Hon. Jean-Yves Duclos, P.C., M.P., Minister of Health: Thank you very much for having me.

[English]

Hon. Jean-Yves Duclos, P.C., M.P., Minister of Health: Thank you for your patience.

Hon. Rosemary Moodie: Minister Duclos, welcome.

Recently, the Health Standards Organization released their first draft of the National Long-Term Care Services Standard. This is highly anticipated because long-term care, as you just pointed out, has been a long-standing issue in this country, one made worse by the pandemic, and was the scene of some of the most disheartening instances of neglect and death during the pandemic.

You have acknowledged that these issues require a broad, systemic change that considers a number of factors: standards of care, conditions for workers, affordability, access to care, and that federal leadership is really needed and essential here.

In the face of an aging population and a weakened health care system, it is clear that the Guaranteed Income Supplement is not going to be the change that will make significant change here. Many of these issues require —

Hon. Jean-Yves Duclos, P.C., M.P., Minister of Health: Thank you, Senator Forest.

I will limit my remarks to two aspects. First, as I mentioned a little earlier, not only has there been ongoing collaboration among the different levels of government, but it has yielded several results. In the past few weeks alone, I have attended seven meetings with my fellow health ministers from across the country.

The Prime Minister has held nearly forty meetings with his counterparts, the premiers of the provinces and territories. Many of these meetings have focused on the health response and investments in health care to protect health. In my case, the meetings have always been about that, of course. We just spoke about $2.5 billion for rapid tests, on top of investments of several hundreds of millions made a little earlier for Pfizer’s Paxlovid treatment courses.

In the meantime, vaccines are being provided free of charge to Canadians by the Government of Canada and, in my opinion, in a relatively efficient manner.

However, more needs to be done. That is why, knowing the priorities of the provinces and territories, we identified elements during the election campaign and in our platform that we believe could form the foundation for a relationship that respects provincial jurisdictions. By recognizing the government’s shared responsibility and by focusing on results, I think this relationship will continue to progress over the coming years, because we’re all in the same boat and we all have a responsibility to take care —

Hon. Jean-Yves Duclos, P.C., M.P., Minister of Health: I believe I already answered that question earlier, but I can sum up my response again.

First, the commitment was made, and that was the right thing to do.

Second, we are working together with the provinces and territories to do this in the most appropriate way possible.

Third, I don’t set the parliamentary agenda. Parliamentarians do. However, my responsibility is to ensure that all of this is done efficiently and quickly, and I will be there to do that.

Hon. Jean-Yves Duclos, P.C., M.P., Minister of Health: Senator Galvez, I will get back to you about the more specific and relevant aspects regarding Bill C-28.

However, I can tell you that I very much appreciate your question. It is an excellent one. I appreciate the link you made between people’s physical and mental health, the health of the physical environment, meaning the natural environment that nourishes us and sustains us, the health of the economy — we now know how connected people’s health is to the health of the economy — and the health of our society. The health of our society includes reducing inequality, poverty, vulnerability and marginalization. All this goes hand in hand in a society like Canada, which is always striving to be better. So I commend you, and I thank you for making this important link between all these aspects of health. I promise to get back to you later on Bill C-28.

Hon. Jean-Yves Duclos, P.C., M.P., Minister of Health: Thank you very much for this excellent question, Senator Gignac. I will give you a three-part answer.

First, as you mentioned, it is important to remember that the provinces and territories and the Government of Canada were working together very closely over the past few months. As a result, Canada came through COVID-19 in much better shape than other countries. Canada’s mortality rate is much lower than that of all other G7 countries, except for Japan. Our economy is bouncing back more quickly than many other economies. The OECD is forecasting that, of the G7 countries, Canada will have the most significant growth by 2023.

That said, there is much work to be done to fix the health care system. We must fix the damage done by the COVID-19 pandemic, the significant delays and cancellations of diagnostic tests, treatments and surgeries. We also have to fix it because we have to keep fighting COVID-19. There will be other variants. COVID-19 is not going away. No legislation or wishful thinking will stop COVID-19 anywhere on the planet over the next few months or even the next few years. We must get our health system ready to fight future waves and future variants. That is why all the work that has been done to this point and that will continue to be done, not to mention all the money, is so important.

(Pursuant to the order adopted by the Senate on December 7, 2021, to receive a Minister of the Crown, the Honourable Jean-Yves Duclos, P.C., M.P., Minister of Health, appeared before honourable senators during Question Period.)

Hon. Jean-Yves Duclos, P.C., M.P., Minister of Health: Thank you, senator.

These are numbers, but as you say, these are also real people who have suffered not only from a physical perspective in most cases and an economic perspective in many cases, but from a mental health perspective in almost all cases.

Minister Bennett, the first Minister of Mental Health and Addictions in the history of the Government of Canada, quoted to me some other numbers just recently. Half of Canadians are reporting that their mental health has deteriorated over the last few months, and 7 out of 10 health care front-line workers say the same thing. These are very big numbers. More importantly, these have very significant impacts on their personal lives and the lives of their families as well.

There is no health without mental health. That’s true for an individual. That’s also true for a family, a neighbourhood and for a community. That’s why, as you suggested, we are going to go forward with extensive, important and, in fact, historic investments in mental health over the next few years for the purposes and the reasons that you identified.

[Translation]

Hon. Jean-Yves Duclos, P.C., M.P., Minister of Health: I have a two-part answer to that.

I will start with the personal, family and social trauma we experienced at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. About 80% of the deaths during the first wave of COVID-19 in early 2020 occurred in long-term care centres. Living conditions were a contributing factor, living conditions that many, if not all, of us are aware of. I was certainly aware of the situation because I had visited long-term care facilities in Quebec during election campaigns and observed utterly unacceptable living and dying conditions in Quebec and elsewhere in the country.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, about 50% of all deaths occurred in long-term care facilities. We promised to work respectfully and efficiently with the provinces and territories to protect our seniors, their health and their unity. As you said, there will be major investments and legislation enabling us to work in a way that respects jurisdiction and the sense of shared accountability when it comes to treating our seniors responsibly and with dignity.

Hon. Jean-Yves Duclos, P.C., M.P., Minister of Health: Thank you, Senator Marshall.

Two things. First, I believe we all understand and certainly we all have heard of the use and usefulness of rapid tests for COVID-19. As I mentioned earlier, those rapid tests were rarely and unequally used by provinces and territories prior to the end of 2021. That’s why we were so happy and collaborative in providing hundreds of millions of rapid tests in quite a short amount of time. We know they were being used and appreciated by many Canadians.

This being said, as you have noted, we note there will be a greater demand for such rapid tests. I will be glad to ask my office to get back to you and provide examples and ways for which these rapid tests will be of continuing use and usefulness for Canadians across the country.

Hon. Jean-Yves Duclos, P.C., M.P., Minister of Health: Thank you very much for the question.

The answer is yes, and that is what we’ve been doing all along. These measures absolutely need to be reviewed, for two reasons. The first is that Canada’s economic and health situation continues to evolve, and the second is that we keep learning more about the science of the virus and its variants as time goes on. I’d also like to mention another reason, which is that now, in February 2022, we have some exceptional tools that we did not have back in March 2020, at the start of the pandemic.

In other words, February 2022 is not March 2020. We fortunately have PPE, highly effective tests, proven, recognized and comprehensive public health measures, and antiviral treatments. On top of that, we have vaccines. We are unbelievably lucky to have gotten vaccines last year, thanks to science. Without vaccines, the lockdown measures we have now would have been much stricter. Being against vaccination is tantamount to being for lockdowns. The only way to avoid future lockdowns is to continue getting people vaccinated. That’s the only way to protect our health, our economy and our society.

[English]

Hon. Jean-Yves Duclos, P.C., M.P., Minister of Health: Thank you. It is a much-appreciated question.

Some estimates suggest there have been 1 million surgeries either delayed or cancelled over the past few months because of the impact of COVID-19. There are approximately 5 million Canadians who don’t have access to primary care through, for instance, a family doctor, and that has been worsened by the pandemic.

That is why we were there, and we needed to be there, during the pandemic with an investment of $63 billion in health, in addition to the Canada Health Transfer, which will increase from $43 billion to $45 billion in a few weeks, then to $49 billion, and then to $51 billion and $53 billion, by the way. So in just about three or four years, it will have increased by 25%. That is in addition to the things we promised we would do during the campaign in support of, as you said, not only repairing the system but also preparing the system for possible and almost certain future waves and variants of the pandemic.

[Translation]