Wayne Stetski

[Criminal Code, October 24th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, in 2008, the Conservative government introduced tougher penalties for drunk driving, and yet in 2011, Statistics Canada noted “The rate of impaired driving increased for the fourth time in five years...and was at its highest point in a decade”, so longer sentences certainly did not seem to deter drunk driving.

I am interested in how the member thinks we can best keep Canadians safe moving forward, given it looks as if the Liberals are going to pass this, and marijuana will be legal by next July.

[Business of Supply, October 5th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I will again bring attention to what the opposition day motion actually says:

That, given that millions of Canadians lack prescription drug coverage, and given that overwhelming evidence, including from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, has concluded that every Canadian could be covered by a universal pharmacare program while saving billions of dollars every year, the House call on the government to commence negotiations with the provinces no later than October 1, 2018, in order to implement a universal pharmacare program.

Nobody would disagree with the fact that millions of Canadians lack prescription drug coverage. We have heard a lot of interesting facts presented in the chamber over the course of the last couple of years. I would like to think the PBO is about as good as it is going to get for reliable information.

Earlier we heard questions about the federal government negotiating with the provinces. October 1, 2018, is a very generous date for the government to implement a universal pharmacare program. I think everybody is on board; they just do not realize it.

[Business of Supply, October 5th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, we have had an interesting discussion today with my colleagues across the floor and down the way. They seem to be looking for reasons why they should not support the motion. They say that they are not really sure the parliamentary budget officer has it right. They claim to be already looking at this in committee. Nothing has been put on the floor by any other party that would provide a reason not to support the motion.

The committee is heading in this direction anyway, yet you talk about taking a collegial approach to a resolution. A collegial approach would be supporting the motion. It really is quite simple.

[Business of Supply, October 5th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from South Okanagan—West Kootenay.

Last Saturday, I attended the Forever Young Seniors Expo in Cranbrook, in my riding of Kootenay—Columbia. It was a wonderful event organized by Kootenay CARP in celebration of National Seniors Day. I spoke to many seniors at the event and to many advocates on seniors issues. There certainly are many issues facing retired people today. CARP, which is the Canadian Association of Retired Persons, has a list of 10 advisory items that it wants the members of the House to address. Let me go over them briefly.

The first is retirement income security. Pensions and the guaranteed income supplement, or GIS, must increase. As members heard in a question I asked earlier this week, it is essential the government consider how critical it is for payments like GIS to be made consistently, every month. Many Canadians do not have enough savings to carry them beyond one month if they miss a cheque. However, every time the Canada Revenue Agency decides to review a case or make a change to a file, it stops the monthly payments that many of our seniors depend on, including for buying prescription drugs. This leaves seniors and other pensioners forced to choose between their rent, groceries, and prescription medications. Consistency is important, and so is the amount of income pensioners receive.

CARP's second item is the transformation of our health care system. It recognizes that reductions in federal health transfers to the provinces are putting undue pressure on the entire system. At the same time, private clinics are working through the courts to overturn our cherished universal health care. This is extremely worrisome to today's seniors.

Improved home care is another program that would save Canadians money. CARP points out that we need to do everything we can to keep seniors in their homes by supporting everything from Meals on Wheels to the United Way's better at home program. Improved home care would keep many seniors out of hospital, freeing up expensive hospital beds. It would provide better services for seniors, while reducing wait times and health care costs.

Prescription medication also impacts hospital times. I will get to that a bit more a little later.

Linked to home care, CARP wants to see better support for caregivers, which is why the NDP's push for a $15 an hour minimum wage is so important. It would help ensure caregivers earn better pay.

CARP's sixth point is better opportunities for older workers—other than running for political office, of course.

The seventh on the list is to make our cities more age-friendly by improving accessibility for people who use wheelchairs and walkers.

Investor protection is also on CARP's list. It gives an example of a 93-year-old woman who was able to negotiate a mortgage, but the bank refused life insurance protection. That is simply not acceptable.

The NDP has spoken often of the need for improved end-of-life care. We support a national palliative care strategy to accompany the current physician-assisted suicide laws. We are pleased to see that CARP has made end-of-life care a priority.

Similarly, and as part of a national mental health strategy, CARP asks for a national dementia care strategy. As Canada's senior population grows larger, the incidence of dementia grows larger as well. Now is the time to respond better to this health care crisis.

I skipped over one of CARP's top priorities, but it is the issue that brings us here today, which is the need for a universal pharmacare program.

Let me take a quick moment to read our motion again for those who may have just tuned in at home. It states:

That, given that millions of Canadians lack prescription drug coverage, and given that overwhelming evidence, including from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, has concluded that every Canadian could be covered by a universal pharmacare program while saving billions of dollars every year, the House call on the government to commence negotiations with the provinces no later than October 1, 2018, in order to implement a universal pharmacare program.

Many of my NDP colleagues have already covered the basic issues: we are the only nation that has universal health care that does not include universal pharmacare, and a pharmacare program would save money. The parliamentary budget officer made that very clear this week with a groundbreaking report that said Canadians can have a universal pharmacare system for billions of dollars less than we now pay for prescriptions. In fact, the PBO estimates conservatively that Canadians would save $4.2 billion a year with a national pharmacare system.

Here is the kicker. I think the PBO got it wrong. When I read the PBO's report, I see it missed an important reason why pharmacare would save money. Let me explain.

We know that many doctors will keep patients in hospitals longer, including seniors, because they need to take prescription medications and patients in hospitals get their medications for free. They are covered under health care in every province. However, the moment patients are released, they have to buy their own medications. Doctors know that many patients do not have private insurance to pay for medications and that even programs that provide medications to seniors do not bear the full cost. Therefore, patients who are released from the hospital may or may not keep taking the life-saving medications they need. As a result, doctors often keep these patients in the hospital longer than they would otherwise need to be there. There is a cost to this.

According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, hospital care in Canada costs about $63 billion a year. On average, the cost of a hospital stay is about $6,000 per day. This is a significant cost, and it could be a significant saving. Introducing a national pharmacare program would lower the health care costs for taxpayers while at the same time freeing up hospital beds and reducing wait times for patients. That is a win-win-win situation. The PBO's excellent report did not include these savings. Therefore, we can assume that the $4.2 billion each year that it estimates Canadians would save would be higher.

The PBO's report was not the first to state the benefits Canada would receive if we adopt a universal pharmacare program. Speaking lightly, I might suggest that the PBO got it wrong. However, the report was incredibly well thought out and extremely important. It tells us that pharmacare would have significant savings for Canadians because of the increased spending power it would offer. A single buyer for all medications in Canada would be able to negotiate with the drug companies to push the costs of medications down. The report estimates that Canadians can negotiate savings of 25% over what we are now paying for drugs. However, in Quebec, the province just negotiated a 40% savings. Therefore, the cost savings to Canadians may prove to be much more than the PBO estimated.

There is an urgent need for pharmacare. Yesterday, I met with some of my constituents from Cranbrook and Nelson here in Centre Block. Some of them are nurses. One of them is on multiple medications. They all said how important this was to them.

Canada currently has the second highest rate of skipped prescriptions due to cost among comparable countries. One in five Canadians report that either they or a family member neglect to fill prescriptions due to cost. In the past, my home province of B.C. has had the highest levels of problems accessing prescription drugs, with 29% of citizens, mostly the young, the elderly, and the poor, unable to afford necessary prescriptions. Of course, we pay some of the highest prescription drug prices in the industrialized world. Therefore, we know the problem, we know the solution, and we just need the political will.

The Angus Reid Institute recently completed a poll that found 91% of Canadians support the introduction of a universal pharmacare program. There are many supporters of pharmacare, including Canadian Doctors for Medicare, the Canadian Diabetes Association, and the Heart and Stroke Foundation. All of them have said that having a national pharmacare system is important to the health of Canadians.

Nationally, highly respected organizations that work for better care in Canada support pharmacare, doctors support pharmacare, and 91% of Canadians support pharmacare. Today I ask my colleagues on all sides of this chamber when they will join them and support pharmacare as well. This is an excellent time for you to do that.

[Royal Canadian Mounted Police, October 4th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Vancouver Quadra for her comments. We had the pleasure of working together under the provincial government when we both were with the Province of B.C. some time ago.

I really am very concerned when I look at law enforcement across Canada and see where things are today. There is the RCMP's yellow stripe campaign. Border services officers are three years without a contract. Corrections officers are almost four years without a contract. Our own parliamentary officers are currently starting their quiet protest again by wearing green hats. I see all these men and women who are so dedicated to keeping us safe struggling with collective agreements. I really would like to see the minister take it very seriously and try to reach resolutions to all these outstanding issues and contracts.

[Royal Canadian Mounted Police, October 4th, 2017]

Madam Speaker, much has changed since I asked my question about Bill C-7 last spring. The government accepted the Senate's amendments to the bill, and the legislation came into force last week.

However, the problems at the RCMP and at other federal law enforcement agencies across the country have not changed at all. In my riding of Kootenay—Columbia, at least two of our detachments are at 50% of their full complement. Many others are short-staffed and are working with outdated equipment.

Why is this so? It is because under the previous Conservative government and continuing with the current Liberal government, budget cuts have been aimed squarely at RCMP members on the ground. The Conservatives even increased the amount RCMP officers had to pay for their medical benefits.

In New Brunswick last week, we saw the RCMP itself convicted of failing to provide its members with the weapons and training needed when responding to an active shooter tragedy. That failure contributed to the loss of three officers, and resulted in other officers being injured.

The RCMP is losing members to provincial and municipal forces where they receive better pay, better equipment, and better treatment. It takes incredible commitment for any officer to stay with a force that cuts their benefits, and will not keep up with critical equipment and training needs or offer them the respect they so rightly deserve. I thank them for their commitment.

Until the passage of Bill C-7, the RCMP was the only police force in Canada not to be unionized, and even with the bill's passing, RCMP members will be forbidden from taking their grievances to the Public Service Labour Relations Board and from engaging in negotiating tactics such as strikes.

Sadly, the lack of respect paid to our RCMP officers is not an isolated situation. I spoke recently about our border security officers, who have been without a contract for more than three years and whom the government refuses to recognize as federal law enforcement officers. Canada's corrections officers have gone without a contract for almost four years. They were recently on Parliament Hill lobbying for treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. The federal government, however, does not consider them to be first responders and will not require provinces to pay for their PTSD treatment where it is currently not offered.

Right here, a few feet from where we are sitting in the House of Commons, officers of the Parliamentary Protective Service, those women and men who work to protect us and our visitors, are once again protesting the government's refusal to negotiate a new contract with them in good faith.

Last spring, our parliamentary officers signed an agreement to back off on their quiet protests in exchange for fair negotiations. Oddly, that happened just in time for the Canada 150 celebration here on the Hill. However, the government now refuses to negotiate in good faith, and we are once again seeing these officers wearing green hats to protest their treatment.

There is a crisis in federal law enforcement, a crisis made by successive Conservative and Liberal governments who have refused to honour all those officers who put their lives on the line for us, every day. It is unacceptable to those officers. It is unacceptable to Canadians. I would hope that it is unacceptable to the members of the House and to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness.

[Canada Revenue Agency, October 3rd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, this week my constituency office had to intervene to prevent a single mother and her three children from being evicted from their home. The cause was that the CRA stopped paying her the Canada child benefit following a routine assessment that ultimately resulted in no changes but delayed her payments for up to four months.

This is becoming a common story. It is Phoenix all over again.

The minister's restructuring of CRA has forgotten people who depend on receiving their legitimate payments on time every month. What will the minister do to fix these problems?

[Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act, October 2nd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to support Bill S-226, also known as the Sergueï Magnitsky law and the justice for victims of corrupt foreign officials act.

The background to this important bill reads like a John le Carré novel. A Russian lawyer uncovered corruption, theft, and tax fraud by a group of senior bureaucrats and police. He reported it and suddenly found himself arrested and imprisoned. Days before he has to be released he mysteriously dies. A former business associate, who had asked the lawyer to look into the corruption, is himself expelled from Russia under threat of criminal charges. Years later, the U.S. agree on sanctions against the perpetrators of the corruption, only to find representatives of the Russian government, people with close ties to the corrupt officials, lobbying a U.S. presidential candidate to repeal the legislation. All of this happened. The lawyer was named Sergei Magnitsky, and after he reported high-level corruption in 2008, he was thrown into a brutal prison where, according to many well-respected sources, he was tortured for months until he died.

The Washington Post wrote:

Independent investigators found, “inhuman detention conditions, the isolation from his family, the lack of regular access to his lawyers and the intentional refusal to provide adequate medical assistance resulted in the deliberate infliction of severe pain and suffering, and ultimately his death.”

In 2012, the United States passed the Magnitsky Act, which named the individuals connected with the corruption and Magnitsky's death, and imposed financial and travel sanctions on them. The European Parliament has passed a similar act, and both the United Kingdom and Ireland are also looking at new laws.

In Canada, a resolution was adopted in 2010 that also imposed sanctions, much to the annoyance of Russian officials, one of whom, according to The Washington Post, called it, “none other than an attempt to pressure the investigators and interfere in the internal affairs of another state.”

I am proud to say that the NDP has long been at the forefront of calling for targeted sanctions against those responsible for human rights violations. We have consistently called for Canada to coordinate our sanctions regime with the United States and the European Union, and to tighten sanctions to address major gaps. We believe that the individuals targeted by sanctions should also be inadmissible to Canada.

Unlike the U.S. and EU versions of the legislation, which targeted individuals connected with the case, the bill that is before us today is a type known as a “global Magnitsky law”, which is broader and meant to be used to impose sanctions on any individual or official from any country, not just Russia. This is an important step in fighting government corruption worldwide.

Last January, I had the opportunity to travel with the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs to Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Poland, and Latvia to cement our diplomatic friendships. On those visits we continually heard from officials and NGOs about their concerns with ongoing Russian aggression and the need for continuing and even increasing sanctions against Russia.

Paul Grod, the national president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, stated:

Through its invasion of Ukraine, illegal imprisonment of Ukrainian citizens, and widespread and systematic abuse of human rights, the Russian regime continues to demonstrate its contempt for international law and democratic values….The adoption by Canada of Magnitsky legislation, and the sanctioning of Russian officials responsible for human rights violations would be a strong signal that their actions are unacceptable to Canada. We call on Canada’s Members of Parliament to swiftly adopt Magnitsky legislation, and the Government of Canada to enhance sanctions on the Russian Federation, and ensure appropriate enforcement of the sanctions.

I could not agree more, and I am glad to see that our legislation can be applied not only in Russia but also to corrupt officials anywhere in the world. Corruption is a global problem and a global threat. Transparency International, which is dedicated to exposing and ending corruption worldwide, has stated that “the abuse of power, secret dealings and bribery continue to ravage societies around the world.”

They go on to say:

From children denied an education, to elections decided by money not votes, public sector corruption comes in many forms. Bribes and backroom deals don't just steal resources from the most vulnerable—they undermine justice and economic development, and destroy public trust in leaders.

Canada is a signatory to the United Nations Convention against Corruption, the only legally binding universal anti-corruption instrument. It covers five main areas: preventive measures, criminalization and law enforcement, international co-operation, asset recovery, and technical assistance and information exchange. It includes bribery, trading in influence, abuse of functions, and various acts of corruption in the private sector among its definitions.

The Sergei Magnitsky law we are discussing today dovetails perfectly with our international obligations under the UN convention. It does more than commemorate a man who fought a corrupt regime and died for his work. It provides real sanctions against corrupt individuals.

This bill includes the ability to freeze, seize, or sequester the Canadian assets and property of foreign nationals who have been deemed responsible or complicit in gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.

Sergei Magnitsky began looking into the accounts of Russian officials at the request of an American-British financier, Bill Browder, who has taken on global corruption as a lifelong cause. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Browder last year at a lunch meeting here on Parliament Hill. He is now the head of the International Justice Campaign for Sergei Magnitsky. He wrote:

one of the questions I got at various different stages of my advocacy work in Ottawa about the Magnitsky act was, what does this have to do with Canada? The fact that we found millions of dollars from the blood money of the Magnitsky crime coming to Canada makes Canada directly involved in this thing. This is not a hypothetical or an abstract notion. This is a situation in which a man was murdered for money, and some of that money came to Canada.

I believe that everyone in this House believes that Canada should not have any role in assisting government corruption abroad. This bill will ensure that Canada can no longer be an unwitting accessory to such acts, and it sends a strong message to corrupt officials everywhere: we are watching, we are paying attention, and we will not help you get away with it.

[Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, October 2nd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague not only for his speech today, but for his many years of championing the resources of Canada's coasts, particularly the west coast.

It is sometimes portrayed as just a bunch of environmentalists who care about tankers and tanker traffic off of British Columbia's west coast. However, when I had the pleasure of sitting in for the member at the fisheries and oceans committee, it was very clear that there is widespread concern among many organizations and groups, including commercial fishers and many others.

I would like to give my colleague the opportunity to share with us some of the people he hears from on a regular basis who are concerned about tanker traffic on the west coast, besides environmentalists.

[Petitions, October 2nd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to stand today to present a petition from the youth in my riding of Kootenay—Columbia, from Salmo, Nelson, Winlaw, and Creston, expressing concerns around climate change. They want the government to fulfill Canada's obligation under the Paris accord by including a strategy that has science-based targets for greenhouse gas reductions, eliminates fossil fuel subsidies, carbon pricing at $150 a tonne by 2030, and invests in renewable energy systems, energy efficiency, low-carbon transportation, and job training. They are asking that the government do this in order to avert disastrous climate change.