Laurel Collins

[Climate Change, June 3rd, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I believe that the member wants bold climate action. Unfortunately, his party continues to water down key climate policies at the request of the biggest polluters. The Liberals even went so far as to invite the CEOs of oil and gas companies to help them craft their climate plan. It is not surprising that we see huge loopholes in the proposed draft on the emissions cap. This is one of the key policies that we need to drive down emissions, yet the Liberals are listening to the oil and gas industry once again.

The finance minister decided not to implement a windfall tax on oil and gas. We could have invested this money in climate solutions. Why was this? It was because oil and gas lobbyists asked her not to.

[Climate Change, June 3rd, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, last year's summer was the hottest on record and the most devastating for wildfires. Smoke from wildfires forced kids to spend their days indoors, and Canadians across the country were evacuated from their homes because of the wildfires.

Our kids are breathing in harmful toxins, and when I think about the summer to come, it is only going to get worse with this year's wildfire season. However, we have the Liberals, who keep acting like it is business as usual. They are breaking their climate promises, handing out billions of dollars to Canada's biggest polluters and watering down key climate policies, like the emissions cap. The Conservatives, though, cannot even agree that climate change is real. Canadians should not have to choose between deny and delay, but it is not only wildfire smoke that is contributing to air pollution and making people sick.

This past year, we saw increased deaths due to air pollution because of the wildfires, but on average, in Canada, 15,000 Canadians die each year because of air pollution. We also know that petrochemical plants are making people sick. In Ontario, the Aamjiwnaang First Nation issued a state of emergency declaration last month due to excessive discharge of benzene from an industry factory. Several people had fallen ill with headaches, nausea and dizziness, and it is all too common that these impacts disproportionately affect indigenous communities.

This is unacceptable, and the government must do more to regulate industry pollution. It also needs to do more to tackle the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving up emissions, that are threatening the future for our children and our grandchildren and that are polluting our air, so much so that a child in Edmonton said that it felt like an elephant was standing on their chest. This is in Canada.

I continue to be disappointed by the Liberal government's refusal to address environmental dangers, to address environmental racism and to protect Canadians. Will the Liberals stop putting the interests of the biggest polluters over the health and safety of Canadians?

[Pharmacare Act, June 3rd, 2024]

Madam Speaker, we hear from the Conservative caucus about the costs of pharmacare. The member spoke about how this is needed for an affordability measure, but we have not heard about how national single-payer pharmacare saves money. The Parliamentary Budget Officer tabled a report saying that $1.4 billion would be saved because national single-payer pharmacare gives governments the negotiating and bargaining power to drive down drug costs. Therefore, it is not surprising to see Conservatives oppose it when their friends, the lobbyists, the CEOs and big pharma keep saying the same things that they do.

Can the member speak to how Conservatives are constantly looking out for the corporations at the very top instead of everyday Canadians who are struggling to pay for essential medications?

[Pharmacare Act, June 3rd, 2024]

Madam Speaker, the Conservative member has been parroting talking points from the big pharmaceutical companies, and while he talks about the majority of Canadians already having coverage, people with diabetes who are covered are still spending thousands of dollars out of pocket for essential medication. Why does he not think those people deserve support?

[Pharmacare Act, May 30th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians know that they cannot trust the Conservatives when it comes to health care.

The Conservative team is full of corporate insiders and lobbyists, including their deputy leader, who is a former lobbyist for big pharma. In fact, the Conservatives' national governing body is made up of 50% lobbyists. It is not a surprise that the Conservatives are fighting tooth and nail to keep money in the pockets of big pharma at the expense of Canadians who are paying out of pocket for essential medication.

[Pharmacare Act, May 30th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I am a member of Parliament from British Columbia, so I am not familiar with the Saskatchewan program.

However, it is written into the legislation that the federal government is going to work with provinces. Provinces are going to get on board because this is funding, transferring money, to ensure that people have access. We also know there are different age cut-offs in different provinces, and that is not acceptable. We do not want to have someone in one province be able to access medication and another person in another province not be able to access it. We want to be able to deliver health care. Everyone should have access to the medication they need with their health card, not their credit card.

[Pharmacare Act, May 30th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the member stole my thunder a little.

We are talking about a universal, single-payer pharmacare program. The reason it is so effective, the reason experts and labour unions have been calling for this, and the reason civil society has been calling for it is that it would save Canadians money, and it would give access to essential drugs. It would also mean that when we buy as a single payer, we would get to negotiate prices as a single payer. It would mean that we would have so much more negotiating power.

That is why pharmaceutical companies are so opposed to it. They do not want to lower our drug costs and make less money. By ensuring that we have a single-payer system, it means those kinds of drugs are going to be more accessible to Canadians. It means that Canadians would be paying less, and it would save money over time.

[Pharmacare Act, May 30th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, it is a historic day: We are going to be voting on the first steps toward universal pharmacare. The Liberals have been promising pharmacare to Canadians since 1997, and for decades Canadians have been waiting to have access to essential medication.

I want to start off by sharing a story. In 2021, I was out door-knocking in a subsidized housing complex. When I knocked on one of the doors, the first person to come to the door was a little girl. She was holding two mermaid dolls and she was adorable. She might have been three or four years old, and she smiled up at me. Then her siblings came running out, and they called for their mom. When I talked to her mother, she had these bright eyes, and she was listening and staring up at us. Her mom said she had not a chance to think about policies or what needs to happen because she was so stressed about how much the devices for her little girl's diabetes cost and how much the medication costs.

This family had been struggling to afford essential medications, and the costs were so high that this mother was wondering how she was going to care for her little girl. I do not know how anyone could look that little girl in the eye and say that she does not deserve access to life-saving medication. I promised that mom that I would come here to Ottawa and fight for universal pharmacare so that her little girl would have her medication covered. I am so proud to be part of a team that is delivering on that promise.

For that family and their struggle, and for families across Canada that are in the same position, it is not inevitable. They are working hard. They are doing everything right. They are trying their best to provide a good life for their kids. However, with the choices of Liberal and Conservative governments for decades, they have decided to side with the biggest pharmaceutical companies instead of everyday Canadians, instead of that little girl.

Liberals have promised this for decades, but it is only now that New Democrats are in a position of power and are able to force the government to deliver on pharmacare. While the Conservatives try to do whatever they possibly can to stop people from getting access to life-saving medication, we are going to keep fighting to deliver on the promise to that mom, to that family and to families across Canada who deserve pharmacare.

I once shared a bit of that story and then asked the Leader of the Opposition how he could look that little girl in the eye and say that she does not deserve access to diabetes medication, that she does not deserve access to life-saving devices. His answer was to spew misinformation. He said that pharmacare will “roll back the rights that unions have fought so hard and so long to secure. Our labour movement fought too hard to secure private drug plans, and we will never let a big, centralizing, bureaucratic government in Ottawa take those rights away from workers.”

However, the major unions in Canada are calling for universal single-payer pharmacare: the United Steelworkers, CUPE, the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions and Unifor. I could go on. Many of these unions have specific campaigns advocating for single-payer universal pharmacare. Unions across Canada came out celebrating the fact that the NDP was able to force the government to first provide contraception and diabetes medications and diabetes devices, but also to lay the legislative framework for universal pharmacare.

This is a huge step, and I think about some of those huge steps. Tommy Douglas had a vision of universal health care. It was New Democrats who fought alongside Tommy Douglas to get our country to a place where if a person broke their leg, they were not going to be turned away because they could not afford to fix it. I think about young kids, and we know that dental surgery is the most common surgery at pediatric hospitals. If people have essential dental costs or if they have tooth pain, then for the first time in our country's history, there would be people accessing dental care who could not afford it. We would have people like that family I talked about accessing diabetes medication and not worrying about whether they could afford it. They would not have to choose between putting food on the table or paying the rent and could access life-saving medication. This is a historic, huge step forward for our country. I am so proud to be part of the team that is making this happen.

I want to also take a moment to talk about providing contraception across Canada and what that means for women and for gender-diverse people. It is huge. I want to give a special shout-out to Devon Black and Teale Phelps Bondaroff, who are the co-founders of AccessBC, and who fought, pushed and advocated, and were successful in bringing this issue to the attention of the provincial government. I am proud that the B.C. NDP has already paved the way, offering British Columbians access to free contraception. We know that countries around the world have been doing this for decades, and finally, the federal government acknowledges that contraception is health care.

It is not surprising that the Conservatives are fighting tooth and nail to stop women from having control over their reproductive health. We know that their MPs have brought forward legislation that is trying to bring back the debate around a woman's right to choose or a woman's control over her own body. A Conservative MP went out and spoke at the rally that was calling to end abortion access in Canada. I would hope that we were past a point in Canada when a major political party is accepting of its members of Parliament calling to end abortion access. Abortion is health care. Contraception is health care.

Now, in Canada, we could start expanding our universal coverage to essential medication and to dental care. I would like to see it also expanded to mental health care. We could have a system in Canada that, if a person is sick and they need health care, they could access it.

I want to end by calling on all MPs in the House to take a moment and to think about the historic steps that we are taking. This would make a tangible difference in the lives of Canadians from coast to coast to coast. I think about that family, that little girl and what this would mean to her. I am so proud to be voting in favour of pharmacare tonight. I am grateful to be able to work alongside 24 other New Democrat MPs who have fought tooth and nail to get this piece of legislation to this point. We are going to take it over the finish line to ensure that every Canadian would be able to access the medication they need.

[Business of Supply, May 30th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I wanted to ask the member about the mental health crisis of young people who are concerned about the climate crisis. Climate anxiety is at an all-time high. When young people are seeing communities evacuated because of wildfires, multi-year droughts, heat domes that kill hundreds of people and extreme flooding, they are worried about right now and they are worried about their future.

Can the member speak to young people and tell them why the Conservatives have no climate plan?

[Business of Supply, May 30th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, when I asked the Leader of the Opposition about industrial carbon pricing, he said that the industrial carbon price did not exist, which is a new level of misinformation.

However, I am critical of the Liberal government's loopholes that have been left in the federal backstop that allow companies like Suncor to pay 14 times less than average Canadians. The government could close the loopholes in industrial carbon pricing, strengthen our emissions reduction plan, get greater emissions reduction and also hold the biggest polluters to account. It could also enshrine industrial carbon pricing in law so that if, in the future, there were another government that wanted to scrap it, it would be much more difficult to take away this vital policy, which is doing the bulk of our emissions reduction.

I am curious if the member is pushing his government to close the loopholes and enshrine industrial carbon pricing in legislation.