44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 19, 2022 07:00AM
- Feb/19/22 8:35:29 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to be a member of Parliament here in Canada. It is an honour to represent the people of the riding of Prince Albert. I am going to do the best I can to do that here tonight as I talk about this emergency debate and the emergency measures that the government is calling for.
One thing that has been missing from this Parliament and from this debate is respect, respect all the way around for people, whether they are vaccinated or not. I think if we go back through time and look chronologically at what has happened and ask ourselves how we got to this point, lack of respect is the true factor.
I have talked to constituents, some vaccinated, some unvaccinated. The unvaccinated would come to me and tell me they were doctors who had been working 80 or 90 hours a week all through COVID, doing whatever they could, and then one day all of a sudden the government comes in and tells them they are no longer safe enough to be doctors. Not only that, the Minister of Employment comes in and tells them that they will not get employment insurance unless they get vaccinated. That is a problem. It could be a nurse and it is the same scenario. It could be someone working with elderly people and it is the same scenario. It could be a police officer and it is the same scenario. These people feel they have been forced or pushed into a corner where nobody would listen and nobody would show them respect. They were there for us in times of need, but now we as politicians need to listen to them and see how we can help them in their time of need.
We actually approached the Liberal Party, the Minister of Transport, before the vaccine mandate for border crossing came into effect. We told them not to do it. The science does not prove it is a problem. We know it is not an issue. These guys are sitting in their trucks. They have been running across the border for the last two years and they are not bringing the virus in and out of Canada. It actually could create problems for supply chains, so why do it? The science does not say we need to do it, unless we want to force our will on somebody, which is what the current government was doing when it said we had to do it. There is no respect.
When people are pushed into a corner, when the lives of their families are at stake and they do not know what to do, what do members think will happen? How did we get to the stage we are at today? Do members think these people wanted to drive across this country to come to Ottawa? Did they want to spend thousands of dollars on diesel? Did they want to sit there and stare face to face with police officers, whom they showed the utmost respect for? Did they want to risk their reputation, knowing there would be undesirables who may join the group and they would have to self-regulate it and kick them out? Did they want to be here? They did not.
There were so many examples down the trail of this where, if the Prime Minister had shown some leadership and respect, this could have been stopped and prevented. It is really frustrating and maddening to see these protesters come here to Ottawa, a lot of whom we might see at a Riders' game, at a baseball game, at a hockey game. They are average Canadians who are at their wit's end, asking and screaming and crying for help. They do not know where to turn. That is 90% of the people who were in that crowd.
They were sitting there waiting to speak with the Prime Minister, but he would not speak to them, because he saw a swastika on the stage, which did not belong to them and they had asked that person to leave. However, he still refused to speak with them, calling them chauvinistic white supremacists, which inflamed the situation. Instead of sitting down with them to talk about their concerns and acknowledge that they are a good chunk of the population, he dug in his heels and showed more disrespect.
That is what created the problem. That is why they stayed for three weeks. That is why they did not leave a week later. If he had shown some respect and goodwill, taken the olive branch we gave him and put out a plan that would show that the mandates would end, a plan that would show that their families would have a future, based on science, we would not have what is going on today. There would be no need for the Emergencies Act. There would be absolutely no reason to use it. Even now there is not.
This morning, when I flew back home, I was at the Toronto airport and everybody is fleeing Canada. They are not fleeing because they are scared; they are going on a holiday, getting on with their lives, doing things, being active and out and about. There were families with children at the airport waiting to fly to their vacation destinations or across Canada to visit more family and friends, something they have not been able to do for two years. I came back to Saskatoon. There must be a serious crisis because these are emergency measures that have to apply right across Canada, yet there are kids snowmobiling in the ditch. Life is going on. Home Depot is busier than ever.
We look at that and ask ourselves where this crisis is. I turned on CBC News to see what happened today in Ottawa, and I saw law enforcement removing the protesters. Yes, they are pushing them back and everything, but everything they are doing is done using existing legislation. They did not need anything new to do what they are doing today.
One thing that is interesting, and something we need to draw attention to, is the finance minister and Deputy Prime Minister and her comments about how we are going to go after the money. I think a lot of people were really amazed that this group could raise so much money so quickly. One could say there was U.S. influence on it. There is no question about it. We could say that about any environmental protest, too.
The reality is they raised a whole pile of money in a short period of time. We all know money talks, and when we see that kind of money being raised, we know there are a lot of people supporting them in the background. We could say half of it came from the U.S., but still, if it is $10 million raised in Canada in two weeks, which political party could ever do that? They would all dream about it. How did a group of truckers, nurses, doctors and farmers all of a sudden put together a fundraising mechanism to raise that kind of money? If this is not grassroots, I do not know what is.
Are there bad influences among that money? There probably are, no question about it. Are there people we should be worried about? Yes, there is no question about that. We should basically call these people out and make sure they are held accountable for their actions, no question about that, too.
However, does it require the Emergencies Act to do what we need to do? The answer is no, not unless we really want to scare people from donating money to any type of cause, not unless we want to make sure that we have shown the country that we have been gone for three weeks, but now we are actually here and we are going to do something: talk about overcompensation for lack of results and lack of effort.
This is another example of the Liberal government not reacting until something becomes a crisis. We have seen it in other situations. On the Canada-U.S. trade deal, the Liberals would not react until it became a crisis, and also on the U.K. trade deal. I know trade because that is the committee I sit on. The deal is expiring, and the Liberals are just saying maybe we should bring it in to be looked at.
The government is not proactive. If we did something beforehand, it could prevent a lot of problems, but no, they wait until it is a crisis and then they want to jump in and be the hero. It is dangerous. As we see right now, it is very dangerous. It produces zero results and there are no winners at the end of the day.
How do we get out of this? The police are doing their job, and I commend them for doing it. They would be doing it whether or not they had the Emergencies Act. If we had told the police to clear them out two weeks ago, they would have done it two weeks ago without the Emergencies Act.
Case in evidence is at the border crossings in Coutts and Windsor. They did not need the Emergencies Act to move those people out. They just sat down and talked to them, and negotiated a way to get them out and get them to move on. There are ways to move forward on this that would actually present the results we want to see.
I also want to highlight the fact that the government does not have the support of the provinces; seven out of 10 provinces do not agree with the government. The Liberals could say they consulted with the provinces and that is good enough. No, it is not good enough. When we hear Quebec saying not to implement it in that province, or in Saskatchewan or Alberta, why would we not listen to them? If they are saying to the Prime Minister that he has not met the threshold for that, why not take that advice? These are smart people who are elected by their populations also. They have a stronger mandate, I would say, because they have majority governments in their provinces, not a minority government.
When we look at that scenario, why would the Prime Minister not take a step back and say maybe we should not do this? It is because of his ego. He has been caught not doing anything and now he feels he has to do something. He is now overreaching and overcompensating, and Canadians are going to pay for it.
What he is doing is setting a very dangerous precedent. He is making it so that with any type of protest or action, any government today or in the future can look at Ottawa and say there were 170 people arrested there, so we can bring in the Emergencies Act and clamp down on everybody because of one protest. It does not meet the threshold.
Looking at my NDP colleagues, Tommy Douglas would never stand for this. Members can go back and read some of his comments when the War Measures Act was implemented in Quebec. If they are truly New Democrats, Tommy Douglas New Democrats, they would not be standing with their leader right now and voting in favour of this. They would actually say they cannot do this because it is not right.
If we are looking down the road at different union protests or strikes going on, what is going to prevent them from doing this at those protests or strikes? What are they really fighting for?
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- Feb/19/22 8:46:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we have to ask ourselves why they overstayed their welcome. Why did they stay there? When we have a Prime Minister who refuses to acknowledge they exist, who shows no respect, who has been basically thumbing them every time they turn around, and who is basically looking down his nose at them, why do we think they are mad? Why do we think they are angry?
I agree with the member's analogy of Coutts. He is right. When the people realized there were some undesirables infiltrating their group, they said they wanted nothing to do with it and they got out of there. Fair enough. I would say that is probably 90% of the people who are sitting there in Ottawa, too. The reality is that if we showed them respect, they would have worked their way out of it, but the Prime Minister refused to do that, and these are the results of it.
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- Feb/19/22 8:48:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is an interesting question in regard to the NDP. I am not in the NDP camp. I am not sure what is going on in the backs of their minds. Maybe we have to talk to a member of the NDP. I will say that the former NDP member for Regina—Lewvan said he could never support this type of act, and this is somebody who had been very heavily involved in the union world before his career as a member of Parliament. I think it comes back to the NDP having some soul-searching to do and having to wonder what the long-term ramifications are, and how the precedent-setting nature of this will have an impact on them in the future.
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- Feb/19/22 8:49:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is a pretty rich question, when we look at the member from the NDP. I am not getting in bed with the separatists at all. I agree on one issue with them: that this is reaching far and beyond. However, we are the party of law and order, and we have been very clear that we thought these protesters should have left earlier. In fact, if the member was in question period he would have heard our leader say that on more than one occasion. The reality is that the NDP is becoming a de facto Liberal Party, and they are just doing whatever their Liberal leader wants them to do. We are going to see that again in this vote.
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