Posted on November 6, 2009
Standing Order 31
November 6, 2009
Ms. Joyce Murray (Vancouver Quadra, Lib.): Madam Speaker, in less than 100 days, hundreds of thousands of visitors will head to Vancouver for the experience of a lifetime. After years of hard work by athletes and others, Canadians will unite to celebrate sport and excellence at the 2010 Olympics.
Excited as I am for Canada, I am also very worried. I am worried that the Vancouver Games will be undermined by the fear and chaos of a national health crisis that has been terribly mismanaged. I am worried that visitors will choose to stay home instead of enter the eye of a pandemic tornado that experts believe is yet to reach its peak.
With priority vaccinations finally starting to reach clinics, long lines are a regular sight in Vancouver. Liberals have made constructive proposals which are being ignored. If the Conservatives do not take action now on the H1N1 pandemic, years of hard work and resources may be wasted.
The Conservative government has ragged the puck on H1N1. The clock is ticking down, but there is not time for a time out. B.C.ers need vaccinations now and the world needs to be assured that Canada has not thrown in the towel.
Posted on November 5, 2009
Ms. Joyce Murray (Vancouver Quadra, Lib.):
Monday, Nov 2, 2009:
Mr. Speaker, as I take the privilege of speaking to this emergency debate, I am going to begin by adding to what the hon. member for Toronto Centre was saying about the government’s low key approach to the issue of H1N1.
I am dismayed at how the government is not taking responsibility for the mistakes that it has made over the course of the last few months. Of course there will be mistakes. Without taking responsibility, the government is just defending itself. It is not learning from those mistakes. That is a disheartening condition that I have observed as a member of the parliamentary Standing Committee on Health.
I would like to put on the record the fact that all members on the Standing Committee on Health were determined to treat this as a non-partisan issue. Our job was to try to identify any gaps and put ideas forward, so the government could actually do a better job and be successful. The whole committee was dedicated to that.
The committee was not made up of a set of armchair quarterbacks as one member mentioned. The committee actually had some leading experts on pandemic preparedness. The committee had an ex-minister of state for public health, who herself had set up, in response to what was learned from SARS, the Public Health Agency of Canada with its budget to deal with pandemic preparedness.
There was a set of civil servants who had been working for members of the opposition and now working for government members. They were using a framework that had been set up by Liberal opposition members. Everyone was on the same page.
What started to become very clear was the fact that there were gaps. Opposition members on the committee pointed out that we needed to have updates in the summer because things were going wrong.
Committee members heard that aboriginal communities were not being listened to and were not being served. They heard from representatives of front line caregivers who said there was no coordination. We also heard that the front line people who had to deliver the vaccination and the preparedness plan were disconnected from the structure of the leadership.
In hearing those things, committee members took some clear steps toward ensuring that there were summer briefings. They had to drag agreements out of Conservative members in order for the committee to play an oversight role so that parliamentarians could know what was happening and to focus the committee meetings on H1N1 rather than have them be scattershot over the fall on important issues but not yet emergency issues.
Members of the health committee played a constructive role and pointed out things that needed to be done in a constructive way. However, the government has had the pathological inability to take responsibility.
At the risk of sounding political, the government is very good at taking credit, whether it is for the way the public’s dollars are spent, or in any number of other ways. Government members have been so obsessed with taking credit, they have forgotten how to take responsibility.
The theme of “Everything is okay. Don’t worry there will be vaccinations for everyone. Don’t worry, be happy. It’s all under control” is a theme that we have been hearing at committee for months, meeting after meeting, despite the fact that we had been hearing from representatives of public health, chief medical officers and many other experts that “All is not well”.
Yes, we have learned from SARS and there have been improvements, but all is not well. We need to do better. Now we are seeing some of that begin to crystallize. We are not doing a good enough job. Unfortunately, people are suffering as a result of the vaccines being ordered late. As a result of the confusing messages from the government, the supply of vaccines is drying up.
(2320)
Not taking responsibility is a key theme with the minister and the government unfortunately and we heard it here tonight. The government has been blaming the provinces and territories, blaming medical experts for the government’s own decisions, blaming drug companies, and now blaming the opposition as opposed to taking responsibility. Where is the leadership on this issue? It is completely missing in action.
Coming from Vancouver, I have another concern around the mismanagement of this issue that has led to the lineups and the panic, the shortages of vaccine, the lack of availability in the coming weeks, and the lack of information. I am going to take a moment to read some very worrisome news that the government needs to be aware of and perhaps is:
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Quarantine was imposed in [Ukraine's] nine western regions due to the epidemic of the H1N1 influenza, commonly known as swine flu. It was also decided to declare a three-week ban on all mass events and introduce a three-week holiday period at all educational institutions. |
In other words, schools are shut down. Public events are cancelled. A huge disruption to society in the Ukraine. According to the president:
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We will introduce a special system to stop unnecessary travel from one region to another. We will cancel all mass meetings…for three weeks…We are considering (imposing) a quarantine not only in the west but also across the country, because the virus is spreading very fast. |
I cannot comment on whether this is a proportionate response to a crisis in Ukraine, but it is incumbent on me to point out to the government that in less than 100 days now we will have half a million visitors coming to Vancouver in British Columbia for the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. Should we be in a situation such as the Ukraine, it would be a huge disappointment and a huge disturbance of the Olympics that Canadians are so excited about and so proud of.
Having been recently in Olympia where the Olympic flame was lit and in Victoria where it was received from Greece, the beginning of the relays across the country, I know how important the Olympics are after so many years of work from an economic perspective, the human perspective, the inspiration to youth and to sports, and the hundreds of thousands of visitors that will come to Canada. We have to do an absolutely impeccable job of preparing for this with the vaccinations, preparing and preventing Vancouver and British Columbia from continuing to be a hot spot and having to consider the Ukraine-type response.
The government has been letting British Columbia down. I heard from the provincial medical health officer a number of weeks ago when I asked whether there are adequate resources from the federal government. I heard, “No, we have not received any cost-sharing for actually implementing vaccinations”.
At the committee I asked the head of the public health agency if there is a shortage of resources for the provinces and I was told, “No, there will be adequate resources”. But going back to the Vancouver chief medical officer I was told there is no funding for the delivery of a mass vaccination program. That will cost between $8 and $10 per person. That is $25 million to $30 million in British Columbia and not a dollar from the federal government. That is historic, the first time in history that there has been a mass vaccination with no resources from the government.
I call on the government, as are the Liberal MPs, to put back the $400 million set aside for pandemic response by the Liberals in budget 2006 for this time period, support emergency planning to help local health authorities cope with this issue, and divert the $60 million from the Conservatives’ self-advertising of their economic plan and partisan misuse of funds into the pandemic so that people can properly understand what they need to do and respond to that.
(2325)
I call on the government to take responsibility and stop taking credit.
Posted on June 26, 2009
June 25, 2009
The following petition is available to sign at Joyce Murray’s Vancouver office, 2111 W. 38th ave.:
“That Mikhail Lennikov, after contributing to Canada’s economy and community life for eleven years, is subject to a deportation order which endangers his life and security by forcing him back to Russia following his disengagement from the KGB, which is not based on evidence of wrong doing or risk to the well-being or security of Canadians, and which will cause the break-up of the Lennikov family.
Therefore, your petitionaers call upon the Minister of Citizenship & Immigration to override the deportation order and allow Mikhail Lennikov to remain in Canada.”
Plus: Joyce Murray is a signatory to a petition letter from MPs to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration and a has sent a letter to the Minister requesting that Mikhail Lennikov be permitted to remain in Canada (more…)
Posted on June 15, 2009
June 12, 2009, House of Commons
Ms. Joyce Murray (Vancouver Quadra, Lib.):
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-6, the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act.
I support this legislation, but I would caution against any description of this as being the definitive approach to consumer product safety. The bill takes a relatively narrow slice of the challenge and addresses that in an acceptable way. For that reason, I see it as a step forward, but certainly a lot of terrain remains to be covered. (more…)
Posted on June 16, 2008
June 16, 2008, House of Commons
Ms. Joyce Murray (Vancouver Quadra, Lib.):
Mr. Speaker, China is important to Vancouver Quadra, to Canada and to the global economy.
World leaders from France, Britain and Australia get it. Our Prime Minister does not.
As the world’s second largest economy, China represents enormous economic opportunities for Canada.
Why, then, does our Prime Minister ignore the importance of our relationship with China? Since he has been in office, he has never once travelled to that country. He has travelled to Europe, to South America and to other regions, yet China is not even on his radar. (more…)
