House of Commons photoLost his last election, in 2015, with 30% of the vote.
Crisis in the Philippines November 20th, 2013
Mr. Chair, according to the Philippine government, there were 4,000 people killed by the typhoon, 18,000 injured and a whole lot of people still missing. The minister suggested there are some Canadians still missing. I wonder if the minister in his comments could let us know if they have identified those Canadians who are still missing.
It is a tragedy that affects all of us.
Crisis in the Philippines November 20th, 2013
Mr. Chair, I will be sharing my time with the member for Scarborough—Rouge River.
This typhoon was the strongest storm in recorded history to make landfall, with winds reaching 315 kilometres an hour. It is an enormous disaster, and I appreciate the minister's comments that there have been extra resources placed in the Philippines to handle visa applications, because I know from conversations with people in my riding that this is one of the things they are concerned about. People need to know they can be reunited with family members who have no place to live and want to come to Canada, maybe temporarily, maybe permanently. It is good to know there are extra resources on the ground. I did not get to ask him exactly how many resources are on the ground, but maybe he could answer that in one of his comments after my speech.
Housing November 20th, 2013
Mr. Speaker, today a rally for affordable housing was held on Parliament Hill, and no Conservative even bothered to show up.
While the Liberals were in power they eliminated funding for affordable housing, until NDP leader Jack Layton forced them to start investing again. Now the Conservatives are threatening to end affordable housing agreements, putting 200,000 more families at risk. When will the Conservatives do the right thing, restore long-term funding, and commit to addressing this housing crisis?
Petitions November 18th, 2013
Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to table petitions signed by my constituents calling on the government to amend the Navigable Waters Protection Act in order to reprotect Canada's lakes and rivers, including the heritage river, the Humber River, in my riding.
Respect for Communities Act November 18th, 2013
Mr. Speaker, I too have noticed the lack of government members speaking on this bill, which leads us to wonder just how important it is to the government members.
It is very important to the people of Canada. It is very important to the people who live in the cities of Toronto, Ottawa, and Vancouver that they have the ability to have a safe injection place to reduce public harm, not just to the individuals who are injecting themselves but to the community at large. This bill would get in the way of that. It would defy the Supreme Court decision by putting in place huge obstacles to the creation of safe injection sites.
One would think that in a parliamentary democracy, we would have a robust debate, back and forth, between both the government and opposition members. However, to this point, there has been very little from the government members.
Respect for Communities Act November 18th, 2013
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for that excellent question. That is precisely why community leaders, medical officers of health, and the medical community have rallied around the notion of finding a safe place for people who cannot control their addictions, whom we understand to be disabled Canadians, to inject their injectables.
Public health would be increased. We would have a better place to live. We would not have needles in parks. We would not have an increase in HIV and hepatitis C. We would not have individuals who are finding public places to inject themselves, leading to a lack of safety in communities. This is about public safety, not ideology.
Respect for Communities Act November 18th, 2013
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to the bill, which was formerly Bill C-65 and is now Bill C-2.
The bill is on something about respect for communities, but that is not really what is going on here. It is an attempt to undermine a Supreme Court decision by putting in rules and regulations, which the Supreme Court has asked the government to do, that would make it virtually impossible to actually abide by the Supreme Court decision, which says that these places should be permitted to exist.
Once again, we have a government that ignores facts, statistics, and evidence. This is a government, do not forget, that wanted to eliminate evidence by closing down such things as the long form census and the Experimental Lakes Area. The Conservatives do want there to be evidence. They do not want Canadians to know what they are up to by there being evidence of what might happen.
We have a government that acts, time and again, in opposition to evidence-based decision-making. It acts in opposition to science-based decision-making. It acts in opposition to decision-making that is for the public good. Instead, its actions seem to be knee-jerk reactions that give the Conservatives opportunities to raise money to get elected and to continue this practice of doing things that are not in the interest of the public.
This is yet another example of an action by a government that is attempting to raise alarm bells for citizens about what might or might not happen in their neighbourhoods.
So far, only three communities I am aware of have actually asked for the authority the bill would grant, albeit without going through some pretty steep hoops. They are Toronto, Vancouver, and Ottawa.
My riding is in Toronto, in one of the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods in Ontario. It is against that context that I want to talk about why it is the NDP believes that the bill is completely wrong-headed. In fact, the bill would be defying the Supreme Court ruling.
The Supreme Court ruling directed the government to come up with mechanisms to allow these things to happen. Instead, we are getting a bill that would make it well-nigh impossible for a community, a public health agency, doctors, and respected members of a community to actually put in place a safe injection site where public harm and harm to individuals would be reduced.
If the Conservatives are opposed to reducing harm, why are they in government? The whole point of us being here is to try to reduce harm. However, the bill would actually increase it in places where we should be trying to reduce it.
The government has taken its cue, based on the questions I have been hearing so far today, from the notion that people do not want one of those things in their neighbourhood. Well, I walk in the park in my neighbourhood. It is a big, beautiful park on the banks of the Humber River, and there are needles in that park from drug users who have not had a safe place to inject, and therefore they litter the ground. One cannot walk safely in my little park, because there is no place for harm reduction in my neighbourhood. There is no harm reduction place where people can go to inject the drugs safely.
An addiction is recognized by medical authorities, the public, insurance companies, and even the reputable sources of disability recognition as, in fact, a disability, not a crime. It is not something to be looked down upon. We need to find ways to help individuals who have addictions.
One way to help these individuals, which has been successfully promoted in Vancouver, is a safe injection site. It is a place where it has been found that harm is reduced for the public, both the individuals who are addicted and the public at large, by providing them with a place they can go to safely inject themselves with what we otherwise understand are dangerous drugs.
We would all love it if these things did not exist, but they do exist. They exist in a manner in which the outcome of the use of these drugs in unsupervised ways, in unsafe ways, has led to significant increases in other diseases, such as HIV and hepatitis C. Who is going to look after those individuals when those diseases get the better of them? Those diseases will eventually get the better of those individuals, and it is the public, not the individuals themselves, that will pay for their health care.
We are dealing with a government that is preaching about the government having to watch every penny. Here is a situation in which the taxpayer, which Conservatives claim to be on the side of, will end up paying more because of this shortsighted bill. The taxpayer will have to look after the individuals who eventually come to hospitals and medical facilities as a result of diseases we could have prevented and limited had we been dealing with them in a more proactive way early on, when these individuals started to inject themselves unsafely.
We should be doing more to try to deal with the addictions themselves. As we have seen in the press very recently, in a big and public way, addictions are a real problem for individuals in my city. One of the first things that happens to addicts is that they deny it. They do not have a problem.
I was a union representative for many years, and many were the individuals who claimed they had no problem. Some we were able to help. Some got treatment. Others did not, and unfortunately, they became a burden to the health system first, and then, in some cases, they passed away. Those individuals were a burden on society, not because they were not able to get the help they needed but because they denied that they had that problem in the first place.
The same is going to be true of individuals who are seeking help at the safe injection sites. Some of them do not believe they have a problem. How are we going to convince them to get help unless we lead them to the help? That is part of what the safe injection sites do. They provide a safe place where addicts can get counselling and where they can get attention from nurses and doctors. They can therefore be exposed to the help to get them free from their addictions.
That kind of thing is being asked for by the City of Toronto as part of its request to the federal government. In fact, the City of Toronto will be speaking on this matter when the bill goes to committee, because it has recommended that the Board of Health make a submission to the federal government to register its opposition to Bill C-65. This is a recommendation from the medical officer of health of Toronto, by the way. It will also recommend the development of a more feasible CDSA exemption application process for supervised injection services, in consultation with relevant provincial public health, public safety, and community stakeholders, including people who use drugs.
The Board of Health urges the provincial government to fund the integration of supervised injection services on a pilot basis, but they cannot do that if the federal government will not give its permission. That is what we are up against. We are up against a government that, as evidenced by the questions I have been hearing so far, is fundamentally opposed to the existence of these things anywhere. It has put into the bill such blockades or walls to get over that it will be virtually impossible for any of the cities in our country to create a supervised injection site with permission from the government.
Petitions November 5th, 2013
Mr. Speaker, residents in my community of York South—Weston who endured terrible flooding last July 8, in part caused by inadequate and antiquated sewers, have signed a petition calling on the Government of Canada to immediately take steps to fund urgent infrastructure projects in order to upgrade our sewer systems and avoid future property damage.
Safeguarding Canada's Seas and Skies Act November 4th, 2013
Mr. Speaker, just this week there was yet another derailment just west of Edmonton, so we have had two on the same line in two weeks. In this case, sulphur dioxide was being transported in one of the tank cars. Luckily, it did not rupture, but something is wrong with the system when we keep having these incidents involving dangerous goods being transported in a way that is not necessarily safe.
The railroads argue that the number of accidents is way down. The railroads have forgotten that the number of cars carrying dangerous goods has risen exponentially, and if only one of those bad things happens in the centre of a town—oops, it did, in Lac-Mégantic—then we have a disaster. We have to prevent those disasters.
Safeguarding Canada's Seas and Skies Act November 4th, 2013
Mr. Speaker, the whole notion of what is in a tanker is something that needs to be absolutely crystal clear before anything is done about changing the rules by which these tankers operate. If in fact something different is going to be in that tanker that we do not know how to clean up, as is evidenced by what is going on in Kalamazoo, then hold the phone. Let us not put it out there. Let us not actually put anything in a tanker that we do not know how to clean up should it spill.
As is evidenced by the fact that there have been so many spills already, it is going to happen, so let us make sure we know what it is and how to clean it up before we put it in the tanker.