SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 162 - Feb/16/23

Mrs. Élisabeth Brière (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions and Associate Minister of Health, Lib.)

Feb/16/23 12:15:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his speech, which reflects his legal background. Surely my colleague would agree that more and more Canadians, especially young people, are suffering from mental health issues. That is why it is important to invest in mental health and in integrated services for youth. By negotiating their bilateral agreements, the provinces will have the flexibility to decide to invest more money in mental health. Is that not a good thing?

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Mr. Rhéal Fortin

Feb/16/23 12:16:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question. I know this member as a great parliamentarian and a very competent legal expert. That said, obviously we are not against mental health care. I have never met anyone in Quebec who was against apple pie. Everyone likes it. People with mental health issues need to be taken care of. I hope the rest of Canada has the same concerns. In fact, I have no doubt that they feel the same way. The issue is not whether we want to take care of people with mental health issues. The issue is who is going to take care of them. Pursuant to the Constitution Act, 1867, could each province not have its own provisions to address its own specific concerns, which differ from one province to the next? After all, that is a fact of life.

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Mr. Gord Johns (Courtenay—Alberni, NDP)

Feb/16/23 12:17:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we are learning about Veterans Affairs' mental health rehabilitation services treatments being outsourced to a company owned by Loblaws. My good colleague from North Island—Powell River has been calling on the government to deliver that through Canada's health care system, not privatize it. Meanwhile veterans, people who have put their lives on the line, are not getting the services and treatment they need and deserve. Does the member think that this privatization of veterans' services should be included in the health care system for Canada and Quebeckers rather than outsourced, where profits are actually flowing to investors while veterans wait for services? It is absolutely absurd. It is unconscionable that the government is doing this.

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Mr. Rhéal Fortin

Feb/16/23 12:18:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. I have a great deal of respect for him as well. I know that there are many health care issues in British Columbia. My heart goes out to the people in that province. That said, I agree with the premise of the motion, which is to prohibit private health care and try to improve public health care. Yesterday, Quebec introduced Bill 10, a bill to restrict the use of staffing agencies and self-employed workers in the health and social services sector. Last spring, in April 2022, it adopted a plan to implement necessary changes in health care. We are concerned about this issue, and we are working on it. I am convinced the same thing is happening in British Columbia, Ontario and elsewhere in Canada. We just have to do things our way, and the federal government must stop interfering in the provinces' management of health care—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Feb/16/23 12:19:19 p.m.
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Resuming debate. The hon. member for Edmonton Griesbach.

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Mr. Blake Desjarlais (Edmonton Griesbach, NDP)

Feb/16/23 12:19:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, today we are talking about health care, something that Canadians value. Our health care system is the very backbone of our social safety net, no matter who we are, how much we make, where we live or in what circumstances we may find ourselves. It is the core value that Canadians right across the country praise, and it is at risk today. There is an insidious and nefarious project under way in Canada that would seek to take away that very protection. It has already begun In my home province of Alberta. The premier of Alberta is utilizing existing public funds to funnel into the private health care system, funds that would otherwise be used for public care. This cannibalizes our existing public health care system. It is a fallacy, a myth that the private health care system can make things better. It is no secret to the many Canadians who had to put up this fight before, including the New Democratic Party, which has always been steadfast in the defence of our public health care system, that the provinces would seek to defund and take away the supports of our public health care system. This would ensure that the public would begin to see that deterioration, which would build public support for private health care systems. That is what is happening right now. Our public health care system is falling victim to a classic privatization trap, whether with respect to education or health care, that would seek to destroy our social safety net. I look at my home province and the real people who have been saved through public health care. The fight began and grew on the Prairies. The intent of the Canada Health Act was to ensure that no matter who we were, whether it was the neighbours we farmed with, or the post office person, or the teacher or the person constructing our roads, and regardless of how the economy may have hurt us, we would have that basic level of humanity. It is not the job of the government to look solely at the GDP of the country. It is important it ensures that the people who develop the means and the surpluses to make so much possible in our country have control and benefit from those surpluses. Part of that is ensuring that the basic need of health care is looked after. Imagine our country seeking to seize on Danielle Smith's project to give everyone $375 in an account to privatize the health care system in my province. If that were implemented that right across the country, millions of our most vulnerable people would be left behind. As evidence of this, Premier Danielle Smith published a paper at the University of Calgary's School of Public Policy, where she suggested creating annual health co-pay fees of up to $1,000 annually based on income. She has stated that once people get used to the concept of paying out of pocket for more things themselves then “we can change the conversation on health care.” It is shameful that she would want to shackle the most vulnerable, who need health care the most, to a limit of $1,000. We know that it costs at least $3,000 for one night in the hospital. Who does she want to toss out onto the street? Who does she want to ensure does not get that care? On top of all of that, the condition of our hospitals today is truly deplorable. Before we get to the point of proposing a solution like Danielle Smith's, we have to break the system first. We have to break public health care. That starts with attacking our public health care workers and our care economy. The brave men, women and non-binary folks who work in our health care system today are the same people who helped us through one of our country's worst nightmares, the global pandemic, which would have left millions of Canadians behind if we did not have a public health care system. Even though health care is massively underfunded, and the conditions these workers were placed in, they stepped up. The House praised them. The Conservatives, the Bloc, the Liberals called them heroes. When I talk to health care workers in my province today, they feel like zeroes, because that is what they are getting at the bargaining table and in their contracts. When we value our health care professionals and those who work in the profession, we value our health care system. These people are not looking for profits. They are looking for the tools to help their neighbours, their family members, the people they grew up with and the provinces they love. However, the conditions they are working in are forcing them into a narrow corner. They have to make a decision to either leave the health care system altogether or enter a growing private sector that would seek to abuse them, that would seek to take away their rights and that would seek to take profit from those who are sick. It is a shame. Alberta can be a prosperous, beautiful, strong and resilient place so long as we ensure that the principles we have agreed to in our provincial health bill, which is our public health care system, are truly adhered to and valued. Part of that is looking back at that history and at those who experienced the health care system before it became a socialized system. I talked to a retired nurse in my riding. Just last weekend said asked me to please stop the privatization of health care. She knew exactly what that felt like because she had lived through it before. In Alberta and other provinces, before our national health care program was built, and is still being built and defended today, she had to go through the onerous process of having to ask someone to insure her husband's life. When she could not afford to make those payments, the insurer said “too bad, so sad”. Her husband needed insulin and medical attention. Her husband worked on a farm his whole life and was a hard worker, and there are realities to that kind of labour. When we do not provide that social safety net for those who rely on it most, we leave them behind and it hurts our economy. We need to take a stand against U.S.-style for-profit health care, and that is part of the problem. We have megacorporations that would love to dine out on the public dollar, that would love to continue to make a killing off people who need that support. Our job in this place is to ensure that Canadians have the tools and the social safety net to succeed when they fall down, because we are all human, so they can get back up. Canadians are fighting for that today. That is the progress New Democrats are fighting for today, a truly universally accepted public health care system that can withstand the labour conditions we put on individuals who give themselves to our country and who find themselves lesser for it; and a government that is not willing to ensure they have that health care. It is for those teachers, so they can ensure that no matter what happens to them, especially throughout COVID, they can continue to do the work of standing on the front lines. The working class of our country are being divided and they are being attacked, and it is being done so we do not look at the real problem. Those corporations that would seek to profit, and the politicians they pay for, ignore this issue. They want us to ignore the fact that our public health care system is under attack. They want us to ignore the fact that for-profit surgeries are already taking place in my home province of Alberta. The Liberal government needs to enforce the Canada Health Act. It is written clearly. It needs to do that and ensure that people like Danielle Smith cannot continue to finance the private health care system like she is today. I welcome the Liberals to Alberta to take a look at some of the private health care systems, because they obviously do not believe it. They should talk to the people who need this service. They should talk to them about how much it costs to get a hip replacement. We are here to defend public health care, and we will continue to do that.

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Mr. Adam van Koeverden (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health and to the Minister of Sport, Lib.)

Feb/16/23 12:29:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for taking such a firm stand in this place for publicly funded, universally available and equitably delivered health care in our country. It is so important that we continue to stand up for it because he is right. There are Conservatives in the House and across the country who would strive to privatize our health care further. However, our plan is compliant with the Canada Health Act. It ensures that provinces and territories abide by the Canada Health Act. The member said precisely that our government should enforce it, and I have a few small examples. In Ontario in 2021, a deduction was taken from Ontario's federal health transfer for charges that were privatized in nature. The same is true for New Brunswick as well as in the member's home province of Alberta. These deductions are the enforcement mechanism that the federal government to enforce the priority. This government has repeatedly stated that our health care remains public and universal. If the member has any other recommendations, I am here to listen.

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Mr. Blake Desjarlais

Feb/16/23 12:30:49 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I believe the government can enforce the Canada Health Act in a way that is consistent with the goal of ensuring we have equity right across the country. The problem I have is the fact that we have an existing public health care system that, if funded properly, could work really well. However, this idea that we could break the existing public health care system and then find innovative “solutions” amounts to privatization. In my province of Alberta, it is already happening. Therefore, something has gone wrong. Either the government is not enforcing the Canada Health Act or it is ignoring the reality that, in Alberta, private health care is happening. People are paying money for their very basic needs in order to survive.

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Mr. Yves Perron (Berthier—Maskinongé, BQ)

Feb/16/23 12:31:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for the passion with which he speaks. Once again, I find myself in a situation where I agree almost 100% with my colleague. However, he is not in the right parliament. Today, his political party is proposing a false solution: to support the government which is underfunding provincial health care, but prohibit the bad provinces from using private health care to solve their problems. The Bloc Québécois does not support using the private sector for health care, either. We are asking the NDP to end this fake NDP-Liberal coalition and stop voting for a government that slashes funding. My colleague talked about history earlier. I would like to educate him on two points: First, Canada is mistakenly called a confederation; it is a federation where an overly powerful central government imposes its will on the provinces. It wants to keep doing that and, in a few weeks, there will be a vote on a budget full of funding cuts, when the initial agreement was 50% of health care costs. I would like my colleague to tell me how he can sleep at night.

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Mr. Blake Desjarlais

Feb/16/23 12:33:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I sleep very well at night knowing that New Democrats are in this place fighting for regular Canadians while the Bloc continues to stop support for even the people of Quebec. Shame. I also want to note that the Conservatives will not rise once to ask about this issue, because they know exactly what is happening in provinces run by Conservatives. To better answer the question of the member, I believe in a universally administered, publicly accessible health care system right across the country, and he does not even have to look too far to actually get that answer. The member could have done some homework and looked at the country's track record on ensuring we had universally administered and publicly accessible health care. He could refer to the 1965 royal commission on this issue. If he looked at that, it calls for a national health care program. Even those in Quebec agreed to those things, and now they are getting mad because they realize they are wrong.

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Mr. Don Davies (Vancouver Kingsway, NDP)

Feb/16/23 12:34:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I note that the Bloc Québécois voted against dental care and now it seems it will vote against the NDP motion to ensure we have a strong, publicly funded system. I do not think that is what Quebeckers want. However, my question is not really about the Canada Health Act today; it is about policy. It is about whether we are going to allow public dollars to be diverted to private-for-profit care when we know that it is more expensive and that it is going to drain workers from our public health care system. That conforms to the Canada Health Act. The question is whether the government is going to attach conditions to its health care transfers to the provinces to prevent it.

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Mr. Blake Desjarlais

Feb/16/23 12:34:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is precisely why we are here today. As a matter of fact, the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs is in my home province of Alberta right now, in Calgary, meeting with the Province of Alberta. I call on the government to make a phone call, demand that we ensure publicly administered, publicly accessible health care is in that deal and make sure Danielle Smith follows it.

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Ms. Lindsay Mathyssen (London—Fanshawe, NDP)

Feb/16/23 12:35:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise in the House today to speak to the motion brought forward by the NDP. My colleagues and my constituents certainly already know how I feel about the Ontario premier's privatization agenda. Federal Liberal and Conservative governments have backed away from their role in the provision of health care. Instead of enforcing the Canada Health Act, they have steadily allowed two-tiered health care. Over decades, successive Liberal and Conservative governments have severely underfunded the health care system, cutting transfers, creating a perceived a crisis and making people believe that there is no other solution but privatization. The government needs to provide real leadership and real solutions. The solutions need to solve the recruitment and retention crisis with health care workers. It needs to make sure that public dollars go to public health care. It needs to close loopholes that are allowing private American-style health care through the back door. While respiratory illnesses were ripping through our communities, I was in the House calling on the federal government to take that leadership. Last fall, when London's emergency room wait times hit an all-time high of 20 hours, I called on the government to sit down with the provinces to create a deal that protected public health care. When London was warned by health officials that the record influx of patients at children's hospitals would not slow down, I told the government that parents are living in fear of their kids getting sick, and it had to come to the negotiating table. When children's hospitals were forced to delay surgeries, I called out the government for walking away from those negotiations. When Doug Ford tried downloading $300 million to London's municipal government because he did not want to adequately fund health care infrastructure, I called on the government to find a deal to ensure the provinces could find enough money that was needed for that infrastructure. When the crisis peaked and London's underfunded and understaffed children's hospitals had to transfer out kids all the way to Kingston, and when the Red Cross had to be called in to Ottawa's hospitals, I asked the government what it would take to finally step up to provide that leadership. By sending people to private for-profit clinics, not only will people now pay double for health care services, but human resources will be drained from an already strained public sector. To explain a bit of this recruitment and retention crisis in Ontario, we only have to look to Doug Ford's government's use of Bill 124 to cap Ontario nurses' wages at a 1% increase. Think about the financial strain that workers have gone through in the last few years, certainly recently with the cost of living crisis throughout the pandemic and now. Through all of that, Conservatives froze nurses' wages. While the government refused to pay what they are worth, they still showed up for Canadians through COVID-19. They show up today. When these failed provincial policies meant hospitalization and ICU rates hit unprecedented levels over and over, they still showed up, but that took a toll on our health care workers. Ontario nurses' overtime hours skyrocketed by 109% during the pandemic. Across Canada, 94% of nurses said they were experiencing symptoms of burnout and 45% of nurses said they are experiencing severe burnout. Even before the pandemic, 60% of nurses said they intended to leave their jobs within the next year and more than one-quarter wanted to leave their profession altogether. After years of refusing to hammer out fair collective agreements with health care workers, years of neglecting our health care system and the creation of a crisis, the idea of privatization has been allowed to creep in. However, we have to be clear that for-profit health care means that wait times will get worse, the quality of care will drop and all Canadians will have to foot the bill. We know what happens to for-profit corporations when they deliver care. We have seen it in long-term care. During the pandemic, more than 17,000 people lost their lives in long-term care. The Canadian Armed Forces were called in because of that crisis. The loss of life and neglect of seniors were avoidable, but the lack of legislated care standards directly led to the deaths of thousands of people living in long-term care homes. The staffing shortage has only gotten worse in private hands. For-profit temp agencies have been overcharging care homes. Yesterday, Global News reported that the temp agencies are taking advantage of the staffing shortage by charging up to $150 an hour. That is why New Democrats have fought for national long-term care standards and have called for them in our agreement with the government. In my community, we had two recent preventable tragedies. We lost two seniors in house fires, two women who were waiting for long-term care beds. One of them was on a list for a not-for-profit bed for two years. She was living at home long after she knew it was time to leave, as it was not safe. The privatization of this sector has exacerbated the crisis. Private, two-tiered systems do not work. The for-profit delivery of health care is only going to make this crisis worse. After years of the suppression of public sector wages, health care workers will be poached by short-term promises from private employers. They will then prioritize cheap, fast procedures over complex, life-saving surgeries that would help solve the backlog. Prioritizing profit over treatment means rushed jobs that increase preventable deaths. Canadians need real solutions to fix public universal health care, not to be funnelling funds and staff to the for-profit facilities. We need new bilateral health agreements that result in thousands of new health care workers. We need to stand up for those workers and their unions to keep the professionals we have and to recruit new ones. We need to close Canada Health Act loopholes that are already allowing corporations to siphon public funds to private pockets. I want to finish today by telling the House about my constituent, a woman of incredible generosity, kindness and care. She gave a lot of her senior years in service to helping veterans in my community. Her name was Doreen Schussler. Every time I saw Doreen, she was there with a hug and a smile. She took such pride in the fact that her husband was a veteran. He had actually won the highest service honour from the government of France for his time in service. She was always there, and then Doreen got sick. A normally very healthy senior woman got sick. She needed a fairly non-complex procedure. She had to go to the emergency room where she waited for hours and hours for care. When she was finally provided assistance from one of the overburdened workers in the ER, she was seen in a hallway. She was not given an adequate diagnosis. She was not given the time that she needed because that health care worker did not have it to give, and she was sent home where she continued to suffer in pain and agony. It is a pretty gruesome story, so I will not go into details. Her daughter, Deborah, shared them with me, and we cried a lot over the death of her mother. Deb came to find her mother in a horrific situation, dead at home because of the care that she did not receive due to the crisis that has been created through the underfunding of our public systems, which was entirely preventable. Deb came to me and asked me to fight for her mother. She also asked, “Lindsay, how can I also fight for people like my mother, people who do not have an advocate in their corner, who cannot suffer the same fate as my mother?” I want to thank Deborah not only for allowing me to share her mother's story today, but also for that continued fight. Her daughter simply asks that we think about this now in the House: What if it were our own mother? That is what we talk about when we talk about care in this country. To fight over jurisdiction does no one any good, but to actually come up with real leadership and solutions, that is what we have been sent here to do. That is what I ask us to do today.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Feb/16/23 12:44:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think it is worth reinforcing that Canada does have a strong and powerful role to play when it comes to our national health care system. We can do it through legislation that is there, by using it and enforcing it, which we have done as a government. The other thing that we can do at the national level is to increase that leverage by providing more financial support. Not only do we have a historic amount of money today invested in health care, but we will also be investing more than $198 billion over the next 10 years in the national health care system. I am wondering if the member could provide her comments on the importance of using leverage to ensure that the Canada Health Act is respected.

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Ms. Lindsay Mathyssen

Feb/16/23 12:45:50 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would simply ask the member if the government is willing to ensure that all this money he is talking about, which is inadequate by the way, actually goes to public health care? It used to be that the agreement between the provinces and the federal government was a fifty-fifty split in responsibility and funding of health care dollars. That does not exist now. That is because of successive governments, Conservative and Liberal, undermining that funding. That is what I ask, and that is what I challenge the government to do. It should ensure that whatever money it can give, which is not enough, actually goes to public funds.

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Mr. Yves Perron (Berthier—Maskinongé, BQ)

Feb/16/23 12:46:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech. I am going to take the ball and run with it in the hopes that my message comes across more clearly than it did earlier, in my previous intervention. What I want to say to the NDP is that we agree on the substance. We should work together more often on social causes like this. The problem, and my colleague just said it herself, is funding. The topic of history came up with the previous speaker. The deal was that the costs would be split fifty-fifty. The federal government's share is down to 22% because it realized it would not score political points by handing out automatic transfers. The government wants to maintain control and impose conditions, and the NDP seems to support that flawed model. I invite them to form a coalition with all the opposition parties in order to force the government to properly fund health services in the provinces, which have jurisdiction over health. It is as simple as that.

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Ms. Lindsay Mathyssen

Feb/16/23 12:47:35 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, again, this is not about that jurisdictional fight, which I know has been the focus of the Bloc today. It is not actually voting with the NDP beyond that jurisdiction fight. Yes, it is about the money. It has not been there. The Conservatives slashed it in the Harper days. The Liberals have not brought it back to the levels that are required. Each provincial government, including the Quebec national government, has underfunded health care. They have used the privatization aspect to underfund those public system. Money is at stake here. It is part of the conversation, but so is the drive of each provincial and territorial government on what they expect Canadians, overall, to put up with. Simply put, it cannot be a privatization of the system.

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Mr. Matthew Green (Hamilton Centre, NDP)

Feb/16/23 12:48:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am going to ask the hon. member to reflect on the fact that we have a Prime Minister who campaigned on stopping for-profit care, but then did just the opposite. He flip-flopped. He called Conservative premiers' for-profit corporate care “innovation”. Even his own MPs have disagreed. The hon. member for Humber River—Black Creek said that the proposed changes are terrible and an absolute erosion of our health care system as we know it, and that the introduction of privatization and where we are going is wrong. Could the hon. member reflect on those comments by the Liberal MP?

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Ms. Lindsay Mathyssen

Feb/16/23 12:49:33 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I often cannot see the difference between Conservatives and Liberals with the decisions that they make. The flip-flop is not all that surprising to me. What I would suggest is that New Democrats have always been consistent about our defence of health care, the creation of it, the expansion of it and the strengthening of it. We had to sit down and force the Liberal government to fulfill some of the promises it has been making for decades. Dental care is a perfect example. Pharma care is a perfect example. I would ask that Canadians look at that and the constant flip-flop to say who actually—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès)

Feb/16/23 12:50:14 p.m.
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We are out of time. Resuming debate, the hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader has the floor.

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