SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 13

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 8, 2021 02:00PM
Context: House Hansard - 13 - Dec/8/21
The Deputy Chair
  • Dec/8/21 9:00:09 p.m.
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The hon. member.
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Ms. Raquel Dancho
  • Dec/8/21 9:00:10 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I think my question is about the fact that the taxpayer has spent $1 billion. We know with the government that the sky is the limit with spending, yet we are seeing an unbelievable amount of mistreatment: Canadians going without food; Canadians going without diapers and milk for their babies; people with celiac going without food they can safely eat; doctors having to put off critical patient appointments. However, all of these people have had negative tests and are just waiting for a bureaucratic stamp of approval for days. It cost $1 billion, and this is what the Canadian taxpayer has received. I just do not find it acceptable. The minister himself has said he does not believe this is acceptable. I will ask him again for the record: Does the minister think it is acceptable to treat Canadians this way?
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Hon. Jean-Yves Duclos
  • Dec/8/21 9:00:51 p.m.
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Madam Chair, what would be acceptable would be to hear the views of the opposition members of Parliament. Do they really believe we should take away all measures at the frontiers, including quarantine and testing measures?
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Ms. Raquel Dancho
  • Dec/8/21 9:01:08 p.m.
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Madam Chair, does the minister think it has been $1 billion well spent?
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Hon. Jean-Yves Duclos
  • Dec/8/21 9:01:12 p.m.
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Madam Chair, $1 billion spent to protect the health and safety of Canadians, I think, is a good idea.
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Ms. Raquel Dancho
  • Dec/8/21 9:01:19 p.m.
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Madam Chair, does the minister believe he is has been protecting the health and safety of the woman who has celiac disease who went 40 hours without food?
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Hon. Jean-Yves Duclos
  • Dec/8/21 9:01:24 p.m.
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Madam Chair, again, we do not know what the alternative is. Are they proposing that we should remove all testing and quarantine measures?
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Ms. Raquel Dancho
  • Dec/8/21 9:01:31 p.m.
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Madam Chair, the government should be treating Canadians with dignity and respect. If they have a negative COVID test, they should be released from quarantine, particularly the doctor who has not been able to see her patients, particularly the woman with celiac who has not eaten, particularly the man who has not changed his underwear for five days, all of whom have had negative COVID tests. That is unacceptable behaviour from the government. I am not appreciating that there is absolutely no dignity and respect coming from a minister of the government, the health minister, who clearly does not care that people have been treated without dignity and respect for days with negative COVID tests.
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Hon. Jean-Yves Duclos
  • Dec/8/21 9:02:07 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I think having respect here would be for the member to tell the House clearly what measures she proposes should be in place.
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Ms. Raquel Dancho
  • Dec/8/21 9:02:20 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I very much look forward to the time when Conservatives are in government. I cannot answer his question.
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Mr. Luc Thériault (Montcalm, BQ)
  • Dec/8/21 9:02:35 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Vancouver Kingsway. I would like to start with a simple little question. Has the minister received his mandate letter?
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Hon. Jean-Yves Duclos
  • Dec/8/21 9:03:00 p.m.
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Madam Chair, there are a lot of ministers, and I am not sure who the member is addressing. I have not yet received my mandate letter. I hope it will be made public soon.
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Mr. Luc Thériault
  • Dec/8/21 9:03:11 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I want to inform the minister that I am my party's health critic. It is 79 days after the election and 43 days since he was appointed, but the minister has not yet received the statement of priorities of his mandate. How does he explain that?
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Hon. Jean-Yves Duclos
  • Dec/8/21 9:03:32 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I assure my colleague that I am well aware of the priorities of my mandate. The first is to help our country definitively recover from the COVID‑19 crisis. The second is to repair the damage this crisis has caused to our health care system. The third is to build our health care system for the long term.
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Mr. Luc Thériault
  • Dec/8/21 9:03:52 p.m.
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Madam Chair, the election was supposedly necessary and urgent. For those people watching us who do not know, I want to make it clear that it is the Prime Minister who sets out the new ministers' priorities in their mandate letters. The Minister of Health claims to know what the Prime Minister expects of him, so it would be great if he could table his mandate letter in the House soon after he receives it so that we, too, can find out what his priorities are. Having said that, has the minister seen the Standing Committee on Health's work on the pandemic?
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Hon. Jean-Yves Duclos
  • Dec/8/21 9:04:33 p.m.
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Madam Chair, the first part of my colleague's question is about mandate letters. In 2015, the Liberal government was the first government in history to make mandate letters public. To answer the second part of his question, I invite my colleague to look at the Liberal Party's election platform from the last campaign. He will see that health care was a huge part of it.
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Mr. Luc Thériault
  • Dec/8/21 9:04:55 p.m.
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Madam Chair, the throne speech was so empty we had a hard time understanding anything about the government's priorities other than its plan to interfere in areas under provincial jurisdiction. Since the minister avoided answering my question, I have to assume he is not aware of the work of the Standing Committee on Health. If he were, he would have known that all the experts confirmed that chronic underfunding, thanks to his government and its predecessors, made the health system so fragile that, when the pandemic hit, all the weak links snapped. Dr. Champagne from Quebec's association of hematologists and oncologists said, “we really need to be concerned about these [diagnostic] delays, because patients and society will pay the price. For 13 of the 17 cancers that were studied, a four-week delay in diagnosis increased the risk of mortality by 6% to 8%”. The pandemic has created two types of victims: COVID‑19 patients and other patients. The latter are collateral victims. Why is the minister failing to see the urgent need to increase health transfers from 22% to 35%?
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Hon. Jean-Yves Duclos
  • Dec/8/21 9:06:32 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I am very grateful to my colleague for the question. I will quickly share two numbers with him. During the COVID‑19 pandemic, the Canadian government invested $55 billion in addition to the $43 billion under the Canada health transfer, not to mention part of the $11 billion that has been invested since 2017. That is a lot of resources invested in a short amount of time, without waiting for an agreement. If the member consults our election platform, he will see that it talks about an additional $25 billion to repair the health care system not in the long term, but in the very short term.
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Mr. Luc Thériault
  • Dec/8/21 9:07:09 p.m.
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Madam Chair, the minister says he wants the pandemic to end as soon as possible, but does he know that at the end of the third wave the lack of cancer screening meant that 10,000 people went undiagnosed? Does he know how many patients were waiting in the middle of the third wave according to the Fédération des médecins spécialistes du Québec, the FMSQ? I would like to note that we have reached the fifth wave.
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Hon. Jean-Yves Duclos
  • Dec/8/21 9:07:40 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I commend my colleague on all his contributions and I would remind him of another number. The number of surgeries that were delayed these past months because of the COVID‑19 pandemic is estimated at 780,000. The extraordinary partnership we saw between the governments during the pandemic can be just as important in the short term for cleaning up that mess.
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