Keith Martin

[Business of Supply, May 16th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I respect the individuals the member mentioned. One can always use anecdotal experiences to arrive at conclusions but to do an adequate scientific assessment on a particular issue, one has to look at a statistically significant population of individuals and do a rigorous scientific assessment of those individuals to determine whether the hypothesis is correct. That is the scientific method and that is the way in which rigorous science is done.

Let me quote an international panel of cancer experts who looked at a large population of people. They examined over 70 published studies on this particular question: Do pesticides cause cancer, yes or no? The National Cancer Institute of Canada organized this group of experts and they reached the following conclusion:

Evaluating over 70 published studies, it concluded that contrary to allegations by some activists, it was "not aware of any definitive evidence to suggest that synthetic pesticides contribute significantly to overall cancer mortality”.

[Business of Supply, May 16th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the debate. It is one that has gone on in the House in the past and it is one that has gripped the public many times. On the surface it sounds very attractive. Pesticides cause cancer is a very scary title. Do the facts bear out that kind of a title? Do the comments coming from the NDP, which are the roots of this motion, rooted in good science and experience? I would submit they are not.

When we go through some of the studies, they show that a lot of the anti-pesticide comments are rooted in fear and fly in the face of common science.

Let us take a look at some of the premises. The first one is cancer rates. Have cancer rates gone up or have they gone down? We all know people who have had cancer and we know many more people have it. The reality is we are living longer. Males living in my province of British Columbia have the greatest longevity of any place in the entire world. Canadians ought to be proud of that. Indeed, Canadian women and men are some of the longest living people.

Cancer, perhaps above all others factors, is a function of age. As we get older, the incidence of cancer rises. Our ability to contract cancer increases with age. It is a function of our genetics, what we have done to our bodies such inaction, poor dietary habits and smoking.

Has the incidence of cancer increased? No. The number of people, per population, who get cancer has remained relatively static over the last 10 years. In some areas it has gone up. For example, the incidence of lung cancer in women has gone up because more and more women are smoking. The incidence of lung cancer in men has gone down. The incidence of cervical cancer has gone down because women have been more adept in having pap smears to monitor cervical cancer. This has saved thousands and thousands of women's lives. Thankfully we have those tools.

Do pesticides cause cancer? The anti-pesticide groups will not tell us this, but 99% of the pesticides we consume are natural.

I will be splitting my time, Mr. Speaker, with the member for Malpeque.

Over the decades ample studies have been done on pesticides. They have shown no increase in the incidence of cancer in populations that have been subjected to pesticides. Most of the pesticides we spray are natural. If we compare synthetic pesticides to natural pesticides, there will be no difference in the statistics of the mortality and morbidity. These chemicals, natural and synthetic, have been exhaustively studied for decades. Large populations have been looked at.

If we were to remove or ban pesticides, which some would like to do, a number of things would happen.

First, the amount of land needed to cultivate the foods we consume would increase. This would result in a diminishment of biodiversity and would affect our environment in a negative way.

Second, the cost of food would go up an estimated 27% if we were to ban pesticides. I know the member is talking about cosmetic pesticides, but it is worth pointing out that many people may be confused by cosmetic pesticides and the desire to ban pesticides in food productivity.

What are the four or five things that have proven to have a profound impact on reducing cancer rates in our country? Working with its provincial counterparts, the provincial ministers of health and ministers of education, the government should be doing the following things.

First, the government should be investing in a smoking reduction strategy. Smoking kills and we need to continue to reduce smoking, especially among young women where smoking has increased.

Second, the government needs to encourage physical activity. We are finding that younger people now are less physically active than ever before. The incidence of childhood obesity has risen to epidemic proportions. Children must get out and play and become physically active.

Working with the provinces, we could perhaps institute an awareness campaign to get adults to play with their children for 30 minutes a day. That would not only benefit the children but it also would benefit the adults. Physical activity is central, not only to physical well-being but to mental health. We just had Mental Health Week. If we were to compare a group of physically active people on anti-depressants to an inactive group of people on anti-depressants, we would find that the first group is the healthiest group.

What also works very well is the Headstart program. For those who are not aware of this program, it is probably the government's best bang for its buck in reducing an array of socio-economic problems. The Headstart program is simple and inexpensive. It is rooted in ensuring that parents have the proper parenting skills and it works on the first eight years of life.

There is a program in Ypsilanti, Michigan, which has been going on for 30 years. If we were to compare the Moncton Headstart program that Claudette Bradshaw started to the healthystart program in Hawaii, we would find that the Headstart program produces enormous bang for a buck, $7 to $8 for every $1 invested. It keeps kids healthier and more active. It reduces the incidents of unemployment later on by keeping kids in school longer. It decreases teen pregnancy rates and it decreases incidents of youth crime. This is a win-win situation for all concerned. The Headstart program is a healthy start program where children can be inculcated into proper dietary habits which in turn has a positive impact on their lives.

The longevity of Japanese children is quite extraordinary and the incidence of various cancers is quite low. One of the reasons for this is their lifestyle. The dietary habits of Japanese children are quite different from children in North America. Their consumption of sweets is quite low while their consumption of healthy foods, such as fish and vegetables, is quite high. These children know the types of foods they are eating and why they are eating them This works well. Studies have shown that these children grow up to become healthy adults. If we look at these kinds of initiatives and behaviours, we will be able to address people's health.

I would submit to the NDP members that their initiative, while well-meaning, is actually misguided and not rooted in fact and science. I would encourage members to look at some of the work that was done by the co-founder and former chief scientist of Greenpeace, Dr. Patrick Moore, who was part of an international panel of cancer experts and wrote some very good articles. Along with Professor Bruce Ames of the University of California, Berkley, Dr. Moore has been trying to tell the world for years that “pesticides in food are not a significant health issue”.

As a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a National Medal of Science recipient for his research in cancer, especially in the area of chemical toxicity, Dr. Ames has found that natural pesticides that plants produce to protect themselves from insects and fungi are just as toxic as the synthetic pesticides in agricultural production.

In short, if we were to affect the health of Canadians, the solutions I have given would be an effective plan of action to reduce cancer rates. Banning pesticides in the manner that the NDP is suggesting will not.

[Public Health Agency of Canada Act, May 2nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to the member's comments.

Regardless of where we live in our great country, we are all affected by health care challenges. That is the intent of the bill. Over the last few years Canada is the number one nation in the entire world in terms of SARS preparedness and SARS response. There is an extraordinary monitoring system within Canada. Our experts have travelled to the Far East to help the people there monitor and address their SARS challenges. We know those challenges quite well. We have done a great job in Canada. Our researchers and Public Health Agency experts, as the parliamentary secretary also knows very well, have done an outstanding international job on this. A world meeting was held last year in Montreal so that we could work with other countries to deal with that challenge.

Some of us put together an initiative which deals with type 1 diabetes. We are poised to close an incredible loop in our country, which is very exciting. It started with Banting and Best and the discovery insulin. We are now at the stage in research where we hope in the very near future to complete the genetic mapping for the genetic component of type 1 diabetes but also to identify some of the environmental factors and develop the technology to enable individuals to regenerate the islet cells in the pancreas which produce insulin.

The member and her party refused to participate in a bipartisan initiative to enable researchers to have a $25 million per year investment over five years. That would enable Canada to take the lead and be the first country in the world to ever cure a chronic disease.

There are thousands of people in the member's own province who suffer from type 1 juvenile diabetes. People are diagnosed primarily when they are children. The biggest increasing age group is between five and nine years. Our country has the third highest incidence in the world. How could the member look her constituents in the eye and say that as a member of the Bloc Québécois, she refused to participate in a binational, bipartisan initiative to ensure that our researchers in Canada, in Montreal, were able to have the tools to find a cure for type 1 diabetes? Why did she refuse to participate in this initiative? Why did she block the initiative for members from all political parties to unite in defeating this disease?

[Public Health Agency of Canada Act, May 2nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to the member's speech on a very important issue for all Canadians. As somebody who has spent quite a few years practising in the emergency department, I am obviously fully supportive of more resources going to the acute side of medicine because there is a definite need right now. Emergency rooms across the country are being choked and emergency health care professionals are overworked in the commission of their duties in our time of greatest need.

However let us project forward and look at what is happening in the country. It is very disturbing to know that our youngest generation could now for the first time have a shorter lifespan than our generation and older generations. We need to address the fact that public health issues, and usually small interventions do have dramatic effects, will be required in order to prevent problems and continue with the extension of lifespans and the quality of life. Water, food, the quality of food and water, and lifestyle issues have to be addressed.

I would submit the following to the hon. member and he can consider telling it to the Minister of Health. It is the small preventative issues that could work well. For example, the head start program, which would have been part of our early learning program, would have ensured that children had their basic needs met for the first six to eight years of life. This is probably the easiest and simplest way of actually having a profound positive impact upon the lives of children and adults. It ensures that children are aware of proper nutrition, activity and that parents and caregivers are able to spend quality time with children and interact with them over a prolonged period of time.

Those kinds of simple interventions have a very positive impact upon children's lives. Will the hon. member present to his Minister of Finance a proposal for supporting a national head start program, a national mental health care strategy and a national medical manpower strategy with the support of the provinces? Will he also look at adopting the findings of the Walkerton inquiry which were very good toward developing national standards for water quality? All of those things could have a profound positive impact upon the health of Canadians.

[Petitions, May 2nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to present a petition to the House of Commons. The signatories of this petition point out that 84% of parents are both in the workforce and that 70% of women with children under the age of six are employed.

Therefore, the residents of Ontario call upon the Prime Minister to honour the early learning and child care agreement.

[Darfur, May 1st, 2006]

Mr. Chair, I thank my hon. colleague and his assistants and members from all parties who have spent a lot of time on this issue. Parliament has worked very well on this particular issue which, as other members have said, goes beyond politics. I would also like to thank Leyla Di Cori and the Canadian Jewish Congress for their hard work. Above all else, as has been said before, I thank our Canadian Forces members who, out in the field along with RCMP officers, have done a yeoman's job under very difficult circumstances.

In Sierra Leone the British went into a situation where rebels were slaughtering innocent civilians. Six hundred and eighty six troops went into Sierra Leone and they stopped the conflict cold. In this particular conflict, 20,000 troops have been asked for. There are a number of groups, including the African Union, which showed extraordinary maturity in giving this particular mission to the UN, but it does not preclude their actions.

Does the hon. member not feel that one of our roles should be to increase capacity within the African Union to work perhaps within a SHIRBRIG to enable a peacemaking force to get on the ground to save the lives of the innocent?

[Darfur, May 1st, 2006]

Mr. Chair, I am of the view, as I think all of us are tonight, that Khartoum is abjectly unwilling to live up to whatever peace agreement it signs on to. It has demonstrated this over a prolonged period of time in the conflicts in the south. It has demonstrated this repeatedly with respect to Darfur. It has failed to demobilize and to neutralize the Janjaweed that is engaged in the killing.

If the government in Khartoum fails to disarm, demobilize and stop the Janjaweed's actions in Darfur, is the member willing to ask his government to support the chapter 7 peacemaking engagement with a robust 20,000 person cohort to go into Darfur as soon as possible?

While the Minister for International Cooperation put in $10 million, last year we put in $20 million. The deficit with respect to the World Food Programme is $500 million, which means that 3.5 million people will potentially starve to death. Will he support an extra $10 million through CIDA's budget that will go as soon as possible to the World Food Programme?

[Darfur, May 1st, 2006]

Mr. Chair, I appreciate the comments of the Minister of Public Safety on this issue. I know he has had a long standing interest in this area.

The question I have is fairly simple. If we look at Khartoum's history with respect to the conflicts not only in Darfur but also going back to the conflict in the south that resulted in two million deaths and four million individuals displaced, we see a disturbing pattern of behaviour. Khartoum engages in false peace negotiations with the international community and then does everything in its power to obfuscate, block, prevent, and deter any kind of meaningful action on the ground to really stop the carnage that is taking place, aided and abetted by itself .

Therefore, even though this particular round of peace negotiations is taking place in Abuja as we speak, the problem I submit to the minister is that Khartoum, if history is an example of what we can predict in the future, will sign on the dotted line, but will simply not live up to the meaning and intent of that peace agreement on the ground. It has failed to do it for the last two years with respect to the peace agreement that it signed, allowed the Janjaweed to continue, continued supporting it, and continued to allow the human rights abuses the minister eloquently spoke about.

I think the comment, “crisis, what crisis” encapsulates everything in that small vignette that he had with a Sudanese official at the UN.

Will the Minister of Public Safety ask the Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs that if Khartoum is not living up to the intent of the agreement that will be signed in Abuja and indeed the agreement that was signed more than a year and a half ago with respect to disarming the Janjaweed and calling it back and removing it out of Darfur, then the government will support the chapter 7 peacemaking initiative that is required on the ground to save the lives of the people there? A robust chapter 7 mandate will be required and will he ask for that UN peacemaking force to be assembled and deployed as soon as possible?

We both know full well, and he has spoken about it before, time is of the essence and action is required now.

[Darfur, May 1st, 2006]

Mr. Chair, I thank the parliamentary secretary for working with all of us in trying to establish a motion that we could support to focus Canada's initiative and activities in a constructive way toward this conflict.

The African Union's mission would not have failed if Khartoum had stopped funding the Janjaweed and its murderous activities in Darfur. If Khartoum had disarmed and immobilized the Janjaweed, the African mission would have been a success.

The reality is that it signed a peace agreement a year and a half ago to do just that and now the same conversations are taking place in Abuja. What happened is that Khartoum deliberately failed to stop the Janjaweed from its activities. The rebel forces in Darfur are having difficulty signing on to this deal because it knows that Khartoum deliberately failed to stop funding the Janjaweed. It has a very legitimate concern.

Based on Khartoum's previous activities and actions, which are well-known to all, not only in Darfur but also in the south, we have to ensure that if it signs on the bottom line it has to live up to the intent of that agreement.

As the member may or may not know, Khartoum threatened to tear up the peace agreement in the south if the international community walked into Darfur.

What happened with Darfur, interestingly enough, was that Khartoum told the AU, which deserves a lot of credit for having the maturity to ask the UN to take this over, that the United Nations could take it over but that the AU would have to ask for Khartoum's permission first, which was not a problem. The second thing Khartoum said was that if there were any non-African Union troops that it would not give the UN permission to come into the country. It is putting in obstacles and making agreements that simply cannot be used to resolve this problem.

I have one last point with respect to the south. We need to do a lot more in supporting the peace agreement in the south. We have to ensure that the international community puts the moneys in through international development to support the newer Dinka tribes in the south who are trying to get their lives back together after this conflict.

I would also like to thank the Minister of Foreign Affairs for bringing up the situation of the LRA in Acholiland in northern Uganda. This is the worst place in the world to be a child. There are 20,000 child soldiers. Sudan has a lot to answer for with respect to that, but so does President Museveni in Uganda.

I would encourage the government to support the United Nations' desire to arrest and prosecute Joseph Kony, the head of the LRA, for crimes against humanity. This person and his cabal of murderous cronies must be arrested and prosecuted in the interests of international human rights.

[Darfur, May 1st, 2006]

Mr. Chair, last week we heard across the world echoes of “never again” as we remembered the Holocaust and yet all of us in the House know that “never again” has occurred time and time again, from Angola to Liberia, Sierra Leone to the Congo, and now to Darfur.

The United States has called this a genocide. The United Nations has called Darfur the worst humanitarian catastrophe in the world today. Despite a dizzying array of treaties and conventions to protect innocent civilians, we have failed to put action behind those treaties and conventions and failed to make them live, breathe and function as they were intended to.

Right now we are seeing peace negotiations take place in Abuja, but if we look at Khartoum's behaviour, the conflict in the south and what has been done in Darfur, a leopard does not change its spots and Khartoum will not change its. Khartoum is engaged in a very clever and cynical game of engaging in false peace negotiations with the international community, leading all of us down a garden path in the hope that peace can come and that Khartoum will live up to the obligations it signed on to. However, in reality, it will not do that.

Over the last year and a half, despite signing on to other peace agreements, Khartoum has failed to disarm the Janjaweed and it continues to support them. The Janjaweed continue to maintain their state-sponsored terrorism of the people in Darfur and it continues to murder, rape and pillage innocent civilians.

Khartoum has led us all down the garden path and I have very little hope that it will live up to the obligations that no doubt will be signed on to in Abuja. This is something the Minister of Foreign Affairs must be very cognizant of. I agree with allowing the negotiations to finish but we need to determine, in a short period of time, whether Khartoum is living up to these obligations.

The ask is simple. First, Canada should call for and lead a chapter 7 peacemaking initiative into Darfur to protect civilian lives. We will not and cannot do it alone. We must ask the United Nations, which has agreed to take this one. We must ensure the peacemaking mission goes in now and not later, as Khartoum desires, if at all, and if we work with the African Union, NATO and other partners, we can and should make this happen. The legal obligations are there.

Why should we do this now? Three things happened over the last week that should change everything.

First, last Tuesday, Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini met with Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir. The purpose was for Iran to share nuclear technologies with Sudan. Sudan said that it needed it for electricity. What a crock. Sudan is sitting on a sea of oil. The only purpose for this meeting was the exchange of nuclear technologies for terrorist activities, full stop. If that cannot shake the international community out of their torpor, nothing will.

Second, the World Food Programme, as has been said before, has cut food rations by 50% to the some 3.5 million refugees who are currently in camps. Two thousand calories is the minimum requirement. One thousand calories in a stressed population will result in starvation and death, which is something we cannot sit by and allow.

Third, we have seen that the conflict has expanded into a regional conflict into Chad. This is no longer within the borders of Sudan.

First is the ask is for the chapter 7 peacemaking force. Second is that we make the contributions to make-up the $500 million deficit that the World Food Programme needs for foods. Third, we need to challenge Islamic nations to make the contributions that they have not made. And fourth, we need to support the International Criminal Court to arrest and prosecute the 51 people identified by the United Nations for crimes against humanity.

We champion our responsibility to protect. We need an obligation to act. We need to put teeth into that. Darfur is the challenge before us. We have the ability to lead and I would inspire and challenge the Minister of Foreign Affairs to do that because he will see widespread support for that in the House.

I want to congratulate and thank Senator Roméo Dallaire, Senator Mobina Jaffer, David Kilgour and the Canadian Jewish Congress for their support and that of many others in our country toward developing and promoting a resolution to this genocide.

Canada can do it. We can lead and should lead. I challenge the Minister of Foreign Affairs to do that. We will work with the government to make this happen.