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May/19/22 3:36:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, with the concurrence of the House, I would like to respond to the comments of my good friend from Vancouver Granville. It was a pleasure and privilege to serve with him in the civil service. This goes back a number of years, to the early 2000s, but I think that experience as civil servants has really instilled in us not only an ethic but also a good understanding of how government works in a non-political way. Civil servants across the country who are serving now, especially during the pandemic, represent the best of the best. I thank my colleague for his service in that regard, but also for his continued service as the member for Vancouver Granville and for his friendship.

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The Deputy Speaker

May/19/22 3:37:09 p.m.
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As all things do, good things must come to an end. I want to thank the member for his hard work in the chamber and, of course, wish him well in his future endeavours. He can always come back and visit any time he wants. Resuming debate, the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and Minister of Emergency Preparedness.

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Mr. Yasir Naqvi (Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and Minister of Emergency Preparedness, Lib.)

May/19/22 3:37:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is a tall order to follow. Before I get into talking about the motion at hand, I want to take a moment to thank the member for Mississauga—Lakeshore for his service in this place. I am confident that his community is better for it, and definitely our country is better for it. It took me down memory lane when he was talking about immigrating from Germany and his parents telling him and his siblings that they were coming to Canada. I had a similar experience when my family and I were immigrating to Canada. My parents came in one day and said that we were moving to Canada. As I was a teenager at the time, that was obviously big, life-changing news. We probably did not understand the full impact of it, but it was one of the best decisions that my parents made for my siblings and me. Living in this great country definitely changed our lives. I want to come back to this motion and speak about it. I think it is an important conversation that we are having in the House around the impact of the pandemic that we all have faced in our lives. Now that we are getting, hopefully, to the tail end of the pandemic, there are questions around how we get back to resuming our lives. As for all of the different functions that the government performs and that we had done before the pandemic, how do we get them to a normal place, as they were before? I think it is important to note, and it is important to remind all of us, that we are still in the midst of a global pandemic. I often hear debate in the House and it sometimes feels as if we have forgotten that the pandemic is not yet over. We still do not have complete control over this disease. This virus has taken countless innocent lives from us, not only here in Canada but around the world. I believe that the number is about a million or so. I may be understating it, but it is a large number. We are still in the midst of this global pandemic, so we have to be mindful about that particular important fact and be able to work together, not only as parliamentarians but also as members of the society of citizens of Canada, to put an end to this pandemic. That is why our government here in Canada, federally, and the provincial and territorial governments, in line with global governments around the world, took the important steps they took over two years ago to control the spread of this highly transmissible disease: the coronavirus. As a result, we all recall, our entire system got shut down. It had to be done overnight. Nobody did that because that was what they wanted to do. Nobody did that because it was part of some grand conspiracy, which some people out there believe but is absolutely false. It was done so that we could protect lives. Members can just imagine for a moment if those important steps had not been taken to shut down our airports, to limit travel and to make sure we worked from home as opposed to going into large, congregating settings. Members can imagine how many more lives would have been lost. All of those steps, and all of those precautions, were taken on the advice of public health officials so that we could protect each other. There is nothing more valuable, as we know, than human life. That is why we all took those steps. Thanks to our scientists here in Canada and around the world, and how quickly they worked to develop a vaccine that could then help us immunize ourselves from COVID-19, which is another remarkable achievement, a vaccine was created in a very short period of time. It got tested. It was proved that it actually saves lives. There was a massive effort here in Canada, which is ongoing around the world, to vaccinate ourselves so that we could fight this virus as well. Can members imagine if that had not happened? How many lives have been saved because Canadians really stepped up and got vaccinated with both shots? The number for the booster shots is continually rising. Hopefully, more Canadians will get their third shot, as I have, and I am sure many members of the House have. That is being done so we can protect lives. The question now is what do we do next? Perhaps that is the essence of this motion we are debating today as we are hopefully at the tail end of this pandemic. We have to continue to listen to the advice of public health experts, who are telling us that we cannot rush to lift the mandates when it comes to requiring people to get vaccinated, to wear masks or to make sure they keep a proper distance.

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The Deputy Speaker

May/19/22 3:44:13 p.m.
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The hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands is rising on a point of order.

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Ms. Elizabeth May

May/19/22 3:44:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I know I am in the far corner, but I am having trouble hearing the hon. member who is speaking due to some interruptions.

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The Deputy Speaker

May/19/22 3:44:24 p.m.
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I could hear a few interruptions as well from a few members in the chamber. The hon. member for Ottawa Centre.

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Mr. Yasir Naqvi

May/19/22 3:44:32 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as we look at next steps, we need to keep listening to the advice of public health officials because they are telling us that we cannot rush into ending the requirements for people to get vaccinated or to wear masks, or to ensure we keep a safe distance from each other. I again remind hon. members in this place that we are still in the midst of a global pandemic. Just because we wish for it to be over, and I am sure everyone wishes that, including me, it is not done yet. We are not fully immune to COVID‑19, and we need to continue to work hard because it is about saving lives. This is not about politics or ideology: it is simply and purely about saving lives. We have to do everything in our capacity. That is what compassionate societies such as ours do to save lives. Therefore, let us make sure that the mandates with respect to travelling and vaccinations are maintained until we feel comfortable that we are all protected.

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Mr. Yasir Naqvi

May/19/22 3:47:10 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member opposite heckled to me that he does. It is good for him if he does. Wishing does not make it so, because the scientists and experts around the world have not told us that. We need to start getting prepared to open up the world and our society as we start to resume our lives thanks to the high vaccination rates and the fact that Canadians stepped up and followed all the rules. We need to make sure we bring back the resources to open our airports, that all government services with respect to passports and the like are fully available, and the government is doing so. Can we do better? Of course we can do better, and we will continue to do better so that as this pandemic comes to an end we can resume our lives the way we used to live prior to the beginning of this pandemic.

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Mr. Fraser Tolmie

May/19/22 3:47:10 p.m.
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We do feel comfortable.

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Mr. Warren Steinley (Regina—Lewvan, CPC)

May/19/22 3:47:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to applaud the member for the performance he just gave. It is interesting that the Liberals who sit here with their masks on during the debates in the House of Commons are the same Liberals who go to receptions all over downtown Ottawa with their masks off, where there are hundreds of people. I would ask my colleague across the way why it is the Liberals wear their masks in the House of Commons, but not when they go to receptions such as the Sir John A. Macdonald one last night? If they are concerned about their safety and the safety of others, why is it okay for them to not worry about wearing their masks in public when they are not on Parliament Hill? Why is it okay for health officers across the country to say we do not have to wear masks in Alberta, Saskatchewan or anywhere else in the country but on Parliament Hill? Can he tell me what advice the Liberals are following? It is not scientific: It is political, as this member has talked about throughout his whole speech.

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Mr. Yasir Naqvi

May/19/22 3:48:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I try to do my very best to wear my mask because I want to keep myself safe and I want to keep my family safe. In fact, when my two young children go to school, they wear masks, even though they are not required to. They know better. They are six and 10 years old, and they continue to wear their masks. I do not even have to remind them and they do so because they want to protect themselves, but most importantly, they want to protect others. Do members know who my children talk about protecting? They talk about protecting their grandparents and their well-being. This is about compassion. This is not about politics. Members opposite can choose to sit in the House and not wear masks. They do so every single day, and that is their call. We will continue to take steps and precautions and we will continue to protect Canadians to ensure that we get through this pandemic safely.

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Ms. Andréanne Larouche (Shefford, BQ)

May/19/22 3:49:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Ottawa Centre for his speech. I would like to hear what he has to say about the amendment proposed by the Bloc Québécois. We want to replace “immediately revert” to prepandemic rules with “gradually revert” to them. During the pandemic, I consulted with cultural and tourism organizations in Shefford on various emergency committees. They were calling for predictability. They wanted a clear reopening plan. The government failed to come up with one, making it difficult for many businesses to anticipate what will happen next. Both of these sectors have been hit hard by the pandemic. Now they want to recover from it. What does my colleague think about the importance of proceeding gradually, while presenting a reopening plan and providing predictability to the cultural and tourism sectors? That is what they are asking for.

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Mr. Yasir Naqvi

May/19/22 3:50:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I concur with the member opposite. She is absolutely right: We need to develop plans. We need to have predictability and certainty as to the next steps as we come to an end to this pandemic. That is exactly what I was talking about. It is very similar to conversations I had with my constituents in the tourism sector that exists right here in Ottawa: the nation's capital. We agree that we need to work together to develop those important plans, and I will continue to urge all government ministers to do so. I believe the government has been doing that. We are developing those plans. We need to make sure that we bring resources back into our services that were thinned out during the pandemic so that Canadians can get the services they deserve.

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Ms. Niki Ashton (Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, NDP)

May/19/22 3:50:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the important point made by my colleague. The pandemic is still very much with us. He made the critical point that vaccines have saved lives here in Canada and around the world, but the reality is that so much more needs to be done to ensure vaccine access around the world and Canada is not doing enough. We should be supporting the TRIPS waiver. We should be allowing pharmaceutical companies here to work with countries in the global south, such as in Bolivia, to produce vaccines during this pandemic that has proved to be particularly deadly for many countries in the global south. Does the member agree that Canada ought to be doing more to ensure vaccine justice around the world?

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Mr. Yasir Naqvi

May/19/22 3:51:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for finding common ground with what I was saying, which is that the mandates and the requirements for vaccines have saved lives, and we need to ensure that it happens around the world. I want to let the member know that I will continue to advocate for Canada to play an engaged role globally so that vaccines are available around the world and people, especially those who come from poorer countries, have access to this lifesaving vaccine also.

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Mr. Randy Hoback (Prince Albert, CPC)

May/19/22 3:52:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, who I know has a very important speech to give after me. This is a very timely motion, considering what is going on in our airports across Canada and the fact that many have had the privilege to pair off with a minister to the U.S. I could draw some comparisons to how the U.S. is doing things in light of post-COVID, or endemic COVID, versus how we do it here in Canada. To be travelling here in Canada, people have to be vaccinated. Let us make that point very clear. Let us look at the way people go through the process. In Saskatoon, I get to the airport and walk into the airport, but I do not have a mask. I have been out and about in the community all weekend without a mask. I do not have one in my pocket and have to run back to my truck to find one in the glove box, because I need one at the airport. I do not need it anywhere else in Saskatchewan, but I need it at the airport. I find an old mask, dust it off and away I go through security. I show my NEXUS card. In Saskatoon, a NEXUS card does not get people into their own lane. It actually just gets them to the front of the line. That must make the people who have been waiting in line for an hour and a half really happy to watch me walk by them to go to the front of the line—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

May/19/22 3:53:54 p.m.
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Order. I want to remind members that they are not to have conversations across the way. I do want to remind the parliamentary secretary not to interrupt parliamentarians when they have the floor. I do want to remind members that they are not to use first or last names of members who are in the House. The hon. member for Prince Albert.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen

May/19/22 3:53:54 p.m.
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So don't do it.

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Mr. Randy Hoback

May/19/22 3:53:54 p.m.
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That is a good point, but not when you do not have enough time. If you get to my point, Mark, and listen to me, you might get some ideas on how you can improve things—

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Mr. Randy Hoback

May/19/22 3:54:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I do apologize for that mistake. I guess what I am saying is that when people are in a rush to catch their flight, they use their NEXUS card and go through security, but they go through the exact same security process as everybody else. In the U.S., people have a preferred traveller status, so when they go to the U.S. and they have their NEXUS card or a global entry card, they get into a separate line. They put their luggage on the rack, put their jacket on the rack, although they do not necessarily have to take their jacket off, it gets pushed through and away they go. People do not have to take their liquids out of their one-litre Ziploc bag and put them into a Toronto-approved Ziploc bag. They do not have to take their shoes off. They do not have to take their belt off. They do not have to take their computer out. They do not have to do any of those things, because they have already gone through the security screening process up front. They are not viewed as a threat. It is just like every time people apply for a NEXUS card, which is also a global entry card in the U.S. Here is an example of what the government could do right now with labour shortages. It could have a specific line for those members, because they are not a risk. They are zero threat. Why would we not take the best practices out of the U.S. and apply them here in Canada to speed up the line? If we speed up that line, we could give more resources to the other lines that are lacking resources at this point in time. In Saskatoon, as I said, when people go through the screening, first of all, they take their jacket off, they take their belt off, they take everything out of their pockets, they take their computer out, they take the liquids out and put them into the one-litre bag they have to use, and then they go through the screening. Then, they get to the secondary screening. There is one thing we are noticing in the airports. For example, in Toronto, with the new system, I call it the scatter system. People go into a line, right next to four other people, and they put their stuff into their bucket. The bucket goes, and then another person's bucket goes, and another. There is actually four to five times more secondary screening in that process because of how it is going through the system. More people are waiting for their bags at the other end, and they are all scattered. How is this becoming more efficient and faster? How can this work when people are bumping into each other and going around each other trying to figure out where their luggage is, where their bags are, where their shoes are, where their belt is and trying to keep their pants up while they are doing it? It is craziness at its greatest. We see that here in the Ottawa airport over and over again. There are some little things that could be changed to make this a lot smoother and a lot more efficient, if the Liberals wanted to. I mentioned the NEXUS card. I go to the gate. I go to board the plane, and I show my NEXUS card. The Air Canada agent says, “Wait a minute, that is an expired NEXUS card.” Yes, I know it has expired. I was told I could use an expired NEXUS card. The agent says I cannot use it for ID. I say that is fair enough and go to apply to renew my NEXUS card. I did it two years ago, and I am still waiting for that interview. I have been online checking to see where I could get an interview done in Canada. I cannot. I live in the Prairies, just north of Saskatoon. Before COVID, I had to go to Calgary or Winnipeg, and now, after COVID, they are saying I would have to go to Buffalo or New York in order to get the interview to get my NEXUS card renewed. Does that make sense? Is that proper planning, knowing that we are going to come out of the pandemic at some point in time? Why is it that way? Coming through the airport, I have seen lots of things, looking at the way things have been operating. I saw one of the more horrific scenes when I was coming in through Montreal. I walked through Montreal airport and looked at the lineups, and they were outside the door, not a line straight outside the door, but weaving back and forth, going around the counters and out the door, to get through security. I asked the security guard what was going on and why it was that way. He said that some of the workers were unvaccinated so they got fired and could not work, some of the workers were laid off and have not been rehired, and the workers who were there were getting so stressed that they were not showing up for work. They are being overworked. He said they are finding it frustrating. They are tired of people yelling at them, because people are at their wits' end by the time they get to the security screening process. I can understand why they are frustrated and why it is a problem. People get through that process, and then they get through secondary screening. I was at the gate at 9:30 at night, waiting for my flight at 10:30, and I saw these four ladies running to beat the devil. They were sweating and they were upset, because they had just found out their flight had gone without them. The door had just closed. In fact, they were looking out the window at that plane. They were trying to get back to Toronto to their family on a Sunday night. They could not spend the night. One lady said out loud that she was a diabetic and she did not have any more insulin with her for the evening. They had spent four hours in the lineup. They took it out on that poor agent. They were mad, and rightly so. They were yelling and screaming and demanding action. What could he do? The plane had left. The reality is that the fault lies with the government. It lies right at the Liberals' feet and it lies at their feet in so many aspects of what is going on right now. The government cannot be proactive on anything. It will not react until the crisis hits such a level that it is forced to react. We knew this was coming. We knew that Canadians were going to start travelling again. There is no question about that. The airlines knew that. If the airlines had been given a bankable schedule, they could have scaled up accordingly. They are doing the best they can to accommodate the number of people who want to travel again. Now the bottleneck is our airports, our airport security and the processes that we have to go through in order to board that plane. The Liberals could have preplanned that. For example, on passports, the Liberals could have said, “We have a lot of people who have 10-year passports coming up for renewal. Maybe we should start approving and processing passports.” They could have said that a year ago. Maybe they should have had things in place so they would not get bottle-jammed right until now and try to do it all at once. When I hear people tell me that they get faster service if they go through their Liberal MP's office than they do through a Conservative MP's office, I get very concerned because that should not happen. I have heard of two instances of that happening now. When I look at that, I think that if they had planned properly, they could have avoided that. If they had properly planned for NEXUS cards being renewed, they could have avoided people not having interviews and waiting and waiting for their interviews. If they had properly planned for bringing the airports back into service, we would not have seen the lineups we have in place today. CBSA would have been able to start hiring and training people sooner if the Liberals had a proper plan. These people do not plan. When they do not plan, what do they get? They get failure, and that is what the government has produced time after time. What can the Liberals do now? They say they are protecting Canadians and they are following the science. They say it is very important to follow the science, and they think they are doing everything right to protect Canadians, which is fair enough. The Saskatchewan public health officer does the same thing. It is the same with the person in Quebec, in Alberta, in Ontario and in B.C. They are following the science, and they are actually being transparent with the science. They are saying that based on the science they can do this and they are allowed to open it up to this level or that level. We have seen that just lately in Quebec, where they made decisions based on what their needs were to reopen their economy accordingly. It was transparent. People knew what was going on, when it was going to happen and why it was going to happen. The government will not give us a plan. Not only that, it will not give us the dataset or the points it is using to make the decisions it is making. Then the Liberals wonder why people are suspicious. They wonder why people do not trust them. All they need to do is show some transparency, which the Prime Minister, in 2015, said he would show an abundance of. With this issue, when it is health-related, why would the government not have transparency? What is the reason the Liberals want to hold back the dataset they are using to make their decisions? There should be no reason. They should be able to do that without any type of qualms. If they showed the dataset and said, “Here is the justification. This is why we have to do what we are doing today”, and showed the science to back that, we probably would not be having this debate today, but they are not. The hypocrisy is that the Liberals are saying that the science says we need to do all this stuff, yet they are letting everything go back to normal and they are not following with it. Yes, we needed to have lockdowns. I can remember being in the Toronto airport in November of last year, I think, and looking down the hallways. I could have said my name and it would have been echoing through the hallways because there was nobody there. There was nobody travelling. Let us also keep in mind what we did not have then. We did not have any therapeutic treatments. We did not have vaccinations. We did not know what we know today. There are lots of things the government can do. I will end it there and I look forward to the questions.

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