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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 166

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 8, 2023 02:00PM
Context: House Hansard - 166 - Mar/8/23
Ms. Heather McPherson (Edmonton Strathcona, NDP)
Madam Speaker, as always, it is an honour to stand in this place and represent the constituents of Edmonton Strathcona. Today, we are talking about Bill S-209, an act respecting pandemic observance day, which is a bill to make every March 11 a day to remember the COVID–19 pandemic. I know all of us in this House remember the day that we were here in 2020 and it was announced that the House was rising and we were all going home. None of us expected at that point that it would be years before some of us came back, or that we would be dealing with the pandemic even to this day. As I reflect on this bill and the need for it, it is very important, as members have said before me, for us to take a moment and remember all of the people who died. More than 5,600 Albertans have died from COVID–19 to date. I think it is also important to recognize that people are still dying from COVID–19 in this country. In 2021, the last year that data was available, COVID killed more Albertans than heart disease, lung disease, strokes or Alzheimer's disease. More than 50,000 Canadians lost their lives across this country. Each one of those people had a family, had friends, had loved ones. It is a loss, and I think the opportunity for us and for all Canadians to acknowledge that and remember those people is very important. Everyone we know has either lost somebody they loved or knows somebody who lost somebody they loved. I think about the grandparents who were lost, the friends and the families. In my own riding of Edmonton Strathcona, more than 100 people lost their lives, at least 50 of whom were in long-term care. I think about what we have lost in our communities: the loss of wisdom, the loss of love and the loss of laughter. I think about Edmonton entertainers. As I have said many times, Edmonton Strathcona is the heart of the entertainment sector in Edmonton. Entertainers like Victor Bird and Ricky Lam will never again step on stage. They will never enchant audiences again. I think it is also relevant to remember that it is not over. In fact, COVID–19 continues to take lives and continues to have long-term impacts on so many people. There is a woman in my riding named Kath. She is a powerhouse and an incredible individual. She works very hard to find homes for pets without homes through Zoe's Animal Rescue. She was incredibly active before she got COVID, and now she is facing fatigue and other symptoms and has to use a walker to get around. I think it is important that we have this moment to do this. I also think it is important for us to take a moment to think about health care workers and teachers. Remember what we asked our teachers, educators and the staff at our schools to do, and what we asked nurses, paramedics, firefighters and doctors to do. Remember the danger we asked them to put themselves and their families in. I cannot help but think this is a wonderful opportunity for us to remember those sacrifices and what those people did to keep us safe. It was not just those people. We also have to remember that in Alberta there were folks who put their lives on the line and lost their lives because we were not good enough at taking care of them. I do not know if members remember that at Cargill, the meat-packing plant in southern Alberta, workers lost their lives because they were not protected and we did not do enough to protect those workers. That brings me to the next comment I want to make. The bill is an opportunity for us to remember all those whom we have lost and an opportunity for us to celebrate the heroes who helped us get through the worst days of COVID-19. It is also vitally important for us to learn so that, when we see a future pandemic, we do not make the same mistakes or do the same things wrong. I am worried that we have not learned some of those lessons. I look at long-term care. The privatization of long-term care resulted in our loved ones, our cherished seniors in our communities, living in unbelievable conditions and dying because we have a system in place that privileges profit over the care of our loved ones. We saw what happened across the country in long-term care. None of that seems to have changed. We have not fixed those systems. If we had a pandemic tomorrow, I am not sure that anything would be different. That is very disappointing, and it is something we need to think about. We need to think about how we provided support for people within our communities. I think the CERB was a lifeline. I remember people phoning my office desperate, and being able to provide that support was perfect. It was a lifeline for so many people. It was not perfect, but we were trying to do what we could very quickly to get support out. We were pushing the government, and the government was trying to do things. However, as we look back on this, we have to think about the ways that it did not work for certain people. We have to think about the ways that we privileged certain groups. Corporations were able to get money very fast, within days, but for people living with disabilities, it took much longer to get support. The House of Commons unanimously supported students not having to pay back their student loans during that time. That was a unanimous motion that I brought forward, which every member of the House supported, but the government never implemented it. The other piece that is a worry for me is how we worked as part of a global community. I stood in this place many times and talked about vaccine equity and how we have a moral obligation to protect people around the world to ensure they have access to the same level of care as people in Canada did. It was not just a moral obligation because, of course, every single time we refused to share our vaccines with other populations, with other people in the rest of the world, variants developed. I do think that is an issue that we have. We have not fixed the systems like the TRIPS waiver. We have not fixed things like Canada's Access to Medicines Regime. These are things that are still broken. Given another pandemic, I do not believe that the government has learned the lessons to make sure that we do not make the same mistakes. As we go forward, a national day for pandemic observance should not only be a time to remember and honour, but also a time to plan and an opportunity to learn, because if we do not learn, if we do not take this opportunity, we are doing a disservice to the memory of those who lost their lives.
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