Nicole Demers

[Canada Consumer Product Safety Act, May 1st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am very sorry, but I did not hear my colleague's question because my earpiece was turned off. Would he be kind enough to repeat the question?

[Canada Consumer Product Safety Act, May 1st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for asking the question.

That is one of the questions that committee members will have to discuss when they deal with this bill after it is referred to the Standing Committee on Health.

It is true that nowadays, we have a lot of trade with countries that we never used to trade with. These days, many of the products we consume are imported from countries whose manufacturing quality and ability we do not know much about, just as we do not know much about the products they use in manufacturing.

Obviously, we need very clear, specific rules for importing these products to ensure that they can be put on store shelves when they get here and that the consumers who buy them do not have to worry about using them.

[Canada Consumer Product Safety Act, May 1st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, that is a rather difficult question to answer. I like to give public servants the benefit of the doubt and assume they do their jobs responsibly and correctly. The problem has not been that public servants did not know what to inspect, but that there were not enough people to do the inspections. There were not enough inspectors. We must also ensure that these people receive extensive training, so that they have the right information and can properly inspect products.

It is true that more and more people are calling on the government to be more diligent. That is fine. It is true that more and more people want to sue the government over products that were recalled too late. If inspectors are more careful and have more resources, I think that we will be in a position to recall defective products much more quickly. If that is the case, we will not have to worry as much about people suing the government.

But I am not sure. I am not yet familiar enough with the bill to know whether it is tough enough to allow for products to be properly evaluated. I hope that it will be tough enough and that inspectors will have the necessary information to do their jobs.

[Canada Consumer Product Safety Act, May 1st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, my constituents have also contacted me, of course, to express their concerns about this bill. It is not right to pass judgment on people who take vitamins, whether vitamin A, B, C, D or E. I have been taking these vitamins for years. And I continue to take them on the advice of my oncologist. She told me quite openly that my vitamin consumption probably helped me beat the cancer I suffered from eight years ago, from which I have made a full recovery.

Something else worries me even more. The Bloc Québécois introduced a bill to include therapeutic and natural products in a completely different, separate bill. Certain products, such as essential oils, can indeed prove dangerous for certain people, like seniors. I do not want to see a free market for all these products, but I would like to see them monitored better and I would like them to be generally accessible to the people who use them. These products are commonly found in drug stores, and pharmacists are very familiar with the contents of the products they sell on their store shelves. I do not believe they would want their business to sell anything that is harmful to our health.

We must be careful about what we want to restrict. On the other hand, we must also make sure that the products we do not restrict are properly monitored in order to ensure they are not harmful to our health. I am referring to essential oils that can be very strong because they are very concentrated. Some seniors have had very serious problems because of unregulated essential oils.

Thus, I am in favour of a more open market for these natural products. I think that medicine and alternative medicine must come together. However, we must also ensure that not all products are blindly accepted.

[Canada Consumer Product Safety Act, May 1st, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to join the debate today on Bill C-52. As you are no doubt aware, I had the pleasure of serving on the Standing Committee on Health for some time and this subject has been on the committee’s agenda for a very long time. Quebeckers, like Canadians, are very concerned about the products that come into the country and are consumed by residents of Quebec and Canada without any assurance that these products are not harmful and that they will not cause health problems.

We have seen in the past three or four years that Health Canada has recalled many products. Unfortunately, very often that is done very late because Health Canada did not have enough inspectors or enough laboratories to conduct the necessary testing, as the Auditor General has reported. As a result, many products were not subject to testing and wound up on the shelves of various stores, either food markets, superstores or shops where one finds toys, other objects and even products such as toothpaste. These products have been identified as being very dangerous to health. We have also seen products for babies that are very dangerous. They could even harm their reproductive capacity in the future. With the declining birthrate that we are experiencing, we certainly should ensure that our children are also able have children. We must ensure that the products used to bathe children and make them beautiful are not dangerous or toxic.

The Bloc Québécois believes it is important that this bill be referred to the Standing Committee on Health so that the different measures can be examined in depth. For a long time, we have been asking the government to strengthen the requirements, to conduct more thorough and more stringent testing to ensure that the products we consume are quality products. There are still serious gaps in the bill. That is why we agree that the bill must be referred to committee so those shortcomings, at least, can be corrected.

It is very unusual for a bill to give special status to some company, manufacturer or particular product. Bill C-52, though, gives special status to manufacturers of tobacco products. They have had special status for a very long time, even though the costs of tobacco consumption are very well known, especially for the young people in our society, who are smoking more and more. We know too that the manufacturers have developed roundabout ways of attracting young people to tobacco. They sell individually packaged cigarillos tasting of banana, oranges, vanilla and chocolate. We have a real problem on our hands when tobacco products are being individually packaged to develop a dependency in young people.

A number of provinces have put a stop to smoking in public places, restaurants, parliaments, schools, school grounds, and hospitals. Smoking is being stamped out everywhere because it is a danger to human health. Tobacco is one of the products that cause the most deaths per year. I know very well because I myself am an inveterate smoker who is having a hard time quitting.

I know how addictive tobacco is and how hard it is to stop. But the bill before us exempts tobacco. Tobacco will not be regulated under it and will not be affected. How is that possible? If we really want to protect the health of Quebeckers and Canadians and take a hard look at the harmful effects of various products on our health, we should also legislate against tobacco products. How can we possibly not do it? This is one of the things we are most concerned about in this bill.

It is not the only one though. As my colleague said just a little while ago, we do not have enough inspectors to meet the increased needs under the bill to ensure that all consumer products imported into Canada are checked. There will not be enough inspectors, even if the bill says that companies will now have to keep a record of all the consumer complaints they receive and the problems found with products, as well as all the times that products have to be recalled. We will therefore have more information about products.

People who manufacture, import, sell or test products will now be required to have documents that will give us detailed information about the retailer so we can know the person from whom they obtained the product and the location where, and the period during which, they sold the product. Those persons will also have to have the prescribed documents, and keep the documents at their place of business in Canada or at any other prescribed place and, on written request, provide the Minister with those documents. The Minister could, subject to any terms and conditions that the Minister may specify, exempt a person from the requirement to keep those documents if the Minister considers it unnecessary or impractical for the person to keep them. We are probably talking about genuinely important bundles of documents.

The requirement that documents about the history of a product be kept will certainly allow for better traceability in respect of the various products that may be harmful to consumers here. We agree with this. There are several other aspects of this bill that we agree with, but as I said, we will have to study several points very carefully. The general public did not feel that they were involved in the development of this bill, either in the drafting or in the way consultations were conducted before it was prepared.

People are sending us letters and memos to let us know they are not satisfied with the way the consultations were held because there was no consultation, properly speaking. This summer a number of toys containing lead were recalled, as were several products that were harmful to health.

Recently, we saw what happened with bisphenol A. I am very sorry about this because a number of businesses have come right to the Hill here and given us these lovely clear plastic bottles we could use to carry our water, without knowing that those bottles might contain bisphenol A. Companies do not procure products because they are not operating out of goodwill, they do it from lack of knowledge and information. Health Canada should be capable of providing that information.

The only way we can be sure that we have a bill that truly meets the needs of Quebeckers and Canadians is by making sure that all of the people affected by the issues that this bill is meant to address, and not merely a few people, are consulted.

We will certainly be making sure that we do our work in committee responsibly, as always, and that we ask the Minister and his representatives the necessary questions so we can be satisfied that the bill will contain everything that is needed to respond to our concerns.

And we will certainly also be putting the subject of tobacco back on the table to see whether there is not something that can be done to include that substance, like any other toxic product, in the products that we want to see better identified and against which we want to be better protected. We know that if we do nothing to ensure that tobacco products are strictly regulated, there are people who may still be harmed by those products.

My main concern is for children, who were affected so much by recalls last summer and fall and this past winter and will continue to be affected, because recalls are still being made. These recalls involve mainly products from foreign companies we know little about and have not assessed. As the Auditor General put it so well, there were not enough Health Canada inspectors to do the work they had to do.

Mattel had to recall thousands upon thousands of toys. This is very disturbing, and it is very worrisome for parents, who buy Christmas gifts for their children or gifts for babies to make them as comfortable as possible, when they do not know whether they can have confidence that the product will not make their child sick, because unfortunately Health Canada has not assessed these products.

Certainly, when the bill goes to the Standing Committee on Health, our representatives on that committee—including the member for Québec, who is doing an excellent job—who know a great deal about the situation, will do whatever they can to amend the bill so that it really does what the public wants it to do.

For example, the heavier fines provided for in the bill are a good idea. It is important that companies pay much heavier fines when they fail to comply with the standards in effect. The precautionary principle the government wants to include in the bill is also very important. Compliance with the bill, which contains a statement about the precautionary principle in its preamble, will be very positive for all consumers.

The bill also gives more power and more tools to inspectors. More inspectors with more power will ensure that consumer products are healthier and less harmful. We will also ask a number of groups to testify and tell us what they would like to see in the bill.

[Justice, April 18th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, when will the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Status of Women and Official Languages have the courage to stand up and defend women? The free vote argument is not good enough. We clearly see the Conservative Party's reform agenda: to criminalize abortion through the back door, as was the case in more than 30 states in the United States. The religious right is thrilled, and so are pro-life groups.

Unless it is intending to criminalize abortion, will the government ask its members to vote against this bill, yes or no?

[Justice, April 18th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the National Assembly of Quebec unanimously passed the following motion:

That the National Assembly indicate to the Parliament of Canada that Bill C-484 should not be passed since it could give rise to significant uncertainty as regards the criminalization of abortion and the legal status of the fetus.

Will the government join with Quebec and defeat this completely unacceptable bill?

[Criminal Code, April 18th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to my colleague and I am very proud that he is taking an interest and trying to uphold the rights we have acquired over the years.

I know that my colleague is very young, so he likely does not remember that an entire society, Quebec's francophone society, was put on trial in October 1970. I was 20 years old, six and a half months pregnant, and I was a victim of and witness to the war measures unjustifiably instituted simply because a few people had misstepped and committed crimes. But an entire society was put on trial and things went too far. Hundreds of people were unjustly accused, without even being told what they were accused of.

This experience traumatized me for a long time. Now, when I hear about provisions that could infringe on rights and muzzle me, I have to question whether they are appropriate or legitimate. I wonder if my colleague thinks the government wants to include these provisions in the bill so that it can move forward with its right-wing agenda, its right-wing ideology.

[Bill C-484, April 17th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the Fédération des femmes du Québec and the Fédération du Québec pour le planning des naissances are again stating their opposition to Bill C-484, because it represents a real threat to the right to abortion. While the women's movement is mobilizing across Quebec and Canada, the Minister of Status of Women is doing nothing.

Will the minister stop hiding behind excuses, such as saying that it is a free vote? Will she do her job and defend women?

[Venant Cauchy, April 11th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, Venant Cauchy, a great Quebecker, a man of the world, an internationally renowned philosopher and an apostle of Quebec sovereignty, died last week at the venerable age of 83.

For many years, we were privileged to be part of his entourage, and to benefit from his friendship, his teachings and his wisdom.

Even when he knew his days were numbered, he kept thinking of the country of which he had always dreamed. I would like to read the last thing he wrote in Laval on March 8: “We would like to extend a cordial invitation to you to be part of Quebec's society, which welcomes all communities that are open to our country. May you find it to be a society that lives and breathes freedom and education. Long live a free Quebec!”

Venant, my Bloc Québécois colleagues and I salute you one last time.