44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 20, 2022 07:00AM
- Feb/20/22 8:48:35 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. That is the deal.
From the early stages of the pandemic to a protest that has become the target of the sledgehammer that is the Emergencies Act, the government has failed in every way to plan for events that it had ample opportunity to be ready for. It has dismally planned to fail.
Before COVID-19 we had SARS, a precursor to the pandemic that should have given us a road map for what could come, but it did not. From a dismal lack of stockpiling of PPE to the completely inadequate health care capacity of our whole system to the failure to produce a single drop of vaccine two years in, Canada was not ready for what became the biggest spend of money in all Canadians' lifetimes combined.
What will we see in the next decade? Misspending has created the largest inflation in 30 years, gas prices are now over $1.80 in some parts of the country, and grocery bills are crippling our families.
The government did what the government had to do when there was no plan: It intervened. The problem with the government taking total control is that it hates to lose the control that it has gained.
Let us switch gears to the protests here in Ottawa. The convoy drove from west to east, making its way slowly across the country while making it well known that it was not happy with the mandates. In every town it entered, it was met with thousands of Canadians who supported it, feeling hopeful for change. Canadians had their own reasons for supporting it, but the common thread was the need for change, for hope and for the end of suffering.
The government had fair warning. People were coming and they were unhappy. The government had ample time to listen to the people and create a plan, a road map out of this pandemic, that Canadians so desperately needed. However, instead of listening and seeing what other countries that had had fourth waves ahead of us were doing, on January 7 our health minister said that he saw more mandates coming.
There was Quebec's tax on health and the continued PCR testing that the WHO said was unnecessary. There was and has been no scientific medical data to back up these mandates, just as there was no data to prove that the Prime Minister was correct in suggesting that interprovincial passports for truckers were absolutely necessary.
Instead of listening and creating a safe, responsible plan, the government took a heavy hand, threatening more mandates and belittling Canadians for expressing their displeasure.
The Ottawa police, the RCMP and the Ontario Provincial Police had all the time they needed to prepare for trucks coming downtown, but let us be honest: There was no plan. An article in the National Post on Saturday stated that the Ottawa police's plan was that the trucker protest would last just a weekend. When police were overwhelmed, they still did not announce an emergency. The following week, they became more indecisive. The police chief stated that he believed protesters would dissipate on their own. It was a failure to plan.
Especially, there was no plan from the federal government to address this larger group or manage any elements of lawlessness. There was absolutely no plan to understand that this was not just a fringe element, but a larger movement of ordinary Canadians simply looking for hope from somebody, anybody, as we in the world continually reach the last phases of the pandemic and the beginning of an endemic. It was a larger group that had no affiliation with hate, intolerance or lawlessness. We only had to listen to and speak to many of those screaming to be heard, or see the messaging from our constituencies.
Most of all, it was a failure of the Prime Minister.
We must all remember just one thing in the House, and that is whom we work for, whom we represent and whom we answer to. When we forget that, and it feels like the government has forgotten it, we find a divided country. A divided country allows our country to be weak on the world stage, weak in future planning and weak to those who look to us for a path forward.
The Prime Minister made a choice, and that choice ignored Canadians when they most needed a leader to hear from. Here are some of the voices from Bay of Quinte in the last few weeks.
My son struggles after COVID19 to the point where he has completely broken down. He can no longer play with friends and he has no interest in even attending school.
I had a major reaction to the first vaccine where I cannot mentally get the second and cannot get a medical exception. I am at the verge of breaking down every day and have never had so little hope.
I donated $30 to the trucker convoy not because of any other reason than I wanted hope and an end to mandates. I’m a single mother and I’m afraid my bank account will be frozen, and I will be detained.
I am currently a teacher. I am speaking on behalf of children that are being masked all day long. They cannot breathe. They are not developing social skills with one another that they should be. The language development in several of my senior kindergarten students are being stunted because of masks.
This is after we should be celebrating what we have done as a country, a country that is 90% vaccinated, a country that has all the opportunity in front of it for a prosperous future and a country that can start to heal from its wounds.
As COVID‑19 wanes, what is left today is a country in shambles. What remains is a country divided, leaving generations of mistrust in government. When a government divides and conquers, once trust is broken, it is almost impossible to build it back. Mothers, daughters and sons have contacted us in the last few weeks. There has been massive trauma experienced as a result of COVID‑19. Domestic abuse and mental health issues have gone through the roof.
The question for the government is this: Why are your politics more important than the heart of this nation? We keep creating division when we should be healing. We cannot keep fighting across the aisle, slinging mud and acting like it is helpful. Canadians need us to meet them with an open heart, acknowledge the pain and trauma they have suffered throughout this pandemic and do all we can to be a light after this dark tunnel. It is time to say that we are sorry, right our wrongs, start mending our country and build trust again.
The government did what it had to do at the beginning of the pandemic: It intervened because it had no plan. There have been countless consequences of that. Again, with no plan to deal with a prolonged protest in downtown Ottawa, the government is in another failure scenario with the Emergencies Act. We are against this act.
The actions taken these past three weeks in several locations in Canada are not an aberration, but rather a manifestation of the growing frustration Canadians feel with our federal government and its inability to truly listen to Canadians and put them ahead of its overreach. The invocation of the Emergencies Act is a slap in the face to all Canadians and not a proud moment in our country’s history.
Even if the need for law enforcement is justified to bail out those who failed to plan, it is the financial overreach that has me most concerned. The law must be predictable and transparent, and the financial overreach of this act is not. Banks should not be and are not our nation’s prosecutors. There are laws now that ensure law enforcement can and will go after unlawful activities, but no Canadian who innocently donated to a cause because they wanted desperately to feel hope should feel maligned. Certainly no government looking at powers that allow financial information to be accessed should be allowed to make those changes permanent, as the Deputy Prime Minister made claim to this week.
The invocation of the Emergencies Act under these circumstances is an insult to all Canadians and certainly not a proud moment in our country’s history. Our nation needs to start healing now, and that is the only plan that we all need to get behind.
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- Feb/20/22 8:58:33 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this was a failure of the government because it starts at the top. We have heard the government members on the other side blame every single party for this, but it starts with the tone and escalation of not treating Canadians as Canadians and pitting them against each other.
We talked about the failure of the police here in Ottawa to take care of the situation. I said that throughout my whole speech. However, it was also the government's tone in not recognizing what was happening, not listening to Canadians and not ensuring that we start healing this nation instead of dividing it.
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- Feb/20/22 9:00:29 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague from Quebec and I agree. She talked about two points. We have talked about two points this week too: We are looking for point one and two of what the government did before invoking the Emergencies Act. We cannot seem to get that answer. There is no justification for it since we did not have step one, two or three introduced before this motion.
At the end of the day, we agree that this is a step too far, especially, as I mentioned, given the financial ramifications to Canadians and especially when the government wants some of these changes to be permanent, which we certainly do not agree with. As I have stated, it is definitely overreach by the government.
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- Feb/20/22 9:02:14 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am happy to address this. We have condemned it from the onset. We have condemned it every single day as MPs and as Canadians. At the end of the day, this is not what the protest movement was about. These are Canadians, and we are listening to them in our constituency offices. I get calls and emails as a member of Parliament, and the majority of Canadians wanted hope and wanted to end division and end mandates.
As to this element that exists in Canadian society, all of us as MPs strongly condemn it. I want to make that very clear. We have zero association to it, and all members of the House, who represent Canadians all across this country, condemn hate, condemn violence and condemn intolerance. Let us make sure that is the way we go forward from here on out.
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