- Member of Parliament
- Minister of Health
- Liberal
- Ajax
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $134,982.00
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Madam Chair, first of all, for Dylan and Kim, I appreciate the member's advocacy. I cannot imagine how difficult that circumstance is, and that is exactly what we want to shut down. This is precisely why we are acting on pharmacare.
One very important question we have is about which model to use. We have a pilot in P.E.I. that is working very well, which is based on a fill-in-the-gaps model. The model that Bill C-64 is based on is a universal model. We are now looking at those two models in a real-world setting to see which one is best to use as a delivery mechanism for all drugs. We have a committee that will be looking at that over the next year, which will really paint that path forward.
These are very active matters of consideration, and this is one of the reasons it is so important that we establish that bedrock, which is the legislative foundation for pharmacare in Bill C-64, and take this action. In this way, we can make sure that we get to help families such as that of Dylan and Kim. That is envisioned in Bill C-64, and very much in my heart and in my mind as we are working on this.
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Madam Speaker, through you to the Conservatives, they are against this bill and against providing contraceptive and diabetes medications. That is fair. They can be against it, but the House has an elected will. What we saw on the very first day that we attempted to put this bill before the House was obstruction and what we have seen with other bills is obstruction, not obstruction to continue a conversation, but obstruction because they do not want it.
I do not know how long we could have a debate about whether or not we should do it. What is the value of that debate to public discourse? We could talk about it until the cows come home, but Conservatives are against it. There is going to be an opportunity obviously at committee, at third reading and at report stage to have a lot more debate on the bill, Bill C-64, and to hear their single position, which is in opposition.
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He said: Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise to talk about Bill C-64, which is an opportunity for us to move forward with pharmacare in this country. In the first order, the bill represents the best of what Canadians should expect from the House, which is different parties working together to find common ground and solutions.
I will start by thanking the member for Vancouver Kingsway for his work in what were often challenging conversations and negotiations, but which led to an exceptionally important bill that is going to do incredible good across the country. As well, I want to thank the member for New Westminster—Burnaby, the House leader for the New Democratic Party, for his work as House leader and now as health critic. In all orders, when we are facing something as challenging as the protection of our public health system and making sure Canadians get the care they require, working in a non-partisan way to drive results is exceptionally important.
I will speak to what is at stake, say a bit about what we have been doing in health and then talk specifically to the legislation that is in front of us today.
It was a stark day for me yesterday because I had two very different kinds of conversations. One conversation was with somebody who was saying, in a roundabout way, that maybe it would not be so bad if our public health care system became private. It is important to focus on what that would mean for this country and why it is something that we should all be adamantly opposed to.
If we allow our system to become a private health care system, there would be a migration of dollars toward a private system and expertise, in which the private sector would take that which was easy and lucrative and leave that which was difficult or involved folks who did not have the means to be able to pay for those services. This would leave less money in a public system that would be dealing with the most expensive problems and the most intractable issues. Over time, we would then see more and more migration of that which was easier into the private system, which would mean that people who do not have the means could not afford the same kind of care.
In a very practical sense, that ends up in the following type of situation: I had an opportunity to be in the United States with my partner for a weekend, and we witnessed a man collapse. It was clearly a person with not a lot of means. He fell unconscious to the ground. We went to his side and called 911. When he became conscious, his first thought was not about his health or worrying about what had just happened to his physical body; his concern was how he was going to be able to afford what just happened to him. I thought about the phone call I made to 911 and whether this was what this man even wanted, because now he has to think of exorbitant health costs to get the care he needs.
Even those who do not fundamentally care about whether their fellow citizens, regardless of their financial circumstances, get the same level of care as everybody else in the country, even if we cannot compel people's morality to care about the circumstance of whether somebody in their own community gets the same level of medical care that they do, the reality is that when somebody does not go to a hospital to get checked for something that is minor, because they do not have money, then it becomes something major. We are then left with the existential question, when that person becomes so sick that they are on death's door, of whether we just let them die or whether we pay the exorbitant costs that we have allowed to accumulate through not having a system that took care of those problems in the first place.
For the prognosticators of doom about our health system, for those who push the idea that we should just allow it to deteriorate and not make the investments or say that it is too difficult, they have to be honest about the future they are painting for Canadians in this country and the type of health care system that they would be left with. It is one where only the affluent have the opportunity to get the care they need. We can imagine a world where nurses cannot afford the care and services they require, but the affluent they are serving do. I do not think that is a society we want to be in.
That is why the investments we are making in health care are so critically important. The federal government has come to the table with nearly $200 billion to invest in partnership with provincial and territorial governments over the next 10 years. In the same spirit as the legislation, the question was not asked about one's partisanship or one's jurisdiction, because I do not think Canadians are interested. They want to see answers and forward progress.
I really want to commend the health ministers across the country because, over the last 10 months, as I had an opportunity to work with them to negotiate the agreements we signed, it was a spirit of co-operation and putting the health of Canadians first. It does not matter whether it was Adriana LaGrange in Alberta, Tom Osborne in Newfoundland and Labrador, a Conservative and a Liberal, or Adrian Dix, a New Democratic health minister in B.C.; they understand we have an important job to do and that we need to focus on what unites us and how we make things better.
The results were incredibly detailed health agreements that not only put money into the system but also showed exactly how that federal money is going to be spent. Thus, Canadians can view where those dollars are going to go to improve their health system and issues such as the health workforce, where we make sure that we have the doctors and nurses Canadians need and that everybody has a relationship with a doctor in this country. In addition, this enables us to put common indicators across the country so people can see the progress their province is making.
We know what is measured is achieved, and for the first time in our health system, these agreements put common indicators across the country so we can see the progress occurring in our health system and see what those investments are doing on key indicators identified by CIHI, which is an independent agency dealing with health data.
However, in dealing with the urgency of the now, let us recognize that our health system has been enormously strained. Throughout one of the darkest periods in public health that, certainly, we have known in our lifetime, health care workers were asked to do Herculean amounts of work. They were asked to rise to an occasion and do more than I think any reasonable person could be expected to do, but they met that hour and did it. As in health systems all over the world, instead of being met with a break, they were met with even more work, with burnout, with all kinds of mental fatigue and mental health issues as a result of the pandemic, with a backlog of procedures and with a health system that was even more overwhelmed.
What was remarkable about that period of time, going back to the spirit of co-operation, is that we made extraordinary progress. This was when the health system was fully aligned in the darkest moments of the pandemic, everybody was given more agency to practise at top of scope, jurisdiction was of distant consideration and people's immediate urgent health needs were first. We are dealing with that, with these workforce agreements and the work we are doing bilaterally with provinces and territories, but it is not enough to deal with the crisis of now. We have already made such huge progress. On where we were a year ago versus where we are now, that progress is evident through our whole system, but we recognize we also have to be upstream.
That brings me to another conversation that I had yesterday. I had the opportunity to be with the member for Ottawa—Vanier at a denture clinic in Vanier. Here is another example of parliamentary co-operation, where two parties came together and recognized an essential need in this country, which is that some nine million Canadians do not have access to oral health care.
We have now seen more than 30,000 seniors, just in the first few days of this dental program, receive care for the first time. I have been able to see what that means, in many instances by going into clinics. I will talk about what I saw in that denture clinic in Vanier. A denturist was talking about a senior who had not had their dentures replaced in 40 years; they did not have the money. This senior had no teeth and used a black apparatus to crush food in their mouth. One can imagine the dignity and the spiritual change in that person when they came in and realized that, after 40 years, they were finally going to get teeth in their mouth. The denturist being able to describe that moment, the pride they had in being able to deliver that service and give that senior that dignity, was absolutely extraordinary.
I had an opportunity in my own riding, just a few days before that, in Ajax, to meet with a senior. I never had a chance to meet him before. His name is Wayne. He sometimes goes by “Moose”. He was talking about himself and his wife. He had a need for partial dentures, and he had other oral health problems, as did his wife, which they had been putting off. In terms of what it meant to him to feel seen and to be able to get those issues taken care of, the truth is that we know it is not just a matter of dignity. It is not just a question of what kind of country we want to live in. What about the cost?
I think of Wayne and his inability to pay for the medical care that he needed for oral health care. Left untreated, Wayne could very well end up in a hospital room with an unnecessary surgical procedure, placing his life at risk. Imagine the staggering cost of that.
Dental care is not about some kind of boutique political intervention. It is fundamentally about making sure that people get the preventative care they need. It is part of the overall action that we are taking as a government, not only dealing with the crisis of the now, but also casting our eyes into the future and asking how we can work together.
Clearly the Bloc Québécois members have concerns about the jurisdiction issue, which I completely understand. It is a concern for me too. However, in my opinion, this is not a question of jurisdiction. It is actually a question of co-operation. There was one question that dominated my conversations with Quebec's health minister, Christian Dubé: How can the Government of Canada and the Province of Quebec work together to improve our health care system?
There are plenty of opportunities for us to work together in a spirit of co-operation to improve our health care system. It is easy to pick quarrels, point out differences and raise the issue of jurisdiction. However, I believe that for Quebeckers, what really matters is their health and government action.
Dental care is a great example of that. In Quebec, the Minister of Heritage has done extraordinary work in her riding. Almost all the providers in her riding have signed up, meeting a lot of that misinformation that was coming from the Conservatives with true facts. The experiences of those providers have been extraordinary. That is an example of us working together.
I said to Minister Dubé in Quebec that if they want to administer the program, it is no problem. Our care is about the patients, not about the jurisdiction. Our only requirements, if a one wants to take it over, is that one has to have at least the same level of care, number one, and number two, we are not going to give more to administer the program than it costs us to administer it. If it costs one more, that is something one has to bear on one's shoulders or look internally at how one is operating one's system.
That is an example of making sure that we get the care now and that we fix the question of jurisdiction later. For somebody who has a dental emergency, for a senior who does not have teeth in their mouth, they do not care about jurisdiction. They care about care and about getting it done. That is what we are focused on.
Before I come to pharmacare, one of the other things we are doing is about school food. When I was at Heart and Stroke, I had the opportunity to lead the Ontario mission and to be the national director of children and youth. One thing that was shocking to me was that when a child has one healthy meal, it can totally change their health outcomes. It does it for a couple of reasons. First, just the act of eating fruits and vegetables and healthy food has a transformative effect on health and prevents chronic disease and illness. Second, how does one learn if one is hungry? Third, one actually gets to develop a taste for healthy food that lasts one's entire life. Therefore, this is an extraordinary investment that is going to make a massive difference.
We are also taking action on marketing to kids with front-of-pack labelling and taking action with the $500-million fund to develop capacity for mental health services on the ground in communities across the country. I could go on and on, but I only have a short period of time to talk about the thing that we are here to talk about. I see the member for Vancouver Kingsway, and I want to thank him for this.
When we talk about contraceptives, it is incredibly frustrating to me that, over the last number of days, we have seen a march and a protest here to try to take away women's rights and take away their right to choose. We have seen over 80 Conservative members, I believe is the number, who have been endorsed because of their belief that they should take away a woman's right to choose, and that is fine. I am pro-choice, and there are members who are not.
However, what I do not understand is if someone is against a woman's right to make a choice about her own body, how can they also be against giving her contraception? What choice is she left with? Let us look at that very specifically. If a woman today is in need of contraception and does not have the money for it, what are they supposed to do? Maybe they can find the money for oral contraception, but it has a failure rate of 9%. An IUD has a failure rate of 0.2%, but it costs $500 up front. For the women who do not have the money to pay for it up front, they are left with a less effective tool to be able to have control over their sexual and reproductive health.
How, in the one order, can we say to a woman that they are not allowed to choose or make a choice for their body, but in the other order, say that we are not going to help them get contraception to be able to make a choice about their body that way either? In other words, they get no choice. What conversation is being had about sexual health? If someone is against giving contraception to women and against them having a choice over their body, then they would at least talk about sexual health.
For women, it is extremely important to know that their body is something that they should always have autonomy over. Sex is something that should feel empowering and should make them feel like themselves. It is something they should never be coerced or pressured into. It is something that they should never feel ashamed of. It is something that should feel pleasurable.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Hon. Mark Holland: There are members laughing.
Madam Speaker, imagine that? As health minister, I cannot talk about whether or not sex is pleasurable. Do members? Do members know how much sex people have in this country?
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Hon. Mark Holland: Madam Speaker, they are laughing again, and that is so juvenile.
Guess what: In this country, or in any country, people have sex. How often does that result in a baby? Less than 0.1% of the time. Most of the sex people are going to have in their lives is for pleasure. Why is it important to be able to say that sex is pleasurable? The reason is when someone thinks that their body is there to serve somebody else, rather than to serve themselves and their pleasure, then they are going to be more likely to accept abuse, more likely to accept manipulation and more likely to be hurt.
I will say this lesson hit home for me very hard in my life when I was young. In my life, I was faced with deep sexual violence that happened when I was a kid. My family did not talk about sex. The result of that was me being afraid of my sexuality and of sex, and linking sexual violence to somehow being part of sex. I did not understand what sex was, and I was deeply confused. That is something that caused me an enormous amount of damage.
We know that sexual identity issues are a leading cause for teen suicide. Many young people struggle with many questions: What do I do? Do I please this person? Do I please myself? Is it okay to please myself? What do I want? It is okay to be ourselves, and we need to be able to say that in this country. It is okay to have autonomy over one's body.
Again, I will ask the question: If someone is against contraception and against choice, in terms of abortion, then how come one cannot talk about female sexuality? Is it because they do not want women to have any choice at all? That is an important question.
Therefore, making sure that women have access to the contraceptive medicine they need is absolutely essential to women having autonomy and control over their own bodies. It is, frankly, about making sure that they are not used, manipulated or have a negative experience with that.
Lastly, I will talk briefly, because I know I am pretty much out of time, about diabetes. Diabetes medication is so essential because if diabetes patients do not have access to the medication they need, and far too many Canadians do not have the dollars for their medicine, it means they are going to be much more likely to experience heart disease, kidney failure, blindness or limb amputation. It is yet another example, like contraception, where the money we would to spend to make sure that people get medication would actually save the health system more than it costs by avoiding all kinds of disastrous health outcomes. It is not just a matter of social justice or preventative health, but in this instance, it would bring huge savings to our health system.
Why are Conservatives against it? They say that it is fantasy. Then, let me try to negotiate it. When I talk to the provincial health ministers across the country, they are ready to act. If Conservatives are against it because they think the system is too expensive, then what is their alternative? How would people get their medication? They do not say that. If it is just that they are against the idea that people should get the medicine they need, then they should have the honesty to say that is their reason. Then, we can have a debate about the merits of the type of country we live in and whether or not those medications are available for the people who need them.
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moved that Bill C-64, An Act respecting pharmacare, be read the second time and referred to a committee.
He said: Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise.
I want to start by extending gratitude to the member for Vancouver Kingsway for his extraordinary work throughout this process. It was a long, hard discussion to find a place of meeting, but it is an example of what is possible when we, in this chamber, focus on getting things done and focus on working together, rather than focusing on what divides us. I think that sometimes we fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of democracy, which is to build consensus, to find points of commonality and to pull people together to find common ground; it is not to find differences or to sow division.
I also want to thank so many phenomenal colleagues on our side who have dedicated, in some cases, decades to fight for the moment when people are not forced to make a choice between the medication they need to stay healthy or the essential goods and services they need to stay alive, whether that be their rent or their food.
In the 1960s, we launched national medicare, but we forget how challenging that was. It was an incredibly turbulent period to actualize it and to bring it to reality. The dream had long existed, but to bring it to bear was extraordinarily difficult. However, at that moment in time, there were certain things left out, one of which was medicine. That was partially because, at that point in time, the number of medications available were very limited. They were typically prescribed in a hospital setting. They did not have the uses and abilities, and they were not as essential as they are today. Certainly, that dynamic has changed, and this means a new dawn for health.
I am going to talk specifically about pharmacare and the legislation therein, but before I do, I will paint a broader picture of the circumstances it faces.
Like all countries, everywhere in the world, the vast complexity of our health systems is overwhelming. We are driving down a highway at a 100 kilometres an hour, recognizing that we cannot slow down, and we have to change the engine while we are driving. Due to that difficulty, most health systems had not done the hard work of transformation, of really stepping back and looking upstream at how we deal with prevention and deal with reducing the amount of chronic disease and illness that exists within our system.
Then the pandemic hit, and in the pandemic, everywhere in the world, the strains and cracks in our health system were laid bare. Health care workers were asked to carry a burden that was impossibly large, working night and day to try to keep their communities safe, and carrying a load beyond imagining. However, in that moment, here in Canada and in a few places elsewhere in the world, we saw something I think quite remarkable happen, which was that in that chaos, there was one purpose in our system. Doctors, nurses and personal support care workers showed us the possibility of what happens when we move with one purpose, with one direction, and when we focus on people's health and nothing else. We could set aside egos, jurisdiction and turf, and we could make things happen. In an incredibly brief period of time, Canada's pandemic response was indeed one of the best in the world with one of the lowest death rates anywhere in the world. We had unbelievable support for the people working within the system and for one another for that period of time.
Then, challenges resumed. The pandemic began to recede. A war erupted in Europe. Global financial turmoil ensued. We forgot the lessons of the fruits of co-operation and of working together, and many of those divisions returned. Within our health system, we saw a workforce who had carried far too much and was dealing with burnout, yet still had the extraordinary weight of a system that needs to change. We saw, for the population, that health was a bit of a hot plate. People's experience of the pandemic was trauma, really, for everybody. It was especially so for health care workers, but nobody was saved from the traumatic experience of going through the pandemic.
I would say that it is the responsibility of not just this government, but also every government in this country to remember the incredible heroism of those who were working in the health workforce during those dark hours of the pandemic, and with that same spirit of co-operation and determination, to not focus on what divides us or what makes us different, but to focus on what can be done. That is no more important in any area than it is in health. Canadians do not care much about what political party someone is from. They do not care much about whose jurisdiction it is; they want to see results.
That is why the $200 billion that we put forward to invest in health care over the next 10 years was so critical. It required an agreement with every single province and every single territory to develop a plan to deal with the crisis of today, to tackle those issues within our health system around the workforce, the backlogs, the health data and the sharing of patient information, to deal with issues like administrative backlogs, things that are legacies that do not make sense, and to work with every province and territory, regardless of its stripe.
Whether it was Adriana LaGrange in Alberta, Adrian Dix in B.C, Michelle Thompson in Nova Scotia or Bruce Fitch in New Brunswick, and so forth, in every instance, that spirit of co-operation pervaded our negotiations. There was a profound understanding in those conversations that we have to be bigger than our partisanship and have to find commonality. As a result, we have had extraordinary agreements signed with all the provinces and territories, in a short period of time, to lay out the next number of years and to see what that health transformation will look like.
That spirit of co-operation was also seen in Charlottetown, where we were able to have an agreement on some things that are really essential: health data; looking toward interoperability and how our systems work together with a digital charter; reducing wait times for recognition of foreign credentials, taking it down to a 90-day service standard. We were also able to work later with the College of Physicians and Surgeons to take a process of credential recognition that is normally a couple of years and were able to get it down to a couple of months.
The other thing these agreements and conversations did, which I think is critically important for the future of our health system, was to establish common indicators, meaning that every province will have the same indicators for their health system, so that whether someone is a Quebecker in Quebec or a Manitoban in Manitoba, one can see how their health system is faring, not by anecdote but in data, and that can be compared against other provinces. Making sure those indicators are there is essential. It is so important that people feel that positive change, that they experience it in outcomes and that it is also measurable in data.
In our federation, as we are making changes and interventions, that ability to have data and to see how we are moving the needle is essential. What one measures, one achieves. For the first time in these health agreements, we have set these essential tools of measurement to be a key component of our health system.
We can then turn to dental care. There are some who say that this is just a boutique intervention, something that is a one-off, but it is actually part of a broader vision of health. Imagine that in this country there are nine million people today who do not have access to dental care. I want to thank my predecessor, the former minister of health, now the minister of procurement, the hon. member for Québec, for his extraordinary work to get us to this point in dental care. I want to thank the NDP and the member for Vancouver Kingsway for their work with our caucus in a common purpose to make sure that we pull together over health.
Mr. Peter Julian: Hear, hear! Thanks to the NDP.
Hon. Mark Holland: Yes, I want to thank parliamentary co-operation.
Madam Speaker, I would say to this place that this is what we were intended to do. When we were elected as members of Parliament, we are not here to shout things at each other, to belittle each other or to put each other down. We are here to listen to each other. The purpose of debate is to ensure that we take each other's ideas and that we find common ground. In this bill, Bill C-64, in pharmacare and in dental care, we are embodying exactly what I believe our constituents elected us to do.
Right now, we have 1.8 million seniors who, in many cases, have never had access to oral health care in their lives. I talked to a denturist who knew a senior who has not had new dentures for 50 years. They lost their dentures and had no money to replace them. The denturist talked about the dignity and the way that senior felt, knowing that they were going to get new teeth and that they could go out in the world, feeling that somebody cared about them. Let us think of the extraordinary nature of that.
When going to seniors homes and when talking to people who work with seniors, they ask if this is really going to happen. They talk about the dignity that comes from it. It is not only about that healthy smile or that they are not going to wind up in an emergency room for an avoidable procedure, but also about the dignity of saying that we care about them, that we see them and that their health matters.
We have one of the most extraordinary health care systems in the world, but it cannot be the best health care system in the world unless oral health is part of the equation. When we do not take care of oral health, when we are not there for oral health, then the costs, not just in terms of social justice but also in terms of health outcomes, are entirely unacceptable. I would submit that is not the country we want to live in.
I am also extraordinarily proud that, about two weeks ago, the Minister of Families, with many of us there, launched the national food program. When I was at the Heart and Stroke Foundation, I advocated for fiercely for that, knowing when a child goes to school hungry, it is impossible to learn, and when a child is denied nutrition, it has devastating effects on their health. It is so sad to say that the research shows just one healthy meal a day has a dramatic change on health outcomes for children. The other thing it does is to give kids a taste for what nutritious food is. They develop their palates, and for their whole lives, their nutrition and nutritional profile is changed.
An essential part of being upstream and avoiding illness and sickness is dental care, a national food program and, yes, action on pharmacare. This is a big task. We know that some 21% of Canadians are struggling to meet the financial burden of being able to afford their medicines. We took essential action on bulk purchasing, reducing the cost of medicine in this country by hundreds of millions of dollars, by working with provinces and territories to do bulk purchasing.
We are taking critical action in P.E.I., with a plan for Islanders, on a pilot basis, to improve affordable access to prescription drugs. Since June 1, 2023, we have been able to reduce copays to five dollars for almost 60% of medications regularly used by Islanders. P.E.I. residents have saved more than $2 million in out-of-pocket costs. This was a precursor to show us what could happen. Whether one goes to P.E.I. or other provinces, and I know that the member for Malpeque talks a lot about this, they will hear about the difference it is making in the lives of people, having medication taken off the table as a concern. It is absolutely huge.
We also launched, in March 2023, a national strategy for drugs for rare diseases, with an investment of $1.5 billion over three years because we know that drugs for rare diseases can be cripplingly expensive, yet they are absolutely vital to keep people alive.
I will give one quick story before I talk about the bill in front of us and about the action we are taking. I had an opportunity a few weekends ago to be in the United States with my partner. We watched someone in front of us collapse. That person was obviously not a person of means. As they came to and I called 911, the thing that person was worried about was not their health, but it was how much money they were going to have to spend. How much money did my call to 911 burden that person with?
We do not want to be in a place, with any element of health care, where somebody of limited financial means, through no fault of their own, is in a circumstance that they cannot afford care, or where nurses on the front lines, taking care of patients and investing their entire lives in trying to make things better, are not given the opportunity to get proper health care for themselves.
Why these drugs? Why did we start with diabetes medication and with universal contraceptives? Let me start with diabetes medication. I want to thank the member for Brampton South for her fantastic advocacy on diabetes specifically. There are 3.7 million Canadians, and it is a growing number, who have diabetes. When I had a conversation in Ottawa with 12-year-old Raina, she summed it up better than anybody else. She said that as a 12-year-old it is really hard in this world, and that no 12-year-old should have to worry about all the problems of the world and also how they are going to afford their medication. If 12-year-old Raina can get it, then this House can get it.
When a person does not have access to their diabetes medication, it means they risk heart attack, stroke, kidney failure, blindness and amputation. I was talking to Sarah in a diabetes clinic, who told me about patients who were reusing syringes because they could not afford them. The risk of blood-borne disease is terrible. That is not the country we should live in, so we all need to rise to this moment to say that for people with a precursor disease like diabetes, which is so indicative of whether they will have future chronic disease and illness, it is essential that we are there with medication for people.
On contraceptives, let me just give one example that illustrates the case. Oral contraceptives cost $25 a month and have a 9% failure rate. The IUD costs about $500, lasts five years and has a failure rate of 0.2%. What it means is that a person who does not have money ends up choosing the birth control option that is cheaper, which has a 9% fail rate and means they are more likely to wind up with an unwanted pregnancy or a sexually transmitted disease if they are not able to make the choices that give them autonomy over their own body and their reproductive health and future.
Therefore, it is absolutely essential, and not only for health. For example, in British Columbia, it has been demonstrated by UBC that it is saving more money with this initiative than it costs to roll it out. That is similar to what we are going to see in diabetes. This has such a powerful effect in prevention that it actually reduces costs overall.
The message it sends to women about their bodies and about their sexual and reproductive rights and autonomy is essential, which is that in this country, no matter where she is, a women will get what she needs to have control over her future and her body. That is a powerful statement, and it goes beyond just contraceptives as a drug.
As a very young person, when I was very, very young, I was exposed to sexual violence. That experience, in a family that did not talk about sex and did not have a conversation about what healthy sexual relationships were, had a devastating effect on my life, my self-esteem and my ability to stand up for myself at different moments in my life. It is difficult for somebody who does not have the information about their sexual health, who is not told that sex would never have anything to do with violence, that violence is about control and sex is about connection, that sex should always be consensual, should never be exploitive, should never involve violence and should always involve what a person wants for their body, that it should be pleasurable and it should make them feel like themselves.
As a health minister, it should not be in any way controversial for me to say those things to people. Whether a person is in a marriage or intersecting for the first time with somebody else sexually, they need to understand it is okay to be themselves and that as long as it conforms to those things, such as that sex should be pleasurable and that one should be empowered in one's body and have access to the reproductive medicines one needs to make choices about one's life, it is going to save lives, because the second-leading cause of death for young people is suicide. We lose about 500 kids every single year, and way too often it has to do with them not feeling comfortable in their own bodies. We have to end that.
In totality, looking at all of these actions, this is a new dawn for health, dealing with the crisis of now and also looking at prevention, so that we can build on what we started in the 1960s and ensure that all Canadians have access to the greatest health care system in the world.
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moved for leave to introduce Bill C-64, An Act respecting pharmacare.
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