44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 24, 2022 10:00AM
- Mar/24/22 4:33:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is nice to see you in the chair again, and I hope you are doing well today.
It is always an honour to rise in the House to speak on matters. Today we are speaking on the opposition motion of our colleagues in the Conservative Party. Reading directly from the motion, it calls for the lifting of “all federal vaccine mandates”. It offers a few rationales for that point of view. Namely, because the provinces and territories have either put in place a plan to do so or have already done so, the federal government should act accordingly.
The issue this ignores entirely is one of jurisdiction. Provinces and territories should continue and will continue to take decisions that are within their jurisdiction based on the local health situation. Of course, public health agencies at a local level will inform that process with their engagement with the chief medical officer of every respective province or territory. That is the system. That is how it works. That is how it should work in a federation.
The federal government, for its part, will operate, as I say, in its jurisdiction on the question of mandates and on the advice of the public health experts at the Public Health Agency of Canada. I am not sure if members have noted this for Hansard, but I will. I want to thank public officials at PHAC. Throughout this pandemic, they have stood up in ways that are immeasurable and in ways that history will recognize as a true contribution to Canadian public policy and to an emergency response.
Where I want to focus my attention today is not so much on the politics of those questions. I want to take a step back, if I could, and ask a fundamental question. It is a surprise to me that this issue keeps coming up. My colleagues in the Bloc have not raised it, and my colleagues in the NDP have not raised it. They may have raised it when the opportunity posed itself, but they have not made it a motion. They have not decided to devote an entire opposition day to it.
My friends in the Conservative Party have, and they continue to devote themselves to this issue. Today's question period, for example, is a case in point. Almost the entire duration of question period was taken up by focusing on this one issue. There are so many other things happening in Canada, and internationally too, that they could have raised, but they kept going back to this.
I am not sure why. I have some thoughts on the matter. I think it has everything to do with the fact that, at some point in the history of the Conservative Party, it became a libertarian party. What is at the core of the philosophy of libertarianism? I know I only have a few minutes, but there are a few insights that need to be put on the record.
Philosopher Robert Nozick is perhaps the most noted libertarian. He said, “There are only individual people, different individual people, with their own individual lives. Using one of these people for the benefit of others, uses him and benefits the others. Nothing more.”
I offer that. I am not a Conservative, but I have Conservative friends and frequently they will resort to arguments about individualism. We need to understand a philosophic rationale for libertarianism, which Robert Nozick provides. It is about the individual for him and nothing more.
In political terms, we can look to Ronald Reagan, but especially to Margaret Thatcher. The transition in the Conservative Party started modestly in the 1980s but especially continued in the nineties and continues into the modern day, and Margaret Thatcher was absolutely instrumental in that change. She said:
...who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business....
Here is another point of view that emphasizes the individual. It is all about self-reliance. The state's job is to get out of the way. The state can provide for a few basic things such as police, a military and basic taxation. Apart from that, apart from offering this idea of what Nozick called the “night-watchman” state, it is about individuals being left alone to pursue their interests as they see fit.
Particularly, as it relates to mandates, when Nozick said, “Using one of these people for the benefit of others, uses him and benefits the others”, I think that is what provides the Conservatives with so much concern about mandates, that it represents state overreach. It represents the state interfering in the lives of individuals and trampling on their individual rights to pursue their interests as they see fit. It is an interesting idea.
Much has been written about libertarianism, but its weakness has become clear during emergencies and crises, particularly public health crises like COVID. So much so that an ardent disciple of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson, said that in fact there is “such a thing as society.” There are individuals, yes, but they live and exist within a society, and those individuals have a duty to one another. That is where I think, as a point of departure, we have to begin the discussion on mandates.
It is not as if we and those who support the introduction and maintenance of federal vaccine mandates do not recognize the importance of individuals. Of course, we do, as well as individual rights. That philosophy is also core to the Liberal Party of Canada, but mandates in the context of COVID‑19, which is still with us and is global, which is what a pandemic is by definition, are key and they are not forced vaccination. Mandates reflect a public health duty. Mandates have saved thousands of lives. In Canada, taken with vaccinations, mandates have helped to save the lives of no less than 400,000 people according to the estimates of experts. Epidemiologists and other public health experts have put that number forward. In the United States, the number is even higher obviously. Over a million lives were saved there. In Europe, the same sort of narrative follows.
Another way to understand the value of mandates is to follow what the philosopher T.M. Scanlon said, “If we can prevent something very bad from happening to someone by making a slight or even moderate sacrifice, it would be wrong not to do so.” Therefore, mandates ask all of us to make a moderate sacrifice. That much is sure. Only the state has the ability to implement such a system, a vaccine mandate system, but that moderate sacrifice is absolutely worth it when we understand that the result of that leads to lives being saved.
Our colleague who just spoke cited the very well-known and well-respected commentator on Canadian public affairs, who is also the public health specialist for The Globe and Mail. When André Picard talks about, for instance, the elderly and those who are immunocompromised still facing a heightened risk, even though we see declining rates of hospitalization and infection rates, we have to remain vigilant and the federal government needs to maintain a broad perspective as part of the calculus as to whether or not vaccine mandates still have a place in Canada.
As we just heard, it is important for the Public Health Agency of Canada to, among other things, assess the international epidemiology. Of course, COVID‑19 remains a pandemic. For that reason, operating in its area of jurisdiction, understanding the international situation, not just the domestic one, the advice given to the federal government is that vaccine mandates still have a role to play.
For the Conservatives, this apparently represents a limitation of individual freedom and state overreach, but it should not. Vaccine mandates are about saving lives and that is a duty that we should all live up to. We are individuals who live in a society. Without adhering to a duty to one another, a collective responsibility, individuals cannot thrive, so what I call for, as a final point here, is to recognize the importance of duty in our politics and not just individualism.
I thank you for the opportunity to speak and look forward to questions.
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- Mar/24/22 4:43:08 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as I understand it, my colleague's constituent is a public servant. The federal government has engaged with public servants throughout. Accommodations have been given where possible, and it continues to engage on that basis and other bases. I will say that more ought to be done by all governments, at every level, to work with individuals who are still vaccine-hesitant.
There is a difference between anti-vaxxers and those who are vaccine-hesitant, and perhaps there needs to be more engagement with individuals who fall into the hesitancy category. The media have a responsibility in that regard, public health experts have a responsibility in that regard, so too do governments. I do not know the individual circumstances of the constituent, but that is what I would put to my colleague.
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- Mar/24/22 4:45:00 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is not unreasonable to suggest this. However, one also has to do so while keeping in mind the nature of the pandemic and the fact that it is constantly a fluid situation. It is a constantly ever-evolving situation.
I think that, when we look at the pandemic, we cannot look at it in isolation. We have to look at it domestically. We have to look at the international situation. We have to be mindful of those things. We have to take public health advice. It is very difficult to come up with a timetable when the pandemic is constantly evolving and constantly in flux.
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- Mar/24/22 4:47:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have a respect, a friendship and a great affinity for the colleague that was just mentioned, the MP for Louis-Hébert. I was elected with him in 2015. On that matter, we simply disagree. I do not believe that there has been a politicization of the pandemic. Certainly, there has been division in Canadian society; there is no question.
However, there is nothing wrong with encouraging people who can get vaccinated, where it does not pose a health challenge or some other challenge to their physical well-being, to get vaccinated. That is—
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