44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 14, 2022 11:00AM
Mr. Speaker, the reality is that the Liberals have done everything in this pandemic to avoid accountability. I would be remiss if I did not recall one of their first acts in March, when the pandemic started two years ago. They wanted to shut down the House of Commons, because they did not want us to hold them to account. They threw it out there in the public, seeing what they could get away with.
At every stage of this pandemic, they have done as much as possible to avoid accountability, and that is why we cannot agree to closure. We need to study bills and respect taxpayer dollars.
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Madam Speaker, I want to start by saying to everyone, my family, friends and constituents, happy Valentine's Day.
Today I am standing in the House of Commons to discuss and defend the position of my party in regard to Bill C-10. For people watching who may or may not know what Bill C-10 is, I am going to read it. It is an act allowing the Minister of Health to make payments totalling $2.5 billion for rapid tests to the provinces. I am just going to read the two paragraphs.
Under the heading “Payments out of C.R.F. ”, it states:
The Minister of Health may make payments, the total of which may not exceed $2.5 billion, out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund for any expenses incurred on or after January 1, 2022 in relation to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) tests.
Under the heading “Transfers”, it states:
The Minister of Health may transfer to any province or territory, or to any body or person in Canada, any coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) tests or instruments used in relation to those tests acquired by Her Majesty in right of Canada on or after April 1, 2021.
I am not an economist, but I do know that spending money we do not have for tests that we needed two years ago is not an investment; it is a waste. How can the government ask taxpayers to spend $2.5 billion with only two paragraphs to back it up? When my tween daughter was 12 years old and wanted her first iPhone, we asked her to write a three-page essay on why she wanted it and needed it and what she would be contributing as a result of it. We asked for three pages. This bill is two paragraphs long and the government wants to expedite this motion without any debate to spend $2.5 billion.
We are almost at a trillion dollars in debt. People with good jobs cannot afford houses. We have a homeless crisis. I paid $1.58 at the pump for gas. This is not a small amount of money. We cannot just expedite this. To reiterate, we are not spending the government's money. We are spending the taxpayers' money, so we need to make sure we are having an adequate debate to spend such an astronomical amount of money that should have been invested two years ago. We are not in the same space we were in two years ago.
The chief public health officer, Dr. Tam, has stated that we need a more sustainable way to deal with the pandemic. How is spending money on tests that we needed two years ago sustainable? I think we can agree as a House that the response to COVID-19 is fluid. I think there is an agreed motion here in the House that we are doing the best we can to keep Canadians safe. Where we differ is in the execution.
In order to take control of something that is ever changing, one must be tactful and thoughtful in their approach. There are outdated travel advisories, punitive restrictions and quarantines, federal vaccine mandates and now 2.5 billion taxpayer dollars being spent on tests that might be obsolete by the time they arrive.
If COVID-19 reminded our country of anything, it is that we have a very stressed and delicate health care system. Our front-line workers, health care workers, are exhausted. They are burnt out. I witnessed first-hand the extreme negligence of patient care in the hospital.
My mother was rushed to the hospital in July 2021 only to wait hours in a hall to be seen. She was not offered any pain medication. She was not offered any water. No one even came to see her. Why are we talking about spending money on tests when we need to be talking about solving the problem? She waited in the hall as nurses and staff tended to patients who had overdosed. Just last week we talked about the opioid crisis in this country. Where is the money for that?
Do members know how excruciating it is to know that their family member needs their help? They could give it to them. I could get my mom a glass of water and fluff her pillow, but I was not allowed in because of the restrictions, so I had to harass the charge nurse by calling repeatedly and asking for help.
I have had so many health care workers reach out to me in their own state of mental health crisis. They go to bed at night and cannot sleep, because they know they do not have the resources to take care of their patients. When are we going to have an honest dialogue about where the money needs to go and where we need to invest it? The reality of this whole situation of these traumatic lockdowns and these traumatic restrictions is that we did not have a health care system capable of managing COVID patients.
Why are we not having that discussion? Why are we not investing $2.5 billion in that? If our hospitals could manage these patients, we would not be here. We need to recruit more health care workers. We need to offer recovery centres to help those struggling with addiction and mental health. We need to offload the hospitals from the opioid crisis.
The Liberals want to expedite this bill, meaning it would not go to committee. Why is that? My constituents and Canadians deserve to know who would be profiting from these tests. Where would the money be going? We need to hear from more experts before expediting such a gross amount of taxpayers' money.
I recently spoke with a small business owner. She told me a story of one of her employees who decided to do a test on her break, because she had been around somebody who thought they had COVID. She did the test and it came back positive. She was asymptomatic and she had to be sent home for five days. That small business owner is already struggling to recover and now she has to make up for that.
Was that testing necessary? We need more experts in to talk about this. We need to have honest discussions about when to test and why to test. Absolutely we need to have testing, but we need to have a lot more discussion before we decide to spend $2.5 billion on testing that may or may not be effective in helping this crisis.
I spoke with a constituent who had to stay home with his toddler, because someone at the day care centre tested positive. He does not get paid when he stays at home. Who is going to make up that money?
We need so much more research. We need to invest in research to prevent COVID and any other virus that is going to happen again. There is so much opportunity for prevention. We are always reacting and never looking at prevention or a long-term vision for solutions. There are amazing people doing amazing research. Why are we not investing in that? Why are we not learning from that?
My question rests. Where is the scientific evidence to support the need for rapid testing for fully vaccinated Canadians? Would this funding not be better spent on our health care system and our mental health care system? Why is this not being prioritized? It took two months for the government to come back to Parliament. Everything it has done has been late. Timing is everything when we are trying to solve a problem. Timing matters, and the government is offering the wrong solution at the wrong time.
Let us look bigger. Let us help people. Where is the research on the long-term mental health, social and economic impacts of these lockdowns? How do we know that? We do not. Where is the research on masking kids and speech development? Why are we not investing in that? It is time for the Liberal government to be transparent and honest with Canadians.
We are a democracy. Let us act like it.
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Mr. Speaker, I believe this is absolutely relevant. We are talking about $2.5 billion of money. What is $2.5 billion? What is $1.2 trillion of deficit that we have doubled under the Liberals? What does that mean? It is just money. It is just taxpayer money. It just puts it upon our children and their children and their children. Who cares? That is the attitude we are getting from this group.
Why am I passionate about this? It is because the Liberals are trying to ram through this bill, which we have supported. We have talked about getting rapid testing for the past year and a half. For the past year and a half, we have been bringing this forward. Now they are patting themselves on the back for getting all of these rapid tests. They are not very rapid on getting the rapid tests. It is pretty slow if they ask me.
More than just slow, it is not just the rapid tests. We need to examine this. How about vaccinations? They tell you, Mr. Speaker, that we have more vaccines per capita than others in the world. We have almost as many as there are stars in the sky.
We have vaccines, 200 million vaccines, and this does relate to the motion. It does not matter that we are paying twice as much as the Europeans or 50% more than the Americans. That is just taxpayer money. We are talking about $2.5 billion. What are we getting for that? Do Canadians not deserve to see what is in there? The Liberals say that it is an emergency and we have to pass this forward.
Maybe there is another little emergency happening right now. The fact of the matter is that we had a vote today on getting mandates lifted, and the Liberals want to shift the dial. Premier Ford was announcing that the province was lifting restrictions and their response was to ask, “What should we do?” Let us have an emergency meeting right now, tonight, Sunday night, and bring in the emergency measures act, and for good measure let us also do this bill.
Things have been serious for a while, but this is how this party works, supported by our friends in the NDP. This is serious and Canadians have a right to know.
When the pandemic began, we had daily calls with staff and it was a running joke after a while. We would give some suggestions to the public affairs people who answer the questions and give it to the end of the month. On the other side the ministers would say that it was a good idea and they would just incorporate it, whether it was a 10% wage subsidy at the beginning, increased to 75%, or a whole host of measures. The impression that we on this side get is absolute wastefulness on that side. They say it is the taxpayers but whatever.
We have doubled the amount of debt in Canadian history just in the past while here. There comes a time for accountability. There comes a time for constraint. There comes a time for thoughtfulness, and we are not seeing it over there.
I remember watching what was happening here over the past couple of years and wondering who we are being run by. Who is economically running this? Is this a group of high school students? I am sorry to high school students. I am a high school teacher by profession. However, this is ridiculous. Maybe they should not be sending these cheques to foreign addresses. Going back to high school students, maybe they should not be giving tens of thousands of dollars to students who have made maybe $5,000. Maybe a bit of thoughtfulness would have been helpful for Canadians, because the Liberals are putting us into bondage.
This is an important bill.
I would also say this on vaccinations. I will tell them where they can put the rapid tests to good use. They can maybe open up to some people they have excluded from Canada. They have made them lepers. Who are these lepers? They are the people who are unvaccinated, who happen to be, according to the Liberals' report, about 20% or maybe more of the population. Maybe people could use them so they could travel. That was the Conservative position. How about letting people travel?
In British Columbia and Canada right now, 20% of households have had COVID in the past month and a half. We are talking about millions of people. It is all over. It is endemic.
They are saying to forget about testing and treat it like you have a flu or a cold. They are saying to stay at home. I know hundreds of people who have had COVID. I had COVID three weeks ago, and my wife did also, so it is real. I know people who have died from it. I am not saying we do not need rapid tests. I am just saying that we need to show a little more thoughtfulness and respect for Canadian taxpayers.
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