44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 10, 2022 10:00AM
- May/10/22 10:21:05 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the second petition I have to present today is from petitioners from across the country who are opposed, and want an end, to the COVID-19 mandates.
The petitioners state that throughout the pandemic, truckers have served Canadians and are heroes, and now they are subject to a vaccine mandate. The petitioners are calling on the House of Commons to immediately end all COVID-19 mandates implemented and controlled by the federal government, which include federal employees, truckers and travellers. They are calling for an end to all COVID-19 mandates.
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- May/10/22 12:15:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, looking at what is happening in the United States with respect to women's right to abortion, it would seem that this crisis has crossed the border. Some women in Canada also face limited access to abortion. In many parts of the country, women do not have access to this aspect of health care, which is so important. It is so important, in fact, that we could have spent an entire day debating it in the House of Commons. It would have been an important and vigorous debate.
Additionally, as everyone is well aware, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is causing an international crisis, and democratic structures are crumbling in several countries. More and more, dictatorships are taking over. This also has an impact throughout the world, including in Canada and Quebec. Today's debate could have been about the crises that we are experiencing on the international scene.
There is also the crisis related to children's health. We know very well that today, on a global scale, we are going to lose 30,000 children. This affects pretty much all children around the world, and could have been part of today's discussion.
I am also thinking of the pandemic, which is affecting Canadians. People are still dying. All the issues related to the pandemic and the response to the pandemic are important, and we could have been talking about that all day.
An opposition day is a day when we should be talking about the real issues, in other words, things that affect people, that affect our constituents. As I said at the beginning of my speech, in all the years I spent in Quebec, no one ever said to me that the prayer at the opening of each sitting of the House of Commons was important to them.
As other speakers have already said, this issue could have been addressed in the debates on the Standing Orders of the House, which are set to begin in a few weeks in any event. I think the motion is acceptable and I see no problem with it, but I just want to point out that all these issues related to the prayer will be addressed in a few weeks anyway.
As far as today's motion is concerned, I think that we should talk about indigenous land acknowledgement, which is something we should have had for years. That is why, in closing, I propose an amendment, seconded by the member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie. I will read it.
That the motion be amended:
(a) by adding, after the words “abolished and replaced by”, the words “an indigenous land acknowledgement and”;
(b) by deleting the words “(1) A moment of reflection be observed” and substituting the words “(1) An indigenous land acknowledgement and a moment of reflection be observed”.
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- May/10/22 12:35:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, when we think about what is happening in Quebec today, in fact in all of Canada, the things that come to my constituents' minds deal with issues such as health care, seniors, the pandemic, what is taking place in Europe, our environment and so much more. This is an issue, as I pointed out earlier, that I have not been approached about in 10 years. No one has even raised the issue with me, yet the Bloc seems to want to make this the issue.
Does the member genuinely believe that this issue is more important than all of the other issues that I just listed, and that the people of Quebec would support this particular motion being debated when there are so many other issues that the people of Quebec and Canada are facing today?
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- May/10/22 2:26:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, global inflation, first caused by the pandemic and then by Vladimir Putin's illegal war in Ukraine, is putting real pressure on families. We see this especially with gasoline and food prices.
As we did during the pandemic, we will continue to support Canadians and make life more affordable for families by increasing the Canada child benefit in line with the cost of living, creating $10-a-day child care for families, and increasing the guaranteed income supplement for vulnerable seniors.
The problem is that the Conservatives continue to vote against these things.
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- May/10/22 2:46:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canada's mortality rate is not the best in class. Japan, Finland, Australia and many other OECD countries have much lower death rates from COVID.
Canada is one of the few remaining countries with domestic air travel restrictions in place. Canadians have endured the isolation of the pandemic and separation from loved ones. We live in a vast country where air travel is often the only way to visit loved ones.
There are some three million Canadians who remain unvaccinated who cannot board a flight to see loved ones. When will the government lift these domestic air travel restrictions?
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- May/10/22 2:48:07 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has always said that Canada's response to the pandemic is based on science.
While countries around the world have already abandoned mandatory proof of vaccination, the Prime Minister continues to require it at Canadian airports.
If we are talking about science, how does he explain the fact that we can have 28,000 people in a sports stadium without proof of vaccination, but we cannot travel within our own country?
Can the Prime Minister share his science with us and explain why he insists on maintaining these restrictions at airports?
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- May/10/22 2:49:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, while people are struggling to live, the increasing costs of groceries, gas and housing are making it even harder and caregivers are feeling these increasing costs. The Canada child benefit is a crucial benefit to help caregivers with the cost of living, yet during the pandemic the government clawed back on the benefit for families who needed CERB.
The Liberals claim to support everyday people. Meanwhile, they are standing by while families struggle. When will the minister fix this issue and support those who lost income because of ruthless government cuts?
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- May/10/22 3:01:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what I can share with the House and the hon. member is that this government has always stood behind small businesses throughout the pandemic to support them and get them through the pandemic. Do members know what we did in budget 2022? We cut their taxes, so that we could help businesses and small businesses grow. We are going to keep working for small businesses and entrepreneurs as a country to help them start up, scale up and access those new markets.
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- May/10/22 3:03:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is quite vague.
Small businesses suffered enormously during the pandemic. As everyone knows, many of them had to temporarily close. Now they are dealing with serious labour shortages and unacceptable delays thanks to Immigration Canada.
A landscaping company in my riding has to wait 10 to 12 weeks to get a work permit for temporary foreign workers. In 12 weeks, summer will be over. It will be pointless. What does this government intend to do to solve this issue?
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- May/10/22 4:04:33 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, you have the latitude regarding whether what I say is appropriate or not. I believe it is. It speaks to particular issues that are relevant here in Canada that we must continue to deal with, and it pertains to the motion at hand.
For many, especially Black and indigenous people, this has been their everyday reality for generations.
These issues are especially felt by people from racialized, religious minority or indigenous backgrounds, and have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Racism and discrimination in our society cause suffering, spread division and contribute to a climate of fear, intolerance and stigmatization that we cannot accept.
According to the 2021 Canadian legal problems survey conducted by Justice Canada and Statistics Canada, more than 38% of the respondents in Canada reported having experienced discrimination in the preceding five years, which includes the first year of the pandemic, in almost every context, from school to the bank to restaurants and more. This is a widespread problem that we cannot ignore.
During the pandemic, race and ethnicity were the most frequently cited factors for discrimination and the only ones that have increased. We should be strongly concerned, for example, that members of the Chinese population were 10 times more likely to face racial or ethnic discrimination than a person who was non-racialized.
Consequently, the number of hate crimes is on the rise. According to Statistics Canada—
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- May/10/22 7:07:57 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise this evening to take the opportunity, on behalf of Canadians who are wondering, to ask the government when it will end the mandates.
I have asked this question a few times in here, and I knew that my remarks this evening would draw a big crowd in the government benches, and rightly so. There should be a lot of attention on this from government members and from backbenchers of the governing party, because we are two years into this pandemic and we know an awful lot more about COVID now than we did in March 2020.
What we are looking for from the government is the same thing that we have been calling for, which we have formalized in motions in this place: the benchmarks that need to be hit for federal COVID mandates to be lifted. This was an entirely reasonable position for us to take several months ago. However, the government has failed to provide them, so now our position is for the government to catch up to the science and end the mandates.
The opportunity to furnish Canadians with the information that the government is using to keep the mandates in place has come and gone. Now the government needs to catch up. It needs to catch up with the chief medical officers of health in the provinces across the country, who have put in place plans and lifted mandates. It needs to catch up with our allies, such as the United Kingdom, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, and the list goes on.
Some of the mandates that we have in place here were never put in place elsewhere, but they remain in place. They are extremely restrictive and include domestic requirements for taking flights and trains in this country and for continuing work in a federally regulated job or in the public service.
The vaccine mandates that the government put in place, as we have heard from the minister on more than one occasion, have served their purpose. They drove vaccine rates up. If that was the raison d'être and it has been successful, then let us hang up the “mission accomplished” banner and end the mandates.
This is what we have been looking for. What are the epidemiological factors that the government has been relying on to keep the mandates in place? Are they based on waste-water surveillance? Are they based on vaccination rates? Are they based on regional or provincial case counts? We do not know and when we have asked, the government does not seem to know. We have even heard from the top doctor at the Public Health Agency of Canada that it is not her decision when to lift the mandates.
I therefore have a couple of questions, and I expect that my hon. friend, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health, is going to offer a response. My questions are as follows. Whose decision is it to lift the mandates? What are the benchmarks that are being evaluated for them to arrive at their decision to end the mandates? On what day or date does he reasonably expect that the mandates will be lifted? Canadians deserve to know.
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