SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 300 - Apr/16/24

Mr. Earl Dreeshen (Red Deer—Mountain View, CPC)

Apr/16/24 1:15:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have a couple of points on the things I have heard this morning. Of course, the NDP is talking about cuts that were there during the Harper era. If one were to look at the amount of money from the budgets over the years, when the Liberals first took power, that was the first time that it had ever ducked below the 3% floor that was given. That statement is certainly one that they talk a lot about, but it is incorrect. The other question I would like to ask the member has to do with the formularies that the provinces already have. In order to get drugs approved, we go through the federal system, but then it goes into the provinces and they make the decisions on how much they can afford to cover. This is different around the country. I am wondering if the member is at least curious about what the consequences will be when that decision comes from the federal government versus the provinces, whose responsibility it is to deliver health care.

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Mr. Francis Scarpaleggia

Apr/16/24 1:16:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the whole issue around pharmacoeconomics is very complex because governments look at the potential benefits of drug use versus the costs, and it becomes a budgetary and political decision. What we are doing with pharmacare is providing more funding so we can surmount these political and budgetary obstacles to providing Canadians with the drugs they need for free.

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Mr. Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay, NDP)

Apr/16/24 1:16:57 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have been listening intently to my Conservative colleagues, who promise something and then oppose it. For example, they really pushed for the suicide hotline and then voted against it. They tried to cut off the funding for it. One wonders why they do these things. I was noticing the Conservative deputy leader was a lobbyist for AbbVie. This is a pharmaceutical company that jacked up the price of medications for senior citizens by 470%. We know who the Conservatives work for. They are not there for seniors. They are not there for ordinary people. They are freaked out that, if people have access to medication and the Conservatives get into power, they are not going to be able to rip off seniors to benefit the lobbyists, who are pretty much running the national Conservative Party and certainly the deputy leader. This is why we have seen their complete unwillingness to take on grocery price hikes, because the member in Stornoway's boss is a Loblaws lobbyist. I would like to ask the member what he thinks about a party that would go along with jacking up medication for senior citizens by 470% to benefit its friends.

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Mr. Francis Scarpaleggia

Apr/16/24 1:18:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the first thing I would say is that I hope those individuals will not end up working in the health minister's office. That would be a tragedy, of course. However, what is important is that we have a lobbyist registration system and that lobbyist registration system ensures we have the kind of information the hon. member has taken good care to collate and to share with the House and with Canadians.

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

Apr/16/24 1:18:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am wondering if the member can expand on his comments regarding the recognition of credentials. The Conservatives are going around misleading Canadians by indicating that they have this grand blue seal program. It is as if they are going to form government and all the individuals who have credentials would get their credentials recognized. It is as if these individuals would just need to write a Conservative exam and miraculously they would be able to work in health care across Canada, across the provinces and so forth. Would the member not agree that is exceptionally misleading to a very vulnerable component of our communities?

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Mr. Francis Scarpaleggia

Apr/16/24 1:19:29 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I agree. They are not just doing that with the blue seal program. They are doing it with climate change by suggesting there is some kind of magic bullet that does not cost anybody anything and we can magically get rid of greenhouse gas emissions. Yes, they need to be more forthcoming—

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Mr. Ron Liepert

Apr/16/24 1:19:56 p.m.
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You guys can't even be honest with each other.

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Mr. Francis Scarpaleggia

Apr/16/24 1:19:56 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the opposition needs to be more forthcoming and be a little more direct and frank with Canadians.

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Forthcoming

The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Apr/16/24 1:19:56 p.m.
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I want to remind the hon. member for Calgary Signal Hill that, if he has questions and comments, he should wait for the appropriate time and not try to contribute to the debate until such time. Resuming debate, the hon. member for Cariboo—Prince George.

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Mr. Todd Doherty (Cariboo—Prince George, CPC)

Apr/16/24 1:20:11 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-64

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to speak to Bill C-64. We have heard some doozies over the last day. Of course, today is budget day, so we will hear some more doozies about the billions upon billions that will be spent and heaped on the backs of taxpayers. One of the reasons it is such a great honour to speak to Bill C-64 is that I get a chance to split my time with the newly minted Conservative member for Durham. Finally, we have a true blue Conservative in Durham, and I cannot wait to hear his speech. I believe it may be his maiden speech today. He is a great member of Parliament. If anybody has not heard his story, it is a true testament that a person can do anything they want if they set their mind to it and do not accept the barriers that life has placed before them. He is a cancer survivor. He was ruled illiterate in grade school and then went to Yale School of Law just seven years later. I am so honoured to share a bench and split my time with my colleague from Durham. We are speaking about Bill C-64, which is yet another promise or plan of the Prime Minister's to hold onto whatever shreds of power he has. It is essentially a power grab, again. We will be talking a little about some of this announcement, as well some of the other failed announcements that the Prime Minister and his “speNDP” coalition have undertaken in the last four or five years. From the onset, I will say that I believe that if a Canadian needs medication, we should be doing everything in our power to make sure they have access to the medications they need. However, this bill is not a pharmacare bill. It is a plan or a promise to work towards a bigger pharmacare system. Where did we hear that previously? Oh, that was with the dental care plan that we saw earlier, and now we are hearing that less than 10% of dentists across our country are signing up to it. It is a failed system. I will have more on that as we go further. The Conference Board of Canada estimates that over 97% of Canadians are already eligible for some form of drug coverage. Over 27 million Canadians rely on privately administered workplace plans. I spoke with insurers who have no idea how this pharmacare plan would work. Are they to scrap their plans altogether? What happens to those 27 million Canadians who already have a plan? Despite what the health minister said, that he has a great working relationship with Quebec, that was proven wrong time and time again. I believe it was the Quebec health minister who went public to say that there are no talks and that they do not agree with what the federal minister is saying regarding health care. We have seen this time and again with the Liberal government. Going back to 2015, the member for Papineau campaigned on doing things differently. He campaigned on having the most open and transparent government in the history of our country. Wow. The one thing he has accomplished is having the most scandal-plagued government in the history of our country, and the NDP coalition is complicit in the cover-up of those scandals. The pharmacare bill is just another in a long list of bills that allowed the Liberals to get in front of the cameras and say they are getting things done for Canadians, when they are really just trying to pull the wool over everyone's eyes. Now, the Liberals and the NDP will stand up, pound their fists and say how bad Stephen Harper was in the dark years of Stephen Harper. Here is a news flash. The Liberals have been in power for nine years. If it was a priority for them, then they could have gotten it done. They had a majority, and now they have a majority with the NDP, so they could get things done if they really wanted to get things done. Bill C-64 is nothing more than a photo op; that is it. It does not actually do anything concrete. It talks about, “to consider when working towards the implementation of national universal pharmacare”. In other words, it is just another broken election promise. Why does the government not work with pharmaceutical companies to bring down the cost of all drugs to Canadians? That is a novel idea, but nothing is mentioned in there. All we get are future promises and no plan. Let us really, truly be honest with Canadians. This is a not a pharmacare plan; it is an empty promise that will not even come close to covering every medication that Canadians use. I spoke about promises. We have heard that Nova Scotia has a bit of plan. We heard that Quebec, obviously, has a plan and was not even consulted on how it has done it. My province of B.C. has the fair pharmacare plan. As a matter of fact, we have 12 plans under that one plan for British Columbians who have trouble accessing medication. What the Liberals have proven time and again is that, after eight years, they neither trust nor respect Canadians. Apparently, they also think that Canadians are too foolish to see through the truth that is right before their eyes. The truth is that after eight long, miserable years, the NDP-Liberal government is simply not worth the cost. We say that time and time again. With this government, the choice is between costly programs and future promises, or should I say false promises, and Canadians know that NDP-Liberal promises never come true. After eight long years of this Prime Minister, there have been so many broken promises. In 2015, he promised affordable housing, and then he doubled the mortgage, rent and down payment costs. It now takes 25 years to save for a down payment on the average home. In Vancouver, a person has to earn almost $250,000 just to afford a home. Most young Canadians believe that they will never be able to afford a home. That used to be the dream; now it is just a nightmare. He promised that the carbon tax would not cost us anything, and now we find out that over 60% of Canadians pay more because of that tax. He doubled the tax; actually, he raised it by 23% on April 1, which was an April Fools' Day joke on all of us. I talked briefly about dental care, and I want to read something from a dental office in Prince George, which wrote that what has been put out to the public as far as the coverage is totally not true. The dental office said that the government has said to the public is that this is free dental, but that it's nowhere close to being free dental, unfortunately. That's why, they said, there's frustration from patients who are signing up and phoning around. Patients are saying that they have free dental now, and they, the dental offices, have to give them the bad news. She continued by saying that there hasn't been a whole lot of information released to dentists, and the government won't give any more information until you register. It hasn't been totally honest and transparent with the dentists, and the dentists are leery of signing up. She said that it was confusing for them, because they haven't been getting all the facts, and that until the facts are better explained to dental offices, dentists and owners, they're not going to register for something if they don't know what they're getting involved in. That is par for the course with this government. Its members stand before the public and the cameras, perhaps with a tissue to their eye; they put their hand on their heart and say that they truly care. However, the reality is that they are not doing the work. We have good people across the way who are actually waking up and seeing the failures and the lies of their front bench. It is about time that this failed NDP-Liberal coalition moved out of the way so that the member for Carleton, Canada's future prime minister, can start righting the wrongs of the last eight years. It is going to be tough, but we have the team and we are ready to do it.

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Hon. Judy A. Sgro (Humber River—Black Creek, Lib.)

Apr/16/24 1:30:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I must say that I disagree immensely with almost everything from the start to the end of the comments that my colleague made. Of course, I am not going to add to them. I would like to know what he would be doing, what your government would be doing and what your party would be doing, if it had the opportunity to become the government, which I hope it does not, actually, because I look back on the years of the previous Conservative government, and it was a question of taking away and deteriorating health care. I think the dental program and the pharmacare program are really important to all my constituents. I am not getting the complaints my colleague was mentioning. My constituents are very grateful to have that program and are already using it. I would expect that my colleague has many people in his constituency who would be very glad to be able to access this program. Is he at a point of eventually supporting this program?

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Apr/16/24 1:31:13 p.m.
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I want to remind the member that a couple of times she actually was directing comments directly to the member, but she did correct herself at the end. The hon. member for Cariboo—Prince George has the floor.

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Mr. Todd Doherty

Apr/16/24 1:31:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have great respect for my colleague across the way. I believe my hon. colleague from Cumberland—Colchester, who is a former physician, mentioned this earlier. We have to, first, eliminate the wait times Canadians face. For example, six million Canadians cannot get a primary care physician. They cannot get their medication if they need that. We would work with the pharmaceutical companies, writ large, to make sure that we were driving down the costs. We would work with the PMPRB. We may even just revamp the PMPRB so that we would be getting those drugs approved faster. Canadians with rare diseases could get the drugs that their friends and families seem to be getting faster in other countries, and they could be looked after sooner. We would develop a rare disease strategy so that those Canadians struggling with rare diseases could get the help they need when they need it.

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Mr. Gord Johns (Courtenay—Alberni, NDP)

Apr/16/24 1:32:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we know that the Conservatives have consistently opposed pharmacare. We heard my colleague from Timmins—James Bay highlight that the Conservative deputy leader was a lobbyist for AbbVie, a large pharma company in North America that jacked up its prices on medications for seniors by over 470%. Who really needs pharmacare lobbyists when we have Conservatives here? I want clarity, because I heard him say, misleading the House, that people in British Columbia are covered for insulin. That is not true. I am going to give my colleague another chance to clarify that insulin is not free in British Columbia, and in fact, it is a huge cost to many British Columbians, especially working-class British Columbians. Is he going to oppose, for those British Columbians who require insulin, this legislation that would provide them the support they need on life-saving medication, especially when someone loses their job and their deductible is no longer within their affordability level. I would like some clarification from my colleague from Cariboo—Prince George.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Apr/16/24 1:33:46 p.m.
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I just want to remind the hon. member that he might want to retract something. He said the hon. member misled the House. He knows he cannot say indirectly what he cannot say directly.

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Mr. Gord Johns

Apr/16/24 1:34:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will withdraw that statement, but I would like clarification, because my colleague was speaking on behalf of British Columbians, saying that they are fully covered. That is not true.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Apr/16/24 1:34:21 p.m.
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The hon. member withdrew it. He does not need to elaborate. I just asked him to withdraw. The hon. member for Cariboo—Prince George has the floor.

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Mr. Todd Doherty

Apr/16/24 1:34:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, most of that member's minute-and-a-half-long rant was incomprehensible. I could not understand what he was saying. However, on one comment that he did mention is that they like to point fingers at other groups and lobbyists. I will remind the member that his leader's brother is a lobbyist for a big grocer. They may not like the answer. They obviously do not like the answer, so they are shouting over top— Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Apr/16/24 1:35:05 p.m.
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Order. I want to remind members that they have an opportunity to ask questions, but unless they are being recognized again, they should not be yelling out or trying to ask other questions. The hon. member for Cariboo—Prince George has the floor.

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Remind

Mr. Todd Doherty

Apr/16/24 1:35:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is unfortunate that when we speak the truth here, those members take offence to it, because all they want on the record is their misinformation. They can say everything they want about the Conservatives, but when we fire back at them, they take offence to it. I hope I did not hurt the member's feelings by not answering, but I am sure we will speak off-line and hug it out afterward. I will end there.

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