SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 315 - May/22/24

May/22/24 5:24:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for offering a substantive question and comment to this debate. We have an agreement that there are health care needs that relate to medication. That is useful progress. I would say that there is a need for proceeding in this context with this very particular piece of legislation because the program is not meant to be a checkerboard where it is done on a bilateral basis, province by province. It is meant to be national, covering all 10 provinces and all three territories. That is the first very important point. The second very important point is that the very pressing issue the member raised about oncological medications for cancer treatment is something that deserves to be discussed and debated. By starting incrementally, we are finally opening the door towards pharmacare in this country as an important expansion of our medical care system. Through the Canada drug agency, the new formulary and the expert recommendations that would follow, we would learn more about whether oncological drugs should be the next salvo in expanding this envelope.

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Context: House Hansard - 315 - May/22/24

Mr. Peter Julian (New Westminster—Burnaby, NDP)

May/22/24 6:40:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the reality is that the Conservatives were wrong in blocking dental care. We have seen the success already. The NDP put in place dental care, forced the government to initiate the program, and over two million seniors have already signed up. Over 100,000 seniors have already had access to dental care, including in so many Conservative ridings, so we have seen that success already. With pharmacare, the NDP, the member for Burnaby South and the entire NDP caucus, pushed to put that into place. That would help, on average, 18,000 people in each riding in the country. That is 18,000 in every single Conservative riding. Another 25,000 would access contraception. That means between those two elements of the NDP's pharmacare plan, over 40,000 Canadians would benefit in every single riding in the country. In every single Conservative riding in the country, 40,000 people would benefit. Why are Conservatives blocking something that would help 40,000 of their constituents, many of whom are at risk of their lives if they do not take the medication?

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Context: House Hansard - 315 - May/22/24

Hon. Arif Virani

May/22/24 6:41:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the short answer is that I am not sure why the Conservatives would block access to health care and medication being covered for their own constituents, who include nine million women and 3.7 million people who are suffering from diabetes.

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Context: House Hansard - 315 - May/22/24

Mr. Tom Kmiec (Calgary Shepard, CPC)

May/22/24 7:26:10 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-213

Madam Speaker, just to confirm, now that the motion has passed regarding Motion No. 39, I lose my unlimited time and I now have a 20-minute slot. Therefore, I will have to share my time with the member for Cumberland—Colchester, even though I would have enjoyed continuing to speak to an issue that I hold very dear to my heart, which is the approval of drugs for rare diseases in Canada and how patients can get access to them. Those two words actually only appear once in the legislation. People with a rare disease are some of the most needy patients in Canada. As I said during the debate on Bill C-213 back in 2021, the hardest medication to get in Canada is the one that is not approved and not available because the manufacturer will say that Canada is too complicated, too difficult and it is not worth its time to try to get it onto our market. That is because of all the regulatory hurdles and steps that exist that make it very difficult for patients with rare diseases to get access to the drugs they need. We saw this with cystic fibrosis drugs for patients who were trying to get access to Trikafta. It took many years from the time when it was available to patients in America to when it was available in Canada, and it was regulatory hurdles that made it much more difficult to do so. Now that the government has passed this gag order on the gag order, it will direct the Standing Committee on Health on how it will consider the matter.

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