Michael Ignatieff

[Afghanistan, November 23rd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, this does not add up.

The minister is saying that he knew that torture was a possibility from the moment they took office in late January 2006. No action of any remedial kind was taken until April 2007.

Why, then, has the government been smearing the reputation of a public servant who tried to tell it what was happening in that period? None of this adds up.

When will the government set up a public inquiry to give Canadians the truth?

[Afghanistan, November 23rd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, in other words, it is reasonable to assume that detainees were being abused.

Last week Richard Colvin testified that Afghan detainees were being tortured and the Conservative government knew about it. The government responded by attacking Mr. Colvin's reputation.

Now the defence minister says he knew that torture was a possibility from the moment the Conservatives took office. Why did the Conservatives take 15 months to act?

[Afghanistan, November 23rd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the minister is trying to make us believe that there is no credible proof of torture in Afghanistan.

And yet, the highest official, General Natynczyk, has said that prisoner transfers were stopped on a number of occasions.

Why were these transfers stopped? Why did they resume?

Why does the government not try telling the truth about this matter?

[The Environment, November 17th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I would remind the minister that the Conservatives have been in office for four long years. They cannot keep blaming other people.

The Conservatives talk about leadership. I will tell the House what leadership looks like. China has invested $250 billion in green tech. The United States is investing six times per capita what we are doing.

It is one thing not to lead but it is another thing to not even follow. Why has Canada fallen so far behind?

[The Environment, November 17th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the government has been giving that reply for nearly four years. Three plans, three ministers, no action.

The government keeps promising Canadians this plan, but the environment minister reported from Copenhagen today that the government is going to put off all publication of regulations until the end of 2010. The conference in Copenhagen is three weeks away.

How are Canadians supposed to believe that the government is going to defend their interests when the government has no plan whatever?

[The Environment, November 17th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, for the past four years, this government has been promising Canadians a plan to reduce greenhouse gases. Every time, it pushes back the deadlines.

Today the Minister of the Environment has once again said he will not announce any action plan until the end of 2010. The conference in Copenhagen is three weeks away. How can we protect the environment if the government refuses to take a position?

[Business of Supply, November 4th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his comments based on his experience of northern communities.

Like him, I have often been shocked by the situation of northern communities and the difficulties that they face in providing adequate health services.

This party is associated with the Kelowna accord and very clear commitments to fund improvements in aboriginal health, aboriginal education and aboriginal housing. We are disappointed with the reaction of the government to these challenges. We have pointed out the ways in which it has failed to respond quickly enough to aboriginal communities.

When I met aboriginal leaders from Manitoba, they pointed out the very sharp contrast between their sense of whether their communities are prepared to meet this epidemic and the public claims by the Minister of Health. There is a gap between the lived experience of these chiefs and what the Minister of Health has been saying about the state of preparation to meet the outbreak. We are very concerned about that issue.

[Business of Supply, November 4th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I want to acknowledge with gratitude the public service of the hon. member opposite. This side of the House would always treat that public service with the greatest respect.

The issue before the House is the public information of the Government of Canada. The issue before the House is whether the government has done its job to provide clear, timely and accurate information to the people of Canada about the public health challenges that they face in respect of H1N1.

It is our view that this message has been confused, dilatory and underfunded. That is the position we have taken. We have tried to point out that had the government spent less money on self-promotion and more money on public health promotion, we would avoid the confusion that we see in the lines across the country.

It is extremely important that everybody behaves responsibly in relation to the H1N1 epidemic and provide accurate and timely information to all Canadians. It is also no secret that northern aboriginal communities face particular challenges which are the responsibility of federal authorities. We have been very critical of the ways in which federal authorities have failed to provide accurate and timely public health information to that community.

[Business of Supply, November 4th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend the hon. member for her remarkable work, which stems from her experience as a family doctor.

This is a debate in which the opposition seeks to put forward concrete and practical solutions to help the country through the situation it is dealing with on H1N1, but it is also an opportunity for us to highlight the fact that this is a government that does not seem to understand the proper functions of government, which are to plan, to inform and to lead. There is no more basic area where the government has to show competence and compassion than in public health.

From the beginning of this crisis there has been a flagrant lack of preparedness by the Conservative government. The H1N1 flu appeared for the first time on April 23, in Mexico. By the end of July, more than 35 governments had placed their order for the vaccine. The Conservative government did not order the vaccine until August 6.

This delay goes a long way to explaining the confusion that reigned in September and October.

The Conservatives started vaccination behind many other countries. China, Australia, United States, Sweden, Japan and the United Kingdom, all began vaccinations before Canada, which did not begin its vaccination program until October 26.

The Conservatives did not properly plan the vaccination of pregnant women. We have already talked about that. There was total confusion in the public information for pregnant women. This is a total failure of their duty as the government.

The Conservatives only used one vaccine supplier even though the Chief Public Health Officer, Dr. David Butler-Jones, has said that the government's contract allows it to purchase vaccine from other providers. We want to know why the Conservatives have not done so.

The men and women at the GSK plant in Sainte Foy are working day and night, but they cannot meet the demand because of this government's delays.

Another area in which we begin to understand why the failure to plan does not just go back to this summer but it goes back over four years is the fact that the government had no emergency preparedness plan whatever for emergencies in general. One of those emergencies obviously is pandemic planning.

Four years ago the Conservatives should have begun that planning process to put a plan in place. They have not done so. The Auditor General has now pointed this out to the country and the country begins to understand that this is a problem that did not just begin with planning failures this summer, it tracks back in fact to the beginning of the government's mandate.

It is a failure to plan but it is equally a failure to inform. The Conservatives consistently failed to give Canadians credible information about the vaccine. On April 28 the health minister told this House, in response to questions from this side of the House, that the government would stockpile H1N1 vaccine, but it did not happen. On August 12 the health minister told the country that the government was prepared for this fall's outbreak, but it was caught off guard. On October 20, just two weeks ago, the health minister told Canadians that the vaccine would be available to all Canadians in early November and just late last week she began to say, “Well actually, we do not mean early November, we actually mean we might get it done by Christmas”.

It is this constant inability to get a clear story out to Canadians that has caused enormous confusion and anxiety in Canadian families. One of the reasons why this has occurred is that the Conservative government chose as a deliberate strategy to spend more than $60 million promoting its own economic action plan and only one-tenth of that on public information. This seems to me a scandalous display of partisanship when the clear duty of government is to inform the public about public health risks.

We also need to talk about the lack of leadership in all these areas, a lack of leadership and coordination between the federal government, the provinces and the territories.

My colleague evoked the need to invest $400 million. It was in the 2006 budget. The clear intention of that 2006 budget, a Conservative budget, was to provide resources so that we could have front-line public health services at the level that a modern civilized country like Canada should have. Instead, the money was not spent and we are now in a situation of frantic improvisation by hard-pressed public health authorities who deserve better from the federal Government of Canada, that is to say, leadership and clear direction.

The health minister, instead of accepting responsibility for these failures, has said, “We do not deliver health care”. The fact is that these pandemics do not care about jurisdictions. The role of the federal government is to provide coordination, planning and investment, and to burden share with hard-pressed local, provincial and territorial authorities.

We have had clinics shut down in Alberta, New Brunswick and Manitoba. We have had Ontario hospitals saying that they do not have room for any potential surge of H1N1 patients. In St. John's and Halifax local authorities report dwindling vaccine supplies. This is unworthy of a country of our reputation, and the failure is squarely at the door of the Conservative government.

The Prime Minister himself has been absent throughout this matter. At a moment when we would expect a Prime Minister to stand up and take leadership of this issue, he has been entirely absent.

He has not met with the premiers of the provinces and the territories nor with health officials. He has not shown any leadership during this crisis.

I want to remind the House that this is not the first public health emergency in which the government has failed to respond. We had the nuclear medicine fiascos, not one interruption of nuclear medicine but two on this government's watch. Now we have the H1N1. It begins to resemble a pattern of negligence, a pattern of incompetence, a pattern of “we just do not care about this issue”, and behind all of that, it seems to me, is an ideological disposition which holds, “What do we care? This is not the function of a federal government”. This side of the House believes passionately in the role of an active and compassionate federal government in providing leadership in the protection of the public health of Canadian citizens.

We on this side are attempting to do our job. We raised questions about the H1N1 epidemic the minute it made its presence known, its presence evident in Mexico. The minute it was sequenced in Canada, we began to ask for action. We have been asking for action consistently, and today's opposition motion puts forward extremely concrete proposals that are meant in a constructive spirit. Their chief intent is for the federal government to step up and provide resources to hard-pressed provincial and territorial authorities. We feel that this, if done, would begin to restore Canada's reputation as a country with a first-class public health system right across the country.

I want to make it clear that the Auditor General's report, which makes it clear that there has been a complete failure to provide comprehensive national emergency planning, adds an additional dimension to this debate, which has come to our attention, thanks to her excellent report. In the light of the Auditor General's report, the supply day motion now under debate, standing in the name of the member for St. Paul's, merits amendment.

I now, therefore, move:

That the motion be amended by adding the following:

...and (d) implement the recommendations of the Auditor General of Canada pertaining to emergency management as set forth in Chapter Seven of her 2009 fall report to the House of Commons.

[Roméo LeBlanc, November 4th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to join in the tributes to a great Canadian, a member of the House, a member of the other place and a devoted servant of Canada, the Right Hon. Roméo LeBlanc.

Roméo LeBlanc was always a proud Acadian, a leader and a beacon for his community, especially as the 25th Governor General of Canada and the first Acadian to bear that title. At every stage of his long and impressive career, Roméo LeBlanc was dedicated to the service of his country.

He was an incredible fisheries minister, at home with everyone on the wharf. The bond he developed with everyone on the wharf and in the whole fishing industry was legendary. He held the post for eight years. I think he was the distinguished Canadian to hold that post the longest. We remember his service to the fishing industry and the fisheries with affection and respect.

As a senator and then Governor General, Roméo LeBlanc was a tireless advocate of education, volunteerism and teaching the history of Canada. He also championed the cause of improving living conditions for the first nations.

We want to publicly offer our most sincere condolences to the LeBlanc family, especially to our colleague and friend the hon. member for Beauséjour, his son, and to his daughter Geneviève.

Today, in the place that he served, we pay tribute to Roméo LeBlanc's career. We remember him as a consummate public servant and a staunch believer in Canada and the Canadian people.

While we mourn the loss of a great Canadian, we also celebrate his life and his place in the history of a country that he loved with a passion.

If I could conclude in a personal way, I think anyone who attended the funeral service in that little church in Memramcook will never forget the deep affection and love that was expressed for him by the crowd outside and the crowd inside.

And when we all sang that beautifully melancholic song, Partons la mer est belle, we felt the affection and respect that everyone at that ceremony, everyone in that small town felt for a very great Canadian who will be sorely missed.