With regard to the two-year deadline for sequestration of criminal records for personal possession as required by the passage of Bill C-5, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, which received Royal Assent on November 17, 2022: (a) can the Government of Canada provide a status update on how this work is proceeding and whether the two-year deadline will be met by November 17, 2024; and (b) what the process will be for Canadians to be notified that their criminal records for personal possession have been sequestered? With regard to the new Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) regulations for the slaughter of non-stunned animals: (a) what are the details of all consultations that the CFIA conducted related to the regulations, including which businesses, stakeholders, interest groups, and organizations were consulted, when were they consulted, and what feedback was received; (b) what impact does the government project that these regulations will have on the (i) availability, (ii) affordability, of Kosher meats in Canada; (c) what specific steps, if any, will CFIA take to ensure that the domestic Kosher market will remain viable in Canada; (d) what is the government's response to the concerns of Canadian Jews who observe Kashrut who will no longer be able to purchase non-imported Kosher meat following the implementations of these regulations; (e) what process did the government undertake to determine who receives exemptions from the new regulations; and (f) what entities or slaughtering practices has the government exempted from the new regulations? With regard to the Department of Finance and changes in federal taxes or levies, since November 4, 2015: (a) how many federal tax or levy increases have occurred since November 2015; (b) what are the details of each increase, including the (i) date, (ii) name of the tax or levy, (iii) previous tax or levy rate, (iv) tax or levy rate following change, (v) percentage of increase; and (c) for each increase, how much additional revenue has been received by the government broken down by year since the increase? With regard to Correctional Services Canada and the La Macaza Institution: (a) what is the last known date the ice rink at the institution was (i) operational, (ii) skated on by inmates; and (b) what is the last known date the tennis court at the institution was (i) operational, (ii) used by inmates? With regard to the authorization regime created by Bill C-41, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and to make consequential amendments to other Acts: (a) how many organizations have (i) applied for, (ii) received, authorization from the Minister of Public Safety; (b) where can organizations seeking authorization apply; (c) when will the authorization regime created under the Act be fully operational; and (d) what are the names of the organizations which have received authorization to date? With regard to the National Advisory Council on Early Learning and Child Care: (a) what conflicts of interest or potential conflicts of interest have been declared by each of the members of the council, broken down by member; and (b) are members of the council permitted to profit as a result of their membership on the council, including through consulting businesses or other enterprises owned by members of the council, and, if not, what are the measures in place to ensure that members do not act in their own self-interest? With regard to government definitions: what is the government's definition of a woman? With regard to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) and late personal taxes, broken down by fiscal year from tax year 2016 to 2023, by province and territory, and by income tax bracket: (a) how many people had a balance owing and were unable to pay it by the payment due date; (b) what was the total amount of balance owing for people that were unable to pay by the payment due date; (c) how many for each tax year had daily interest charged on any unpaid amount owing because they were unable to pay by the payment due date; (d) how much was paid in compound daily interest by those unable to pay by the payment due date; (e) how many people filed their tax return after the due date and had a balance owing and were charged a late-filing penalty; (f) what was the total amount of late-filing penalties paid; (g) how many people made a request to the CRA to cancel or waive penalties or interest as they were unable to meet their tax obligations due to circumstances beyond their control; and (h) how many people for each tax year were granted relief for requests in (g)? With regard to reductions in Full-time equivalent (FTE) employees, broken down by department or agency: (a) what is the total number of FTE employees the department or agency will be eliminating; (b) what is the projected cost savings by the department as a result of eliminating FTE employees; and (c) what impact assessments has the department or agency undertaken to ensure that services Canadians rely on will not be affected by the FTE employee reductions? With regard to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and Société Radio-Canada (SRC): how many (i) non-disclosure agreements, (ii) non-disparagement agreements, and (iii) confidentiality agreements have the CBC and the SRC signed with employees and contractors for each year in the last 10 years? With regard to Parks Canada’s Detailed Impact Assessment of the ‘Management of Zebra Mussels in Clear Lake in Riding Mountain National Park’ that was opened for public comment in February 2024: (a) who did Parks Canada directly inform of the Detailed Impact Assessment, and when were each of them notified; (b) for each notice in (a), what is the name and title of the Parks Canada official who provided the notice and what method of communication was used; (c) what are the details of how Parks Canada informed the public of the Detailed Impact Assessment prior to extending the public comment period, including the (i) date of public notice, (ii) method of communication used; (d) what elected officials were informed by Parks Canada of the public comment period for the Detailed Impact Assessment prior to March 10, 2024, if any; (e) were any of the elected officials in (d) a (i) mayor, (ii) reeve, (iii) councillor, (iv) member of the Legislative Assembly, (v) member of Parliament, and, if so, what was their name and title; (f) how many public comments for the Detailed Impact Assessment did Parks Canada receive before the original March 10, 2024, deadline; (g) why was the public comment for the Detailed Impact Assessment period extended from March 10, 2024 to March 29, 2024; and (h) what First Nations were informed of the Detailed Impact Assessment prior to March 10, 2024, and when was each informed?

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all remaining questions be allowed to stand.

Is that agreed? Some hon. members: Agreed.

moved: That in relation to Bill C-64, An Act respecting pharmacare, not more than five further hours shall be allotted to the consideration at the second reading stage of the bill; and That, at the expiry of the five hours provided for consideration at second reading stage of the said bill, any proceedings before the House shall be interrupted, if required for the purpose of this order, and, in turn, every question necessary for the disposal of the said stage of the bill shall be put forthwith and successively, without further debate or amendment.

Pursuant to Standing Order 67.1 there will now be a 30-minute question period. I will ask hon. members who wish to ask questions to rise or use the “raise hand” function so that the Chair can have some idea of the number of members who wish to participate in the question period. On a point of order, the hon. member for Mégantic—L'Érable.

Mr. Speaker, while you were reading the motion, I was unfortunately distracted by the Liberal government House leader when you were specifying the number of hours allotted for debate on this issue. Could you please remind the House of the number of hours specified in this time allocation motion to discuss the bill? This will illustrate the lengths to which the government is going to prevent us from talking about it any longer and debating it as much we would have liked.

The time allotted is five hours. The hon. member for New Westminster.

The hon. member for Mégantic—L'Érable is rising on a point of order.

Mr. Speaker, has the question and answer period on the time allocation motion started yet?

Yes, the hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby has started asking his question. The hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby may continue.

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives should have stood up and should have the guts to actually defend the unbelievably negative things that they have tried to do around pharmacare. My question to my colleague is very simple. When 17,000 of their constituents need access to diabetes medication and 25,000 need access to their reproductive health prescriptions, which are part of this bill, why are Conservatives blocking the ability of Canadians to access these medications?

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his work on this legislation. Specifically, I want to take an opportunity to thank the member for Vancouver Kingsway for his work as well. Canadians expect parliamentarians to work together to get results, to get the services and the care that they need. It is fine that the Conservatives are going to vote against dental care or vote against pharmacare, which means they are voting against medication for diabetes and against women getting access to the contraceptives they need. It is bad enough that they would vote against it, but to block it actively, to block the elected will of the House to be able to get care to people, is extremely disturbing. I will talk about dental care. It was really revealing to talk to dentists across the country who had been filled with misinformation, and who were shocked by how easy it is to use the dental care plan. The reason that confusion, in many cases, exists is because of the confusion deliberately being pumped into it. Again, I would say this to the Conservatives: It is fine that they do not want people to get diabetes medication, they do not want seniors to get dental care and they do not want people to be able to get access to the contraceptives that they need. That is one thing, but they should allow the House to do its work, allow us to move the legislation forward and allow us to make sure that those people who need care get care.

Mr. Speaker, I was listening to the minister when he said to allow this House to do its work. Allowing the House do its work also means not limiting debate. I know the minister to be a reasonable man. Is he not embarrassed to be limiting debate? Bill C‑64 includes some extremely important powers. There is a danger. No one will be surprised to learn that the Bloc Québécois is against encroachment, against jurisdictional overlap, against what will likely be a waste of public funds on administrative redundancy. I think it is important to take the time to debate this properly. Is the minister not embarrassed to be limiting the time for debate?

Mr. Speaker, there will be time for the committee to conduct a study. After committee, there is still going to be time for the report stage and third reading. After that, there will be time in the Senate. It is important to keep the debate going, one step at a time. We need to make sure we can have a conversation with the Quebec government. I had a good conversation with Minister Dubé. Quebec is ready to move forward. If the House takes too long, it affects people who really need medication, whether it is diabetes medication or contraceptives. Yes, it is important to debate. However, there is plenty of time for debate in committee and during the rest of the House process. It is time to get on with it and move forward.

Mr. Speaker, my question is about pharmacare, in particular, the contraceptive angle of this and the supports it is going to provide. At the heart of this is really a woman's right to choose. I found it very alarming that, on Friday, the member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes stood up in the House and said, “A common-sense Conservative government would use the notwithstanding clause only on matters of criminal justice.” It was in the nineties when it was actually made a crime to perform an abortion. What we have seen is that the Supreme Court, using those charters rights, overturned that law. We now have Conservative members saying that, in terms of criminal justice, which that law was, Conservatives would consider using the notwithstanding clause. In theory, Conservatives could bring back a similar law to that which was in the nineties, using the notwithstanding clause to make sure that it stuck, something that the Supreme Court would not be able to overturn. I find it alarming that, only a year after the United States reintroduced legislation regarding a woman's right to choose and preventing it, Conservatives are now toying with and basically laying out the framework for how they would restrict those rights in the future. I am wondering if the Minister of Health would like to comment on that.

Mr. Speaker, I think it really is reprehensible to see the backward movement we are seeing over women's reproductive health and rights, where their autonomy over their own bodies is being called into question. Let me make it very clear, as Minister of Health, that we will do everything in our power to make sure that women have full power and autonomy over their bodies. That is a fundamental freedom. That includes their reproductive futures. In many of these instances is an inability to have real conversations about sex and about whether a woman should have the autonomy to make a choice about the way in which she makes decisions with her body. It is absolutely unacceptable in this country. When we take something like contraceptives, such as a condom, that have a failure rate of about 9%, and an IUD, which has a failure rate of 0.2%, how could people, first of all, have the position that they are going to tell a woman what she does with her body and then, secondly, try to block her ability to get reproductive technologies so that she does not wind up with an unwanted pregnancy? Those things, to me, seem to be diametrically opposed. If one was opposed to abortion, if one was opposed to a woman being able to make that choice over her body, it would seem to me that one would at least stand up and support her ability to get reproductive medicine. For me, it is extremely disturbing that this is any kind of debate in this country. Everywhere in this country, every woman should be told that she has autonomy over her body and that she has access to the medication she needs. That is fundamentally what this bill is about, in part. I am sure we will get an opportunity to talk about diabetes as well.

Mr. Speaker, the debate right now is on time allocation on Bill C-64, and I would put it to the Minister of Health that I would love for us to be having a debate on an actual proposal for pharmacare. It has been since June 2019 that the former Ontario health minister, Dr. Eric Hoskins, gave the government and this country clear direction that we need a national pharmacare program. We are the only country in the world with a national health care program that does not automatically include the provision of needed prescription drugs. We know from the Hoskins report that, properly implemented, a full national pharmacare program will save this country $5 billion a year at least. However, the bill is picking out only two things, which is what is so strange about this bill and why I object to the debate being closed before we can actually discuss it. Why are we only talking about reproductive health care and diabetes medication? What that may end up doing is giving those opposed to pharmacare evidence that it costs more than it is worth, when we need to prove to everyone concerned that national pharmacare will save our health care system money and ensure Canadians get the health care they need.

Mr. Speaker, this is a concrete proposal to move pharmacare forward in this country. The drugs are two classes of drugs. They represent more than 80 different medical drugs that deal specifically with diabetes and contraceptives. It is part of a broader suite of actions that we are taking, such as, for example, drugs for rare diseases. I am currently having conversations with every province and territory about how we can take action on drugs for rare diseases so that folks with rare diseases can get access to the medications they need. It is part of what we have done on bulk purchasing to realize $300 million in savings for Canadians across the country. It also builds on the work that we are doing with a pilot in P.E.I., where we have been able to get copays down to five dollars there, saving seniors hundreds and hundreds of dollars in P.E.I. Action is taken one step at a time by demonstrating in evidence exactly what is going to be saved and exactly how this should function. As an example, in British Columbia, when it comes to contraceptives, it already shows that the province is saving more than it costs to run the program. I suspect we will also see that in diabetes. Canadians, rightfully, want to see this in evidence. They want to see these things live out there, demonstrate how they work in each example and then build on that successively. Our health care system was based on an iterative process by making sure that the steps we take are prudent, smart and fiscally responsible, and that is the way that we need to proceed with pharmacare as well.

Mr. Speaker, I view this legislation not as a pharmacare plan but a spending plan and what will be another empty broken promise, just like the carbon tax was going to be revenue-neutral and just like housing was going to become more affordable under the current government. Frankly, I do not see enough trust from Canadians to see another project fail to be delivered properly. I have been getting a lot of questions from constituents regarding the proposed plan. People are asking me if they should cancel their existing insurance plans because, like many others, the majority of Canadians are already covered. They are worried there is going to be a reduction in availability of coverage under the single-payer system that is being partially promised, partially proposed and, ultimately, I expect, poorly delivered. Perhaps the minister could clarify, for the hundreds and thousands and millions of people across Canada who are wondering if they are in limbo, if they are going to lose the quality of the coverage they have through their private insurance and whether they should cancel it now and await further clarification from the government, what eventually may be covered under the pharmacare plan.