Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): Thank you for your question and ongoing attention to this very important issue. The Government of Canada has been working with — and continues to work with — domestic manufacturers and foreign suppliers to secure adequate supplies of all medications and drugs needed by Canadians and by our health care system. There is, sometimes, a worldwide challenge, and Canada does — and is doing — its best to secure supplies for Canadians as it has with regard to the issue of acetaminophen, the children’s pain medication.

I don’t have the details of the specific initiatives on specific drugs, but this chamber should rest assured that the government is working hard with domestic and international partners to address this issue for Canadians.

Senator Carignan: The same goes for your office. On March 31, I asked you a question about the infamous secret trial. Six months later, the answer was that the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, the PPSC, couldn’t comment further. Leader, how do you explain that it took six months to say, “No comment”?

Hon. Donald Neil Plett (Leader of the Opposition): Senator Gold, a recent article in The Globe and Mail noted that between 2016 and 2021 the number of people older than 65 with an outstanding mortgage on their residence increased from 1.2 million to 1.5 million. This is an unbelievable 25% increase in only five years, Senator Gold.

This is very concerning, and illustrates the growing challenges that Canadians are having with the skyrocketing costs of everything under your government’s tenure. Can you tell me if your government has started to recognize that it is failing Canadians, and that its addiction to ever-increasing spending is making things worse and not better?

The Hon. the Speaker: Honourable senators, I have the honour to inform the Senate that the Clerk of the Senate has received a certificate from the Registrar General of Canada showing that Leonard Andrew Cardozo has been summoned to the Senate.

[Translation]

The Hon. the Speaker: Honourable senators, there have been consultations and there is an agreement to allow a photographer in the Senate Chamber to photograph the introduction of a new senator.

Is it agreed, honourable senators?

The Hon. the Speaker having informed the Senate that there was a senator without waiting to be introduced:

The following honourable senator was introduced; presented His Majesty’s writ of summons; took the oath prescribed by law, which was administered by the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel; and was seated:

Hon. Senators: Hear, hear!

[Translation]

The Hon. the Speaker: Honourable senators, I wish to draw your attention to the presence in the gallery of Alice Cardozo, daughter of the Honourable Senator Cardozo; Anthony Cardozo, his son; and Joann Garbig, a member of his family; along with friends of the honourable senator, including former premier of Ontario Dalton McGuinty.

On behalf of all honourable senators, I welcome you to the Senate of Canada.

The Hon. the Speaker: Honourable senators, I received a notice from the Government Representative in the Senate who requests, pursuant to rule 4-3(1), that the time provided for the consideration of Senators’ Statements be extended today for the purpose of paying tribute to the Honourable Jean Lapointe, former senator, whose death occurred on November 18, 2022.

I remind senators that pursuant to our rules, each senator will be allowed only 3 minutes and they may speak only once, and the time for Tributes shall not exceed 15 minutes.

[Translation]

Hon. Claude Carignan: Honourable colleagues, I rise today to pay tribute to a great Quebecer and a great Canadian who passed away on November 18, 2022.

Our former colleague Senator Jean Lapointe passed away surrounded by his loved ones at the age of 86. Following a brilliant career as a comedian, singer, songwriter, actor and philanthropist, Jean Lapointe was appointed to the Senate on June 13, 2001, by Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and sat in the Senate as a Liberal — he did have faults, after all — until his mandatory retirement at the age of 75 on December 6, 2010.

I want to extend my condolences to Jean’s family, to his many friends and colleagues in the arts and philanthropy communities, and to all Quebecers, because Jean Lapointe was truly part of our family for decades.

In November 2010, a few days before Jean retired from the Senate, I had the honour of paying tribute to him for the occasion. I looked him straight in the eye and said the following, and I quote:

The man I wish to pay tribute to here today is a wonderful friend to people struggling with various addictions, including alcohol, drugs and gambling, a man who understands, as his own song lyrics say, that “Everyone has a Story,” a man who encourages those people to grow, even inviting them to express themselves, saying “Sing me your Song,” a man who has helped and supported others by saying, “Let’s Sing Together.”

In 1982, Jean Lapointe very generously joined the fight against alcoholism by lending his name to a drug treatment centre that would become La Maison Jean Lapointe.

In 1983, he issued a call of hope to people struggling with addictions with the following words, “Bring your sick flowers; we will put them in the sun. Yes, now is the time for sick flowers to come back to life and experience a summer like no other.”

In 1984, my father was one of those flowers who answered his call.

Honourable senators, Jean Lapointe was an infinitely kind and altruistic man with extraordinary artistic talent.

I will close with this little anecdote that Guy Fournier, a Quebec artist involved in the world of communications, shared with us at the time of Jean Lapointe’s death. When Guy Fournier founded the television station Télévision Quatre-Saisons, he said that before going on stage for the big launch, he was overcome with stage fright. This is how he tells the story:

A few minutes before I left my dressing room, there was a knock at the door. It was Jean Lapointe.

“I came to give you a hug to make you feel better.”

I barely knew the guy, but he had guessed that I was scared to death. He hugged me for a solid minute, then whispered in my ear, “You have nothing to worry about. People will like you if they get the feeling you like them. That’s my secret to getting over stage fright.”

I doubt Jean Lapointe ever had stage fright, because Quebecers adored him.

Farewell, Jean.

Senator Sorensen: I am open to your questions.

The Hon. the Speaker: Honourable senators, I wish to draw your attention to the presence in the gallery of Stephen Pike. He is the guest of the Honourable Senator Miville-Dechêne.

On behalf of all honourable senators, I welcome you to the Senate of Canada.

Hon. Mobina S. B. Jaffer: Honourable senators, as many of us are watching the World Cup, let us also remember 23-year-old Tej Narayan Tharu from Nepal. In August 2018, Tej died working on the Al Wakrah stadium being built for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. His mother Sita expressed anguish with these words:

I’m heartbroken. My son has gone for ever. He’s never coming back. He has a small daughter. Life is long and hard. How will she survive?

Senators, those are the heartbreaking words of one mother. Unfortunately, there are thousands of mothers, like her, of migrant workers in Qatar, working towards the World Cup.

In 2021, Human Rights Watch found that foreign workers continued to suffer from punitive and illegal wage deductions, and faced months of unpaid wages for long hours of grueling work in unsafe conditions, with passport confiscations, high recruitment fees and deceptive recruitment practices continuing to be widespread.

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Qatar has a labour force of more than 2 million working under these conditions. Even more horrifically, a Guardian investigation published last year found that more than 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have died in Qatar since it won the right to host the World Cup.

Sadly, FIFA continues to be complicit in this tragedy. Instead of condemning the regime, they have written to all 32 teams competing at the World Cup, telling them to “now focus on the football!”

Thankfully, certain teams and nations have spoken up. For example, Paris and other French cities are refusing to screen matches in public areas, despite France being the defending champion.

Denmark is wearing “toned-down” shirts in protest, with kit provider Hummel saying they “don’t wish to be visible during a tournament that has cost thousands of people their lives.”

European football associations from Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland have endorsed calls for a compensation fund for migrant workers.

As we become engrossed in these games, let us remember victims like Tej, and 29-year-old Mohammad Shahid Miah, from Bangladesh, who died in one of the numerous, highly unsafe accommodations for migrant workers in Qatar, as the flood water in his room came into contact with an exposed electrical cable, electrocuting him.

While watching the games, let us not forget the senseless loss of life, the families they have left behind and the mothers who will never see their boys return home.

Thank you, senators.

The Hon. the Speaker: Honourable senators, I would now ask that you rise and join me in a moment of silence for our former colleague the late Honourable Jean Lapointe.

(Honourable senators then stood in silent tribute.)

The Hon. the Speaker: Honourable senators, I wish to draw your attention to the presence in the gallery of Ms. Cynthia Black. She is the guest of the Honourable Senator Hartling.

On behalf of all honourable senators, I welcome you to the Senate of Canada.

The Hon. the Speaker: Honourable senators, I wish to draw your attention to the presence in the gallery of Sarah Laframboise. She is the guest of the Honourable Senator Kutcher.

On behalf of all honourable senators, I welcome you to the Senate of Canada.

Senator Gold: Thank you for the question, senator.

Unfortunately, no, I’m still waiting for the answer to your question, and as soon as I receive it, I’ll communicate it to the Senate.

[English]

Senator Gold: Well, thank you. I will certainly communicate your concerns and this point of view to the minister. It would be my pleasure to do so.

The Hon. the Acting Speaker: More than.

Hon. Pierre J. Dalphond: Honourable senators, I, too, would like to all too briefly pay tribute to the Honourable Jean Lapointe, an important figure in Quebec, known for his songs and for his great talent as a composer, comedian, impersonator and actor.

Though he is dead, he will continue to live on in the hearts and minds of Quebecers through the lasting memories he created and his remarkable philanthropic institution, La Maison Jean Lapointe, which, for 40 years, has been helping men and women escape the clutches of alcoholism as he did himself.

He joined this chamber rather unexpectedly in 2001 and held the position for nine years as “a Liberal in quotation marks,” as he was fond of saying. He never liked political posturing in the Senate and he was not shy about speaking out about the ways time was being wasted, something that still happens all too often today.

As Senator Saint-Germain pointed out, in his maiden speech in the Senate, Senator Lapointe proposed to reduce the time spent on the “tributes occasioned by deaths,” which he described as interminably long. Mr. Lapointe, wherever you are today, we’re listening to you and we allocated only 15 minutes to your tributes when you deserve hours of them.

Even though politics made him “unhappy” and “disappointed,” in 2022, he still saw the Senate as “the guardian angel of the people, of minorities and of the poor.”

He arrived in Ottawa a declared and staunch federalist, and said shortly after his retirement that he understood the realty of the two solitudes, saying about Quebecers, and I quote, “We don’t think the same way, we’re not made the same way.”

In an interview with Patrice Roy from Radio-Canada television a few months ago, he said, “One day or another, Quebec will be independent. That’s my wish.”

Those who worked with him unanimously describe him as spirited and tormented, but very compassionate. He sung to Quebecers about things they could relate to.

To his daughter Anne Elizabeth, to his son, Jean-Marie, and to the other members of the Lapointe family, I offer my deepest condolences on the passing of one of our greats.

Thank you.

[English]