- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Niagara Falls
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 69%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $102,468.80
- Government Page
- Nov/1/23 7:53:35 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, why is it that the members of the government believe that there is still some value in retaining the ArriveCAN app?
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- Nov/1/23 7:53:14 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, despite the faults with the ArriveCAN app in its application and the $54 million and the scandals that we now find, why is it that the government, in your mind—
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- Nov/1/23 7:38:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it was an absolute shame to see what was happening at Canadian borders. We were essentially driving people to airports such as Buffalo. I questioned the previous minister and jokingly said the Buffalo chamber of commerce was going to hold a parade for him because of the additional business he was creating in Buffalo, instead of getting our act in order so we could get people back to Pearson and flying out of Toronto.
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- Nov/1/23 7:37:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I enjoy working with my hon. colleague on the international trade committee as well.
If we go back to the study we undertook, we were the first committee to undertake a study on this. The first recommendation asked, “That the Government of Canada ensure the safety and security of Canadians by continuing with its ongoing efforts designed to modernize Canada’s borders, including through the use of appropriate digital and non-digital tools”. If we are going to do that, we need to ensure that we get it right. ArriveCAN was a disaster. We need to get to the bottom of ArriveCAN before we can proceed forward to improve the borders and the digital tools we need moving forward.
Why was it allowed to take place? Why did it cost $54 million when people were saying they could have created it over a weekend for a couple of a hundred thousand dollars?
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- Nov/1/23 7:35:04 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, being in a border community, I can relay some of the examples we have from the four bridge crossings into my community and about our visitor base in terms of tourism in Niagara, which would be about 30% American. Those American visitors represented 50% of the spend.
On the ArriveCAN app and the terrible image it portrayed because of wait times and the glitches it caused, there were, for example, 10,000 Canadians who were told they had to quarantine, because of a glitch. It was incorrect. Those types of things halted any attempt at tourism recovery in 2022.
Why did it take the government until October to end the ArriveCAN app? People knew it was not working; it had never worked, from day one. On top of that, the government then spent, from January to August, $400 million on rapid testing capabilities when we knew infectious disease experts were saying that it was not needed. Again, the government was wasting money and denying us and the people in the tourism community the ability to recover, which they so badly wanted to do.
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- Nov/1/23 7:26:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my colleague, the member for Calgary Midnapore.
A lot happened during the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, which stretched over three years, from 2020 to 2022. It was a time when the Liberal government tried to give itself full spending authority without any opposition scrutiny. This was in the spring of 2020. Then, the Liberal government thought it was a good idea to prorogue Parliament in the middle of a raging global pandemic later that summer. After more than a year of social distancing, public health restrictions, masking and vaccines, the hypocritical Liberal government plunged the country into a pandemic election.
It is truly unthinkable, if one goes back to look at it. However, for the Liberals, it has never been about good and sound policy. It always was and always has been about politics. That is why we are here this evening, unfortunately, to discuss another disastrous Liberal policy objective, which did little to protect Canadians during the pandemic and almost single-handedly ruined any chance of a tourism recovery in 2022.
It is an honour for me to sit as a member at the Standing Committee on International Trade. I was assigned to the committee on February 28, 2022. We have since covered a wide range of topics and issues impacting Canadian trade. While some people might not realize this, tourism has important elements of trade, as an export industry. When COVID-19 hit our country, tourism was hit first and hardest. We all knew early on that it would take the longest to recover.
When we fast-forward more than three years, since the federal government agreed to close our international borders, the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are still being felt in many parts of Canada's tourism economy. Recovery is not equal. Some areas are recovering more quickly than others, particularly those in rural, remote and northern communities.
Further, thousands of tourism operators across the country continue to struggle with high levels of debt after taking out pandemic loans, through no fault of their own, and with a tourism visitation base that simply has not returned to be as strong as it was before COVID.
Domestically, Canadians are now scaling back their spending and travel plans, impacted by stubborn inflation, increasing carbon taxes and higher interest rates, which make everything more expensive and life more unaffordable. Internationally, visitors are simply not coming as they did before COVID.
After eight years under the Liberal Prime Minister, Canada's tourism reputation has been damaged, and our country's overall tourism economy has lost its competitive edge to other countries. For reasons, many related to the Liberal mismanagement of our tourism economy, visitors are simply not making Canada their destination of choice as they once did.
The reputational impacts on Canada's tourism industry that were caused by the mandatory use of the ArriveCAN app should not be downplayed or ignored. When this dysfunctional $54-million app was made mandatory for anyone entering Canada, the issues faced by travellers were countless. Moreover, the issues were being faced by just about every person trying to arrive here, at every point of entry, ranging from major airports to land borders and international bridge crossings.
My riding of Niagara Falls is the number one leisure tourism destination in Canada, employing over 40,000 tourism workers. Before the pandemic, it was generating over $2.1 billion in tourism receipts. My riding includes the city of Niagara Falls, the town of Fort Erie and the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake. As a border riding, we also have four international bridge crossings, with at least one bridge in each municipality.
From day one, simply put, the ArriveCAN app was an utter failure. Its impacts were so severe that I felt compelled to bring forward a motion to study this issue at committee. Upon agreement, we undertook this study, which eventually produced the sixth report, along with the motion and the amendment that we are debating here today. While I sincerely appreciate our committee's work on producing this report, the fact is that new and very troubling information about ArriveCAN has surfaced, beyond its astronomical price tag, which now stands at approximately $54 million. These issues should be of great concern to all parliamentarians, partisan politics aside, no matter one's political stripe. New allegations of misconduct, including identity theft, forged resumés, contractual theft, fraudulent billing, price-fixing and collusion involving contractors, ghost contractors and senior bureaucrats have emerged. Canadian taxpayers deserve answers.
I look forward to hearing from my colleague, the member for Calgary Midnapore, as she expands on some of these shocking revelations.
There is a reason we now call the app and its implications “arrive scam”. Given that new information about ArriveCAN that we simply cannot ignore has come to light, it is only reasonable to support this amendment to the motion to extend the ArriveCAN study to get to the bottom of these issues. As badly as the Liberal-NDP coalition wants to move on and forget about its mistakes, bad decision-making and reckless spending, there is still a lot of unfinished business to take care of from the pandemic years, and the ArriveCAN app absolutely must be included in this.
I see a trend growing here, whether it is the refusal to review $15.5 billion in potentially ineligible pandemic wage benefit payments because it is not worth the effort, wasting more than $600 million on a risky pandemic election or not caring that $54 million was required to develop the dysfunctional ArriveCAN app. The reckless and wasteful NDP-Liberal coalition has become far too complacent with the tax dollars of hard-working Canadians. It must realize it has a spending addiction that is costing Canadians and the country dearly. It is our job as the opposition to hold the government to account. That is why I support my colleague's amendment to the motion, to amend the sixth report to include reference to the $54 million of hard-earned Canadian tax dollars wasted on the application, the inaccurate evidence government officials provided during the committee's investigation, the serious allegations of fraudulent contract practices and the statement made by the RCMP that it is investigating criminality in the contracts that were awarded. Now the Auditor General of Canada wants to update Canadians on where all the money went.
Canadians deserve answers. The people of Niagara deserve answers. This government's obstinance in removing the application until the fall of 2022 denied tourism recovery to those in my community and throughout Canada who were looking for it so badly. To add insult to injury, it is a government that feigned interest in responding to the concerns of our tourism community and simply did not care to ensure that hard-working Canadian taxpayers' dollars would be protected. Instead, we are now continually bombarded by scandalous revelations on how an application that could have been developed over a weekend wound up costing Canadians $54 million.
After eight years in office, the tired and inept government and Prime Minister are not worth the cost. Let us get Canadians the answers they deserve. It is simply the common-sense thing to do.
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- Nov/1/23 7:05:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I take issue with my colleague's comments on our role as the opposition.
In fact, I called for, at the international trade committee, the study of ArriveCAN in the winter of 2022. That is why we are here today. It is because of the negative impacts that application had on the tourism community. We lost two years because of COVID. We lost a third year of tourism because of the ArriveCAN app and its implications for the tourism sector.
What were the impacts on the tourism community in your riding? Why is it that you are criticizing us for wanting to continue to raise and alleviate the concerns we are trying to look at with the tourism sector?
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