Peggy Nash

[Science and Technology, December 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the senseless cuts to the Canadian Space Agency come after a decade of budget freezes under Liberal and Conservative governments.

While NASA is launching Exploration Flight Test-1 tomorrow, the first crew-capable spacecraft to leave low-earth orbit in more than 40 years, the Conservatives prefer cutting funding to science across the board and muzzling scientists.

Why is the government pursuing these cuts to the CSA? Why is it laying people off from our space agency?

[Parkdale Anti-Violence Education Working Group, December 3rd, 2014]

As we approach the 25th anniversary of the Montreal massacre, I want to pay tribute to work in my riding done by PAVE, the Parkdale Anti-Violence Education Working Group. This coalition of service providers takes action on International Women's Day, Take Back the Night, and December 6, the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women.

I am proud to join PAVE each year to present the Rose McGroarty Memorial Scholarship to a woman who has survived violence and has enhanced the lives of other women and children in Parkdale.

PAVE brings together women from the community to help them develop into leaders and find their voice to fight sexual violence and the accompanying silence and isolation.

Let us all thank groups like PAVE that work to end violence against women so that the Montreal massacre is never repeated.

[Poverty, December 1st, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, nearly 400,000 Ontarians are using food banks every month, which is all we need to know about the Conservatives' economic record. This says it all.

Conservatives have let hundreds of thousands of good jobs disappear while the number of precarious jobs has increased, and 1.7 million jobs in Ontario are considered insecure. Now we have a situation in which people who are working full time need to use food banks.

Where is the government's action plan to reduce food bank use and poverty in Ontario?

[Poverty, December 1st, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, Conservatives' economic mismanagement has had grave consequences for Ontario. As good jobs have disappeared, nearly 400,000 Ontarians have been forced to rely on food banks every month. They are doing this just to put food on the table. Most shockingly, the number of Ontario families forced to walk into a food bank for the first time ever rose 20% over the last year.

Counting on food banks to feed families is not a good economic strategy. Why have the Conservatives allowed this to happen?

[Steel Industry, November 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, Canadian steel companies and workers are being shut out of opportunities because of the government's failure to do anything about creeping buy-American policies.

Now a ferry dock project in Canada on federally owned land is closed to Canadian steel companies. Canadian workers and businesses are looking for more than concern from the government.

What is the minister actually doing to correct this situation?

[Business of Supply, November 27th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I think that gets to the crux of the question here.

Free, in terms of free the market, sounds very good, but in fact what we saw with thalidomide is that there was a terrible price to pay. It is not free. We all learned as we became adults that rules are usually there for a purpose, and there are some rules that we need to obey because they make for a better society, whether it is a stop sign or not allowing poisons to be ingested by pregnant women.

As I said earlier, sometimes ideology that talks about free this and free that is very seductive, but a society needs to co-operate. We all act more productively, more coherently, and more safely when we act in concert.

Safe regulation and coherent regulation is part of that responsibility. We failed in the past; let us not fail in the future.

[Business of Supply, November 27th, 2014]

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

If we compare the reactions of this and previous governments to the reaction of governments in Germany or the UK, for example, we see that the latter have already compensated thalidomide victims. In fact, they give the victims thousands of dollars every year. In the United Kingdom, for example, each victim receives $98,000 Canadian annually. It is an important recognition of the government's responsibility for having caused this tragedy.

On a side note, it is really unbelievable that the minister did not even read the report from the thalidomide survivors task force.

However, today we have the opportunity to turn that inaction around. We need to take urgent action to support and compensate the survivors.

[Business of Supply, November 27th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, it is one of the more important days in the House to be able to stand and speak. It is not only a subject which is extremely important, but one in which, because of co-operation on all sides of the House, we are able to have a serious and full debate without resorting to the extreme partisanship that sometimes takes place in the House.

I am pleased this afternoon to share my time with the hon. member for Churchill.

During my time, I would like to speak first of all about the importance of drug safety and of regulations.

Sometimes governments today, and many people and theoreticians in our society, talk about the value of deregulation, of leaving everything up to the marketplace. Surely, the issue of public health and safety, and something as specific as drug safety, are a very key and important role for government. In the case of thalidomide, the government clearly did not do its job. The government, for whatever reasons at the time, failed to protect the health and safety of Canadians.

The use of the drug thalidomide in Canada has been rightly called one of the most serious drug catastrophes anywhere.

I have met individuals who were affected by thalidomide. They are charming people. They are like normal people everywhere, except they have very serious physical deformities. The people I have met are incredibly courageous and dignified. In spite of the incredible barriers they face, they try to live their lives as fully as possible, and with as much dignity as possible.

It is important that we have a strong regulatory regime to ensure that we have drug safety. It is important for Canadians to count on their government, whether it is in the area of pharmaceuticals, or it is food safety, transportation safety, all areas where people would normally rely on their government to look out for their best interests.

In the case of thalidomide, we had a situation where a drug that was not permitted by other governments was approved and sold in Canada. It was a drug that was designed to reduce nausea in pregnant women. Women rely on their doctors and on public safety laws to ensure their safety, especially during pregnancy. In my own pregnancies, I was hyperconscious of my safety. Pregnant women are always concerned about what they are breathing in, what they are eating and drinking, to make sure that the safety of the fetus is protected. In the case of thalidomide, unlike other governments, the Government of Canada failed.

I want to salute my colleague from Vancouver East for her work in the broad field of health, and also her work with thalidomide survivors. I also want to thank her for bringing forward today's motion. The motion calls on the House to provide full support to the survivors of thalidomide, recognize the urgent need to defend the rights and dignity of those affected, and provide support to survivors in co-operation with the thalidomide survivors task force.

It is important that the relationship be one of collaboration, co-operation, and respect, not of charity. These individuals did nothing wrong. Their parents did nothing wrong. They believed in the government and the regulatory regime of the day, and sadly they were failed.

I have been contacted by many community members about this, all calling for the government to right this wrong, and to support the thalidomide survivors in Canada to ensure they not only get compensation and support, but to ensure that such a public health disaster never happens again.

I have a letter that is particularly moving. It is from a constituent who elaborates on the facts that we now know about thalidomide and its impact throughout the 1960s. She was personally affected by this public health catastrophe because her sister was one of the victims of thalidomide. I was very moved by the letter from this constituent. She wrote to me and my provincial counterpart about her sister, Kim Beeston, the very first thalidomide baby born in Canada, who was delivered in hospital in Toronto on January 20, 1962.

A photo of her with her parents holding their bright-eyed, smiling girl was featured in The Globe and Mail. For years Kim was followed by the media. She became an avid swimmer, competed in wheelchair basketball, and hitchhiked across Canada with her dog Sam. She was an activist, pressing for wheelchair-adapted housing. However, she then began to withdraw because her body began to fail her and she had chronic pain. Sadly, she passed away over a decade ago in a one-bedroom public housing unit in Toronto.

She had a great deal of scarring across her body because of the impacts of thalidomide. She had almost non-existent legs and very deformed feet and toes. She was born with the damage of thalidomide, and her sister said that its shadow trailed her to her death.

The day after she died, her father took his life. He left a note addressed to his daughter. He was apologizing to her, said her younger sister. He felt responsible that he could not be there 24/7 to care for her. Ultimately, he was blaming himself.

This family's story is a lesson about the forgotten fallout of thalidomide. The need to relieve the victims' suffering is evident. The tragedy of the Beeston family began when Kim's late mother swallowed a pill with her doctor's blessing. The ripples of that single act never stopped.

On behalf of Kim and her family, the sister wrote:

It is time the Canadian Government took responsibility for this horrific event in our history, the remaining Thalidomide Survivors deserve no less!

Therefore, I would urge all members in the House to think not only of the Beeston family but of all of the thalidomide survivors. Let us ensure that these survivors are compensated, are supported, are treated with respect, and that their needs are dealt with in terms of support and accommodation for the rest of their days. Let us also reaffirm to Canadians that we must never, ever fall prey to ideological communications that somehow convince us that government does not matter and that everything should be deregulated and left up to the private sector alone, because that indeed was the origin of this tragedy.

I will conclude there. However, I would like to thank my colleagues on all sides of the House for this important debate today. I urge the government and all of us to get this done quickly.

[Business of Supply, November 27th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, it was back in the 1990s, under former prime minister Brian Mulroney, that the Conservative government required thalidomide survivors to sign an indemnity form giving up their right to sue in exchange for accepting a small, one-time payment that did not even begin to cover the expenses of a lifetime disability. We see the impact of that decision today, where so many of these survivors are struggling and are facing a bleak future without significant additional assistance.

Does the member opposite agree that Canada has a moral obligation to provide compensation for the thalidomide survivors?

[Canada Post, November 27th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, while millions of Canadians are losing their home delivery services, Canada Post is on track to post record profits. Seniors, people with disabilities, and many other homeowners are all being left behind.

Conservatives claimed these cuts were needed because Canada Post was going to lose hundreds of millions of dollars. Now that Canada Post is turning a large profit, will the Conservatives join with us and fight these cuts, or are they hell-bent on allowing Canada to become the only G7 country without home mail delivery?