44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 24, 2022 10:00AM
- Mar/24/22 11:48:39 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Charter rights of three million unvaccinated Canadians have been violated over the past year. They cannot board a plane or train or cross the border.
Does the member think this is one measure that could be lifted right now?
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- Mar/24/22 12:19:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I hear a lot of talk in the debate about science and how we need to follow the science. I just want to let people know that I am a chemical engineer. I did work in science and research, so I do have some understanding of the issue.
One of the facts that I want to talk about is how the 90% of people who are vaccinated in Canada can get and transmit COVID-19. We know this. The Prime Minister has had it. I have had it twice, and a lot of people in the House have had it. These 90% are able to go back and forth across the border easily and get on a plane and take their masks off while they are eating lunch, etc. However, the 10% who are not vaccinated can also get and transmit COVID, but they are not allowed to go anywhere. As the World Health Organization has pointed out, this is accomplishing nothing other than violating the charter rights of these individuals.
Would the member agree that this would be one measure we could drop today without any adverse impact?
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- Mar/24/22 1:27:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today. I will be splitting my time with the member for Peterborough—Kawartha.
I am glad to have an opportunity to speak to our Conservative motion, which reads:
That, given that Canada has one of the world's highest vaccination rates and every province across Canada has lifted or has a plan to lift vaccine mandates, the House call on the government to immediately lift all federal vaccine mandates in order to:
(a) protect the jobs of federally regulated employees;
(b) enable Canadians to travel unimpeded;
(c) ensure Canada's tourism industry recovery; and
(d) allow for the free flow of goods across the Canadian border.
Of course, before my colleagues across the way try to shame and attack me for various and sundry, let me give a full disclosure for the record. I have had my vaccinations and I have also had COVID-19 twice, once at the beginning of the pandemic and once at Christmastime. I also know quite a bit about science. I have been a chemical engineer for nearly 40 years, so I would like to approach this from a scientific point of view.
I will start by talking about the charter rights violations.
This government has trapped almost three million Canadians in the country. They cannot take a plane, they cannot take a train and they cannot cross at the land borders. There was a point in time when this would have been considered a reasonable measure, according to the medical health experts and the World Health Organization, because we were in the time of trying to control the transmission of the disease. However, with omicron, we are now at a place where the World Health Organization has said that omicron is everywhere. Therefore, these types of restrictions are no longer working, and that is the reason countries all over the world are opening up.
If we think about it, we have quite a high rate of vaccination in Canada, and those people can get and transmit COVID-19. I talked about having it myself. The Prime Minister had it. The member for Beauce had it. A lot of members in the House have had COVID-19, and we have all had our vaccines. Therefore, if we have almost 90% of those people going back and forth across the border, what is the additional risk of allowing another 10% of people who can get COVID-19 and transmit it from going back and forth across the border? There actually is no difference in risk from a science perspective. The government can no longer rely on section 1 of the charter, which allows it to temporarily infringe the charter rights of Canadians to freely come and go. That is one mandate that I would like to see dropped immediately.
The second thing I will talk about is the people who were fired for not being vaccinated.
First of all, I think this is just wrong on so many levels, but let us talk about it from a science perspective. Let us take a person who is a federal employee working from home who is vaccinated. What is the chance of that person spreading their germs to somebody in another building who is also working from home? The answer is, quite simply, there is zero risk. Now, if one is an unvaccinated federal worker who is working from home, what are the odds that this person is going to transfer their germs to somebody who is also working from home in another building? The answer from a science perspective is, again, there is zero risk, but those people were fired by this Liberal government. That is discriminatory. It is not based on science, and it is just one example of the many things this government has done to deliberately punish people who chose not to get vaccinated.
I have had many people approach my office who wanted to get an exemption because they had a history of stroke or a history of heart and kidney problems or other comorbidities. Originally, many of them received exemptions from their doctors, but then the Royal College of Physicians overturned all of those exemptions and threatened the medical licences of doctors in this country if they wrote exemptions for anything other than an anaphylactic reaction to the first vaccine. That is the reason many people were not able to get their exemptions, but they still had valid reasons for not taking the vaccine. I would like to see the federal government hire back every person it fired who is working from home regardless of vaccination status.
Now all provinces have started to lift their mandates. Let us take Ontario, for example. We have vaccinated and unvaccinated people whose children are going to school without masks, who are going to malls, who are eating in restaurants and who are all breathing the same air, so it is ridiculous to think that we have to protect them in some way in other places when they are already exposed. That is why, for all these mandates that have to do with the requirements on planes and trains and keeping unvaccinated people out of that line, the science is not there. These people are already exposed to omicron, just like the vaccinated. Everybody can get it and transmit it, so that needs to go.
With respect to the things causing problems at the border, let us talk about ArriveCAN and the ability to input all of that stuff. Some people do not have cellphones. A lot of seniors are not computer literate. What is the increased risk of exposure to COVID‑19 if the federal government eliminated the need for ArriveCAN today? What is the difference? There is no scientific risk of increased COVID exposure related to an application. It can get rid of it today, and I suggest it does.
At the same time, I am very concerned about some of the privacy invasions that happened during the COVID‑19 pandemic. We have seen privacy issues that have been put forward to the Privacy Commissioner. We have also seen the digital tracking of Canadians. I am concerned about those things as well.
Some members may know that at the beginning, when we returned to this parliamentary session, I was quite passionately standing up for civil liberties. I had meetings with MPs who had their concerns. I happened to keep the paper with the list of things we wanted to see addressed, so I thought I would tick these off one at a time.
There was the elimination of the PCR test for vaxxed and asymptomatic people. I am glad to see that was removed. There was no scientific evidence that it was needed, so that went away. I talked about ArriveCAN and the rules at the border. With respect to those things as well, there is no scientific merit to keep them in place. They are not going to prevent the spread of omicron and need to go. There were the medical privacy violations. I just spoke about that one. Then there was trapping Canadians in their own country. I just spoke about that one. Finally, there was the firing of the unvaxxed, and I just spoke about that one.
I would like to share a little story. In my own riding of Sarnia—Lambton, Bluewater Health fired 18 medical workers and forced 300, under duress, to take the vaccine or lose their jobs. Four weeks after it did that, there was an outbreak of COVID‑19 among the vaccinated medical staff. What was accomplished? It was absolutely nothing but misery for the 18 families of the people who lost their jobs.
Keep in mind that these are health care workers who, from the beginning of the pandemic, were dealing with COVID on the front lines with their personal protective equipment. Nobody was vaccinated then and they were considered heroes. Then, fast-forward, they were fired. Really, they were the safer ones. They were getting rapid-tested every day and wearing their PPE, whereas the vaccinated ones who ended up having the outbreak were not. Therefore, we can see that all of these mandates are intended to discriminate and punish, but they are not based on science and they do not accomplish anything.
I do not think we need to talk about the provincial mandates. There are plenty enough at the federal level so we do not need to bring a lot of that in, but it is the same sort of thing. We need to look at the World Health Organization, which is recommending that we drop these mandates. We need to look at the other countries that have opened up. We need to look at the U.S., where 40 states have dropped all of their mandates. We need to look at the provinces, which have all dropped or are dropping their mandates.
The current government needs to get rid of these things immediately. We all want to work together. The people who are vulnerable will want to continue to protect themselves, and I support that, but at this point in time we need to learn to get on with our lives. We need to stop punishing people. We need to stop violating their charter rights.
Together, we will be better prepared for the next pandemic when it arrives.
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- Mar/24/22 1:37:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the member opposite for recognizing that the best university is in his riding of Kingston.
Actually, I was informed in previous debates by the Liberal members who are actually members of the bar on the Oakes principle, which is applied when looking at section 1 of the charter in trying to determine whether or not the threshold has been met for being able to infringe upon people's rights. It is intended to be temporary, and it has to be shown that there is a threat to Canada. That is my principle at this point in time.
We cannot show that at this moment in time, with omicron being everywhere and being able to be transmitted by people who are vaccinated and who are not vaccinated, that anything is being accomplished to protect Canada by keeping the unvaccinated trapped in their own country.
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- Mar/24/22 1:39:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member pointed out a couple of things that are worth noting. First, there are a lot of numbers out there and the bar just kept getting changed from the beginning of the pandemic.
At the beginning of the pandemic, the concern was to prevent deaths and to prevent our ICUs from being overcapacity. Once the the ICUs were not overcapacity, then it became tracking the number of cases and then it became 70% vaccination. Then that was not good enough and it needed to be 80% vaccination, and so on and so forth.
Now, essentially, we see that the ICUs are not overcapacity in our country, and we know that every year, when we have flu season, 12,000 Canadians die from flu and upper respiratory illness. I could not minimize the seriousness of COVID-19, especially for those who are vulnerable and have comorbidities, but I think we need to stop looking at case counts. We do not measure case counts when we talk about the flu every year.
We do need to look at what is happening with the ICU, and it is a static situation. We could see another pandemic. We could see another strain. We have learned from the past how to react quickly to those and as appropriately as need be at the time.
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- Mar/24/22 1:41:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for the question.
I think that we do indeed need to have a plan. The Liberal-NDP government does not have one at this time.
I believe that we must get rid of the requirements that are currently in place, for example the ones at the border for people who lost their jobs. We must put an end to these requirements immediately and set out a plan for all the rest.
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