44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 24, 2022 10:00AM
- Mar/24/22 10:13:31 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have a petition on behalf of Canadians from across the country who want an end to all COVID-19 mandates. The petitioners state that throughout the pandemic, truckers have served Canada and are heroes but are now impacted by a vaccine mandate that is impacting the supply chain. They say that the Prime Minister has politicized vaccines and insulted Canadians who have disagreed with him. Moreover, the petitioners comment that it is the sacred duty of the government to guard against discrimination and guarantee the freedoms of all Canadians.
The petitioners call on the House of Commons to immediately end all COVID-19 mandates implemented by the federal government that regulate areas that include federal employees, truckers and travellers. They also call for the end of all vaccine mandates and restrictions.
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- Mar/24/22 11:14:21 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the Minister of Health for his presentation on everything the government has done to manage the crisis.
One thing he did not mention, which I would have liked to hear, is his justification for Canada's vote at the WTO against temporarily waiving patents. This proposal came from India and South Africa, two countries that were the source of variants of concern.
To call this a global crisis means that what happens in one country will automatically impact other countries. However, if we leave the distribution of vaccines and medications solely and blindly in the hands of the market, what will happen is that only the rich countries will be able to procure doses. Meanwhile, vaccines and medications will be treated as business opportunities rather than shared resources to be used to address this global health crisis.
When the question comes up again, will Canada continue to treat vaccines as a source of profit for big pharma, or will it actually do the one thing that will get us out of this crisis? Let me remind the House that while we are here talking about administering a fourth dose, there are billions of people around the world who have not yet had access to their first.
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- Mar/24/22 11:15:42 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his very good question.
First, as my colleague suggests, the Canadian government and Canada will have to continue to work with the other countries to ensure that the distribution of pharmaceutical production capacity, such as for vaccines, is equitable, including in developing countries.
Second, Canada committed to delivering 200 million doses of vaccine in 2022. So far, we have already delivered roughly 100 million doses, or around half. There remains another 100 million doses to deliver, and we will see to it as soon as possible.
Third, Canada ranks sixth among the countries that provide vaccines. We are very proud of that, and we will continue to work hard not only to deliver these vaccines, but also to have these vaccines administered in developing countries.
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- Mar/24/22 11:34:50 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague speaks French very well and his question is fundamental. We are in a pandemic. By definition, a pandemic is global. This is not an epidemic; it is a pandemic.
I invited members of Amnesty International to appear before a parliamentary committee. They came to speak to us about this waiver, which Canada should support. It is absolutely clear.
Canada has good intentions, but it does not seem to be following through. It must be much more proactive and help get patents waived since that would democratize access to vaccines and anti-virals.
We must also provide more support for the supply and deployment chain in developing countries. It is not good enough to send vaccines that sometimes expire two weeks later. We must provide the logistical support needed so that the vaccines can be administered.
Having vaccines produced on site would prevent a lot logistical problems in many cases. It would make it possible for people to be much more autonomous in terms of vaccination and enable them to provide the drugs needed to fight the pandemic.
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- Mar/24/22 11:50:04 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am looking at the work we have to do.
The cultural sector is in need of assistance, the employment insurance regime is in need of reform and health transfers need to be paid, yet today we are debating the opposition motion.
When the Liberals brought up vaccines during the election campaign, they cast their line. Since then, the Liberals have been reeling it in and the Conservatives are the fish flopping around. In the meantime, we are not getting our job done.
Could my colleague tell us what we could be working on for Quebeckers and Canadians if the Liberals had not politicized the vaccination issue?
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- Mar/24/22 11:51:44 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, one implication of the motion is that the Canadian government could facilitate the exchange of goods and services across the border unilaterally, but there are still U.S. government requirements for vaccines that affect the exchange of goods and services.
Would the member like to comment on that aspect of the motion?
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- Mar/24/22 12:20:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as a person interested in science, I am sure my hon. colleague is also interested in the accuracy of numbers. It is not 90% of Canadians who are vaccinated. It is 81.6%. Of course, as I pointed out in my speech, only 46% of Canadians have had their third booster, which, in my view, now ought to be considered required to be considered fully vaccinated.
We know, based on the science, that the impact of vaccinations wanes over time. After three, four or five months, we know that the efficacy of the vaccine, particularly the mRNA vaccines, can go down to very low numbers, so getting that third booster is incredibly important.
I would just say that federal policy should be to encourage people to be vaccinated and to do everything possible to ensure that all Canadians receive their third boosters. Relaxing and withdrawing mandates, in that respect, at this time, I think, is not only irresponsible but harmful to the health of Canadians.
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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 1:50:10 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, on the topic of vaccine mandates and requiring people to have vaccines, it was found out that during the 2021 election this particular member went into a retirement home being not fully vaccinated. I wonder whether she has had an opportunity to reflect on that and if she thinks that was a wise choice.
More important, would she recommend that somebody else do the same thing? Would she encourage anybody going into a long-term care home to be fully vaccinated?
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- Mar/24/22 2:32:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, all 10 provinces and most G7 countries around the world are lifting the mandates. Despite this, federal mandates around vaccines for employment and travel persist. At the health committee, we already heard the Minister of Health talk specifically about the plan to end federal mandates, but he did not quite make it. He talked about this complicated science and did not elaborate further.
We, on this side of the House, would like to know. What is this complicated science the NDP-Liberal government is not sharing and when will the minister make it available to all Canadians?
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- Mar/24/22 2:36:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I really want to ask my colleague to remind Canadians that vaccination is not a punishment. Vaccines have saved lives, communities, our economy and jobs.
I understand there are questions about when these mandates will be lifted. We will continue to follow science and advice, and I ask the hon. member to avoid partisanship in the face of vaccination and science.
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- Mar/24/22 3:06:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives were the first in the House to put pressure on the government to procure and supply vaccines for all Canadians.
We were the first, while they were slow to act. I do not need any lectures from the government's chief health lecture-giver. All he gave us today was a bunch of numbers, such as 8,000; 25,000; 700,000; 135,000; 3; 400,000; 10; 30%; 100; 1.1 million; and 4 billion. That is a lot of numbers, but he did not answer the question at all.
When will he join the provinces and announce that the federal government is lifting the health measures?
It is a simple question and we want an answer.
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- Mar/24/22 3:59:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I really enjoyed listening to my colleague's speech and his expertise on this. I do appreciate that my colleague also supports and agrees that COVID-19 vaccines do provide strong protection against severe illness, hospitalization and deaths.
Does my colleague agree Canada should support the TRIPS waiver at the WTO to expand global vaccine production, especially for middle and lower-income countries?
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- Mar/24/22 4:00:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the shameful behaviour of the NDP-Liberal coalition government taking vaccines from the COVAX program has led to vaccine inequity around this world. Certainly, that is the kind of thing we do not want to be associated with as Canadians, and as Conservatives, we do not support that style of governance.
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- Mar/24/22 4:12:33 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, what should be disturbing to this new NDP-Liberal coalition government is the funding that is required through the COVAX program. The federal government should be ashamed that it actually took money and vaccines from that program that should be going to those countries that need it most, so that they can get vaccinated, so that we can provide assistance to them and so that we can avoid situations with continued growth of variants that continue to emerge throughout the world.
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- Mar/24/22 4:14:29 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, to my hon. colleague for Niagara Falls, we have a lot in common. Both of our ridings are really beautiful and both rely on a lot of tourists.
I am going to go back to the question from the hon. member for Victoria and the hon. member for Courtenay—Alberni. It is not because I do not think that the hon. members have not answered this, but perhaps it was not clear enough. Many of us on the opposition benches, and I hope Conservatives will join us, are pressing the Liberal government to do an obvious thing that so far it has refused to do. We have asked the government to do it for two years. Under the World Trade Organization, there is something called trade-related intellectual property rights. These protect the rights of big pharma to protect its vaccines.
What we are asking is that Canada join with South Africa and India and use an exemption that is already in the treaty. It says that in an emergency, when we need to produce vaccines or drugs of some kind in other countries, we can get a waiver so that big pharma does not control all the intellectual property and vaccines can be produced in the developing world.
Speaking for himself, does the hon. member for Niagara Falls agree that is a good idea?
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- Mar/24/22 4:31:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is a good question. As someone said, we will not be safe until everyone in the world is safe.
I am not particularly ideological about how we ensure that everyone is vaccinated. Whatever approach is most efficient in terms of getting the rest of the world vaccinated is the one we should go with. Intellectual property is, of course, a very complex field. We want to ensure that whatever measures we take actually result, at the end of day, in greater production and greater distribution of the vaccines.
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- Mar/24/22 4:48:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I just want to start by letting you know that I will be sharing my time with the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent.
Vaccine mandates have had a very real impact on the lives of Canadians. As the situation has evolved, governments have had to change. We have seen that as the case for governments across Canada, as well as governments all across the world. Sadly, what we have seen from the Liberal-NDP coalition government is that it has been slow to act. It was initially slow to close the borders. Then it was slow to get vaccines, slow to get rapid tests, slow to reopen the borders and now slow to end federal mandates.
On Monday, the health minister said at health committee, “We want to apply the least disruptive measures in order to protect the health and safety of Canadians, and the conversation will evolve as the situation evolves.” The situation has evolved significantly since the vaccine mandates on domestic travel were initially applied. It is worth noting that, when domestic travel vaccine mandates were first imposed, they were based on an idea that those who were vaccinated were much less likely to contract and therefore spread COVID. However, this changed as the omicron variant took over. As far as I can see, it no longer serves the original policy goal of preventing the spread of COVID. It just serves to needlessly divide Canadians.
Last week, I was contacted by a constituent. She was really devastated and she was really having a hard time. She is a nurse and she has worked throughout the pandemic, serving vulnerable Albertans as a registered nurse. She has been unable to be vaccinated because she has a medical exemption. She actually has an allergy to vaccines, and not just this vaccine but many vaccines. It is an anaphylactic allergy. It is something that is literally a life and death situation for her. All because of this, her employer, Alberta Health Services, has given her reasonable accommodations, so she has been able to continue serving as one of our frontline health care heroes throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Despite having medical exemptions, the process to be able to get on an airplane was not simple or straightforward, nor was it very timely. While I understand that many members in this chamber do not understand the vastness that is the country of Canada, my constituent is from Ontario, which was 3,600 kilometres away. Driving was not really a feasible option. Her father, who was in Ontario, had just passed away sadly, and she really wanted to be there with her family at this really difficult time, to be able to mourn with her mother and attend the celebration of life for her father.
However, this is the problem with any kind of really strict rule. There will inevitably be people who are stuck in the margins and for whom those rules do not necessarily make sense. Those rules cause undue and unnecessary hardship. That was the case with these rules. I was able to help this constituent navigate through the bureaucratic nightmare and the red tape so that she could get on a plane in a timely fashion and make it in time for her dad's funeral.
However, as I was helping this constituent, it really made me stop and wonder about all the constituents who are not vaccinated, have a sudden death in their family and do not have a medical exemption. What are those constituents supposed to do? Why are we continuing to needlessly divide Canadians? Why are we continuing to stigmatize Canadians who are vaccine-hesitant, who are unable to be vaccinated or who, for any number of reasons, whether they be religious or otherwise, might choose not to be vaccinated?
I had another constituent contact me about a month ago. Her sister was really not doing well. She was in palliative care. She also had to fly. She had one vaccine, but had to wait 28 days before she could get her second vaccine and then another 14 days after that before she could get on a plane. She was not anti-vax; she just had not gotten around to it for a number of reasons. We need to show compassion. We need to understand that there is humanity. There are human cases here, and it is very real throughout most of rural Canada. We really need to do better.
We have among the strictest rules on vaccine mandates and restrictions, when it comes to domestic travel, in the entire world. I am not saying that they did not at some point serve some kind of purpose, but right now they do not serve the original policy goal that they set out to. I do not believe that bullying and name-calling are effective methods to get one's way. My mom used to tell us all the time that sticks and stones may break our bones, but words would never hurt us. However, it was not okay to hurt somebody by name-calling. It did not really matter that it would not physically hurt them, because it would still hurt them.
Yesterday, at the health committee, Dr. Cohen, the CEO of the Canadian Psychological Association, appeared. When we asked her about this, and whether a productive way to get more Canadians vaccinated was to stigmatize them, bully them and call them names, she said there was behavioural science that showed that it was actually a very ineffective way. I am paraphrasing. This goes to a point. Why we are making people jump through these hoops at this point in time? Why can we not just treat people like people?
We have among the highest vaccination rates in the world. We have complied for the last two years. Canadians have stayed home when they were asked to stay home. At this point, they need to see a path out of this. The federal mandates regarding travel restrictions are very much imposing on constituents in my riding. That is just one small example. Men and women who have served our country are being threatened with the loss of their jobs and benefits because, for some reason, they have chosen not to get vaccinated. I am not even sure what the reason is, but it does not really matter to me what the reason is. We need to think, deep in our hearts and souls, about whether we want our legacy to be that, when given the opportunity to do the right thing, we chose to sit idly by and let Canadians continue to be divided.
One of the things that has been brought to my attention on so many occasions in my constituency through correspondence is why we continue to divide. Why do we not just allow hope, and why do we not have a plan? Provinces have ended their mandates and our G7 allies have ended their mandates. They are following the emerging science, and I understand that the science has changed substantially. What we know now about COVID is much different from what we knew originally. When we know better, we have an opportunity to do better.
I am asking all members in this assembly to keep in mind that many of us represent large rural ridings on which these travel mandates have a very direct impact. It is really complicated. I implore all members to please do the right thing and end the travel mandates and all federal mandates for the best of our country.
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- Mar/24/22 5:00:30 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, one of the things we saw early in this pandemic was that rather than having domestic production of vaccines, the Liberal-NDP coalition decided to raid the COVAX group and take away from countries that desperately needed it. What I would like to see, and what members on this side of the House would like to see, is an improvement in being able to produce more vaccines domestically so that we have a little more protection when it comes to the future of Canada's health.
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- Mar/24/22 5:12:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is always a great pleasure to listen to my colleague. He is a great orator here in the House. I think he has already been recognized as the best new MP in the House.
I would like to ask him the following question. Does my colleague believe that someone who arrives from overseas who is not vaccinated or who received a less effective vaccine than Pfizer or Moderna is a greater threat to the Canadian community than a traveller who enters the country and is fully vaccinated with recognized vaccines such as Pfizer or Moderna?
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