Ralph Goodale

[Food and Drugs Act, June 10th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I have just a few remarks to address in this debate. They take the form of certain questions which I would be grateful if the Minister of Health would take the opportunity to address before this debate comes to an end.

Bill C-51 amends the Food and Drugs Act to modernize the regulatory system for foods and therapeutic products, such as contact lenses, breast implants, pharmaceuticals, and so forth. The bill seeks to improve the surveillance of benefits and risks of therapeutic products through their life cycle. It is intended to improve the compliance and enforcement measures by corporations to encourage them to report adverse reactions or potential health threats associated with market products. To this end, the bill proposes to give very substantial regulatory powers to the minister. That is the type, broadly, of legislation we are dealing with in Bill C-51.

We in the Liberal Party obviously are committed, as we always have been, to improving the health and safety of Canadians and to making sure that we have an appropriate legislative framework to that end. We obviously support measures which strengthen the regulatory process to ensure that Canadians are able to have access to the safest and most effective food and therapeutic products.

However, members will have noticed as this debate has gone on that a number of problems have been brought to the attention of the House which need to be addressed. I would like to highlight a couple of those and ask the government for its considered response.

I am sure that all members of Parliament have received letters from a variety of people across the country with respect to the professional services of naturopathic doctors. The statement has been made by those who defend this legislation that the bill actually has nothing to do with that broad category of activity.

I would like to read briefly into the record one of these letters that I have received from a constituent in Regina. I would ask the minister or the parliamentary secretary to be kind enough to provide responses to the questions that this individual has raised. I will read portions of the letter as follows:

I am writing to you as one of your constituents to express my concerns about Bill C-51 and the impact it will have on the ability of my naturopathic doctor (ND) to treat my health concerns safely and effectively....

As an informed patient I have chosen to be treated by a naturopathic doctor utilizing natural therapies and substances to ensure optimal health. I would like some assurances that my choice to see a naturopathic doctor...will not be negatively impacted by Bill C-51.

I have the following questions:

1. Will Bill C-51 exclude my ND [naturopathic doctor] from having access to all the products that he/she needs to treat all my health concerns?

2. Will Bill C-51 result in fewer natural health products being available in the Canadian marketplace?

3. Will inspectors have the ability to enter premises under the search and seizure provisions without a warrant or a judge's approval?

That is the end of the bulk of the letter. I am sure the tone of that letter is familiar to many members in the House who would have received similar letters. It is important for the government to put on the record the official response to those concerns so that Canadians who have those kinds of concerns can be reassured about the impact of this legislation.

Finally, I have a suggestion to offer to the Minister of Health. It has been said in parliamentary circles in the last several days that when this bill gets to the committee stage, the government intends to bring forward what are considered to be significant amendments. We do not know if that is in fact the case, but the rumour that seems to be circulating in the Standing Committee on Health is that when Bill C-51 arrives in the committee officially, there will be significant amendments to the bill brought forward by the government itself.

That presents a problem for the House. We are now coming near the end, I suspect, of the debate at second reading and very shortly we will be called upon to vote on approval in principle of this legislation before it goes to the Standing Committee on Health for detailed consideration clause by clause. I would suggest that before the House is asked to vote at second reading on approval in principle of the bill, the House needs to know what amendments the minister has in mind. Are there amendments that are likely to be forthcoming at the committee stage? Are they significant amendments as they have been portrayed? If they are significant amendments, they may well affect the principle of the bill.

Second reading, as we all know, is approval in principle. Once we vote on approval in principle at second reading, a lot of water has gone under the bridge. It is important for the House to know exactly on what it is voting.

How can the House approve in principle Bill C-51 now if we are not told specifically what that principle is? Will that principle change? Are these amendments that the minister proposes to introduce in the committee so fundamental that they might take this bill in a new or different direction that is not contemplated by the scheme of the bill that is presently before the House?

There are two alternatives. First, before this debate comes to an end, it would be very helpful if the Minister of Health or the parliamentary secretary or someone on behalf of the government would simply inform the House now of the type of amendments the government may have in mind when the bill gets to the committee stage. They have been portrayed generally as significant, but we have not yet been told the detail.

If we are to vote on approval in principle of this bill which at a later stage is going to be amended, we are being asked now to buy a pig in a poke. I would simply ask the parliamentary secretary or the minister to tell us what the amendments are so we can make a considered judgment about Bill C-51 when we are asked to vote on it in principle at second reading.

The other alternative is if the government is not in a position to publish its amendments now or to inform the House about what those amendments might be eventually, the government could choose to simply suspend the debate at second reading. Instead of forcing the House now to vote in principle on something that may change at a subsequent date, the government could change its tactic and adopt the procedure that is set out in Standing Order 73(1), which is to send Bill C-51 to the Standing Committee on Health before the vote at second reading.

If that course of action were adopted, it would then be possible for members of Parliament to consider all dimensions of what is contained in Bill C-51, both the substance of the bill as it now exists and any proposed amendments the government might have in mind, without first having to vote on a principle, the substance of which we are not sure because it might change when it gets to the committee.

Either give us the amendments now so that we can know what the government has in mind or send the bill to committee before second reading so that members of Parliament will have more scope to change the bill if the principles contained in the amendments the government has in mind are not consistent with what the House would prefer.

Those are the points, briefly, that I wish to make on Bill C-51. They are offered in a spirit of trying to be constructive in this debate and bringing forward the concerns that people in my constituency, at least some of them, have expressed. I would ask the government if not now then at some other time in the debate to make an effort to respond to those points in the constructive spirit in which they are offered.

[Extension of Sitting Hours, June 9th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I would remind the hon. gentleman that there are two full sitting weeks remaining between now and June 20. As far as I know, the only day that will be treated in an unusual way, and quite rightly so, will be Wednesday, to deal with the aboriginal apology. Otherwise, it will be the normal flow of business for the remaining nine days.

The government has all of that time to advance its agenda. Maybe it should not have wasted the 16 days at the beginning of this session, or advanced all the other ways in which it has squandered the hours, so that this Parliament could have achieved something more.

[Extension of Sitting Hours, June 9th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure it is a very frustrating situation, particularly for members who have been here for some considerable period of time and have seen the House function in different ways.

There has been a unique style established by the current government in its management of House business. There is not, unfortunately, that spirit of collaboration, give and take, consultation and respect around the table that used to be a hallmark of how the institution would function.

Instead, time and time again, opposition parties are simply told that their views do not matter, that they do not matter, that “it is our way or the highway” and that they can just shove it. That is the attitude. Quite frankly, with that kind of attitude, it is very difficult to work out those collaborative arrangements. We try very hard, as we did at last week's meeting. When the question was asked of the government House leader what the priorities were and what must get done, he would not give an answer.

[Extension of Sitting Hours, June 9th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I think the whip for the NDP is trying to make the point that the government is exercising a double standard.

When it was in opposition it had a certain view about the application of the rules and, for example, things like committees being able to look into allegations of impropriety. When the Conservatives were in opposition, they were all in favour of that. Now that they are in government, they have taken extraordinary steps to try to stifle the committee process.

Whether it is procedure and House affairs, the operations committee, the ethics committee or the justice committee, the Conservatives have tried their very best to shut down those committees when those committees wanted to focus upon certain public allegations of impropriety or wrongdoing on the part of members of the government. As a consequence of that, there are portions of our committee system that simply have not been sitting, certainly not sitting effectively, for the last number of months.

Earlier, a member of the NDP made the point about the environment committee. It was effectively stifled and stymied by the government for the simple reason that the government did not like the direction in which the committee was going.

What the government fails to recognize is that this is in fact a minority situation. If we want a minority to function successfully, there has to be some give and take. There has to be some common respect and consultation back and forth across the floor--

[Extension of Sitting Hours, June 9th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, that member and the government have had fully the entire session of Parliament since their so-called throne speech last fall to do that work on the part of Canadians, and the fact is that they have not done it.

They have been obstructionist in committee. They have been uncooperative with other opposition House leaders.

Simply, to get to the final point, when they were asked just a couple of days ago what their priorities would be for the period between now and the end of the session and what things they would want to see accomplished for Canadians in that period, they could not and would not answer the question.

Until they can indicate what the priorities of the House might be, there is no point in simply providing them a blank cheque on timing. This is not an institution that is governed and run by the government. This is an institution that is run by all parliamentarians. We are duly elected to this place.

It is not just the Conservatives who have legitimacy in the House of Commons. Every parliamentarian who is duly elected to this place has the same rights and responsibilities. The government has to show some respect for the institution before it can expect to see some respect shown in return.

[Extension of Sitting Hours, June 9th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to take part in this debate on the government's request to extend the sitting hours in the House of Commons for the last 10 sitting days before the summer adjournment.

The government is exercising an option that exists under the Standing Orders, particularly Standing Order 27, and it is, in effect, asking the House to sit every sitting day until 11 p.m. from now until June 19. That is the substance of the motion.

What the government House leader has tried to do in the last few minutes is to offer some justification for those extended hours. The government says, in effect, that it is necessary to have these additional hours for the next two weeks to somehow speed up its legislation, that list that is found on the order paper, but I suggest that the real reason and the main goal for this motion, on the part of the government, is to hide its own patent mismanagement of the House calendar over the last many months.

Let us look at the facts. In 2006, out of 365 days, the House sat for only 97 days. That, of course, was the year that was interrupted at the beginning of the year by the election, but in 2006, the House sat for 97 days. In 2007, the House sat for only 74 days before the government prorogued the first session of this Parliament and then instead of coming back promptly, it delayed the beginning of the second session until well into October, October 16, 2007, to be exact.

This conscious delay, this delay by the government, was its prerogative. It exercised it, so it is the Conservatives' responsibility. They effectively eliminated 16 sitting days in last fall's House calendar, not to mention all of the time that was wasted on a vacuous throne speech debate since many of the bills that remain on the order paper today were simply reinstated from the previous session. In other words, prorogation and a Speech from the Throne produced precious little that was actually new. They were just recycling the same drivel from before.

The Conservative minority government is now asking for the cooperation of opposition parties to adopt this motion to extend hours in order to help it advance an agenda that largely consists of old business, despite the fact that the government itself has squandered a great deal of time and goodwill over the course of the last two years.

I would like to take a moment to remind members of this House of the words spoken by the now Prime Minister when he was leader of the opposition on the topic of how to make a minority Parliament work. That is one very important factor to bear in mind in the context of this motion, that we are operating in a minority situation. I am quoting the Prime Minister's own words that are found in Hansard for October 6, 2004:

I believe that even when a government holds a majority it is not relieved of its obligation to consult with the opposition, with the House and with the people on important matters. That obligation is surely even more imperative when a minority government situation exists. It is the government's obligation to craft a working majority to advance its agenda by taking into account the policies and priorities expressed by the three opposition parties in the House.

In other words, a great call for cooperation in the House of Commons. I agree with what the Prime Minister said when he was the leader of the opposition. Unfortunately, the minority government has demonstrated no commitment to those principles that were described by the Prime Minister when he was leader of the opposition. The minority government has no idea what it means to consult the opposition parties, not to mention no idea what it means to take into account their priorities.

The modus operandi of the government is one of bitter partisanship all the time, running roughshod over everything and everybody in its path, no matter what. Let us take a look at its track record.

The Conservative leadership across the way prepared and distributed, just about a year ago now, a 200-page handbook on dirty tricks, instructing its members on how to obstruct the work of Parliament should things not be going happily in its direction.

Several Conservative committee chairs have actually followed that manual on dirty tricks very carefully. One example is the justice committee, which has just been referred to, where the chair repeatedly, just as soon as the meeting gets going, gets an urgent call of nature and rushes from the room. He does this at every single meeting. Is that accidental? No. It is a conspiracy to destroy the effectiveness of that committee.

We can see the same pattern being followed at the procedure and House affairs committee, the operations committee, and the ethics committee. All of this is an effort on the part of Conservative members to hide from the truth about a seemingly never-ending series of Conservative ethical difficulties, and parliamentary committees have been sacrificed to Conservative political expediency.

The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration has refused to appear before standing committees to defend her supplementary estimates. The minister responsible for official languages refuses to appear before the standing committee to defend her government's action, or lack of action, on official languages. It is obvious that in the Conservative government, transparency and accountability are not principles that ministers are prepared to respect.

That creates an atmosphere in the House where it is, indeed, difficult to get the kind of cooperation that the government House leader has asked for today. What is the genesis of that problem? What is the root cause? The government House leader need only look in the mirror.

I will give the House another example. The government agreed to a compromise resolution earlier in this session about Afghanistan, and particularly Canada's role in that very difficult mission. The motion was comprehensive. It involved a good deal of give and take, back and forth, across the floor. But specifically, it included the creation of a special committee to oversee that mission, to provide a greater degree of transparency and accountability back to Canadians.

After the adoption of the resolution, which occurred on March 13 of this year, a full month went by and the government had not bothered to consult with anybody with respect to the creation of that very important special committee. In fact, the Liberal official opposition had to use an opposition day to force a debate that resulted in the motion in the creation of that special committee. The government would not have taken action if the opposition had not moved to force it to do so.

With respect to consultations, I should point out that the Conservative government has a great deal of difficulty sharing information with opposition parties, especially when it concerns the proposed calendar of House business. Members will be very familiar with the vacuous speeches that always appear here in the House of Commons on the Thursday of every week in response to questions about the future agenda for the House.

The government, one would think, would take advantage of official and unofficial meetings of House leaders to share plans and priorities about how the business of the House is going to flow. The fact of the matter is that information is rarely forthcoming.

When the Conservatives were the official opposition, they demanded and they received from the government of the day a calendar outlining the government's intentions for House business for three weeks in advance. Today, we are lucky if the government can provide five days of advance notice of proposed House business from time to time.

None of that contributes to the kind of atmosphere where there is a sense of cooperation or where the government can make a convincing argument that there is a sense of urgency that justifies the motion that it has presented.

On other matters, there have been simple requests from opposition parties for things like take note debates, for example, which are no burden on the government whatsoever but they do deal with important topics like Darfur and foreign aid, and other matters of public interest where members strive, for the better part, to set aside the intense partisanship of this place and take note of a matter of important public interest.

On several occasions, House leaders have asked for the government House leader to make an occasion available for various take note debates and the government House leader's response has been simply “no”. We asked why, his answer was “No reason. My answer is just no”. He said, “I can be arbitrary so I am being arbitrary”. That again does not contribute to a good working relationship in the House.

On another item that we have seen very recently, something like advanced notice and consultation for solemn occasions, like the recent visit by the President of Ukraine and the apology on residential schools, somehow the government, rather than treating these with the dignity and the solemnity they deserve, they somehow get twisted into partisan arguments that repel other members of the House from even trying to accede to government requests.

The government has also been quite strange in managing, or mismanaging, what it says are its priorities in the House. On the election campaign, the Conservatives have repeatedly said that their priorities include things like gun control and killing the Canadian Wheat Board, and both of those things have been on the order paper. However, they have only been called for debate in the most symbolic and trivial of ways.

The legislation on firearms, for example, has been on the order paper, in my recollection, since June 2006, and it has been called for debate in the House on one occasion for one hour. Similarly, the bill on the Canadian Wheat Board has been sitting on the order paper since March of this year, and the first time the government even mentioned it was today in response to a question during question period and then on a motion after question period.

If these things were such priorities, the debates would have been called on these items months and months ago, and not just brought up at the last minute and the government saying that now they are a priority.

When we asked the government, as we have done both in the House leaders meetings and on the floor of the House, to specify the priorities it has for things that simply must be passed before the summer adjournment in a couple of weeks, all it did was simply recite in total the entire order paper.

When the government claims that everything is a priority, then clearly nothing is a priority, and the government cannot, on that basis, make a compelling argument for extended hours.

The government has tried its very best to portray the opposition as the villains who are in some way delaying the work of this Parliament as it appears on the order paper, but the fact of the matter is, when we look at the government's own delays in bringing legislation forward, when we look at its disrespect for Parliament and for the committee process, when we look at the ways that it has failed in the mandate expressed in the Prime Minister's own words; that is, to consult and show respect for others in this place, then it is little wonder that when it makes a motion of this kind, the opposition is skeptical.

I would inform you, Mr. Speaker, that the official opposition will oppose this motion.

[Extension of Sitting Hours, June 9th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, on a specific matter of House business that will be dealt with in the next two weeks, specifically on Wednesday, June 11, Canada's aboriginal leaders and selected residential school survivors will be invited to join us here on the floor of the House to receive the apology, and that obviously is very good news. However, apparently those aboriginal representatives will be expected simply to sit through perhaps the most important and emotional moment of their lives, and that is the official apology, without saying anything in response to it.

Again, it is very good that aboriginal representatives will be on the floor. That idea was proposed in the House, first, by the official opposition and others. The government has agreed to it, and that is a very good thing. However, surely, on this very important occasion on Wednesday, those aboriginal representatives should not be voiceless. The aboriginal people, who will be here, will be hearing from four politicians in the House. Surely, the House owes them the courtesy of hearing from them in return, right here, so it can be on the official record.

As the government House leader contemplates the business of the House over the next two weeks, and specifically on Wednesday, while there is still time to do so, could we not come to some common understanding that the aboriginal peoples who will be on the floor will not only be asked to sit and listen, but in fact have the chance to respond?

[Aboriginal Affairs, June 9th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, this event should indeed be one of historic proportions, an integral part of reconciliation between the Government of Canada and aboriginal peoples. Both sides need to have a voice.

Will Canada's aboriginal leaders have the opportunity to respond to the apology, also right here on the floor, where their responses will be officially preserved in the Hansard of the House of Commons?

[Aboriginal Affairs, June 9th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, with respect to the apology to be delivered on Wednesday to the victims of Indian residential schools, we have made the point repeatedly that it is not sufficient for aboriginal leaders, elders and survivors to sit in the galleries or stand outside on this historic occasion. They must be invited to join members of Parliament on the floor of the House to receive the apology in person.

Last week, the government's response to this suggestion was essentially no, but that appears to have changed. Will the government confirm that aboriginal people will indeed be seated on the floor of the chamber, and specifically, who has been invited?

[Ethics, June 6th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, it is a bad sign when they hold a news conference and all the media laugh at them.

Unlike the parliamentary secretary, Dona Cadman's story has been the same from day one. Her husband was offered a million dollar insurance policy. After fumbling for weeks, the parliamentary secretary finally settled on one story. There was one meeting with Chuck Cadman on May 19. Well, Dona Cadman's affidavit says, “the date that my husband told me that he had received the offer of a $1 million insurance policy was May 17, 2005 and not May 19, 2005”.

Which should we believe, the PMO puppet or the sworn testimony of Dona Cadman?