Health  Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his advocacy on behalf of palliative care. We are very happy as a government that we were able to support the provinces and territories to the tune of $6 billion of new money to expand access to home care and palliative care. I have had

Health  Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for raising this issue again in the House. Again, we will talk about the fact that this is an unprecedented national public health crisis. We are working determinedly on all aspects of the crisis. Our response is comprehensive. We have investe

Health  Mr. Speaker, I would like to correct a fact that the hon. member stated. I think he may have misread his notes. In fact, British Columbia is on track to have 1,400 deaths in 2017. This is a significant increase over last year, and we continue to see this overdose crisis spread ac

Controlled Drugs and Substances Act  Mr. Speaker, the member's question gives me an opportunity to speak to what is taking place in Surrey. Indeed, I was in Surrey not very long ago addressing this very issue. Surrey is one of the municipalities where I saw a tremendous amount of collaboration from members of the c

Controlled Drugs and Substances Act  Mr. Speaker, I want to reiterate this, because I am not sure everyone has fully comprehended the severity of this crisis in British Columbia. Based on the number of deaths that have occurred in the first three months of this year, if trends continue there will be 1,400 deaths fro

Controlled Drugs and Substances Act  Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for supporting time allocation in this case. I agree with her that this is an exceptional piece of legislation because there is a tremendous amount of urgency. I appreciate her upstanding perspective on how to address it, as she said, knowing that

Controlled Drugs and Substances Act  Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the wonderful opportunity to speak to the amendments adopted in the Senate relating to Bill C-37. This is an act, as we know, to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, and to make related amendments to other acts. Before I begin, I thank my

Physician-Assisted Dying  Mr. Speaker, as I said, this group was asked to find individuals to do this work. They have chosen 43 individuals. These are esteemed academics. They were chosen by an independent process by the Council of Canadian Academies. They did so in order to examine these issues, and we

Physician-Assisted Dying  Mr. Speaker, the Council of Canadian Academies uses a totally independent process when naming individuals to this panel. I found out at the same time as the public found out the names of the individuals. Individuals are named to the panel to debate the evidence before them and n

Marijuana  Mr. Speaker, over the past few months, I have spent a lot of time working with my counterparts, the health ministers. We have discussed many issues. We discussed the introduction of the cannabis legislation, and we are going to continue to work hard and work with them to protect

Ethics  Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member would assume, the person he referred to, who is no longer working in my office, obviously met with the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner to discuss arrangements. Everything about his new position was cleared with the commissioner. The st

Ethics  Mr. Speaker, I certainly encourage the member opposite to not manufacture a concern that is not based on fact. The person about whom he is speaking has cleared this new position, and it is very clear he will not be lobbying this government.

Health  Mr. Speaker, our government passed legislation that provides a legislative framework for medical assistance in dying and that protects the most vulnerable Canadians while giving them safe and consistent access to medical assistance in dying across the country. As required by th

Health  Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned earlier this afternoon, this budget was the best news on health that we have seen in a decade, with fantastic news in so many areas; not only the new investments that I referred to earlier, but we have a growing Canada health transfer that would give t

Seniors  Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for this question because it gives me an opportunity to talk about the fantastic news in our budget yesterday, as it relates to health, and that includes the health of seniors. We were able to announce additional investments in the order of $11 billion