break them apart and they will release considerable amounts of energy.

While the fuel rods in their original state are used for about three or four years in a nuclear reactor, they can be used for 13 to 15 more years, thus extracting more energy from the effete rods than what would have been received in the first three to four years. To use these rods for 18 years rather than 3 or 4 years is a very interesting proposal. When using the effete rods there is still the problem of disposal at the end of that period of time as they are still as radioactive as they were when they originally came out of the nuclear reactor.

The government should ask the National Research Council to explore this option with researchers in the United States who are doing similar research. It is a simple principle of burning rubbish rods and generating energy from them in a way that would be very useful for our environment. This would also lead to fewer rods being used if energy could be generated from the effete rods. Therefore the nuclear waste that we would have to deal with would be smaller.

Another option is called the fusion torch which was established some time in the seventies when the possibility of fusion reactions existed. For whatever reason there has been less interest in exploring the possibility of fusion. However the fusion torch can be used to burn the effete rods in a different way through fusion reaction.

While fusion is not a reality at this point in time, I would ask the government to have the National Research Council work with scientists in the international community who are working on fusion as a potential option for dealing with our nuclear waste problem.

What I am about to tell the House now is truly frightening. It is taking place in Russia and Ukraine and there is active Canadian involvement. We all know what happened to Chernobyl, the devastation that incident brought on the population there, and how radioactive nuclear tides were spread over a large area. What Canadians may not know is that there are many more Chernobyls in Russia and Ukraine. It is not only a problem for the people there. Radionucleotides are cancer causing and teratogenic materials that enter our ecosystem and bioaccumulate into other ecosystems far and wide.

I had the honour of participating in discussions with members of the government on this. We know many radionucleotides are bioaccumulating in the flora and fauna in the Arctic, and that is having a dramatic negative impact on the lives and health of the people living there.

A Mayak reactor, which is located near Ozersk in Russia, was supposed to be closed down. Lake Karachay, which is nearby, is the repository of nuclear waste materials from that reactor. The lake is the most radioactive place on our planet. If people were to bathe in the lake it would kill them. One would think the reactor would be shut down, but it is actually expanding, and it is expanding with Canadian taxpayer money.

Canadian taxpayer money is being used to maintain the Mayak reactor that is dumping radioactive waste materials into Lake Karachay. This is having a dramatic, negative and lethal impact upon the population there. Why is Canada funding a reactor in Russia that is dumping radioactive waste materials into a lake where people could be killed?

The goal has always been to shut down a lot of these reactors that are effete. In the last 10 years Canada has put almost $90 million into shutting them down but we now know that a lot of the money was not used for that purpose. These reactors are not only open but a lot of the money has gone into the pockets of the Russian bureaucracy.

Why is $90 million of Canadian taxpayer money being sent to Russia in good faith only to be dumped into the bureaucracy and into the pockets of private individuals, and then chewed up with no end result?

As a G-7 country, Canada committed almost $300 million to make sure those reactors were shut down, closed and cleansed of radioactive material. That has not happened. Russian nuclear weapons are being sent to the Mayak reactor so they can be reprocessed into MOX fuel, which is a radioactive and lethal fuel.

The Canadian government should be asking some tough questions of the Russian government, such as where is the money that was sent, why are the reactors not being closed down, and why is radioactive material being dumped right into the biosphere with no checks or balances whatsoever.

We were supposed to close the reactors down. Canadians will be shocked to know that we are funding 40 new reactors in Russia. However the reactors are using 30 year old technology that has been widely dismissed as being dangerous and unsafe by western standards. Why is Canada funding 40 new reactors in Russia that have 30 year old technology? We are exporting to the international community technology that is unsafe for us. Why are we doing this?

This will lead to more Chernobyls, more Mayak reactors and more nuclear waste being dumped into the biosphere. It will not affect communities in the former U.S.S.R. but it will affect all of us. Our government does not know where the money has gone or where we are supposed to spend it.

Little has changed in Russia in terms of nuclear reactors, cleanup mechanisms, and checks and balances that ought to be there. There are many other Chernobyl-type situations just waiting on the horizon.

Another aspect that would be frightening for Canadians to realize is that in Ukraine, which has a number of nuclear reactors, the government has stripped the regulating body of its monitoring powers. What is happening is that fewer checks and balances are being put in place. This will have a lethal and devastating effect not only on that country but on all former eastern bloc countries.

CIDA has said that the money that it sent has simply disappeared. Millions of dollars have disappeared. Money was also sent through Atomic Energy of Canada Limited to finance a program that would increase the operating safety of nuclear reactor plants. That was a great idea. Who could argue with that?

It also wanted to clean up Europe's largest nuclear power plant, the Leningrad nuclear power station near St. Petersburg, because it was unsafe. The power plant continues to operate. The money that was sent to clean up these operations and to close them down has done absolutely nothing at all.

CIDA also gave $500,000 to Russia's nuclear regulatory agency, GAN, but legislation currently before the Russian parliament will transfer the GAN's licensing powers to another group called Minatom. Minatom will be a self-regulating company beyond the reach of government. Why are we sending money to the Russian government to fund a regulatory agency that will have no powers?

We are sending money to an agency that will have nothing to do with regulations because the regulatory body has been moved to something else and will be a toothless tiger. It will have no checks and balances, no government regulation, no transparency and no public involvement. That is very frightening. Canadians would never tolerate that type of situation here.

Canadians would demand, and rightfully so, that the nuclear regulatory agency be monitored by a public transparent organization. What Canada is doing with its international aid money is sending millions of dollars into a big, black hole where it is not producing the intended effect.

I encourage the minister responsible for international development, when she hears about these issues, to take a very aggressive position. The Minister of Foreign Affairs should also make immediate interventions with President Putin and the Russian government to get to the bottom of it.

If he cannot do that, Canada should choke off all moneys going into these programs and should rally the international community to say that no more money will be sent to clean up Russian nuclear waste sites or to decommission nuclear reactors until we know where it will go and where the other money has gone. The Russian government has a great deal to answer for and has poisoned the good will of Canadians and the international community.

The last aspect I want to talk about is the issue of depleted uranium. This came up as a big issue after the war in the former Yugoslavia and the gulf war. A number of our soldiers came back with strange illnesses such as malignancies, weaknesses and depressed immune systems. No answers were found as to the cause. The Department of National Defence said very clearly that it did not believe it was due to anything in particular and that these people just got sick as a matter of course.

There is the larger question of whether or not depleted uranium, which is radioactive and can have lethal effects on individuals, contributed to the illness of men and women in uniform, not only those from our country but also other participants who came back from both the gulf war and the former Yugoslavia.

I emphasize that it is essential for the Minister of National Defence to work with the international community to obtain an answer for our soldiers. They deserve one. We must have an answer to determine whether depleted uranium has a negative effect, whether on impact the dust created that can travel for more than 100 kilometres has a deleterious and potentially lethal effect on the health of our soldiers. We have a responsibility in that regard.

Many people from around the world are looking at this question. If we work with our international defence partners on the matter together, we will have the answer for our soldiers who have been affected in some unknown way as yet by some terrible diseases.

Actually a group on the east coast has done some very interesting studies. It found residues of radioactive uranium in the bodies of individuals who came back. If my memory serves me, I believe residue has been found in the bodies of 12 of 20 individuals.

The department of defence has said this was not a problem. I urge the department not to take such a cavalier attitude toward the problem and not to completely dismiss it. It should deal with and explore the facts and the signs. It should not deal with it individually but work with the international community that is struggling to find an answer to this very important problem.

It is not only important because of what happened in the past but because depleted uranium is still being used. It is being used in the anti-tank ammunition of the A-10 warthogs and anti-tank weapons that are used on the ground. The number of countries that are using it has expanded dramatically over the last few years. Pakistan and India, our NATO partners, and many other countries are using DU munitions in their military.

This is not only a problem that has happened in the past. It will happen in the future. We must find the answer. A concerted international effort by defence departments and scientists from around the world will get to the bottom of it. We owe it to our men and women in uniform not only to find the answers but to make sure they are treated with more care and consideration. That is our minimum responsibility to them.

We support the bill. We recognize that nuclear waste is a very serious problem, but for it to be disposed of wisely we must have buy-in from the communities. There must be an open and transparent process for where it will be put, how it will be disposed of, and the tomb these nuclear materials will be encased in.

I also encourage the government to work with the international community to look at alternatives. I have spoken about the fusion torch. I have spoken about the NPTRE that can be used as another way of burning effete nuclear rods. We can use these things to decrease the amount of nuclear waste that we will ultimately have.

I encourage Canada to work with the international community to do it. It is another one of those problems that not only affect us but affects the international community and all those who are in possession of nuclear reactors.

We have to deal with former U.S.S.R. countries to find out where the tens of millions of dollars have gone that we have sent to Russia and Ukraine for decommissioning nuclear reactors and other nuclear waste material.

It has not gone where it should be going. There are other Chernobyls on the horizon. People will be killed. Canada can play a very important international role with our other partners in this regard. We all have a vested interest in ensuring that nuclear waste is disposed of wisely. I encourage the government to work with all of us and the international community to make sure that happens.

[Cida, May 18th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, this is a Canadian company that has a monopoly on the project in Belize. The project will fracture a critical area of biodiversity that stretches from Mexico to Panama.

Why does the government not take responsibility, deal with the company and block this environmental catastrophe?