Senator Pate: Thank you for the years and years of work that you put into this. Thank you for inspiring Da Vinci’s Inquest, which brought it home to many people in ways they might not otherwise have known about. And thank you for all the work I know you’ll continue to do. I suspect my time is up, so I want to ask: Why is this your last speech?

Hon. Kim Pate: Senator Campbell, would you take a question?

Hon. Jane Cordy: Honourable senators, I rise today at second reading in support of Bill S-254, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (warning label on alcoholic beverages). It would make mandatory health warning labels on alcoholic beverages which are sold in Canada.

I’m speaking to you today from the unceded land of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg peoples.

I want to first begin by thanking Senator Brazeau for introducing this very important bill to this chamber.

Honourable senators, it has been scientifically proven that a link exists between consuming alcoholic beverages and certain types of cancers. As Senator Brazeau has stated in his speech, these include cancer of the mouth and throat, vocal cords, esophagus, breast, liver and colon.

As Senator Brazeau also highlighted, only one in four Canadians are even aware that there is a connection between consuming alcoholic beverages and the risk of cancer. The majority of Canadians are also unaware that the World Health Organization classifies alcohol as a Group 1 carcinogen.

In letters of support for this bill from organizations such as the Cobequid Community Health Board, the Yarmouth Community Health Board, the Lunenburg County Community Health Board and the Digby and Area Community Health Board, all from my province of Nova Scotia, they make it clear that the measures in this bill are in line with current health recommendations grounded in scientific, evidence-based findings:

Bill S-254 aligns with the recent call for warning labels that formed part of the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction’s proposed new Canadian Guidance on Alcohol and Health that Health Canada: “require, through regulation, the mandatory labelling of all alcoholic beverages to list the number of standard drinks in a container, the Guidance on Alcohol and Health, health warnings and nutrition information.” This recommendation comes from leading scientific experts in the field and is supported by an Evidence-based Recommendations for Labelling Alcohol Products in Canada written by Canadian Alcohol Policy Evaluation (CAPE) Project researchers, who have been leaders in the alcohol policy field for over 10 years.

The Eastern Shore Community Health Board members in Nova Scotia echo these concerns in their support for this legislation stating that they feel:

. . . it is imperative for people to know and understand the risks they are taking when choosing to consume alcohol. Not only is alcohol a health risk for cancer but we see the outcomes of alcohol addiction in our communities in the form of family violence, mental health issues and other chronic diseases. Warning labels are just the start of a series of public policies required to reduce the amount of alcohol consumed in our communities and create healthier environments for families.

Honourable senators, the goal of this bill is not to take away Canadians’ right to purchase these products, or restrict access to these products, as I feel opponents of this bill may claim. The intent is to provide the consumer with clear and accurate and, quite frankly, important information to make an informed choice when deciding to consume these types of products.

When we hear that only one in four Canadians even know that there is a risk of cancer from consuming alcoholic beverages over time, I think the proof is there that these types of labels are necessary and well overdue.

Honourable senators, some may ask if warning labels are even effective; will they make enough of a difference, or will they just be an unnecessary disruption to Canada’s alcoholic beverage industry?

We can look at tobacco as an example. I will quote from a relevant study. In 2006, International Tobacco Control conducted a four-country survey to assess the effectiveness of cigarette warning labels in informing smokers about the risks of smoking:

The aim of the current study was to use nationally representative samples of adult smokers from the United States (USA), the United Kingdom (UK), Canada (CAN), and Australia . . . to examine variations in smokers’ knowledge about tobacco risks and the impact of package warnings.

At the time:

Smokers in the four countries exhibited significant gaps in their knowledge of the risks of smoking. Smokers who noticed the warnings were significantly more likely to endorse health risks, including lung cancer and heart disease. In each instance where labelling policies differed between countries, smokers living in countries with government mandated warnings reported greater health knowledge.

For example, in Canada, where package warnings include information about a specific health risk, “smokers were 2.68 . . . times more likely to agree” that smoking causes that health risk compared to smokers from the other three countries.

The survey concluded that health warnings that are “graphic, larger and more comprehensive in content are more effective in communicating the health risks of smoking.”

We see that health warning labels are effective in educating the consumer of the risks. But the question now is, does that knowledge lead to change in behaviour, in this case, a decrease in consumption?

If we look at Canada in 2000, the smoking rate was roughly 28% of Canadians above the age of 15 who smoked on a regular basis. The latest statistic on the prevalence of smoking in Canada put that number under 12% today.

Of course, the decline in smoking prevalence in Canada cannot be attributed solely to mandated graphic health warning labels on tobacco packages. There were, as you know, many forms of advertising that spoke of the harms of smoking. Health warning labels are just one of the many tools to help curb consumer behaviour. It has been shown that, when used together with other policies and measures, it is a very effective strategy.

In the case of alcohol consumption, the evidence shows that the more alcohol consumed, the greater risk of certain cancers. Canadians need to be aware of that; however, we know that it is not in the financial interest of alcohol beverage producers to voluntarily add warning labels to their products.

The aim of warning labels is to reduce consumption, which would decrease demand for their products; this is why, as Senator Brazeau has said in his speech, “it becomes the basic responsibility of Parliament to step in.”

Honourable senators, again, I wish to thank Senator Brazeau for introducing this bill here in the Senate. I fully support the intent of this legislation. It has been shown that health warning labels on other products have had a positive impact on consumer behaviours. Why should alcoholic beverages be exempt from this same scrutiny? It is time they are brought in line with other products that can be harmful.

Honourable senators, I am hopeful that we can send Bill S-254 to committee in a timely manner for further study and for consideration. Thank you.

(On motion of Senator Martin, debate adjourned.)

The Senate proceeded to consideration of the seventh report of the Standing Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration, entitled Senate Budget 2023-24, presented in the Senate on February 7, 2023.

Hon. Lucie Moncion moved the adoption of the report.

She said: Honourable senators, it is my pleasure to speak on this report, which deals with the Senate’s budget for the financial year 2023-24.

In summary, the anticipated budget is estimated at $126.7 million, which is $4.9 million or 4% over the 2022-23 budget.

The process of arriving at the budget is based on the recommendations of the Subcommittee on Senate Estimates and Committee Budgets. The subcommittee is comprised of myself as chair; Senator Marshall as deputy chair; and Senators Bovey, Moodie and Tannas. I thank them for the substantial time and effort they spent on reviewing the estimates.

The members of the subcommittee met with the Senate Administration Executive Committee and most of the directors on many occasions. Detailed presentations were made by the directorates to the subcommittee. The members had the opportunity to discuss and question funding, staffing and expense requirements during this process.

Throughout its consideration of the 2023-24 Main Estimates, the committee took into consideration not only the changes in the Senate, but also the effects of the new economic and operational realities resulting from two years of the pandemic that has had a significant impact on the Senate’s operation. The committee was also very mindful of the Canadian economic environment and the importance of balancing operational needs with proper stewardship of public funds.

Moving to the detail of the expenditures, I would remind senators that there are two parts to the budget: statutory funding and voted funding. The statutory portion deals with money allocated by legislation. This includes senators’ basic and additional allowances, pensions, senators’ travel and living expenses, telecommunications and employee benefit plans. Any shortfalls in these categories at the end of the year are covered by the Treasury Board. Conversely, surpluses are automatically returned to the Treasury Board as they cannot be reallocated. The second part of the budget is the voted budget, which is for the workings of the Senate. They cover senators’ office budgets and Senate Administration.

Moving to the numbers, the total amount of the statutory budget is $38.1 million, an increase of $800,000, or 2.2%, from last year. The main reason for the increase is the senators’ travel budget, which is increasing by $418,000 to reflect the recent increase in travel costs. The other increase is the contribution to the employee benefit plan, which rose by $391,000 due to the increase of 0.2% of the Treasury Board rate from 15% to 15.2%.

Moving to the second part of the voted budget, this portion is $88.6 million, an increase of $4.1 million or 4.8%. The major components of the voted budget growth are the International and Interparliamentary Affairs Directorate, which increased by $201,000 to cover the cost of the 47th annual session of the Assemblée parlementaire de la Francophonie and the 31st annual session of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Parliamentary Assembly. There was an increase of $100,000 for the diversity, equity and inclusion program and additional funding of $2.5 million to maintain and renew the IT infrastructure and technologies, for new resources to support human resources activities and for services and funding for the East Block and the Senate of Canada building’s cafeteria.

[Translation]

The new requests for funding approved by the Internal Economy Committee over the course of the year represent $1.1 million, mainly because of economic increases for the Senate Executive Group and the Middle Management Group for two additional resources for the new enhanced security measure for senators and staff, which the Parliamentary Security Department will be responsible for, and for two additional resources for the Committees Directorate.

An amount of $146,00 was included mainly to cover position reclassifications. The following two budget transfers were approved. The first is a reallocation of $179,000 from the Senate committees budget to the Senate Administration to cover the salaries of two resources to support witnesses who appear virtually. The second is a reallocation of $178,000 from the Audit and Oversight Committee’s budget to the Senate Administration to cover the salary of a new chief audit executive.

Initiatives requiring one-time funding will be self-funded up to $924,000, particularly for strategic planning of human resources for the employment participation study and the review of compensation, maintenance and the ongoing renewal of the Senate network, and the renewal of two resources to support the renewal of the network and the redesign of many processes.

As a result of the decision made by the members of the Standing Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration on December 15, there is a temporary hiring freeze, which means that the employee threshold is 441.2 full‑time equivalents. A review of operational efficiency is currently being conducted by the Subcommittee on Senate Estimates and Committee Budgets. This committee is responsible for evaluating the expenditures and performance of the Senate Administration in key areas in order to identify opportunities for savings and for the streamlining of services. It should be noted that any proposed amendment will be presented and have to be approved by the Standing Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration.

Before concluding, I want to once again thank the members of the subcommittee, staff of the Senate Administration and members of the Executive Committee. They all considered the budget in a thoughtful and prudent manner.

At this point, I’d also like to provide some clarification respecting certain recent newspaper articles on the financial situation of the Senate. This information was confusing and painted an inaccurate picture of the Senate’s real expenditures.

[English]

Actual expenses and budgets are often used to explain the cost of operating the Senate. Colleagues, there is a difference between “budget” and “actual expenses.” The budget is the overall amount allocated for the functioning of the Senate during a year, whereas the expenses are the amount that is actually spent. Here are the figures for both budget and expenses.

If you remember, in the newspapers, we had comparison from 2015-16. The budget at that time was $88.8 million. The 2023-24 budget is $126.7 million. The increase in the budget between 2023-24 and 2015-16 is $37.9 million, or 42.6%, representing an annual budget increase of 5.3%. If you compare the actual expenses — so I’m talking about expenses now, not about the budget — they were $74.6 million in 2015-16 and $96.4 million for the year 2021-22. That represents an increase of $21.8 million, or 4.9% a year over six years.

The budget for the upcoming fiscal year of 2023-24 totals $126.7 million. This represents an increase of $4.9 million, or 4%, over the fiscal year from 2022-23. So we’re back to talking about budgets.

The annual average budget increase for the past three years is approximately $3.7 million per year, or 3.1%. The 2023-24 budget is based on the principles of maintaining high quality services to senators and some management of public funds in the context of the pandemic and post-pandemic recovery. It includes inflation, economic salary increases, increase in costs, investments in technology and new initiatives.

Some of the new initiatives are actually required by law. The Canada Labour Code, the Pay Equity Act and the Accessible Canada Act require the Senate to implement new programs with deadlines predefined by the regulation, including pay equity, accessibility and harassment prevention.

In addition to these regulatory requirements, the Senate is working to implement initiatives on diversity and inclusion, recruitment and audit and oversight. As a reminder, the Senate has actual expenses. In the last six years, all surplus amounts were returned to the government’s central funds.

My last remark will be on the amount of work done by staff just to keep this institution running. We have 18 permanent committees, 7 subcommittees and 4 joint committees. We have three Senate sittings a week and we have four groups and caucuses that meet on a weekly basis. Every time there is a committee meeting, there are at least 20 to 25 people who are involved. If you were to add up all of these committee meetings and the work done during the week, there is a lot of staff who are at our service in the Senate. I will say that the service we receive from our staff is excellent, and I have no complaints whatsoever. On this note, colleagues, I rest my case.

Hon. Paula Simons: Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to the inquiry instigated by our colleague Senator Donna Dasko, calling the attention of the Senate to the role of leaders’ debates in enhancing democracy by engaging and informing voters.

My friends, I am passionate on the subject of debates because I am a debater, and I mean that most literally. It would probably not shock most of you here to learn that I was an eager member of my high school debate club. Indeed, back in my Grade 11 glory days at Ross Sheppard Composite High School, my partner Esther Winestock and I won the Alberta provincial debate championships and thus the chance to attend the high school national debate championship in Montreal.

I have the fondest memories of that Montreal tournament, not just because I was ranked fifth in the country but because it was at this glorious festival of nerds that I was finally asked to dance my first-ever slow dance — not because I was the belle of the ball, but because an older boy, a member of the Ontario team, took pity on my wallflower status and kindly asked me to dance to “Stairway to Heaven,” the slow dance of our era. That boy’s name was David Lametti. He is now the Minister of Justice; I’m now a senator, and I suspect it’s fair to say that our high school debating experiences have stood us in good stead, even if our dancing abilities have not.

Debating sharpens the wits. It teaches you to think on your feet, to engage in the respectful clash of ideas, to listen, analyze and rebut in real time. In high school competition, you have to research and argue both sides of every issue. You thus cultivate the capacity to appreciate that no one side has a monopoly on good ideas. You develop respect, even for those with whom you may have an intellectual disagreement, because you’ve learned — indeed, you’ve trained — to view things from the opposite point of view.

Debate also did wonders for my social life, and not just in high school. I went on to be a member of the University of Alberta Debate Society, where my partner Jason Lucien and I won the McGoun Cup, the western Canadian university debate championship. Jason remains one of my dearest friends.

But it was also at the University of Alberta debate club that I met my Valentine, my husband, 40 years ago this coming fall. You might say he and I have been debating together ever since. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we raised a debater. Our daughter — poor child — could hardly escape her fate. Call it nature, call it nurture, she was genetically engineered and raised for debate competition. And oh, she was very good. She attended the junior high national debate championships twice and ended up ranked the third-best debater of her age in the country, surpassing my own standing.

When she started high school, however, she rebelled. And oh, how she rebelled. I don’t want to shock you, but I must tell you: She traded in her debate podium for the stage and became captain of her high school improv team instead. She insisted that somehow improv was more fun. Goodness knows why. Still, now that she’s an articling student defending her legal clients, she’s finding her debate chops are coming in very handy.

I wasn’t just a debater or a proud debate mom, which is like being a hockey mom with less skate lacing and more rebuttal prep. I also spent decades volunteering my time as a debate judge and coach, writing how-to guides for the Alberta Debate and Speech Association, teaching and coaching junior high, high school and university debaters on the basic skills and the finer points of cross-examination and parliamentary-style debate.

So when I tell you that our current format for federal leaders’ debates doesn’t work, I’m not just speaking as a current senator, nor as a long-time political journalist. I’m speaking as a debate aficionado. I know good debate when I see and hear it, and the way we structure our federal election events simply isn’t conducive to good debate, no matter who’s on the stage. There is no clear, clean clash of ideas. There are few opportunities for direct engagement at all. There’s an overreliance on pre-memorized talking points and canned answers, so we don’t always have much chance to see candidates thinking on their feet and grappling with opposing points of view.

Part of the problem, of course, is our increasingly multi-party system. A conventional debate works best when you have two opponents at a time, and those days are long gone. When you have four or five or six rival leaders onstage shouting each other down, squeezing each other out, it’s hard to come up with a format that allows for one-on-one argument and refutation.

But then — and I say this with all due respect to the various journalists involved — we don’t really have a debate at all. We have questions posed by journalists — sometimes good questions, and sometimes not. Then things degenerate into a sort of competitive press conference to the death, where the rival leaders fight to give the best sound-bite answer, even if that response has precious little to do with the question they were asked.

Then, as soon as the debate is over, each leader’s partisans take to social media to trumpet the victory of their candidate, and the pundits immediately begin their instant analysis. By the next morning, millions of Canadians who never watched the debate in the first place are convinced that they know who won.

Why do we attach so much importance to leaders’ debates in the first place? After all, I think we in this chamber know that oratorical skills, while very handy, aren’t actually the litmus test for a great leader or a great prime minister. You can be a fine, witty, charismatic public speaker and be a disaster at public policy creation or caucus management. Rhetorical flourish doesn’t make you a good economist nor a sound military strategist nor an expert in jurisprudence. Yet we demand that our leaders engage in these ritualistic public speaking duels. Why?

Perhaps we can blame, or credit, the Greeks and the Romans, on whom we base so much of our modern democracy. In the Athenian Agora or the Roman Senate, rhetorical skills were deemed a mark of intellect, of leadership ability, and seen as a path to political power, whether they were deployed to convince an elite audience or to inspire a mob.

Long after the Acropolis had crumbled and Rome had fallen, the myth and romance of the ancient world informed and inspired the English aristocracy, who, over centuries, modelled their parliamentary notions on classical ideals. Which is why, even today, in the multicultural, pragmatic Canada of the 21st century, we expect our leaders, our prime ministers, to follow in the models of Aristotle and Pericles, Cicero and Caesar, to show off their prowess as orators and win verbal sparring matches. We ask them simultaneously to entertain us and to prove their worth, yet it is undeniable that in our age of television, live streaming and social media, a good debate performance matters, politically speaking, when it comes to shaping public opinion.

Back in 2011, Alison Redford was vying for the leadership of Alberta’s Progressive Conservative Party. Redford’s mother died the night before the televised debate amongst the leadership contenders. Some expected her to pull out. Instead, she showed up at the studio and so impressed the TV audience that she ended up overtaking the three male frontrunners and becoming Alberta’s first female premier.

It must be said, a lot of Albertans waited a long time to see the same qualities that Premier Redford displayed that night play out in real life, but there is no doubt that the grit, the composure and compassion voters saw helped propel Redford to victory.

In Alberta’s 2015 election, it was Rachel Notley’s fierce and funny performance in the leaders’ debate that fuelled her landslide victory. Although you could also say that the debating failures of Conservative leader Jim Prentice and Wildrose leader Brian Jean did a lot to make Notley Alberta’s first NDP premier.

I remember my father — a blessed memory — a good Red Tory, calling me up, disgruntled, the morning after the debate. “It wasn’t fair,” he grumbled. “Why not?” I asked. “She was just so charming,” fumed my father. “She was impossible to beat.” My dad wasn’t the only one to think that. The night of that debate, Alberta’s current premier, Danielle Smith, was working as a TV pundit, providing live debate analysis. “I’m in a room full of business conservatives,” she said that night. “Feedback so far is the men look grim and Rachel looks great.”

When I think back on that historic 2015 Alberta leaders’ debate, I remember it not just for its outcome, but for its structure. The debate had four participants, but the format allowed them to face off one-on-one, which allowed for some genuine clashes of ideas and personalities. It was a debate that changed people’s minds, not just because of Jim Prentice’s infamous “math is difficult” gaffe, but because people had the chance to scrutinize Prentice, Jean and Notley side by side — to compare and contrast — and to see who seemed the smartest, the most intellectually agile and the most sincere. Despite all the superficialities and frustrations of our TV debate culture, I still believe that political debates can have a real place in showing us a candidate’s grace under pressure, their quick-wittedness and their ability to connect with people.

However, if we want these TV debates to continue, and to provide meaningful context, we need to have a long, hard discussion about their format, their structure and their ultimate purpose. We need a debate model that really allows for a clash of ideas — one that forces leaders to defend their platforms and their principles. And we need to make sure the leaders do that work, not the journalists.

We need to hear the candidates in candid, unrehearsed conversation with each other — thrusting and parrying. We also need tough, strong moderators who will keep people to time, crack down on bullying and generally enforce the rules of fair debate. We don’t want to sit through long, boring prepared sermons — nor do we want a shouting-match free-for-all. No; what we want is debate that is, at least, as good as it was at my daughter’s junior high school. That shouldn’t be too much to ask, nor too much to expect.

My thanks to my friend Senator Dasko for launching this inquiry, and for allowing me this little chance to reminisce.

Be it resolved, then, that this house believes in the power of political debate, and in the necessity of finding a way to make it work for the 21st century.

Thank you. Hiy hiy.

[Translation]

Hon. Stan Kutcher: Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to Senator Coyle’s inquiry on climate. I will focus on the impact of climate change on human health, and how health care systems could respond.

To begin, let us acknowledge the leadership and hard work that Senator Coyle has demonstrated in creating and advancing Senators for Climate Solutions.

Climate change is not only a threat to our global environment and economy, but it is also an existential threat to human health and our health care systems. In 2009, the medical journal The Lancet identified climate change as the most significant global health threat of the 21st century. These impacts are both direct and indirect. In terms of direct impacts, frequent extreme weather events, such as floods, hurricanes, heat waves and wildfires, impact both health and our ability to provide health care. Various water-borne diseases occur in flooded areas, and access to timely, critical care becomes extremely difficult due to damages to infrastructure, such as roads and bridges. Wildfires disrupt access to acute care sites, while concurrently increasing demand for care due to their impact on respiratory conditions. We are all aware of the impact of hurricanes on health care infrastructure, and how heat waves lead to increased deaths.

Perhaps less appreciated, however, is the indirect impact of climate change on the geographical spread of disease, or the emergence of new diseases — especially infectious diseases. For example, in my home province, there has been an increase in tick-borne infections that can lead to Lyme disease. This is due to an increase in the numbers and longevity of blacklegged ticks as a result of warmer winters. Their biting spreads the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi, the cause of Lyme disease, resulting in increased numbers of people who have contracted the disease. According to the Canadian Public Health Association, this outcome — of indirect climate change impacts on human health — is driven by numerous complex changes in the pathways of disease transmission that are sensitive to climate changes. For example, the West Nile virus arrived in Ontario in 2013, and has since spread across that province.

I want us to be aware — now — of some of the nasty tick‑borne and mosquito-borne illnesses that seem to be spreading into Canada due to our changing climate. They have impressive names, such as human granulocytic anaplasmosis, babesiosis and La Crosse encephalitis. Trust me; none of us wants to have a severe case of any of these diseases, even if we could pronounce their names. Their impacts are most severely felt in populations that are already at risk of poor health, and face barriers to appropriate affordable housing, food security and quality health care. The impact of climate change will make those inequalities worse. Addressing this issue requires dealing with the social determinants of health, as well as undertaking actions needed to protect health care settings from severe weather events, such as moving them away from flood plains.

We need to be ready. There are two key areas where preparation within our health systems is needed now: These are treatment readiness and risks to health infrastructure.

The first area is treatment readiness. As we all remember, when COVID-19 arrived, we were not prepared. We had insufficient stockpiles of personal protective equipment; we had insufficient surge capacity in our emergency rooms and intensive care units; our surveillance, reporting and tracking systems were inadequate; we lacked national coordination in our response; and much more. This must not happen again. We need a coordinated national disease surveillance capacity with single-point national accountability. This includes a national health database that can provide real-time information to guide policy decisions, and help direct resources and interventions where and when they are needed.

We also need to be able to rapidly provide treatments that we expect may be required. For example, to treat many various tick‑vector bacterium diseases, effective antibiotic treatments are available; there are medications such as doxycycline, clindamycin and azithromycin. They are not exotic drugs; they are commonly used medications.

But as we have learned, we can’t expect that just because they are commonly used that they will be there when they are needed. We are now experiencing challenges obtaining other types of common medications, such as paediatric fever and pain medication. I recently went to Shoppers Drug Mart stores all over Ottawa to try to find specific medications for sinus congestion and found only empty shelves. We can’t let ourselves get into the same situation again.

In conjunction with this is the preparation of our health care providers. I know there are a number of excellent physicians in this chamber. I do wonder, however, how many of us, if faced with a person who presented with persistent and severe malaise, sweats, headaches, nausea and fatigue, would consider a diagnosis of babesiosis? If our basic workup identified the presence of a hemolytic anemia, which is a condition where red blood cells are being destroyed, we would certainly look at all possible causes, but we might not think of asking for a microscopic parasite analysis or ordering a babesia IFA antibody test.

To be clear, this is not pandemic preparation I am talking about. We might indeed experience pandemic disease outbreaks due to climate change, but we might more likely see a gradual increase in various types of infectious diseases. They will slowly sneak up on us unless we are keeping a close eye out.

In September 2020, The Lancet published “A pledge for planetary health to unite health professionals in the Anthropocene,” which proposed an interprofessional planetary health pledge. The pledge adds protecting planetary health to the fundamental commitments health practitioners make when they enter their profession.

Recognizing that, the Canadian Medical Association’s 2020 strategic plan mentions environmental well-being. The Canadian Federation of Medical Students, through its Health and Environment Adaptive Response Task Force, has been working on developing educational materials that could be embedded in medical curricula.

While much more needs to be done, initiatives across all of Canada’s medical schools are under way, and I am pleased to say that the Faculty of Medicine at Dalhousie University is one of the early leaders in this work.

I have great faith in our infectious disease colleagues. I know they are up to this challenge. I would also like to acknowledge and thank our colleague Senator Osler for her exemplary national work on this file.

I am hopeful that this necessary work will be done well and expeditiously.

The second is the risks to health infrastructure. Health infrastructure is something that many of us, especially in large urban areas, take for granted. The hospital? Yes, just down the road. Ambulance station? There is one about 15 minutes away. Drug store? There is one in the Rideau Centre.

Health care settings are subject to extreme weather events that can damage or destroy anything from roads, making it difficult to access a hospital in an emergency, to damage to ports and, thus, to the smooth functioning of the medical products supply chains. This reality raises the uncomfortable possibility that when this critical infrastructure is most needed, it can be unavailable.

Let’s take the issue of floods, for example. In a study of the impacts of floods on health infrastructure, it was noted that health care facilities faced both diminished capacity and increased demands. Regarding the recent floods in Bangladesh, UNICEF noted that:

The flooding damaged water points and sanitation facilities increasing risk of waterborne diseases . . . . Access to healthcare and nutrition services was reduced due to the damage of 90 per cent of health care facilities.

Closer to home, during the recent British Columbia floods, numerous patients had to be evacuated from hospitals and long‑term care facilities, and access to acute-care settings in flood‑ravaged areas became problematic.

A recent flood mapping exercise of Canadian health care centres at risk of flooding concluded:

There are a surprising number of facilities at risk of flooding in most provinces and territories. Manitoba and Yukon have the largest percentage at risk of flooding. . . . Yukon’s high percentage of facilities in the floodplain and small total number of facilities illustrate how weather-related disasters driven by climate change could disrupt and damage important health infrastructure when it is most needed.

So, in the face of our climate change reality, what is to be done? Thankfully, many things. We can consider opportunities for action in two complementary categories: developing environmentally sustainable health care facilities and creating climate-resilient health care facilities.

Health care systems account for about 4% of total global carbon emissions, and health care facilities can act to substantially reduce their carbon footprint. At COP 27, the World Economic Forum produced an article entitled “Here’s how healthcare can reduce its carbon footprint,” which addresses this important issue. For example, hospitals have the highest energy intensity of all publicly funded buildings and emit 2.5 times more greenhouse gases than commercial buildings. Therefore, switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy can have a major impact.

Other innovative solutions can also help.

Another direction is shifting outpatient care away from hospitals into more energy-efficient community settings and by increasing the use of high-quality virtual care with less environmental impact, such as home-based health monitoring systems and telehealth care. A secondary gain will be the avoidance of travel from home to hospital, thus decreasing the carbon footprint of transportation.

Health care facilities also need to become more climate resilient. In this domain, some good initiatives are under way. I will briefly touch upon a few of them here.

The World Health Organization has created the WHO Guidance for Climate Resilient and Environmentally Sustainable Health Care Facilities. More recently, the WHO report, Measuring the Climate Resilience of Health Systems, has provided substantial guidance on how to mitigate climate-change impacts on human health and health care.

Our federal government has created the Climate change and health vulnerability and adaptation assessments: Workbook for the Canadian health sector. This is designed to help health care facilities evaluate and then address their climate-change preparedness.

The Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care, in partnership with the Province of Nova Scotia, has created The Health Care Facility Climate Change Resiliency Toolkit that can be used by health care settings to assist them in their climate preparedness work.

As we can see, honourable senators, much work is being done, but much more is needed.

Canada’s health systems, collectively, have the third-largest per capita carbon footprint in the world. Our health care systems were responsible for about 5% of Canada’s annual greenhouse gas emissions prior to the pandemic. Per-capita GHG emissions in our health sector actually increased from 2018 to 2019.

In 2021, Canada committed to the WHO COP 26 Health Program initiative directions, which include building climate‑resilient health systems, developing low-carbon sustainable health systems, adaptation research for health, the inclusion of health priorities in nationally determined contributions and raising the voices of health professionals as advocates for stronger ambition on climate change. To those, I would add this: ensuring that our Indigenous, Inuit and Métis communities are fully integrated into the creation, development, deployment and evaluation of all the work that needs to be done.

We need a cohesive national initiative to set directions, coordinate efforts across jurisdictions and support legislation and implementation of sustainable changes to health systems. That will require collaboration amongst federal-provincial-territorial partners; input from Canadian expertise, such as Health Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada, l’Institut national de santé publique du Québec, our universities and granting agencies; and international expertise, such as the WHO and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The National Adaptation Strategy currently under way is an ideal place to address this need. We must not let this adaptation strategy get stranded on the rocks of inactivity.

This is a tall order — an existential challenge — but it is our challenge. As we Canadians have shown time and time again in our history, we are up to any challenge. Wela’lioq, thank you.

Hon. Jim Quinn: Honourable senators, I rise today to speak in support of the collaborative efforts in raising our awareness of the challenges facing our global environment. My remarks today will briefly focus on the marine sector and share some of the progressive efforts of that sector to improve its environmental performance generally and specifically here in Canada.

Before I begin, I want to acknowledge the leadership of our colleagues Senators Coyle and Kutcher, who have provided such by bringing together Senators for Climate Solutions. They have organized discussions and presentations by international and national experts working to inform the public and governments of the serious climate change challenges facing our planet, and as one of our presenters so poignantly noted, “it is not just about saving our planet; it is in fact about saving humanity.”

I thank Senators Coyle and Kutcher for their leadership in that area that is so important for all of us as global efforts need to contribute to work that will build on and find solutions to slow down, and hopefully some day reverse, climate change and its devastating effects.

Marine transportation has always been a backbone for moving people and cargo locally, nationally and indeed globally. There is no denying its impact on our global economy. Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen serious disruptions in global supply chains resulting in shortages of essential goods and rapidly increasing prices. Indeed, this situation was and is driven largely by high consumer demand, and this in turn has resulted in historic cost for marine shipping. After all, globally, approximately 90% of everyday goods from food products, electronics, automobiles, clothing, energy products, furniture — you name it — is mainly moved by vessels.

In the Canadian context, over 80% of our everyday goods pass through our ports. Our 17 Canadian port authorities handle 340 million tons of cargo every year, maintain over 200,000 jobs and contribute a direct economic impact of $36 billion.

With the huge volume of vessels moving around the globe and the continuous operation of ports — all essential activities supplying goods to our world community — there’s no doubt that we need to advance ways of reducing their environmental impact. So, too, is taking a global approach in finding solutions to reduce the environmental impacts of this shipping activity.

The United Nations’ International Maritime Organization, more commonly referred to as the IMO, is the focal point for working with its 175 member states in dealing with all matters tied to shipping. It has four pillars of focus, one of which deals with the prevention and, indeed, the reduction of pollution from ships.

Over the decades, numerous standards and regulations have been collaboratively developed by this organization, dealing with numerous topics such as increasing strict regulations concerning ships’ discharge, rules governing the handling of ships’ water ballast to reduce the risk of invasive species being introduced to domestic waters, requirements for the types of paint ships may use — that may sound strange, but ships use a lot of paint — eliminating things like lead and so many other initiatives that are aimed at reducing ships’ environmental impacts.

But perhaps one of the more important initiatives has been the establishment of Emission Control Areas, which are areas that have been designated in different regions of the world where ships must burn fuels that are required to dramatically reduce emissions such as sulphur, nitrous oxide and others.

In our case, together with the United States, our Emission Control Area creates a 200-mile-wide boundary that requires vessels to burn much cleaner fuels while operating offshore and coming into our waters. This ensures that vessels operating in our coastal waters and ports have significantly reduced emissions, delivering important benefits to large segments of our population as well as to our marine and terrestrial ecosystems.

Canada itself has also provided leadership in this important area of reducing pollution and greening of operations at sea and in ports.

In 2007, various players in the marine industry in Canada formed Green Marine, the leading environmental certification program for North America’s maritime industry. It’s a voluntary initiative that helps its participants to improve their environmental performance beyond regulations. Green Marine targets key environmental issues related to air, water, soil quality and community relations. It’s an inclusive, rigorous and transparent initiative that brings together several types of participants: ship owners, ports, terminal operators, shipyards and the seaway corporations based in Canada and the United States.

To obtain Green Marine certification, participants must complete a progressively rigorous process that has clear, measurable results that are audited by industry experts every two years to ensure results are maintained while encouraging continuous improvement. The membership also encompasses associations, supporters and partners that each, in their own way, support participants in their efforts to reduce their environmental footprint.

From its humble beginnings that focused on the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway, Green Marine now brings together hundreds of members from across North America with different backgrounds that all share the same objective: to improve the maritime industry’s environmental performance through concrete and measurable actions.

Its influence has reached across the Atlantic Ocean to France, where Green Marine Europe was formed in 2020. It operates on the same proven model created right here in Canada. Most recently, a large ferry operator in Australia has become a member of Green Marine, clearly demonstrating its value, its work and its leadership in addressing marine-related activities at sea and in port, and how steps can be taken to reduce environmental impacts. I applaud the great work of Green Marine and the leadership it provides on that global stage.

As a long-serving CEO of one of Canada’s busiest ports, Port Saint John, New Brunswick, I would be remiss if I did not speak briefly of our Canadian port authorities and how climate change can affect them and our economy. I would also like to mention some of the initiatives they have introduced and continue to implement.

Ports are part of Canada’s critical infrastructure, connecting land to water and subsequently connecting interior roads and rail links that are particularly vulnerable to climate change-related weather, erosion, fire, flooding, rising water levels and other events.

A couple of examples demonstrate the reality and the risk potential of these climate change-related factors. All of us can recall the fires and floods that affected our West Coast ports, notably Vancouver. Those events cost our economy billions of dollars and significantly disrupted our supply chains. Our West Coast ports are not alone, as our central and eastern ports have also experienced various weather events that have disrupted operations and compromised supply chain efficiencies.

Our ports also face other significant climate change risks, such as in the Tantramar marsh area that connects New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. That area is protected from flooding by a series of very old dikes that will fail as weather events continuously promote erosion and rising sea waters, which will, in the short-to-medium term, exceed the limits of protection offered by the dikes.

Failure of these dikes is not an option as the Port of Halifax, Canadian National Railway and the Trans-Canada Highway — all critical components of Canada’s supply chain — cross the marsh and would be inoperable. Certainly, such a failure would have disastrous effects on local communities such as Sackville, New Brunswick, and Amherst, Nova Scotia, as well as many others. That flooding would have a devastating impact on local, provincial as well as our national economies.

Our ports have also been taking action to reduce and mitigate their own impact on climate change, while taking action to protect the environment and port ecosystems. All Canadian port authorities are members and active participants in Green Marine, and I’m pleased to say that they have been very successful in advancing through the various levels of the program.

Ports are committed to improving their performance and hold themselves to account, not only for the ongoing greening of their operations, but also to being responsible partners with their local communities. The development of port environmental policies is another aspect of this, as well as environmental audits and reports that make themselves accountable to the public. The creation of green programs — such as reduced rates for shipping companies that operate vessels accredited with their own green programs that guide reduced emissions from their operations — is another way of promoting ports’ activities in this area.

Ports are creating port-public and Indigenous partnerships to ensure concerns and inputs help guide port projects in an environmentally sustainable manner. Ports are also providing vessels that are capable of “plugging into” shore power facilities, thereby allowing the vessel to shut down fuel-burning generators and engines while in port. Ports are also providing the protection and creation of fish habitat. They are working with local experts, universities, colleges, Indigenous groups and environmental groups in creating monitoring and protection programs from marine mammals and other species, and there are so many other initiatives.

Finally, I want to mention initiatives that Port Saint John has undertaken. It will see them source 100% of power for all cruise terminals, corporate offices and port-owned terminals from the soon-to-be-commissioned nearby Burchill Wind Project, drastically reducing the port’s carbon footprint. This fits into the new Port Saint John decarbonization and sustainability plan, which is being developed in partnership with stakeholders, including a post-secondary pitch competition all about decarbonizing the port ecosystem with New Brunswick students.

In closing, I hope my presentation underscores that today there is a renewed interest and a sense of urgency to push further and faster to build a green economy that includes an environmentally sustainable marine sector. I hope that I painted a picture that clearly shows that Canada is indeed a world leader in the marine sector, as it is in other sectors in advancing climate change solutions.

Thank you for listening, and again, I want to thank Senators Coyle and Kutcher for their leadership. Meegwetch. Thank you.

(On motion of Senator Clement, debate adjourned.)

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the inquiry of the Honourable Senator Woo, calling the attention of the Senate to the one hundredth anniversary of the Chinese Exclusion Act, the contributions that Chinese Canadians have made to our country, and the need to combat contemporary forms of exclusion and discrimination faced by Canadians of Asian descent.