Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, COVID infections are raging across Canada and hospitals in many provinces are overwhelmed. Canadians need to be vaccinated as quickly as possible to help address this crisis. However, the head of the Public Health Agency just told the health committee that Canada's vaccine rollout was only operating at half capacity. This is due to a lack of supply of doses. Will the Liberals stop spi…
Read full speech →Emergency Debate
Mr. Speaker, I did touch on those very important points made by my colleague. Absolutely, we must never again allow Canada as a G7 country to be put in a place where we do not have the capacity to produce life-saving medications or vaccines in our own country. That is something on which all parties should join together and recognize, and construct the capacity to do so. It is also vital to ensure …
Read full speech →Emergency Debate
Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Vancouver East, who is also the deputy critic for health, for her extraordinary representation and contributions to the House and country. To be honest, all the things I mentioned are important, but the most acute crisis in the country right now is going on in Ontario. I think all of us across party lines can share the horror at any doctor in our country…
Read full speech →Emergency Debate
Mr. Speaker, let me take the opportunity to congratulate my hon. colleague on her appointment as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health. I also have a great deal of respect for her and her excellent representation in the House of her constituents. To answer in a short way, I remember when former prime minister Trudeau wanted to tackle inflation and invoke the Anti-Inflation Act, and it …
Read full speech →Emergency Debate
Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Windsor West. This debate occurs at a critical time in our country. We have a serious third wave of COVID-19 raging across our nation. We are seeing transmission rates higher than at any time since the pandemic began. We have variants of concern that are now the dominant virus in many areas with greater contagion capacity and virulenc…
Read full speech →Emergency Debate
Mr. Speaker, I am going to quote from the Emergencies Act. It says: a national emergency is an urgent and critical situation of a temporary nature that (a) seriously endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians and is of such proportions or nature as to exceed the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it It then defines a public welfare emergency as: an emergency that is caused by…
Read full speech →Emergency Debate
Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for her initiative in causing this debate tonight. I think it is very valuable and I thank her for her leadership on this. The member mentioned the word “emergency” many times, and I have in front of me the Emergencies Act of Canada. It is the only flagship legislation that we have from 1988. It says that “...a national emergency is an urgent …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, we know that for decades millions of Canadians have had no access to the prescription drugs they need to be well and even to live. In 1997, Liberals said that if Canadians elected them, they would bring in pharmacare. They broke that promise. In the 2019 throne speech, right after being elected, the Liberal government said, “pharmacare is the key missing piece of universal health ca…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, yesterday's budget was an opportunity to strengthen our health care system for people across the country. However, the Liberals, once again, failed to deliver pharmacare for Canadians and ignored their own advisory committee's recommendations and timelines. Their choice will continue to leave millions of Canadians without access to the life-saving medications they need. The Liberals h…
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Mr. Speaker, the pandemic third wave is raging and Ontario's health care system is in serious crisis. People are doing their best to stop the spread of COVID-19 by staying home and following public health guidelines, but they need more help. If the federal government declared a public welfare emergency we could increase hospital capacity, get more vaccines to vulnerable people and provide paid sic…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, the hon. member spoke of vaccines in the indigenous community, and that of course leads to the issue of indigenous health. We know that indigenous people in Canada score below the mean on every major health metric, and one of the core elements of health is access to basic nutrition and clean water. However, the government has missed its self-imposed target of removing every boil wat…
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Mr. Speaker, we know that UNDRIP was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2007 and that followed several decades of negotiation. The purpose of it was to enshrine the rights that “constitute the minimum standards for the survival, dignity and well-being of the indigenous peoples of the world”. We know that Canadian indigenous peoples have suffered a genocide. They suffered the worst crime imagina…
Read full speech →Routine Proceedings
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-286, An Act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and to enact the Expungement of Certain Drug-related Convictions Act and the National Strategy on Substance Use Act. Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to introduce the health-based approach to substance use act. I would like to thank my colleague, the hon. member for Vancouver East, for seconding this propose…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Bill C-14, the economic statement that was introduced last fall. As has been noted by a number of speakers, there is a little irony to the debate today on this bill, because it has been superseded by a federal budget that will be introduced next week. I have to point out for the record that it has been over two years since the last budget was presented b…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I think there is a fundamental difference in philosophy between the Liberals and the New Democrats. The Liberals continue to cling to the notion that the solutions to all problems in this country will come from the private sector. New Democrats believe in a strong private sector, but also a strong public sector engaged in public enterprise. I think the current government giving half…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I would agree very much. I think there are a lot of products and services that are best delivered by the private sector. For some it makes sense to have public and private collaboration, but others, of course, require public enterprise. For instance, we can talk about our health care system. Right in the Canada Health Act, it says our health care system must be publicly administered…
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for the excellent work he does both in Parliament and in representing the people of his riding. Of course, he is quite right. I do not think I am being cynical by pointing out that successive Liberal and Conservative governments have allowed these structural, chronic problems to develop and have been well warned about them. If we take the long…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I did not separate or single out any particular group in Canada because housing is a core foundational need for every single resident here. It is so important to recognize the core responsibility the federal government has towards indigenous peoples in this country. My hon. colleague is absolutely right about the state of inadequate housing, both on reserve and off reserve, and in u…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I agree with my hon. colleague. I do believe that providing affordable housing for Canadians is going to take the co-operation all three levels of government. We once did it. There used to be two core mandates of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation in this country. The first, of course, was to insure mortgages, which it still does. The second was to build affordable housing.…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate my hon. colleague for his speech. Frankly, I think every single thing he mentioned is core NDP policy as well. I want to focus on housing, because it has been said that COVID has created many crises, but it has also exposed other crises that were pre-existing, and one is the housing crisis. There is nothing in this legislation that deals with the incredi…
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Madam Speaker, I know that as a former nurse, the member has a particular expertise in these matters. I think she will appreciate the very difficult trade-off that we have. What I think is important to recognize at this point in time is that our ability to reopen our economy and to restore some sense of normalcy to communities across this country is completely dependent upon our gaining control of…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, it is well known in the COVID crisis that one of the main vectors of disease transmission was part-time workers moving between long-term care centres and workers who could not afford to stay home when they were sick. Dr. Caroline Colijn of the Simon Fraser University has said, “Even before COVID happened, workers were going to work sick because they had no other choice...Now more than…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, the problem is deep: 58% of all workers in Canada do not have access to paid sick leave, and that jumps to 70% for low-wage workers. Only about 10% of companies increased their paid leave policies in response to COVID. The CRSB, which the Liberal government brought in, does not provide immediate accessible paid sick leave. It pays less than a full-time minimum wage job does in most …
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Madam Speaker, what I always fail to understand about the Bloc Québécois position on standards is that it seems to fail to understand the way that the Canadian health system is set up. The Canada Health Act establishes standards. That is the basis of our entire health care system, of which the people of Quebec, I am sure, are very proud and count on. The Canada Health Act sets out five principles,…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, I would like to start my remarks by outlining a few key principles I think are important for all parliamentarians to keep in mind. One, all federal COVID-19 guidance must be based on the best available science and reflect both the state of the pandemic and the pace of the vaccine rollout across Canada. Two, Canada's New Democrats understand that there is no trade-off to be made betw…
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Madam Speaker, I should have said that at the beginning. Yes, I will be splitting my time accordingly. Several studies conducted throughout the pandemic have found that outbreaks at for-profit facilities have been more extensive and have led to more resident deaths. Indeed, decades of research have demonstrated that long-term care facilities run on a for-profit basis tend to have lower staffing le…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, this gives me a chance to thank the member for London—Fanshawe for her tenacious advocacy on behalf of women in this country. There is an incredible gender aspect to this issue today. It is a heavily gendered workforce. It is a heavily racialized workforce. Most care is provided by women and women of colour. Of course, most of the seniors are women. We have a government that constan…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, the member is right that it really is a multi-faceted problem. We need more resources, both financially and otherwise, and an improvement in standards. When we talk about national standards, we are talking about things like making sure there are a minimum number of care hours per day per resident and that there is a minimum ratio of care aides to patients. We would tie the federal f…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, as my hon. colleague well knows, this is a motion brought before the House that calls on the Liberals to commit to a principle. The principle we are asking the Liberals to determine today is whether they do or do not believe that we should be making profits off the care of our seniors. That is the question before the House today. Once we know the government is committed to that, the…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, in politics, it is imperative to speak truth to power. This is especially the case when matters of life and death are involved. Today, I rise to speak this truth. Canada has utterly failed to protect vulnerable long-term care residents and workers throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and this failure has cost the lives of thousands of Canadians. According to the National Institute on A…
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Madam Speaker, the hon. colleague talked about the government's role. I am a little alarmed that the government has become an expert at deflection, shirking and buck-passing. For example, the sexism occurring in the military was not its responsibility. The vaccination delays are the fault of the premiers. We have no pharmacare because the provinces are stalling. Sometimes the government can not ma…
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, the member said that he has confidence in the current system. Well, last June, the Canadian Institute for Health Information found that 81% of the deaths in Canada due to COVID-19 were in the long-term care sector. This compares to countries such as the Netherlands at 15%, the U.K. at 27%, Australia at 28%, Donald Trump's U.S. at 31% and Germany at 34%. In fact, the OECD average is …
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, due to decades of underfunding and privatization, COVID-19 has cost the lives of thousands of Canadians in long-term care homes. Residents and staff are living and working in unsafe conditions so bad the army had to be called in to care for seniors and help overwhelmed workers. Federal governments allowed this to happen by failing to regulate national standards of care and allowing co…
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate that this is a very difficult subject for many parliamentarians and Canadians. It also invokes many deep feelings of conscience. Personally, I am in favour of medical assistance in dying and support Canadians' rights and constitutional rights to access that, but I also know a flawed bill when I see one and I also know when the majority of the Canadian public is very con…
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Madam Speaker, I have had the honour to represent the people of Vancouver Kingsway for some 12 years, which means I remember when Stéphane Dion was the environment minister and famously named his dog “Kyoto”. I cannot say how many different iterations of reducing carbon by so much by such a time I have seen; all I can say is that Canada's carbon emissions have gone up every single year that I have…
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Madam Speaker, on the trash issue, it is interesting that the Liberals have still not paid compensation to the Philippines and are negotiating loopholes with the U.S. that would still allow for trash to be sent to third world countries. That should go on the record. My colleague talked about Conservatives and their position on the environment. I was in this House when Prime Minister Stephen Harper…
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Madam Speaker, the New Democrats are always pleased when we see any kind of legislation that will help working people in our country, so we will support this legislation. I found it passingly interesting to hear the hon. colleague say that he would have liked to have seen workers better treated over the last 30 years. The Liberal Party has been in power for 21 of the last 30 years. In fact, it has…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, the facts are clear. The reality is that millions of Canadians today have to choose between paying their rent and getting the medications their doctors prescribe. Many are getting sicker and even dying from this lack of basic health care. Canada is the only country in the world with universal health care that does not cover prescription drugs. The truth is that drug prices have risen …
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Mr. Speaker, first, I will thank the Prime Minister for his graciousness. The facts are clear: Millions of Canadians cannot afford the medicines their doctors prescribe. Many get sicker and even die from this lack of basic health care. The reality is that drug prices have increased every year of the government's mandate and the NDP pharmacare bill would work exactly like our public health care sys…
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Mr. Speaker, first, I would like to thank all my hon. colleagues for their support in this. I am going to also raise a question of privilege, because I have a right not only to be heard but to be seen. There has been a totally inconsistent application of this. Just in the course of the last half hour, Mr. Speaker, you interrupted a member and advised her to bring her microphone down. You did not i…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, during my question, my computer malfunctioned and my screen was not working, so I was wondering if I could receive the unanimous consent of my colleagues to re-ask my question.
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, on August 31, 2020, the Prime Minister publicly stated that Canada would produce 250,000 COVID vaccine doses per month last November and two million doses monthly by the end of last year. The co-chair of the federal vaccine task force just revealed that producing vaccines in Canada was never possible before the end of 2021. If domestic vaccine production was never a possibility until …
Read full speech →Statements By Members
Mr. Speaker, it is in times of crisis that we see the very best in Canadians. I rise today to pay tribute to the everyday heroes who are doing so much to support the people of Vancouver Kingsway. From the front-line health workers at Evergreen and Lu'ma community medical centres to the staff at Collingwood and Cedar Cottage Neighbourhood Houses; from the first responders at Fire Halls Nos. 13, 15 …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Mr. Speaker, I believe that the hon. chair of the committee was well intentioned but simply mistaken when he thought it was his duty to arbitrarily end the meeting at 4:30 when it was the clear will of the majority of the members of that committee to continue. It is uncomfortable sometimes in those situations because some people want to end the meetings and some do not, but the idea of a filibuste…
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Mr. Speaker, in the time I have been privileged to serve the people of Vancouver Kingsway, two very fundamental concepts have been rendered very apparent to me. The first is time is one of the most important currencies in Parliament. The second is that majority rule is the cornerstone of our democracy. I believe the current motion before us on privilege engages both of those very important princip…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Madam Speaker, the COVID pandemic has shown Canadians the cost of government inaction and neglect. Families have suffered devastating losses of loved ones in long-term care centres across the country, but instead of fixing the problems like they promised, the Liberals continue to underfund health care and protect the profits of big corporations and their wealthy shareholders. Nobody should be prof…
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour to serve with my hon. colleague on the health committee, and I appreciate his wise words in that committee. We have heard the same evidence that shows that Canada was caught without a domestic ability to produce essential medical equipment and supplies like PPE. We were reliant on countries like China and the United States. Given his interest in buy America, does he …
Read full speech →Government Orders
Madam Speaker, a lot of Canadians are suffering right now. We have just seen the government bring in some very strict measures when it comes to people who have to travel abroad and come back, with figures as high as $2,000 to be spent on hotels. As health critic for the New Democrats, I am very much in favour of strong measures to protect public health. However, I have been contacted by some const…
Read full speech →Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, first, Pfizer delivery interruptions delayed vaccine doses to Canadians. Then EU export controls threatened our supply. Now reports from think tanks are raising alarms. According to the U.K.-based Economist Intelligence Unit, the majority of Canadians may have to wait six months longer than Americans and Europeans for vaccines and will not be vaccinated until mid-2022. Canada is alrea…
Read full speech →Emergency Debate
Mr. Speaker, just to correct my hon. colleague on numbers, the United States was vaccinating 1.1 million Americans a day to last week, and they announced today that they are going to move that to 1.5 million Americans each day. If we compare that with Canada, it means that the Biden administration's commitment that it will vaccinate 100 million Americans in the first hundred days means that about …
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