Larry Bagnell

[Income Tax Act, June 10th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the member for Delta—Richmond East on bringing forward this bill. It is a very positive initiative which is sorely needed in today's housing market. I congratulate him on that, and the member for Edmonton East for congratulating him for that. I also want to congratulate the member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River for initially contemplating this initiative and for all the work he has done on this and the eloquent way in which he described the need for this bill.

The main reason I wanted to speak is to say that I hope that the Conservative members in particular during their caucus meetings tomorrow morning will pass on to others in government this spirit of goodwill and the need for housing that they have outlined in speaking to this bill. I hope that they will encourage the government to move on some other fronts in the same spirit. It would be contradictory to take one step forward with this bill in addressing a very serious need and then to take another step backward on a different issue.

The member for Delta—Richmond East has disagreed with his government and the Prime Minister and has voted against them before. He could do it on some of these areas, too, if the need arose.

The point is there are people who are really in need of housing. There is huge housing crunch. We have some programs that have been successful in helping to deal with that. Certainly not all of the problems have been dealt with and more has to be done, but I am not asking for that at the moment. All I am asking is that those successful programs be allowed to continue while other initiatives are contemplated, or that these initiatives be expanded.

I am talking about three programs. One is the national homelessness partnering strategy. It has been hugely successful. The government extended it a year. The second one is the residential rehabilitation assistance program which helps people, many of whom could not otherwise afford it, including seniors, fix up their homes. This program is absolutely critical. Now that gas prices have gone up so much, they are going to need every bit of help they can get to survive. Making their houses more energy efficient would be helpful. The third program is the affordable housing initiative which provides people who otherwise would not have the ability the possibility to own a home.

These three programs still have a chance. That is why I am encouraging the Conservative members to bring this to their caucus meeting tomorrow. These three programs are still producing results, but they will expire at the end of March 2009.

For any program, there is a huge machinery of government. There are local committees in place that do excellent work to help implement these programs. Decisions are made months in advance of their implementation. We are getting close to the time when they are going to need to know. They are going to have to make decisions. Huge amounts of money are not needed, and in fact, the amounts are very small in the large scheme of things, to complement this excellent bill and to help some people into housing. I would encourage the Conservative members, when they go to their caucus meeting tomorrow, to urge the finance minister to simply announce that he will extend these programs at least at the existing level of financing until other successful initiatives are added.

These programs have proven to be successful. They are helping alleviate the housing crisis in Canada. The Conservatives have not cancelled them, which is good. They may not have done anything wrong, but I am just bringing this forward because there is an advanced timeline in the machinery of government. Unfortunately, there are so many rules that people have to follow that they have to know in advance whether these good programs will continue so that there is not a break in them. For instance, there is one shelter in our area which is funded by one of the programs. If that shelter had to close, imagine what would happen to the people who would have no place to go in a climate where there are many consecutive days at -40°.

Again, I compliment the member for Delta—Richmond East on the fine way in which he has brought forward this initiative. I hope he gets unanimous support.

However, I encourage him to encourage the government to build on the three programs that are really helping people who otherwise would have no chance of having a shelter over their heads and who continue to have some hope through the assistance that those programs are providing to some of them.

[Food and Drugs Act, June 10th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am wondering if the member could provide for the public watching a technical outline of the new enforcement regime in this bill.

I will read a couple of concerns that I have received. Martin states: “I am opposed to the police state powers in Bill C-51.” Anne asks: “Why do bureaucrats want seizure warrants without judge approval? With fines being increased a 1000 times, and seizing authority without a warrant, is Bill C-51 meant to bankrupt and silence its target audience?”

I thought the member made a good point about trying to make all these amendments at second reading. There was a bill in the justice committee and some members wanted to add a year to the penalty in the bill and the Conservative chair ruled it out of order as it was beyond the scope of the bill.

The amendments the Conservatives are proposing are good amendments, but they are far more drastic than that particular change, so I can understand why opposition members are a bit skeptical about being able to make these changes at second reading.

[Food and Drugs Act, June 10th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I commend the member for putting input from his constituents on the record. I want to do the same.

I want to ensure that the supplements for people with bipolar syndrome are still available for them. I have some constituents who need them.

Also, in this process, there has to be consultation with first nations, especially those who have in their land claims and self-governance agreements the right to distribute these products.

Finally, this last comment is from a retailer, who says:

Many Canadians rely on natural health products for their health. These products are endangered and consumers need to act now to save them.

Since 2004 when the Natural Health Product Regulations were introduced, natural health products have been increasingly threatened. The new Regulations were Health Canada's response to consumer demands for the government to protect their access to natural health products. The Regulations have had the opposite effect. To “legally” sell a health product the new Regulations impose a licensing requirement. The problem is that 60% of the licence applications have failed. These have been the “easy” applications. Expectations are that 70-75% of applications will fail. For the [Natural Health Products] Community this means that 75% of [natural health products] we rely upon for our health will become illegal.

[Food and Drugs Act, June 10th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I just want to get something on the record quickly. I want to ensure that Empowerplus is still available after this bill goes through and the supplements that help bipolar disease. There also has to be sufficient consultation with first nations to ensure that a protection exists in their land claim or self-government agreements to deal with natural medicines.

[Food and Drugs Act, June 10th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I have three short questions and comments.

First, for the experts on the bill who are watching, as I said in my previous speech, it is very important for one of my constituents that Empowerplus continues to be legally available. I hope they would confirm to me by email or some other means that it is the case.

Second, the member for Cambridge, with whom I mostly agree on this bill, has to understand that the reason the members have asked to consider the bill before second reading is there are so many amendments both by the government and others. The experience we have had in the past is when we get to second reading, we cannot change things that much.

We had an example in one committee where something was changed in a clause from year to two years and the Conservative chair of the committee ruled it out of order, it was too much change. Therefore, we can understand people's hesitancy and why they would prefer the bill to go to committee before second reading.

A question I have for the member is from one of my constituents, Drew. It is very short, but it reflects a concern about which other constituents have also written. He says:

I would not be writing this letter if this bill had no “teeth”, but unfortunately (under section 23) it gives government agents unprecedented power to search, confiscate and prosecute people....

Does the member have any comments on the regulatory and enforcement mechanisms in the bill?

[Committees of the House, June 10th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his speech. If there is anything else he wants to say, I will give him a chance to do that.

I just wanted to rise to commend the member for Brant on bringing forward this very important motion. We heard about the tragedies in those families mentioned by our party's agriculture critic. It is very devastating. I certainly am glad that we are having this debate. Does the member want to add anything?

[Petitions, June 9th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, sadly, and to emphasize the petition we just heard on Darfur, I am presenting another petition on Darfur, with signatures collected by Canadians for Action in Darfur from the people of Ottawa, who are asking us to stop the humanitarian crisis. As was just said, 400,000 people have been killed since 2003 and 2.5 million have been ripped from their homes.

Canada has a responsibility to work with the international community to end this atrocity. The signatories want the government to know that each signature on the petition represents 100 innocent dead citizens of Darfur.

[Extension of Sitting Hours, June 9th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the House leader cannot get out of his embarrassment that easy. It has just been explained how time and time again, week after week, the government stonewalled committees. It delayed the process. For weeks and weeks and months of wasted time, it wants to add two weeks of a few hours extra.

In the justice committee, meeting after meeting, even when there were witnesses waiting and when the committee legally wanted to have a couple of extra meetings and not delay time, the Conservatives instructed their committee chair to walk out of the meeting and delay the whole process. A number of the bills on this list would have been passed now if it had not been for the Conservatives walking out of meetings.

What is most embarrassing is the House leader just said to a member of the House that it was stalling when a party had every member of its caucus speak to a bill. Is that democratic? He is saying that members cannot speak to a bill, or even speak once on it? That is an embarrassment and a confrontation to democracy to tell members they cannot speak to a bill, which the government House leader just said was a stalling tactic. It is an embarrassment that he would say a member, who is elected by his or her constituents, cannot speak to a bill.

[Food and Drugs Act, June 9th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad the member mentioned advertising, because I do not want to see more advertising either.

A constituent, Brian, wrote in an email:

Bill C-51 was brought to my attention by a person who has successfully controlled the symptoms of his diabetes, arthritis and bipolar depression with diet and supplements. He is afraid he will lose his right and ability to do this under Bill C-51. He will then have a choice to go back on Big Pharma's anti-psychotics and other drugs, which did not work well and caused intolerable side effects, or to sink into psychosis and eventual death. That's an example how loss of choice will affect an individual.

I want to make sure that does not happen. I hope the member would agree.

[Food and Drugs Act, June 9th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the government on the proposed amendments, particularly adding traditional knowledge, which is a very important amendment, and I appreciate that.

I have a question on one particular amendment. Perhaps the member could outline this further for people who might not understand the complexities of the categorization of these natural products. Although he did a very good job in his speech, could he go over the regulatory regime where in 2004 they were categorized?

If I understand it, the government has agreed to an amendment that would solve the concern and the legislative environment. Right now every product, whether it is a drug or a food, would be subject to a lot of the conditions in the bill. Now there will be an additional amendment to will deal with a lot of the concerns we have had expressed to us. This will identify natural products in the legislative framework as something different.