44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 20, 2022 07:00AM
- Feb/20/22 7:33:17 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I think we need to be careful because this debate is not just about the abuse that was committed during the protest. This movement took hold because some truckers were against mandatory vaccination for cross-border truckers and then the situation deteriorated.
I do not want to minimize the movement, but the member said that the use of the Emergencies Act was the result of the government's lack of leadership. I imagine that she agrees that the government could have taken action sooner and used other tools instead of allowing the crisis to escalate and then using this law of last resort.
I would like to hear the member say that this debate is about the health measures and that the situation did not warrant the use of the Emergencies Act.
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- Feb/20/22 7:47:37 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the jurisdictional football that people have watched take place with COVID is symptomatic of what I have seen in politics as a municipal city councillor, and it has continued to plague us.
I asked the government to do a vaccination program for truckers, similar to what provinces were doing in advance. The government refused to do that, so there has been no centralization of some of the programs that have taken place, even though the federal government has been presented with solutions. Those are the things we should get in front of. We are always on the defence.
To be frank, we need to stop the jurisdictional wrangling. The Ambassador Bridge sits on a road in the city of Windsor that goes to an interprovincial highway and then goes to the 401. Who is going to protect those roads? Who is going to pay when convoys are still coming here and the mayor receives a bomb threat for taking a stand? These things are not right and they are not helpful, and that is why I support corrective action now before things get worse.
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- Feb/20/22 10:19:40 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I, like my colleague from Whitby, saw thousands of Canadians standing on the overpasses as the convoys moved through. I thank him for mentioning that we should not be looking at those who are struggling as our adversaries; rather, we should be looking at them with mutual respect and sometimes a little compromise.
We know it was the flip-flop on the mandates for the truckers that sparked this, and I would ask my colleague this. I have looked for the science behind this. We have a 90% vaccination rate. I wonder if he has seen the science from before the mandates were in. The government operated without mandates for two years, so are they justified at this point in the pandemic? I watched the hon. member for Thornhill at the transport committee ask the transport minister that. He could not answer.
I know we follow the science, but there is a carve-out. We are allowing truckers to deliver vaccines across the border without the mandates right now, so I am wondering what the scientific justification is for the mandates now.
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- Feb/20/22 10:20:54 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, from what I understand, omicron has changed the whole scenario we are in, so the context has shifted. However, that does not undermine the effectiveness of our vaccines in significantly reducing hospitalizations, severe illness and outcomes such as death. Vaccine mandates are still effective in reducing the spread of COVID‑19, specifically the spread of severe outcomes, and alleviating the burden on our health care systems, which we saw come very close to breaking down completely in the omicron wave. We have to continue this fight. The higher the vaccination rates, the better, and vaccine mandates have been proven in many jurisdictions to push those vaccination rates up as high as possible, which is good for our country and for our economy. I fully believe every Canadian should choose for themselves whether to get vaccinated. If they choose not to do so, that is their choice, but there are going to be some consequences associated with that.
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- Feb/20/22 7:53:49 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to join the debate on the Emergencies Act. I hate to spoil the surprise for those waiting until the end of my speech to understand how I will vote, but I am going to come out early now and spoil it by saying I do not support this overreach by the government.
We have to ask how we got here today. I am sure the Liberals are saying “by Air Canada”, but I mean the crisis we are dealing with right now. Some think it was because of the trucker vaccine mandate brought in by the government about a month ago, and I have to wonder why, now, the government would bring this in.
At the very beginning of the pandemic, two years ago, before we had vaccines and before we knew much about COVID, truckers were able to come and go. They were deemed vital to the continuation of our economy, bringing food exports, so we were not putting any mandates on them then. During the delta wave, we had some vaccines, but not a huge part of the population had been vaccinated. Truckers were able to come into the country without having the mandate.
Here we are, now, where 90% of Canadians are vaxxed or partially vaxxed. We have had omicron wash through the country. Thankfully, due to the high vaccination rate and that it is milder, we have not had the problems and the issues of the first waves. Now, the Liberals decide they are going to hit the truckers with a mandate. There was no data to back it up and no reason, it seems, apart from politicking.
At the point where we are here with the crisis happening in Ottawa, some might think the tipping point was the Prime Minister in September, but it was reported in January, calling the unvaccinated racists, misogynists and extremists. The Prime Minister asked if we should “tolerate” these people, pitting Canadian against Canadian.
However, I think the roots of what is happening across Canada and outside this place, go back to the election. On July 13 the Prime Minister stated there would be no vaccine mandates. Two weeks later, when he called the unnecessary, unneeded election, he found out, though internal polling, that this was a wedge issue and he could wedge Canadian against Canadian and the electorate against Conservatives by flip-flopping and bringing in vaccine mandates and making it the prime election issue. It is quite funny, listening to the other side, especially the finance minister, calling Conservatives the party of flip-flop.
This country has had a number of distinguished finance ministers: Paul Martin, Jim Flaherty and Michael Wilson. Can members imagine any of these distinguished and fine finance ministers reducing themselves to name-calling, such as “the party of flip-flop”, like the current one? That seems to be the modus operandi of the government.
During the election, we had never seen protests like we did, caused by the current government. We had never had people out shamefully throwing rocks and pebbles at a prime minister until the government purposely wedged Canadians against Canadians.
We understand vaccines are important. We all know that, but pitting Canadians against unvaccinated Canadians for political gain is wrong, and it has led to what has happened outside. I have been doing this game for a long time. I actually started my political volunteering with a gentleman named Chuck Cook, who was the member of Parliament for North Vancouver and was the whip at one time for the Mulroney government. I helped out as a youth delegate alternate for Joe Clark, losing unfortunately. I campaigned from Victoria to Newfoundland, knocking at doors, and I have never seen such anger or so many Canadians turned against each other as I have because of the government turning one group against the other.
I once even actually door-knocked in the by-election in Davenport after Jack Layton passed away. I had never in my life seen a campaign where every single house had an orange sign throughout the entire riding. The support was amazing, but as a Conservative I was able to door-knock there with none of the vitriol we saw in the last election, again caused by the Prime Minister pitting Canadian against Canadian and wondering if we should tolerate other Canadians who have not been vaccinated.
When the truckers announced they were coming to town, the Prime Minister thought he could just demonize them like he did with other protests. If he called them names, they would simply go away, but they did not. The Prime Minister riled them up. Again, instead of discussing the issue, instead of debating it in the House, he called them names. He created the conditions and the anger and that stuck in Canada.
When we had rail protests a couple of years ago, crippling the economy, the port of Vancouver blockaded, the situation in Quebec with the lack of fuel was so bad that Alberta companies were talking about, heaven forbid, a convoy to bring propane to keep Quebeckers heated. What did the Prime Minister do? Did he call them names? These were protesters who were throwing furniture in front of moving trains, hoping to derail them. Did he call them names? Of course not. He actually hurried and sent ministers out to negotiate. This is not a national emergency as much as the other side will claim. This is a political emergency for the Prime Minister.
On the act itself, since 1988, we think of all the crises Canada has faced, and there have been a lot, some major, some not as much. We had Oka. I remember Oka. The army was there against people with AK47s, and it was solved without the Emergencies Act. There was Caledonia, and again the protests two years ago with the rail blockades. The G20 summit protest, where we had over 1,000 arrests, violence in the streets and storefronts destroyed, was not a national emergency.
In 1997, we remember Vancouver during APEC, when the RCMP famously pepper sprayed protesters and then prime minister Chrétien talked about pepper being something to put on his steak. People do not realize that the RCMP feared for protesters' lives, because the government for the first time had allowed eight different nations to have armed security with their leaders. I am not worried about Bush being here and the U.S. being armed, but President Suharto, a strongman and thug from Indonesia at the time had armed security with him. The RCMP stated they were afraid Suharto's thugs would fire into the crowd and kill Canadians, but that was not an emergency under the act.
At the Coastal GasLink protest, we just saw that people broke in and tried to light a car on fire that had workers inside. They broke in with axes; there were millions of dollars' worth of equipment and, when the police were attending, they ambushed the police, throwing burning items at the police cars. Apparently that was not an emergency. I wonder if the government is actually going to try to seize some of the bank accounts of those supporting such things.
Are the Liberals going to investigate that? Of course not, because certain ideological protests are apparently more fair than others. The Liberals will try their best to trot out the various reasons that this is a national emergency. They try to claim, as we heard earlier in one of my interventions, that these people were trying to overthrow the government. Seriously, as if the hot tub time machine guys out there with the ludicrous online demand to overthrow the government are to be taken seriously, or the people calling in saying, “Have the Governor General replace the Prime Minister.” That is not a serious issue.
Perhaps bringing out former prime minister Harper to be beheaded on the lawn of this place like the Toronto 18 planned to do could have been considered an emergency, but again, I do not think the bouncy castle people are anything that constitutes an emergency.
Earlier, when this first came up, I was heckled by one of the Liberals when I was asking a question about why they were able to clear Windsor, Surrey and the other border crossings without the Emergencies Act. Why do we need it? The Liberal MP yelled across that they might come back. I have to ask, when will this actually end for the Liberal government? When will the political emergency end if the government is saying secretly maybe they will come back and we will keep it going.
The Liberals have not justified in any way the use of the Emergencies Act. That is why I will not be supporting it.
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- Feb/20/22 9:35:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in my speech, my colleague said that the government put political interests, partisanship, ahead of science.
He said that by making reference to the motion the Conservatives moved, citing Dr. Theresa Tam. Personally, I have heard many Conservative colleagues say that vaccination is annoying, but the science tells us that we have to get vaccinated.
Is my colleague in favour of vaccination? Does he agree that the best way out of this crisis is vaccination?
I would like his opinion on that.
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- Feb/20/22 11:51:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have been listening to the member, who said that the Prime Minister was the sole person responsible for what happened in the streets of Ottawa. I have no particular affection for him, but I am still able to say that there are some Conservative members who made some rather concerning speeches when it came to vaccination. Some of them even enjoyed a few photo ops with the protesters, and encouraged them at the same time.
Does the member not believe that some of the responsibility lies with some of her colleagues, who were complacent toward the protesters?
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