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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 291

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 19, 2024 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 291 - Mar/19/24
Mrs. Stephanie Kusie (Calgary Midnapore, CPC)
  • Mar/19/24 2:10:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians continue to ask questions about the ArriveCAN app, and Conservatives continue to push for answers. Last week, we continued to prosecute GC Strategies, an IT firm of two people who performed no actual work, yet it was paid a third of $60 million in contracts for the ArriveCAN app. After hiding from accountability to the point of being threatened with arrest, the two individuals finally appeared at committee. Although they were still evasive, MPs were able to learn that the two partners pocketed $2.5 million, and for what? One partner, Kristian Firth, that said he had averaged two to four hours per day at a rate of $2,600 per hour. His partner said that he had no clue as to what went on at any point in the ArriveCAN process and only processed the security clearances for their subcontractors, a job he did wrong. The Liberal government must listen up. It must explain why it wasted millions of dollars. Canadians want their money back, so it should start explaining and pay up.
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Context: House Hansard - 291 - Mar/19/24
Mr. Nathaniel Erskine-Smith (Beaches—East York, Lib.)
  • Mar/19/24 5:52:56 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's remarks and the amendment. It follows from the debate we had at second reading. I was clear at second reading when I said that the core of this bill is the plan. We need legislation passed in this House to ensure that all future governments take every step possible to prepare for the next pandemic and, ideally, take steps to reduce pandemic risks to prevent the next pandemic. The review body, the advisory body, was not intended to have some searching, backward-looking accountability function. It was intended to ensure that experts come together to learn lessons and inform the plan. In conversations with colleagues subsequently and even at second reading debate, I was clear that this was not a hill I was going to die on. The core of this is accountability to Parliament for every future government to ensure that every three to five years, which I said I was open to as an amendment too, the government comes back and tables the plan and improves the plan. This would ensure we are doing everything we can, knowing that the costs of prevention and preparedness pale in comparison to the human and economic costs, the costs we just lived through and the costs that our kids are likely to live through in relation to the next pandemic. To be clear, I do not subscribe to all that my colleague from Vancouver Kingsway has said. I do not suggest that this is a whitewash. The idea was for experts to come together to inform a plan. However, I am nothing if not pragmatic, and I would like this bill to pass. I think it is incredibly important that the core of it passes and that we see serious thought go into a whole-of-government approach. We talked about that. This bill sets out specific ministerial responsibilities to inform the plan. The bill is informed by and worked on by the intergovernmental platform on biodiversity and ecosystems and its report on preventing the next pandemic. It is informed by UNEP's report on preventing the next pandemic. It is informed by the Independent Panel's report on pandemic preparedness. The core of this, the most important part of it, is that there is a plan in place, tabled in Parliament, to prepare for and prevent the next pandemic, that future governments ensure that plans are tabled to improve upon those efforts and that there be accountability to this House. It is not that PHAC and the government would do this work separately. There would be accountability to the Canadian public on an ongoing basis. We know, having seen what took place post-SARS, that there was a lot of good work to make recommendations and some good work to implement those recommendations, although not fully and by no means completely, and then the public lost interest. We moved on to other things and were not as prepared as we could and should have been. This bill would remedy that. It would ensure that every future government takes these serious obligations as seriously as they should. I certainly accept the amendment. I do not accept the characterization of the advisory body, but if removing the advisory body and that particular review is what it takes to get the core of the bill passed, that accountability to Parliament on a pandemic preparedness and prevention plan, then so be it. Let us get the amendment passed and let us get this bill to the Senate.
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