Rob Merrifield

[Canada's Clean Air Act, December 4th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I believe my colleague said something about the rail line industry not being regulated. We are here today to debate this piece of legislation so it is clear in everybody's mind as we move forward to vote on it and get it into committee.

Just for clarification, by 2010 the rail sector will be regulated. I wonder if my colleague understood that when he commented that the rail lines were not to be regulated.

[Canada's Clean Air Act, December 4th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I did not catch all of it but I caught most of what my colleague had to say and most of it was absolute rhetoric.

I look at our clean air act and compare it to him saying that it does not meet the favour of the international community. He suggested that wherever he goes internationally people say how shameful it is that we in Canada are not actually doing what we said we would do when we signed on to Kyoto, which is that we would reduce emissions by 6%. Instead of that, under the Liberal watch emissions increased by 35%. That is the rhetoric.

The reality of the situation is that the Liberals signed on to an agreement that they had no intention of complying with, nor were they actually doing anything about it. Now we have legislation that we hope will become law after it is debated in the House.

We can talk about the rhetoric, one side or the other, all we like but we are talking about a substantive bill that actually deals with this in a way where businesses that do business in Canada will need to comply.

I am wondering what the member has to say with regard to indoor air pollution, which is also in the clean air act. The government opposite had no kind of vision or ideology on that. I wonder if my hon. colleague would stand in his place now and tell Canadians and the House that he at least will support the indoor air standards that would be provided under this legislation and say something a bit more positive about the environment. Everyone in the House and all Canadians are environmentalists. I would like to get my hon. colleague's consensus at least on that.

[The Environment, November 28th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I was recently in Hinton, Alberta for the groundbreaking ceremony of its new eco-industrial park made possible through $5.5 million in federal funding. It is the first of its kind in Canada. Its eco-industrial zoning and development guidelines will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the same as removing 3,800 cars from our roads.

The layout of the park will also reduce pollution and waste as it is designed to optimize the waste of one business as an input for another. Already other communities across Canada have been expressing an interest in replicating Hinton's success.

Our government recently announced Canada's new clean air act. For the first time in our country, Canada's government is taking realistic action to reduce air pollution and greenhouse gases to protect the health of Canadians and the environment. Decisions to regulate the auto sector and to support smaller initiatives like Hinton's eco-industrial park are examples of why my grandchildren will be able to inherit a strong, free and clean Canada.

[Business of Supply, November 28th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments of my hon. colleague. He is a colleague of mine in Alberta who represents the wonderful riding of Crowfoot. I know that we both identify with some of the pressures and stresses of the delivering of health care in rural ridings.

When it comes to the patient care guarantee, it is not only something that doctors have endorsed, the Canadian Medical Association brought forward a recommendation on this a number of years ago and actually did some polling on it. We also have the support of the courts with the Chaoulli case which actually said that individual Canadians must be able to access health care when they need it because the government made that commitment to the people of Canada and they pay for it.

However, more important, the people of Canada support the care guarantee that this government has brought forward. In recent polls that I have seen, 85% or more support a care guarantee.

When it comes to the care guarantee in rural Alberta and understanding the dynamics and the problems of it, my colleague, who is from rural Alberta, knows that we deal with this in a micromanagement way all the time because we must travel a considerable distance to access health care services.

I wonder if my hon. colleague could explain to the House a little more about how it works in Crowfoot and how it should work right across this country.

[Business of Supply, November 28th, 2006]

I mean the opposition. Will the hon. member of the opposition commit to working on behalf of Canadians to make the care guarantee actually work in this country instead of the nonsensical rhetoric that we have heard from him in his deliberations and that we see in this motion?

[Business of Supply, November 28th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague and challenge some of the things he had to say with regard to this motion, which suggests that there are broken promises.

He also then he went on to explain what we were intending to do as government when we first got into office. First, we were going to sit down with the provinces, which we have done. Second, we were going to try to work with the provinces to establish wait time guarantees, which we are doing. Third, we were going to do pilot projects to actually comply with those issues, which we have done as of last week. It is not that we have broken anything.

I want my colleague to understand this as I ask him a question. In the last election campaign, we stood up on December 2 and said that we needed a health care guarantee in this country, but that was not a brand new idea. It is an idea that was put forth by the Kirby commission. In fact, a Liberal senator's report recommended it. The Mazankowski report and the CMA and others suggested it many years prior to the Kirby report.

However, we have a debate today on a motion that was actually introduced in the House on September 26, eight months after we formed the government, saying that we had broken promises to the Canadian public. I find it absolutely appalling that we would be playing politics with an issue like this, with such shallowness, and appalling to come into the House and spend a whole day debating what is absolutely ridiculous. In fact, the government should be embarrassed to be bringing forward a motion like this, so--

[Business of Supply, November 28th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my hon. colleague a question or two. She went on and on about a number of different issues. I think she referred to me in part of her dialogue. I believe there is a communication breakdown, but I will talk to her about that a little later. She thought I said one thing when actually I said something else, but that is not what my question is about.

My question is about her idea of the broken promises with regard to her province. I wonder just how much she really believes in her province, because when the 2004 accord was signed, all the provinces, including Quebec, signed on to that accord, which was for $41 billion over a 10 year period with the onus and the responsibility of dealing with wait times as a provincial jurisdiction. The only time the federal government should have to exercise a wait time guarantee is if the provinces have failed to comply in providing those wait times for those individuals.

Can my colleague tell me if the province of Quebec is going to fulfill its mandate, which it agreed to in the 2004 accord and which is to make sure that medically necessary services are provided for their citizens?

[Business of Supply, November 28th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I could not agree more with my hon. colleague with regard to home care. It is a major problem. It was a major problem back in the 2003 accord. That was a specific one. That accord had a date for when there would be national standards on home care. It was supposed to be accomplished by September of the following year. That date came and went and the Liberal government sat there and did nothing and wondered what was to happen. It is absolutely unbelievable that we saw no initiative, even when the Liberals sat down with the provinces, signed the accord, said that this was what it would do and then failed to complete it. The Liberals failed to even address it after that time period.

There is absolutely no question when it comes to home care, when it comes to individuals who need health care services, that they have to get it in an appropriate way.

We have to keep our seniors in their homes for as long as we possibly can and give them support services as long as we possibly can. That is where we have to go. We have to start thinking outside the box to know how to deliver that service in an effective way and understand the diversity between the vast geography of our country in doing so. If we do those things right, we will be able to accomplish what the hon. member has alluded to, which is to deal with our seniors in a respectful way in their homes. That is what we have to do.

[Business of Supply, November 28th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, there are a couple of ways I could answer that, but first I want to say that it takes 138% longer to see a specialist today than it did in 1993. That has to stop. We have to have some innovative projects that will actually hit the nail on the head and deal with the problems that Canadians have to try to get medical services. That is what the care guarantee is all about.

We will accomplish that. It is not an easy thing. We have to deal with the provinces collectively, because they have jurisdiction as well on this. We will work with them and drop the rhetoric not only in this House, but between orders of government. That is how we will solve it. We will solve it collectively. We will do it in a way that will be effective, because we have to for Canadians. They have paid for no less and they deserve no less. That is what we will accomplish.

[Business of Supply, November 28th, 2006]

Yes, the previous government.

We saw an example of exactly what could happen when the SARS crisis hit Canada. We saw that dithering cost not only billions of dollars but 44 lives. That was due, to a large degree, to ineffective leadership by the Liberal government. We could discuss for the entire day the disaster that happened because of the inaction of the Liberal government. We are not talking dollars, we are talking lives.

Let us go on to wait times. Why is it so important that we have a wait times guarantee? It is important to understand that some of the commissions studied it and recommended it. The Mazankowski report recommended it as did the Kirby report. It is a very important concept. People have to understand that if a government is prepared to say that it will provide necessary services as a public system and then the public does not have the opportunity to access those services, something is wrong.

The Supreme Court decision in the Chaoulli case in 2005 said that medically necessary services must be provided by the state in a timely fashion. If we are not going to do that, then we are saying that we are prepared to allow individuals to die on those wait lists before we provide the services. That is not compassionate, nor is it the way we should run our health system and it does not reflect Canadian values.

It is interesting to look at what happened in the last election. On December 2, the Conservatives announced the care guarantee saying that we would guarantee care to Canadians.

What was really interesting about that and why I bring this up, is the Liberal government, when it was embarrassed and knew it had to come out with something on health care, on January 3 said that a care guarantee was needed. That was after 13 years of saying no, that it was not going to do what needed to be done in health care. I am upset because of the partisanship and shallowness of the motion. We must stop playing politics with health care if we are to sustain it over the next 30 or 40 years.

We have to get down to work in the best interests of Canadians. We have to put the patient first. We must stop all this rhetoric and nonsense. A care guarantee absolutely must take place.

There is much that can be done with the dollars we have put into health care. It is not that Canadians do not want to support the system. It is not that there is not enough funding in the system. There is a significant amount of funding in the system.

The health committee wanted to look at care guarantee and wait times in order to make a recommendation to the minister with regard to wait times. We brought in a good number of witnesses last spring to look at what is happening in the provinces. We have to look at the provincial jurisdiction, understanding that it is the provinces that deliver on health care, and then determine what we can do from the federal perspective to assist them in dealing with the situation.

What are the provinces doing? There are some wonderful examples. One is the Cardiac Care Network of Ontario which appeared before the committee and described how it was improving access for patients. There is a joint approach between cardiac care and a system of services. Decision making is being improved through the way the data and experiences are being put together. A significant amount of research is being done. As well, there is an early warning system.

The one that struck me the most was the Alberta bone and joint transplant project. This is a pilot project led by Dr. Cy Frank from Alberta. It reduced the wait times from 47 weeks to 4.7 weeks within one year for joint and hip replacements. That is a wonderful statistic. The first thing that ran through my mind was the cost, but it actually cost us zero. They put $20 million into the project. Most of that money was for the extra joints and hips. The most astounding fact is not one more doctor was needed in order to provide that service and to reduce the wait times by 90%. It is astounding when a public system can actually do that.

The question that begs to be asked is why that cannot be done for every procedure in every province right across the country.

Dr. Cy Frank was in my office about a week ago and I asked him what else has happened. A significant amount of these projects are on their way in every province. Other provinces are modelling what has happened. This is the kind of innovation that we need in the public system. If we are going to sustain it, we have to stop the rhetoric and start working with the provinces that have the jurisdiction to accomplish what needs to take place to sustain the health care system over the next 40 years.

Because of the baby boomer bubble, an intense weight will be put on this system starting in about 10 years and increasing toward 2040 and beyond. It will take every Canadian working as hard as he or she possibly can to sustain the health care system as we know it today. We do not have time for rhetoric. We have to get serious about solving the problems and fixing what is out there.

My hon. colleague talked about the funding. There was the $5.5 billion in the 2004 accord and none of that money has been cut. It is all going out there. This year alone there is $1.2 billion for reducing wait times, focusing on health human resources. When we talk about health human resources, the minister actually added another $18.3 million last week to a specific project to deal with those immigrants in Canada who might be driving taxis right now, but who need to receive medical credentials. They need to be brought into the mainstream of the health care system to use their abilities in the best possible way for the benefit of Canadians. The goal with the $18.3 billion is to increase the number of doctors by 1,000, nurses by 800 and other health care professionals by 500. Those are the kinds of things that are actually happening.

That is not all. There is another project. It is the mandate of the federal government to deal with first nations. The first initiative is a care guarantee for first nations. After a woman's first pregnancy appointment, she will be cared for within four weeks of that visit.

I come from the province of Alberta where there are regional health authorities. Before coming to the Parliament, I worked for a regional health authority for 20 years.

The care guarantee is such in my riding that if an individual has a back problem and needs back surgery, he can go to Edmonton, which is not too far away. He may be on a wait list for six to eight months, or maybe even a year. Or he could go north to Grand Prairie to a smaller hospital and have that surgery within two weeks. Those are the kinds of examples.

The concept is that the individual needs the option to get the care as fast as he possibly can to add credibility and competitiveness within the system. That needs to transplant itself right across this country, in every province, in every area, so that we can use the dollars in the most effective way possible for the benefit of all Canadians. That is where we need to go. The rhetoric has to stop. We have to fix health care and we will do it.