Kirsty Duncan

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, March 18th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for the question. I think that is a question for the other side of the House.

My concern is certainly that we in the Liberal Party would like to see a focus on more money for Canadians who have low incomes. We would like to see child health care. We would like to see a focus on our seniors.

Where was the investment in our seniors? Population aging has tremendous implications for Canada, where most elderly people would not be able to meet more than a small fraction of the cost of the health care they incur. The average hospital stay for our seniors costs $7,000, and that does not take into account emergency and cardiac care.

Where was the investment in prevention? We know what the global risks to heath are. They are high blood pressure, tobacco use, high blood glucose, physical inactivity, overweight and obesity. These factors are responsible for the risk of chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

We know that reducing these risk factors along with alcohol use and cholesterol, and increasing our fruit and vegetable intake, will increase global longevity by about five years.

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, March 18th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, absolutely not. I was highlighting that Saudi Arabia had a vision for its people to build for education, to build for a better tomorrow. How could any country go from 67th position in the world economy, back in 2004, to rank at 13th by 2010, with the goal of being in the top 10? They have done it by inviting Harvard University professor Michael Porter to come and consult with the government. Now their companies are having growth of 6,000% and 8,000%. It was simply to highlight that we need vision, and in this example I used a vision for health.

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, March 18th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Charlottetown.

l am honoured to stand today to pay tribute to the people of Etobicoke North and to respond to the Speech from the Throne, the speech to provide the government's vision for the country, to set out its broad goals and directions and the programs it will undertake to accomplish those goals.

The speech should rejoice in Canada's history, build on our country's great spirit, our core values, what we stand for and why we exist, reaffirm our timeless purpose, passed from generation to generation, and should set the course for a greater future.

The speech should create opportunities for families: the opportunity for a first-class education; an excellent health care system when people need it most; the chance to get a fulfilling job; and the ability to contribute. It should provide care for society's most vulnerable: our children; those who suffer from brain disease, such as ALS, MS or dementia; and our aboriginal citizens. We must commit to closing the gap in a generation.

Governing means creating opportunities for every Canadian and not merely administrating. Where is the government's fierce resolve to do whatever it takes to dream of the future Canadians want and deserve, while addressing the tough decisions we face about our growing deficit, our warming climate and the future of our health care system, all of which will have an impact on future generations?

Where is the understanding that in building Canada's future, tackling climate change for example, there will not be one single defining action, one technological fix or one miracle moment? Rather, real action will require relentless steps in one direction: energy efficiency, transportation changes, personal responsibility and building greater momentum.

I would like to mention a case to highlight vision and catalytic policy to stimulate progress. For the next few minutes I will highlight the vision of His Majesty King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia who is transforming education and modernizing the business environment to become one of the top 10 most competitive countries in the world. Before I continue, I appreciate the differences in our society and our economy but it is the vision we must learn from.

When the kingdom was established in 1932, education was available to very few people, mostly the children of wealthy families living in the major cities. Today, however, there are 25,000 schools, 11 universities, with an astonishing 22 more currently being built. Female students make up a little over half of the nearly five million Saudi school and university students.

Most recently in 2009, over 3,000 dignitaries from around the world attended the official inauguration of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, or KAUST. It came with an endowment of $10 billion and aims to be one of the world's great institutions of research, with partnerships with 27 universities, including Caltech, Harvard and Stanford in the United States, and Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College in the United Kingdom.

Government ministries, private companies, investors and the Saudi public all repeat the mantra of the 10x10 vision. Consequently, Saudi Arabia has shown significant improvements in the World Bank's Doing Business rankings over the last five years, leaping from 67th position in 2004 to 38th in 2006, 16th in 2007 and to 13th in 2009, ahead of advanced economies such as France, Germany, Japan and Switzerland.

The kingdom's exception performance and membership in the World Trade Organization has been driven by the vision of His Majesty.

In 2006, the Global Competitiveness Forum, an annual meeting of top business leaders, international political leaders and selected intellectuals and journalists, was founded. It is the premier event on the road to the World Economic Forum's Davos meeting.

The kingdom has actively encouraged domestic and foreign investment in the country, created new ministries and the National Competitiveness Centre, established the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority and privatized companies.

Canada must dream and dream big. In the past, Canadians built a country-wide railway system, they fought in World War I and World War II and they travelled to space. And remember the Allies gave 2% of GDP to rebuild Europe.

We have to negotiate for our children who are not here. We have to accept moral responsibility. With every tough decision, we must ask if this is something our children would be proud of.

As someone who taught at a business school, I understand that we must slay our country's biggest deficit in history, $56 billion. We must confront this brutal fact while retaining unwavering faith that we will prevail in the end.

However we cannot do it by destroying what makes us Canadian and in some cases uniquely Canadian. Let me take health care for example. Worldwide, we are now seeing major movement between public and private financing. Countries with a public financing scheme are trying to discover what the private sector might have to offer. Countries with the private sector, like Australia and the U.S., are looking to the public sector for advantages.

Today Canadian health care is at a crossroads. We must fix the system that served us so well for many years. We cannot let it slip away.

Thankfully, making improvements does not necessarily require higher spending. If we look at hospital costs across 10 OECD countries, we see wide variations. If unit costs could be reduced to the level of the best performers, average costs could potentially be reduced between 5% and 48%.

Opportunities for cost reduction include more emphasis on preventive medicine and the social determinants of health, such as early detection visits and mammograms. We know that diseases are cheaper to treat if they are caught earlier.

There are opportunities for better coordination. Problems can happen throughout health systems but most particularly at the barrier between primary, specialist, acute and long-term care. This is recognizing of course that we have a federal-provincial system.

There are opportunities to reduce drug spending. For OECD countries, drug spending is annually increasing at 5.7%, outstripping growth for other types of health care and GDP.

While we work to meet this challenge, a tectonic shift is taking place in medicine. For the average patient the movement is subtle, but ultimately it will affect the entire landscape of health care.

Genomics will allow tomorrow's physician to predict in utero or at birth what major diseases a person is likely to develop. Vaccines will be created specifically to treat an individual person's cancer. Stem cells will be used to regenerate a specific tissue lost to disease or trauma. I have seen heart cells beat in a petri dish. They will be used to repair the heart after a heart attack.

I know stem cells are scary for some people, but they have to understand that stem cells can be taken from adults. As an adult I can choose to take adult stem cells from my hip bone.

Medical information will be digitized and instantly available. Medicine will become safer.

I left a job I loved to run for elected office because I believed and still believe today that it is the job of government to make life better for Canadians today and to have a dream to build for a better tomorrow.

What I wanted to see in the throne speech was real vision for the future. It was not there. I wanted acknowledgement of our immense challenges, our aging baby-boomers entering their high demand period for health care, a recognized problem worldwide.

Today one in three, or ten million, Canadians will be affected by neurological or psychiatric disorder or injury at some point in their lives. Brain disorders and injuries will become a leading cause of disease in the next 20 years.

I want to see our current challenges and our future challenges laid out frankly and honestly with a plan to take action in the short term and in the long term.

Most of all I wanted to see promise, building hope for a better future by taking the right steps now. That means not only reducing the deficit, but building the social safety net now and in the future, as this side of the House was able to do in the 1990s.

[Global Brain Awareness Week, March 17th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the brain is the most vital organ in the human body. It makes our heart pump and our lungs breathe. It is the physical structure that makes us human and allows us to experience art, love, poetry and science. If the brain does not work properly, every aspect of life may be compromised.

One in three, or 10 million Canadians, will be affected by a neurological or psychiatric disorder or injury at some point in their lives. A common thread links many brain conditions, such as ALS, MS and dementia, namely, there are no cures and no effective treatments that consistently slow or stop their course.

Brain disorders and injuries will become the leading cause of death and disability in Canada within the next 20 years.

This is Global Brain Awareness Week and we must commit to a national brain strategy for Canada, as we did, with a focus on key pillars such as awareness and education, prevention, treatment and support, caregiver support, research and income security.

[Agriculture, March 15th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, because of the new tainted meat recall, we find out that plants packaging meat for the U.S. market must be inspected daily in order to meet U.S. standards while plants that package meat for our domestic market get inspected only once a week.

Will the minister explain why the government cares more about the health of Americans than it does the health of Canadians?

[Agriculture, March 15th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, CFIA's meat inspectors have given the agency a failing grade. It failed to implement the vast majority of 57 recommendations about the listeriosis outbreak that killed more than 20 Canadians. Now, another investigation into contaminated meat will include a review of five more deaths.

In the wake of this second tragedy, will the minister tell Canadians why he has yet to implement those recommendations?

[KAIROS, March 9th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, for nearly 40 years KAIROS has received funding to do projects in the world's poorest countries and is recognized as one of Canada's most respected charitable organizations.

Recently, four inspiring seniors came to my office committed to restoring funding to KAIROS so the organization can continue its work in aboriginal rights, climate change, corporate accountability and poverty reduction.

On January 21, 10 of the most influential national faith leaders from the Anglican, Catholic, Christian Reform, Mennonite, Presbyterian, Quaker and United churches requested a meeting with the Prime Minister to understand why his government made KAIROS a target for vicious attacks, including maliciously and wrongfully slandering the organization as anti-Semitic.

I hope that the Prime Minister will agree to meet with these faith leaders as they have requested, offer a full apology for the government's defamatory attacks and restore the politically motivated cuts.

[December 10th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the low uptake of the vaccine among pregnant women today in Manitoba is a tremendous concern. Six per cent of deaths in the U.S. have been among expectant women, who make up a tiny percentage of the population.

Confusion also led to the initial ambivalence about the vaccine. When federal officials declared that Canada was in its second wave of the H1N1 pandemic, a poll revealed that almost half of Canadians did not plan on getting the vaccine created to stop it.

Simply having the vaccine is not enough to have a successful program. As a result, the minister and Dr. Butler-Jones were then forced to make a plea to Canadians. There is a very real risk of the flu. Even in its mildest form it is miserable, and at its worst it kills. The choice is simple: a safe and effective preventive vaccine, or a very real risk of disease. This message, the real facts about immunization, needed to be given during the summer.

I call on the government to increase its efforts in order to achieve the target of greater vaccination come January.

[December 10th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, in preparing, responding to and recovering from the H1N1 pandemic, Parliament's focus must be to reduce the rate of hospitalizations, illness and death, as well as to reduce economic and social impacts. Therefore, our discussions must remain on the winding down of the second wave, as well as preparing for a possible third wave.

Having said this, we are here to address a question regarding communication and consistent messaging. Before I address challenges, I want to recognize the government's effort in producing a guide, information sheets, radio and television ads, et cetera, during the mid-fall. I also want to recognize Dr. David Butler-Jones, who made himself available to me several times to answer questions regarding vaccine research and safety.

However, we missed a window of opportunity in the summer to adequately prepare Canadians for a possible second wave. That is to first, let families know that for the vast majority of Canadians H1N1 would be a mild illness, but for a small percentage it would be a very severe, potentially fatal disease; and second, to inform Canadians of the best way to prevent the spread of the disease and to reduce the risk of contracting it.

Tragically, it was a bereaved family that shook the complacency of Canadians when their young hockey-player son passed away. The family wanted other families to know that H1N1 could be deadly so that no other family would have to suffer as theirs had.

Communication is vital in responding to any crisis and clear, consistent messages are required. Prior to asking tonight's question in the House, MPs' office had been inundated by health care workers and the public who wanted real answers.

Perhaps the greatest confusion surrounded vaccine for pregnant women. The WHO advisory panel on vaccines recommended on July 7 that non-adjuvanted vaccine be used for pregnant women if it were available. However, the government ordered adjuvanted vaccine on August 19, and not August 6 as earlier stated, and later ordered non-adjuvanted vaccine on September 4.

Why were pregnant women an afterthought? When the WHO made its recommendation in July, there was no safety data for the adjuvanted vaccine in pregnant women and expectant women fared poorly during past pandemics.

The government then recommended that pregnant women wait for the non-adjuvanted vaccine unless the cases of H1N1 were rising in their area. If a woman was over 20 weeks, she should take the adjuvanted vaccine.

To add to the confusion, the government then ordered 200,000 doses from Australia. This meant that expectant women in Canada had to make a choice that they should never have had to make: risk getting H1N1 or risk taking a vaccine for which there were not yet clinical trials in pregnant women.

The position was eventually clarified, but the damage was done. Research shows that the first message received on a particular subject sets the stage for a comparison of all future subjects; that is, if the public cares that the world is flat and someone comes along and says the world is round, the latter message may face some resistance because of preconceived ideas on the subject.

Preliminary data shows that the vaccine uptake among pregnant women in Manitoba is lower than other priority groups considered at high risk of falling severely ill from H1N1 influenza. Consistent messages are vital and inconsistent messages will increase anxiety and quickly torpedo credibility of experts.

[December 8th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, we must also ask, why was no attempt made to slow the spread of the H1N1 virus in aboriginal communities as theoretical modelling showed was possible and has since been recommended by the WHO? Why was the science forgotten in a response that was supposed to be evidence and science-based?

What was done to ensure the administration of antiviral drugs such as Tamiflu in a timely manner? Antiviral drugs can prevent serious flu complications. Dr. Anand Kumar explained to our health committee that some people had to wait seven or eight days for treatment and that this likely impacted patient outcome.

An investigation should ask questions regarding antiviral use, containment and social distancing measures. Other important questions include: when and where did aboriginal cases start and spread?

We need to recognize there is a real health crisis across the country in aboriginal communities. Perhaps H1N1 will prompt the government to fix chronic social problems.