Rob Merrifield

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, February 16th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for her comments with regard to the reply to the Speech from the Throne.

I am intrigued with her discussion and dialogue about the health care system. When I look at the last decade and what the Liberal government has done to health care, it has not been very pretty. When I look at the Prime Minister's words that if we want proof of where he is going, we should look at where he has been, I will look at where he has been.

What he has done is cut $25 billion out of the health care system. That hurt and that cut was to the CHST, which is health care and education. The member talked a lot about health care and education being a priority and a value that Canadians appreciate. She is absolutely right.

There is a lack of human resources, of doctors and nurses and of individuals who will be trained as professionals in Canada. The number has shrunk significantly, so much so that we have a disaster on our hands with the shortage out there. Wait lists are growing. There are a million plus Canadians right now who cannot get into our system, who are dying on those wait lists.

How does the member square that with what she just said as far as identifying those problems with the words of the Prime Minister compared to his actions? I wonder if the member senses that there will be a change, because that change is not very apparent when we look at the history of the Prime Minister.

[Resumption Of Debate On Address In Reply, February 16th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask another question along the same line.

Part of the Auditor General's report last week indicated the dire situation in Parks Canada. In my riding it is a big issue because one of the primary highways, Yellowhead Highway, goes right through Jasper National Park. It is a transportation route, but Parks Canada's budget actually has to maintain that highway. The money comes out of Parks Canada's budget when the parks' infrastructure is in such dire straits, rather than from the gasoline tax.

I am wondering if the hon. member would comment on whether the money should come out of the Parks Canada budget or whether some of the taxes that we are paying on gasoline should pay for that infrastructure.

[Food and Drugs Act, February 6th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, it is important that I begin by answering a bit of the last little rant with regard to this piece of legislation going directly to committee.

I am speaking on behalf of the people of Yellowhead but also as the senior health critic. The committee that would be dealing with this piece of legislation would be the health committee. I have seen how dysfunctional the health committee can become. In fact, the last one was. It is something in which I would not have great confidence, having those questions come before that committee because of the partisan nature of that committee.

I want to talk a little about this piece of legislation. First, it has noble intent. There is no question about that. More people in Canada are overweight and the problem is very serious. I had a number of different lobby groups in my office over the last number of years all saying--the Heart and Stroke Foundation is one of them that comes to mind--that we have a serious problem.

There are individuals in our schools right now who are obese. Over 30% are going to be hitting the health care system about the same time as the baby boomer generation. We are going to have a serious problem. They are going to be having heart and stroke problems at a much earlier age, in their thirties and forties instead of their fifties and sixties.

There is no question that this piece of legislation has the right idea in the sense that we should limit the amount of calories and be conscious of what we eat. It is very true that never before in the history of mankind has so much food been produced by so few people. Farmers produce almost over 80% of what we eat and, by the way, for so little. They are starving to death, especially with what we have seen with the BSE problem.

There is more awareness in society. People are asking what they are eating and what they should be eating. In fact, it is interesting when I look back on this last year. We had the Minister of Health just arbitrarily pull out of a hat $15 million and then threw it at CIHR to do some research on why people are obese in this country.

I come from a farming background and I know a little bit about nutrition from the work I have had with animals. My discerning nature tells me that it probably has a lot to do with what we eat and how we exercise.

This same government decided to wave the participaction program that mandated physical education in our educational system in the early nineties. When the government came into power, it decided to scrap that program. It was perhaps not the best program, but it was a good program that dealt with exercise of our youth in our school system.

The government said that it got rid of that program because it was a clerical error. It did not actually have the red tape done and the applications submitted in time when it did up the budget, and so it just got waved. I do not believe that for a minute. Nonetheless, that was the excuse that I was given.

Here we have another Liberal member coming up with a private member's bill that is trying to address the problem and missing completely the seriousness of what is actually happening in our school system across the nation.

It is a twofold thing. Not only should we look after what we eat but also start to exercise more. If we were true to what we should be doing, we would start with our youth and ensure that they have the exercise needed and then teach them how to eat properly.

In teaching them how to eat properly, I wonder how many of them go into a McDonald's and say--even if the calories were written on the McDonald's billboard--“Golly, I had better not eat that burger or those super size fries”. I honestly believe that they are not there thinking of calories. They are there thinking, “Boy, this is good to eat”.

There was more talk today about the amount of trans fats in our foods. I think we should look at trans fats in our foods. Is it an appropriate amount or not and is there something there to curb them? All of those discussions should take place; however, this piece of legislation attacks the restaurant industry, and the fast food industry in particular, because they are the ones that would qualify for the $10 million.

The legislation is saying that the number of calories for each product should be indicated so that individuals putting orders in would understand what those calories are so that they could discern a little better what they are eating. One would think that is a noble thought, but the mechanics of it have not been worked out.

I found it interesting when I spoke with the restaurant association and other people who are in the industry. They were telling me that this is totally unworkable. I wonder whether the member, with his well intentioned bill, really did sit down and speak with the industry to see how it would impact it and see if there was any kind of a buy-in so that the intent, which is noble, would actually come to fruition, and we would actually see something happen.

For example, 15 different ingredients in a submarine sandwich have 40,777 different combinations. That becomes a very unworkable situation when one realizes that it takes somewhere between $150 and $350 to do the testing to find out what the calorie, salt and carbohydrate content of the different combinations actually are. If we were to bring this into fruition and actually make it law, we would have to do that but it would be false advertising because it would be misleading the population by not giving the accurate amounts.

Most of the restaurant industry is served by individuals who are on a minimum salary. Maybe the professionalism is good because they are thinking of it in exact calories, but one would dish up a different sized portion than another, which is sort of normal and natural. One can see that even if the combinations were posted, they would be virtually unworkable when we really look at what it is trying to do.

What we need to do in this society is to understand and discern exactly how we eat and what it does to us in proportion to the amount of physical exercise that we are doing. As a nation we have fallen short of that. There is no question that North America is killing itself with too much food. We are killing ourselves with kindness in some people's eyes, which is what they say. We must really look at some solutions to this.

This legislation is not a workable solution. It is not one that is actually going to do anything to push us in that direction. We need to raise awareness in what we are actually doing to our bodies.

I know the amount of calories we eat. I have always used the philosophy that people gain weight because their input is over their output.

I come from an agricultural background where we work very hard. Most members in the House, I would say, have come from forefathers who had an agricultural background where physical labour was something that was a normal part of ordinary life. Today, we are in a situation where our children are parked in front of television sets and computers far too long. As a result, they eat the wrong foods because of perhaps the fast pace of their parents' lives and the ease of being able to order in and so on. Knowing or not knowing the number of calories is certainly not the answer to the problem that is before our society.

Actually changing the habits of individuals, making them understand the importance of physical exercise and forcing our youth to do that is where the government has fallen down in the last decade, particularly with the one program. We had better start reinstating that because the impact on our health care system is absolutely phenomenal.

In fact, that impact alone in our health system is estimated at $6.3 billion a year. The direct cost to health care would be $1.8 billion a year. It is not small numbers that we are talking about. The problem is very significant. It is very important that we realize that and that we do what we can to address it.

To put this thing forward right now and move it directly into committee would not be the answer. We have a piece of legislation that would come into force in 2006 and would work toward that end in the sense of indicating some of the calories, trans fats, sodium, carbohydrates, et cetera, on packaged foods. That may be well and good, but a lot of people have said that they need a magnifying glass to read it to begin with, so I would question, how much good is that actually doing?

I want to close by saying that this piece of legislation is identical to what has been introduced in at least 19 states in the United States. Most of them have been defeated very quickly as they came up for debate, and I think that is exactly what should happen to this one as well.

[Reinstatement of Government Bills, February 6th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, our system comes out of the British parliamentary system and we sort of formed a history of the Canadian government under some of the rules from there and are hybrids of them.

Other nations have had other rules. Australia is an example of a British Commonwealth country that has hybrids of the British parliamentary system. I would say that the Australian parliamentary system is much more reflective of a democracy. Some of the changes there are much better than we have. We could learn a lot from the Australian model.

The United States has a four year term. Everyone knows exactly when the election is in the United States. In other democratic countries and free countries around the world, they get around this idea that it is up to the prime minister, or actually a prime minister's wife, to call an election. That is absolutely ridiculous. It is nonsense. This is about governing the country and we should stop the partisan politics of it and try to stop the opportunity for one party to get the upper hand because of the economy, employment rates and manipulation of events as to whether that party thinks it is going to be a good winter or bad winter as far as the economy goes.

That is something we should get around. There is absolutely no question that we should have legislation in place so that everyone in Canada knows the date and time of the election at the beginning of the term of a new government.

[Reinstatement of Government Bills, February 6th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, let us be very clear about this. The interest in that piece of legislation coming forward early is certainly not for Canadians. It is only for that party over there. It is unfortunate it plays that kind of game.

That is the Liberal Party of Canada playing games. It says it is different, that it is new and improved. I would say that it is the same old rhetoric. The Liberals were the ones who prorogued for no reason. They should have got busy with the governing of the nation.

We had a Prime Minister who took an extended holiday away from the House and now we will go for a few weeks and have a big break in March and then supposedly go right to the polls. That is the rumoured agenda. We should not be doing that.

We should be governing the country and then let us go to the polls once Canadians have an opportunity to really judge whether the Liberals are up to the task or not. There are a number of reasons that we would say they are not. Driving some of this legislation forward is certainly a reason that nothing has changed. It is not a new and improved party. It is the same old rhetoric, same old faces. Canadians can expect the same old problems from the government. It is unfortunate because a golden opportunity has been missed to really lead the country the way it should be led.

[Reinstatement of Government Bills, February 6th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to the electoral boundaries act, it is really quite interesting. Every 10 years we have to mandate it. We look at whether the population has increased or decreased and boundaries shift significantly. That is what has happened now.

We do not have a problem with that necessarily. This is something that is good. It helps with democracy. It helps with making sure that some ridings do not get too many individuals in them, where one member in the House would have a disproportionate number of people than another. I think that is very appropriate, but that is all in place.

The population of Canada has increased and this time I think another seven seats are being proposed under the new piece of legislation. As the boundaries are shifted around, there will be another seven seats in the House. We do not have a problem with that. The deadline was set out. It was there. We do not see any need whatsoever for the changing of that date to be moved forward to April.

Why put this legislation in place because of electoral expediency and because of the government's agenda to rush to the polls? That is playing politics with the will of the population. That is very unacceptable and it is inappropriate that we do so.

The democratic process is set. We have always said in our party that the day we win an election is the day we should call an election so we are not playing this silly game. Now we are moving the date up from some time in July or August to April 1. I am saying that is absolutely ridiculous that we move that date up. For what?

We have a government that should govern for a while. Let us let it govern for a while and then go to the polls. Let us see if Canadians will respect the Liberals' wish and re-elect them as the governing party of the nation. To go before it has a chance and to bring forward legislation and to ram it through is absolutely repugnant. It goes against any kind of democratic deficit rhetoric that we have heard in the last few days by the government.

That is something the government is going to have to wear as we go into the election and it tries to jam the election down the throats of Canadians.

[Reinstatement of Government Bills, February 6th, 2004]

My colleague says some. As long as my colleague has been a Canadian, I can say that the ethic in Canada has been to respect human life from beginning to end, regardless of how fragile it is. That is a Canadian principle and a Canadian value that we had better cherish, because if we do not cherish and protect it we will lose it. We had better be very careful of that. Also, if we can achieve the same thing by doing it through the means of adult stem cells, that is where we should be going. This piece of legislation vaults us into that.

When it comes to the legislation we are dealing with and what has actually been happening at committee, we have many other problems with a piece of legislation that was flawed, the one that is now in the Senate, if this goes through today. We have a serious problem with it because there were a hundred different amendments that we wanted to tighten up.

The other and most important part of this legislation is the agency that will be struck to determine what science goes forward and what does not. This agency has no accountability. In fact, there is a clause in the bill which says specifically that the Minister of Health can dictate to that agency what will be approved or not approved. The agency has no recourse but must follow the instruction of the Minister of Health. That is not transparency. That is not accountability. It is not reflective of being accountable to this chamber and, by being responsible to this chamber, to the people of Canada. If this agency that is being struck does not garner the support and confidence of Canadians, it will ultimately fail. We should be very careful to make sure we put parameters around the agency to ensure that accountability is there.

There are numbers of other different things in the legislation that we are very concerned about. Donor anonymity is of great concern to a number of people. Really the bill was not about embryonic stem cell research necessarily, it was about building families. It was about putting some parameters around the reproduction part of the fertility clinics that are trying to have young couples conceive children when they are having difficulty doing so. That is very noble. In fact, our report reflected that. We said we should change the name of the report from “all about science” and we should say what it is about. It is all about building families. We named our report “Building Families”, because that is what it should be.

However, in building families, who is going to protect the interests of the unborn child if not our committee and if not this legislation? We have said that the right of the child should supersede the right of those who are donating the egg or the sperm. I think that is just a principle that should be there. If we do not fight for the right of these children to know where they come from, no one will. That is something that was debated at committee at length with all kinds of individuals. I remember very clearly a beautiful, young, 19 year old lady who came to our committee and said she did not know who her father was. When she walks down the streets she looks at every man and wonders who is her father.

There are no parameters in this country about how many times one can even donate sperm. There are no limits on it; it is uncontrolled as it presently is. There is no way in this piece of legislation that we either limit the number or determine how the individual who is conceived and born out of this is to know their biological makeup. We do not believe there should be any liability that follows this. Just the knowledge of who someone is biologically, I think, is a fundamental of human life and is something that the child should know.

The idea of surrogacy in this legislation, the idea of renting a womb to be able to conceive a child, is something we find repugnant in the sense that if someone believes they want to help an individual conceive a child, then it should be done from the most altruistic motives, not because someone wants to make a buck. This piece of legislation can vault us into that because it allows for the payment for surrogacy. If we allow for the payment for that, even so much as to pay the individual for their lost salary during the time they are away having the child, we are saying that is a problem. We are strongly against that and see it as something that should not be taking place.

Then we come to the whole idea of cloning. It is interesting that when we talk about cloning and we look at this piece of legislation, a lot of times we say that maybe this should be called the cloning bill. In some ways it should. Because the bill should be split right down the middle. We said that right from the very beginning. It has two tracks.

One is to deal with the prohibitions, things that as a nation and in this House we would collectively in a minute say that we should not allow: human and therapeutic cloning, germ line alteration, and chimera hybrids, which are animal-human combinations of creating life. Those we find repugnant.

The reason that cloning is so repugnant is that one out of 200 to 300 are actually born alive and healthy. If we remember, Dolly the sheep was born out of cloning technology, but it takes 300 Dollys before we get one. Even Dolly the sheep was found out to be aging prematurely and therefore had faults. But there were another 300 that never made it, that were born handicapped, mentally retarded or whatever. I do not mean that sheep are mentally retarded, but I am saying that if we translate what we know of sheep to humans we are going to have a serious problem. It is repugnant to do this. Most of the nations around the world are saying that we should not go there.

What I find astounding on the whole idea of human cloning is that I do not know many nations in the world that say that human cloning should be allowed, but I do know that in the United Nations this fall there was a debate on this same issue of human cloning and whether we should we do something internationally to either allow it or not allow it. There were actually three motions put forward at the United Nations.

One motion coming from Costa Rica, which had garnered the support of 60-plus countries, would ban human and therapeutic cloning and would reflect our own bill, the one before us.

What happened at the UN was really interesting.

Another motion came forward out of Belgium, which had garnered the support of about a dozen countries. It said we should ban just reproductive cloning, but not therapeutic, which would not reflect the bill that is before our committee and the bill that is now in the Senate. It is interesting that Canada originally supported Belgium, which went against its domestic position, if that is in truth what its position is actually going to be under this bill. That is what would reflect the bill. They said no, that we should not; they supported the Belgian one.

Another motion that came forward was the first motion voted on. It was out of some of the Arab countries and said, “Hold it, this is a little bit complex. Why do we not just put it off for two years?” It is interesting that when it came to a vote at the United Nations, Canada refused to vote on it. Canada abstained from the vote. Because of that, it was a tie vote and we lost it. It was to put it off for two years.

It is unbelievable that we would not stand on the principle of supporting the actual domestic position on the international stage. Canada should hang its head because of what we have done internationally and for the message we are sending internationally on this issue.

It is unbelievable how complex this piece of legislation is. When one talks to individuals on the street and says this is a bill on reproductive technologies and starts getting into the issues, people's eyes glaze over. It is very complex. Even those who were on the committee and listened to all the witnesses were just nicely getting into it and understanding the complexity of the legislation.

I am trying to boil it down in as close to layman's terms as I possibly can get and explain it as simply as I can so that this House and those who are watching will understand what this legislation would actually do to us as a country.

At one stage, I even went to you, Mr. Speaker, and asked for an emergency debate on this.

At another stage, I thought maybe the thing to do was to bring forward a motion at committee to split this piece of legislation, because that is indeed what we should be doing. If we were to take the two lines I said earlier that we should be working on, one on the prohibitions and the other on the regulatory side of it, and if we brought forward a piece of legislation on just the prohibitions, it would pass in the blink of an eye. In fact, I have said that it would pass faster than the raising of salaries of members of Parliament did in this House, which took 72 hours. I think that is what we should be doing.

We should be splitting this piece of legislation as fast as we possibly can and bring that forward. In light of that, I think the bill that is now coming back after prorogation and going to the Senate should be stopped. We should not go forward with it.

I am wondering what to do. I sent a letter to the Senate and I am truly hoping that the Senate will do the right thing by giving this a sober second thought. I talked to Senator Kirby and members of his committee. I am hoping that they will do the right thing and not just rush this bill through before the election, but truly give it sober second thought. It is extremely important that we do that. It is extremely important that they actually have a free vote on this in the Senate, not like was done here.

Even though it was not a free vote, there were many members on the other side who voted against this piece of legislation because of its volatility and what it will do to us as a country. It is very important that we split the bill, that we stop this one, and we bring another piece forward to put the limitations on it.

I move:

That the amendment be amended by adding:Bill C-49 an act respecting the effective date of the representation order of 2003.

[Reinstatement of Government Bills, February 6th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, introducing new bills into the House and the Senate after prorogation is a serious issue. We must look at what was done with some of these pieces of legislation in the last Parliament.

One particular piece of legislation that I am very concerned with is Bill C-13. We had an unbelievable debate in the House on this. We sat in the chamber and voted on Bill C-13 dealing with reproductive technology for over two and half to three hours one evening. The bill was originally brought into the House at the beginning of the 37th Parliament as Bill C-56.

However, if we go to the history of where the bill came from, it actually died on the Order Paper as Bill C-47 in 1997. The bill was initiated by a royal commission in the early part of the last decade.

It is not that we should not have this legislation. In fact there is no question that such legislation is long overdue.

I will now talk a bit about the history the legislation. It is very important to understand its history in order to discern whether we should at this time be bringing it back after prorogation and just before an election.

I would not argue that we do not need the legislation. In fact I argued long and hard for the need to have it. Science is far ahead of the legislation on which we are presently working. Nevertheless, this legislation is flawed in many serious ways.

In committee we aggressively dealt with it. There were at least 100 amendments that we wanted to make to the legislation prior to it leaving committee. There was very tight voting on it. It pricks the conscience of every Canadian. All members who listened to the testimony at committee were very much involved in the debate. There is an emotional level that this subject brings to the conscience of most Canadians, especially committee members.

The reason I am talking about the legislation is because we worked on it for a long time as a Parliament. However, at the beginning of the 37th Parliament, the minister of health decided to bring a piece of legislation in and treat it somewhat differently in the House of Commons. It went directly to committee. That was the first piece of legislation of its kind that would go directly to committee, instead of going to the House of Commons for first and second reading and then to committee.

In a very non-partisan way we brought the best witnesses from across the country and around the world to give us their wisdom and present their testimony before committee. Then we would be able to discern how we wanted to draft and craft a bill reflecting the views of Canadians. We wanted this legislation to be the best in the world. That was the intent of the committee at the time. It was something on which we worked quite aggressively.

The committee listened to well over 150 witnesses. We sounded some of the pieces of information that came forward from some of the brightest minds in the world on the subject. The committee had international witnesses and we reviewed their legislation. The committee reviewed what was in the draft legislation. We worked very hard, openly and in a non-partisan fashion on the legislation. It was an exciting opportunity. As a new member of Parliament, it was my first experience on committee. I thought this was the way it should be done.

I have been here three years now and I realize that is not quite the way most committees work. My first awakening on that committee was at the very end of the sitting. For nine months we worked very hard on legislation that was very sensitive, and in a very non-partisan way. The most profound piece in the legislation was whether we should be able to destroy the human embryo or embryonic stem cell for research purposes. The committee was almost unanimously against this because of the witnesses and testimony which had come forward over the nine months.

I will never forget what happened, because at the last minute, at the eleventh hour, the minister cracked the whip and these individuals I trusted on the other side in committee--because of the witnesses and some of the testimony and some of the things they had said--changed their views 180° on whether to allow embryonic stem cells or not. I could not believe that on an issue such as this they would change their minds and yet that is what happened at that time. I believe it was the wrong decision in so many ways.

We asked to be shown why stem cells were needed. We asked why as a nation we should go to the place where human life would be destroyed for the sake of others. The science is not there. Scientists said they were needed because stem cells from embryos are more elastic and therefore they might be capable of being triggered to grow into any organ of the body. I challenged them by asking them to show us in animal embryos where that was a possibility. If it is a possibility then maybe we should go there even though it would be difficult for many Canadians to destroy human life for the sake of others.

Perhaps there would be some scientific validity to it if we want to change the ethic from where we protect human life from beginning to end, which has been a fundamental principle for Canadians for as long as Canada has been a nation. The legislation would change that ethic to “for the greater good of society”, which would change the ethic from protecting human life regardless of the cost. We should do the math and see whether we should proceed or not, and if it is for the greater good rather than the negative, then perhaps the math will be the guiding principle. If this becomes just about math, then we are on a very slippery slope in this nation. Not only will we be destroying human embryos, but as health dollars become precious in the upcoming years, we will be going to the place where we will perhaps be making decisions as to whether or not grandma should have hip surgery or heart surgery, or whether we look after comatose patients or the physically and mentally challenged individuals in our society.

These kinds of decisions will be made if we allow ourselves to be controlled by just the ethic of math rather than the ethic of protecting human life regardless of how fragile it is. This what I very much fear more than anything else in this piece of legislation: where it will vault us.

It is really amazing to me that when we went through all of this in committee we had agreement at that stage. We said we would put out a committee report reflecting our views. It was a very difficult time at that stage. The report had to be worded in such a way that it would not be exploited and would not take us down that path, because the legislation we were looking said that research should be done if it was deemed necessary. But necessary was not defined, and if we do not define necessary it means that whatever somebody thinks is necessary is obviously necessary. We thought we should put in the wording “only if no other biological material could be found” to do that kind of research; we thought perhaps that was the time we should consider it. We agreed on that wording collectively in committee and that wording was put forward in our recommendations.

Committee members said that we should hold off, as my party has said, for at least three years and put a moratorium on embryonic stem cell research while the science proved to us as a nation that it was the way to go. We are not there yet. The science is not there yet.

In fact, science is showing us that we could achieve much more promise in adult stem cells. In committee, that was our question to the scientists. We asked the scientists why adult stem cells could not be used. They said they could not be triggered into growing into any organ of the body. That has been proven wrong, actually, in the time that we have been working on this piece of legislation. A scientist in Minnesota has come forward to say that stem cells can be taken from bone marrow and triggered into growing into any organ of the body and then we can do the same kind of research that we wanted embryonic stem cells for.

The problem with embryonic stem cells, according to the research and science behind this, is that they are so elastic they cannot be triggered into growing into the appropriate organ. That is not the problem with adult stem cells. I am not a scientist, but I have been told by scientists that when adult stem cells are being grown they can be triggered into growing into the organ that scientists want them to grow into. There is much more promise on the adult stem cell side than there is on the embryonic cell side.

We should be very cautious of being led down the garden path in the sense of allowing us to do the research that is morally repugnant and goes against the morals that Canada and Canadians have had for generations.

[Aboriginal Affairs, February 6th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, this corruption has gone on for over a decade. We still do not know how high the corruption went within the department, whether it was the minister or the deputy minister. We are not sure.

In 1996 the audit uncovered $1.2 million in unsupported billings. In 1997 the audit reported another $1 million in overcharges. In 2000 the government committed $40 million to this project. Only a public inquiry will get to the bottom of why.

Will the government put its money where its mouth is on transparency and call a public inquiry?

[Aboriginal Affairs, February 6th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, in July 2000 the government signed a five year funding agreement with the Fontaine foundation worth over $35 million. A few months later another $2.4 million was added. All of this came after the audits of 1996 and 1997 revealed serious fraud at the treatment centre.

Why would the government hand out almost $40 million to an organization without first fixing the mess?