- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Bloc Québécois
- Montcalm
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $126,025.95
- Government Page
Madam Speaker, I will begin my speech this evening with two images. The first is that the cure is worse than the disease. The second is that we should not use a bazooka to kill a fly, but rather the appropriate tool, in other words, a fly swatter.
The government is being sneaky about it; that is the worst part. That is the story behind Bill C‑368. The government introduced this provision under the radar, in an annex to budget 2023, in Bill C‑47. From day one we have always made a distinction between natural health products and drugs, and rightly so. In the drug industry, in the pharmaceutical industry, people may have to bear the recovery costs, but they have 20-year patents. They are able to break even. What is more, there are no taxes on drugs.
The government makes a lot of money in taxes on natural health products so it can afford to pay for an inspection service that will guarantee the effectiveness and safety of natural health products. When we met in September, everyone agreed that consumers deserve to have effective products that are safe. Health Canada has to do its job in that respect.
What did the Auditor General's report reveal? First, in my opinion, there was a minor methodological problem. Rather than proceeding randomly, products, places and companies were targeted where problems were known to exist. Obviously, if problems are already known to exist, the audit will reveal a high percentage of problems.
There are approximately 91,000 natural health products. Of that number, 75 were analyzed in a targeted way, leading to the conclusion that Health Canada has not been doing its job to ensure product safety since 2014. That is what was found after checking the sampled products. Health Canada was caught with its pants down, so to speak. It played tough, tried to assert its credibility and brought out the big guns.
As legislators, we have always wanted to ensure that there is a balance when it comes to natural health products and access to those products, in order to guarantee free choice for consumers while also ensuring that when Health Canada approves products, it does its job after the fact and inspects those products. From 2004 to 2014, 53 recommendations were made. In September, when we heard from Health Canada representatives and the chief scientist, we realized that the answers were not credible.
I asked whether an impact study had been done on the industry, on small and medium-sized businesses, concerning the recovery costs required. I was told that it was based on Treasury Board guidelines. I imagine that the Treasury Board's main interest is getting its money's worth. What kind of service is it going to provide when, after all this time, and with all the taxes generated by the industry, it has not even been able to ensure an audit or any inspections throughout its mandate?
There are a few problems today. I asked the chief scientist how many adverse reactions there had been to natural health products in 17 years. I asked her to provide the numbers. We have yet to get an answer to that question. I also asked her what the numbers were for adverse reactions to pharmaceutical products. She replied that she had some numbers, but she still has not provided those either.
We know very well that, even though they are approved by Health Canada, pharmaceuticals can still sometimes have very serious side effects. However, that is no reason to discredit the entire industry. We are just doing our job and making sure that we do it properly. Contrary to what people might think and what the government tried to have us believe, the shell game that I am talking about, the one in Bill C‑47, happened in June, when we were voting on the March 2023 budget. Now we are getting letters and the public is starting to find out about this.
As legislators, we do not have any say over the regulations. We vote on laws. Regulations are then drafted on how the legislation should be applied. The problem is that we need Bill C‑368 to be sent to committee so that we can do our job as parliamentarians and look into the regulation that was brought in under which natural health products are now considered therapeutic products under Vanessa's Law.
It is very clear that we would not be where we are today if the government had been a little more transparent, if it had carried out the consultations it needed to and if it had worked with everyone to find some common ground to ensure that no harm would come to an industry that Quebeckers and Canadians have the right to have access to by choice. Natural health products are not forced on anyone through a prescription. No one is forced to buy them. When people choose to buy them, it is because, in a way, they have educated themselves.
It is true that they can pose risks, and it is also true that people have to follow their pharmacist's instructions. There are interactions, true. However, these interactions are between drugs prescribed by a doctor versus a pharmaceutical product that I am going to buy. We are not trying to trivialize anything, but just because there are a few bad apples in one industry does not mean that the entire industry should be discredited. That would undermine small and medium-sized businesses, which want to sell safe products. Their main motivation is people's health.
We would not be here if there had been a bit more transparency and if the people who came to testify in September had the courage to point this out to us. When they were told that their cost-recovery model was modelled on the pharmaceutical industry, they did not say one word, as if we would not figure out Bill C‑47's sleight of hand at some point. They took the entire model from the pharmaceutical industry and transposed it to the natural health products industry without allowing us to debate it. That is why there were two meetings on this. It was to get information about the problem.
There have been no more consultations so far. That is why we are going to vote in favour of Bill C‑368. We want to ensure that the legislator, who never has access to the regulations and can never review them through legislation, brings this to committee. There we will be able to work on it and find a balance regarding the government's claims that 88% of the 91,000 natural health products are deficient and have misleading labelling. This is a serious methodological bias that does not reflect reality, because in 2015, a randomized study showed that more than 90% of products were fully compliant. What happened in the meantime, then?
Maybe if the people at Health Canada did their job and carried out inspections, and maybe if they sent people their criteria, guidelines and information about where they want people to focus so that, during production, they can be certain that the product is okay, we would not be here today. The Bloc Québécois will indeed vote in favour of the bill.
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Madam Speaker, I do not know whether the government is investing based on events, but the passage of Bill C-47 will not be an event. To clarify, I would say this.
The government boasts about having invested a lot of money during the pandemic. However, had it taken the necessary precautions, it probably could have spent a lot less money.
We likely would have been able to save the lives of more people in long-term care if the national PPE stockpile had not been completely depleted and if we had had masks to protect the personal support workers who had to work in two or three different facilities to be able to make ends meet at the end of the year, because the federal government has been making cuts to health care transfers for 30 years. The chronic underfunding of health care weakened the system, which led to anomalies during the pandemic.
Yes, there is an obligation to make one-time investments, but if we want to make our health care systems strong again, then we need to make long-term structural investments to get results.
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Madam Speaker, today we are examining Bill C-47, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28, 2023. I wanted to read the full title because I am going to use it to back up what I am saying.
This is a huge bill, a mammoth bill. It is 430 pages long and seeks to amend 59 statutes and the Income Tax Regulations. However, since we have people who can read quickly, we noticed that King Charles III was hiding in this mammoth bill.
The government is trying to sneakily introduce a measure in this budget implementation bill that will force us to be loyal to His Majesty and will enshrine in law the fact that Charles III is indeed Canada's sovereign. That is quite appalling.
It is more than just appalling. I am convinced that, while there are those who are just a bit complacent about this matter, there are others who find this extremely offensive because of their roots. I am sure that those who have indigenous or Acadian roots may find it offensive to have to recognize this archaic institution. Clearly, the government put this in a mammoth bill because mammoths are another archaic part of history. In fact, they have disappeared, just as the monarchy should.
For someone with Acadian roots, swearing an oath and recognizing this monarch in 2023 hurts deeply. We know the harm that was caused to the Acadian people and to indigenous peoples.
I do not get it. How is there not a majority of members here who agree with what I just said? They could make sure we have an honest bill and submit the issue in all honesty to the House in a separate bill. No, this is hidden in a mammoth bill that amends 59 statutes. I get the impression that the government is a bit ashamed of its monarch.
I am not the first member to speak to this bill, but the Bloc Québécois is voting against Bill C‑47. First of all, there is nothing in there for seniors. For years we have been asking the government why there is a two-tiered system for seniors, but it stubbornly refuses to change this. It is as though people between 65 and 74 do not have needs and were not affected by inflation. It is as though every senior between 65 and 74 had enough income to live it up every day, when the opposite is true.
According to epidemiological studies, many illnesses emerge at this age. If we add to that financial insecurity, instead of a life without too many worries about living comfortably and deciding to buy this or that product or this or that medication, we would see that it is far more costly, in many ways, not to make the program fair.
The bill should have included tax measures to allow seniors who want to work to do so without being penalized. Something should be done about that. I cannot understand this stubbornness. Obviously, this is the budget implementation bill. These measures were not in the budget, which is not surprising, but it will come as no surprise that I am criticizing it.
The bill contains no long-term solutions for funding health care. My colleague spoke before about Bill C-46 and Bill C-47. Bill C‑46 included a $2-billion transfer, without conditions, to Quebec and the provinces. Suddenly, Bill C‑47 decides that would be redundant. We thought it was a generous gesture, given the government's previous power grab.
Now the government is preparing an amendment to walk it back. We are going to work hard to ensure it remains in Bill C‑47. I am appealing to the social conscience of all so-called Liberal members. A Liberal is supposed to be a progressive who is in touch with what is happening. At present, I would truly like to see one Liberal rise and show me that, in the medium and long term, the health transfers being provided are enough to meet the needs that the provinces and Quebec will have over the next ten years. That is an impossible task.
This does not mean that we do not appreciate the one-time investments made as a result of the pandemic. However, the structural problems of the health care system will not be fixed with one-time investments. The government made non-recurring investments when medium- and long-term structural investments were needed to rebuild the health care systems and to ensure that a pandemic will never again undermine and weaken these systems to the point that we have to lock down for a year, for example.
It is appalling, what is happening here. Taking away this $2 billion is shameful. That they would even consider taking it away is shameful, indecent even. They are offering crumbs. As I said before, the provinces were asking for $28 billion a year, from coast to coast to coast. The government offered them $4.6 billion with a gun to their heads. Take it or leave it; the budget was already written. The government thinks that that will be enough for the provinces to be able to take care of their aging population and cover all other needs, which ballooned and became more acute during the pandemic because of the delays and the waiting lists.
The Standing Committee on Health has done a study on the collateral effects of the pandemic. In the midst of the third wave, the experts came to us and said that even if we injected that $28 billion during that wave, it would still take 10 years for us to claw our way out of the pandemic. Imagine that. The government did not inject the money until after the eighth wave, and offered only $4.6 billion in new money, thinking that it would be enough for the provinces to take care of their people.
There is nothing in the bill for EI. Worse still, the government is about to pilfer $17 billion from the EI fund, because the only budget item it has decided not to absorb is EI. Neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives have ever put back into the EI fund the $57 billion the federal government stole from it.
My father worked and paid into EI all his life. He was proud to pay into it for his colleagues who might need it and for workers who would probably need it. It made him proud to pay into it out of solidarity, but to never have personal need of it. He took pride in that.
What has this government done? It has pilfered $57 billion from the fund and has never returned it. Today, when it should be able to pay back $17 billion of that amount, it has decided to pay it by increasing workers' premiums. It is shameful, and it is why I will be voting against the bill.
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