- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $170,231.20
- Government Page
- Apr/15/24 7:16:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in conclusion, it is somewhat ironic that it is a Liberal member who wants us to be remembering what happened during the pandemic. Frankly, I would expect Liberal members to want us to forget what they did during the pandemic. I would not have expected this, but the Liberals should be offering a grovelling apology to the Canadian people for their disastrous record over the course of the pandemic and should be hoping that people forget afterward.
The reality of the government's approach to the pandemic was that it showed capricious disregard for the basic civil liberties of Canadians. It showed disregard for the law. It sought to demonize people who disagreed. It saw the pandemic as an opportunity to spend outrageous sums of money, and in many cases, it was on things completely unrelated to the pandemic. It aggressively demonized people who would disagreed with it. That is the government's pandemic record. It shows a lack of respect for taxpayers' dollars and a lack of respect for constitutionally protected fundamental human rights.
Let us go back to the very beginning. Then finance minister Bill Morneau, of course with the full encouragement and co-operation of the Prime Minister, tried to use the pandemic as an excuse to bring in legislation that would have given the government the power to raise taxes without the permission of Parliament. That group of Canadians, when the pandemic hit, was immediately thinking how they could use it as an opportunity to raise taxes.
The Liberals have a one-track mind over there. There was a global health crisis, and they saw it as their opportunity to raise taxes, to take over more control from Canadians and to undermine fundamental rights. They did that during the pandemic. They wanted to be able to assume, within the executive, all the powers of Parliament. That was the government's attitude to the pandemic. It is unbelievable.
I do not support this legislation. I wish Liberal members of Parliament would have more ambition with their private member's bills than to just have more days for this and days for that. Actually, I do not. I am glad they do not have more ambition because I can only imagine what kind of terrible ideas they would come up with.
While we are talking about remembering what happened during the pandemic, I hope government members will take an opportunity to apologize for how they tried to abuse the circumstances of the pandemic to undermine the rights of Canadians, to attack taxpayers and to demonize people who disagreed with them.
The pandemic is behind us, but we should never forget what it revealed about the kind of Prime Minister and the kind of government we have.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise to speak to Bill C-293 from my friend across the way. I think the last time I spoke to this bill, I was suggesting some slogans for his leadership campaign, but I continue to wish him very well in all of his personal endeavours. He did very well, although he did not take my advice to go with the slogan I suggested at the time.
I do, more seriously, want to recall and build on some comments I made in my last intervention on this bill regarding the impact the pandemic has had on our communities and the need to seriously reckon with some of the challenges that have resulted from that.
The last time I spoke in the House on this bill, I said that I wanted to conclude by saying that I am very concerned about some of the social and cultural impacts of this pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, we were already seeing trends where there was a breakdown of traditional community and greater political polarization. People were less likely to be involved in neighbourhood and community organizations, community leagues, faith organizations and those kinds of things, which were becoming more polarized along political lines. Those existing trends were dramatically accelerated through the pandemic, when the restrictions made it difficult for people to gather together in the kind of traditional community structures that had existed previously, and we have seen a heightened political polarization with people being divided on the basis of their views on masks and their vaccination status.
As we evaluate what happened during the pandemic, and this is more of a cultural work than a political work, we need to think about how we can bring our communities back together, reconcile people across these kinds of divides and try to rebuild the kinds of communities we had previously where people would put aside politics and were willing to get together and focus on what united them.
Over the last two weeks, with the exception of some arrive scam hearings that brought us to Ottawa, most of us were in our constituencies connecting with our constituents. I had a number of round tables and discussions with my constituents. It has really come to the fore again and again, as I have talked to people since the pandemic, how the failures of government during the pandemic impacted trust in government decision-making and, indeed, trust in our institutions. It would be desirable for people to be able to trust our institutions, but that trust has to be earned. Government policy-makers and public institutions cannot demand trust simply by virtue of the positions they hold. They have to earn that trust by demonstrating themselves to be trustworthy.
For many Canadians, the pandemic was a demonstration that institutions they had trusted were not as effective as they had thought they would be and were not defending their concerns or their interests. People were affected by the pandemic in various ways. They were, of course, forced apart from each other. They were also impacted by draconian policies that demonized people and punished people for personal health choices.
This has not just affected that moment in time. It is not just something that happened in the past during the pandemic and is now over. There have been profound consequences in social trust as a result of those events, and it was a result of the fact that the government was not prepared for this.
In the years before the pandemic started, in the years leading up to it, the government was not attending to the appropriate stockpiles of materials. Then the government madly thrashed around, giving different advice, such as saying one should not mask and then that one should mask. Initially, the public health authority said that masking was counterproductive and then reversed that recommendation. Initially, we were told to take any available vaccine, and then we were told to actually take these ones as opposed to those ones.
There was inconsistency, and I think a lack of humility, in the kinds of pronouncements that were made by governing authorities. This has affected social trust in significant ways, and understandably so.
We had an exchange on this specific point recently, during the break, at the public accounts committee, where, in the process of Conservatives criticizing aspects of government decisions, a Liberal member said we should not do that because that is impacting social trust. Our view is that government institutions have to earn trust, and it is our job as the opposition to hold them accountable for their failures.
Therefore, it is through accountability, through honest reckoning with the failures of government and other public institutions, that we are able to come to the kind of reconciliation that is required. I do think there is a stock-taking required. Although Conservatives do not support this bill because there are some significant problems in the way the proposed reviews are structured, as my colleagues have pointed out, there is a need for a fulsome and independent reckoning. The government failed in so many different ways in the course of its management of the pandemic and the kinds of decisions it made throughout.
In my own constituency, from conversations I have, people now struggle to believe anything they hear from the government or any other kind of official institution because of how badly betrayed they felt by the inconsistencies and the demonization that happened during the pandemic. We need to have a government that does its job, that plans for crises effectively and that understands its responsibility to earn the trust of Canadians rather than demand the trust of Canadians. Governments ought to try to earn people's trust through the work they do.
At the same time I think about the kinds of processes that should happen for investigations of this nature, and they require authentic independence. We see over and over again with the government that, when it wants us to be looking at or investigating some kind of issue, it always wants that investigation to be something where it can control the outcome. We are dealing with this issue, for instance, in the government's approach to the arrive scam scandal.
Every independent investigation has been extremely critical of government procurement. The government has now said it is going to have an internal investigation within CBSA by an investigator who is within and reports to the chain of command within CBSA. Inevitably, that is a process that can be controlled by the government, and the people who should be held accountable through that process actually cannot be held accountable effectively because the investigator is part of that internal structure. Again, we see a process proposed in this private member's bill that has similar obvious kinds of flaws.
To review the key points, the government failed profoundly during the pandemic. It contradicted itself and spent a great deal of money on matters that were not pandemic related. We saw it, in the early days of the pandemic, pursue this horrifying power grab, trying to seize on the worry that existed at the beginning of the pandemic, saying it wanted to have the power to effectively make law without Parliament. Conservatives pushed back and put a stop to that. Then we saw how it tried to use the circumstances of the pandemic to create division and conflict within this country at the expense of certain Canadians who were making certain choices.
There is a need for a reckoning, but it has to be an honest reckoning. We need a government that is prepared to do the work to rebuild trust, not a government, like the Liberals, that continually fails Canadians yet demands their faith and trust in spite of all these failures. We need a government that is honest with Canadians and works to get things done for their good.
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- Jan/31/24 8:52:56 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, what a striking piece of legislation we have in front of us from a Liberal member of Parliament. In the same period here that the government has had its hand slapped by the court for the way it acted during the pandemic, we have a Liberal member who wants us to be aware and have an awareness day for the pandemic. By the way, it is sort of a running joke here that the Liberals' solution to every problem, the go-to for every issue, is an awareness day.
It is very rare that members of Parliament have an opportunity to actually bring forward a private member's bill for debate and a vote. However, instead of putting forward substantive changes to the law, things that would impact people's lives, the member across the way, who is not a new member and who has had a long time to think about what kind of private member's bill to put forward, chose an awareness day, as if anybody was not aware of the pandemic. However, let us be aware of the pandemic while we are here and while the member opposite said that her biggest idea for a private member's bill is a day dedicated to awareness about the pandemic.
Let us be aware of what happened during the pandemic, and let us be aware of what the Federal Court said about what this government did during the pandemic. We have a ruling from the Federal Court that the decision of the government to use the Emergencies Act during the pandemic was unconstitutional and was a violation of the charter.
It is interesting because this government has, for a long time, tried to wrap itself in the charter. However, it has shown complete disdain for the charter when it gets in the way of its desire to demonize people who disagree with it and to divide Canadians. This has become clear. What typifies the value system of the Prime Minister is not the Charter of Rights and Freedoms but his admiration for the basic dictatorships that he sees in other countries. That has been clear from what he said, and that has been clear from what he did during the pandemic.
During the pandemic, we had very difficult situations. Governments around the world tried to grapple with how they could respond to the challenges and how they could adjust quickly to those realities. I recall standing here in this place and making a simple recommendation. I said that we should look to and learn from the countries that were the most successful at reducing transmission, and those tended to be our East Asian democratic partners, countries that put in place effective border measures at the beginning and that built up a stockpile of necessary equipment and that took a collaborative approach around things like masking and contact tracing.
I said very clearly at the beginning that we should be learning from countries like Taiwan and South Korea. Unfortunately, the World Health Organization failed to engage with Taiwan, in particular, and learn from what Taiwan was doing well. I asked questions in the House as well about the failure of the Liberal government to engage with Taiwan and to push the World Health Organization to engage with Taiwan.
If we look at those early months, when the government said that any limitations on what happens at the border would be unacceptable. Representatives of the government said that masks did not work. All kinds of things were said in the early weeks and months of the pandemic, on which the government subsequently reversed itself.
On some level, I think Canadians would have some sympathy for leaders who made mistakes in the early days of the pandemic if they had the humility to acknowledge that they did not know everything, that they understood the challenges and that they were doing their best to learn as things went along. However, the government showed a complete lack of humility in relation to the differences of perspective that existed in the context of the pandemic. In fact, this government tried to marginalize and demonize those who had a different point of view.
That demonization escalated as the process went along. When vaccines became available, of course Canadians were reading what they could, trying to understand, trying to learn about the approach they wanted to take and evaluate personal health choices in the context of the information that was coming out. However, the Prime Minister tried to discriminate against and demonize people who chose not to get the vaccine.
Particularly bizarrely, the Prime Minister tried to enforce a requirement where, for people who were working alone in the cab of their truck and did not have interactions with other people, for the most part, in the course of their work, as their nature of their work was to sit behind the wheel by themselves and drive, the effect of the policy he imposed was that they could not engage in cross-border trucking if they were not vaccinated. That provoked a strong response from Canadians; it was not just the policy but also the rhetoric, the name-calling against Canadians who had made different choices.
I think there was an opportunity for the Prime Minister to try to show leadership and say, “Look, here is my view. Here is the approach we feel we have to take, but I understand this is difficult and I want to bring Canadians together.” He did not take that approach. He wanted to try to divide Canadians for political reasons.
He had an opportunity again, when protesters came to Ottawa, to try to defuse the situation and to try to listen to the conversations that were happening, but he persisted in trying to use the events politically, including through the draconian imposition of the Emergencies Act, measures, or measures like them, that had not been used since another Trudeau was prime minister. These draconian measures have since been determined by the court to be unconstitutional.
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I had a slogan suggestion for his leadership campaign as well. It was “Get high in the polls”, but anyway, I will carry on with my remarks here. I wish my friend well, but I will not be supporting his bill.
This bill is about a review of our pandemic preparedness and comes out of the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, which, it is sort of cliche to say but it is obvious, is the seminal event in all of our lives that has had so many dramatic consequences. There are the health consequences for so many people, but also the social and cultural consequences of the pandemic that have deeply shaped us and will continue to shape us. Most of those consequences, quite frankly, are negative and require a reaction to the social and cultural damage that has been wrought as a result of the divisions that have been created through this pandemic, some of them maybe just incidental or unintended, but some of them very much intentionally sown.
It is right that we, as politicians, as leaders but also as a society in general, should be evaluating and reviewing the effects of the pandemic and asking what happened here, how we got some things so badly wrong, what were the things that we got right, and how we could approach future pandemics in a better way. In principle, I agree with the idea of having a postpandemic review and having in place provisions to ensure that there is a plan for future pandemics. I do not regard this bill, sadly, as a serious approach to those things.
I will just mention some aspects of this. One is that Liberals love to put forward new advisory councils appointed by government ministers. We saw this with their child care bill, Bill C-35. We are seeing this again with Bill C-293, where they are saying they have this issue they have to think about and therefore they are going to have an advisory council that is going to be responsible for advising the government about it. The minister responsible for that area is going to appoint the advisory council. By the way, the advisory council should be, in certain respects, diverse, reflective of different kinds of backgrounds, experiences and so forth.
However, what guarantees diversity of thought in an advisory mechanism is diversity in the appointment process, that is, bringing in multiple voices in determining who are the right people to sit on this advisory council. If a minister chooses who sits on the advisory council, then obviously they are going to be tempted to appoint people who share their pre-existing philosophy and who are not necessarily going to dig into providing the kind of criticism that is required of the government's approach.
Various members have put forward proposals in terms of the kind of broad-based, genuinely democratic postpandemic review that we would need to have. Many of those conversations are already going on. There should be a mechanism within the government to have this kind of review. I know various provinces are looking at this already. There should be international mechanisms around pandemic review. All these things are important, but those review processes should not be a top-down, controlled whitewash. They should be authentically empowered to hold governments accountable, to ask whether we got some big things wrong in the context of the pandemic, why we got them wrong, and how we could ensure we fix those issues.
In the time I have left, let me highlight some of the things I think we got badly wrong about the pandemic, and some of the ways we need to think about how we go forward.
There were a lot of things that we did not know about COVID-19 when it started. Let us acknowledge that it was probably inevitable that we were going to get some things wrong, but at a basic level we should have had the stockpile of PPE that was required. This was coming out of past pandemics, so that people could eventually come to conclusions such as to what degree certain kinds of masks limit, or not, the spread of the virus. At the very beginning, before we knew anything, it would have been a good kind of default to say, let us make sure that we have protective equipment in place and that we have that stockpile available so that it could be available to people.
It was out of the discussion after the SARS pandemic a couple of decades ago that we created the Public Health Agency, which was supposed to help us be prepared for these things. We were not prepared. We did not have the stockpiles of PPE. In fact, we sent away PPE at a critical juncture early in the pandemic. There was a lack of preparedness, particularly around having the equipment that was required.
Members will recall, and it is important to recall, that the leading public health authorities in this country and in the U.S. said not to use masks and that masks are ineffective or even counterproductive. That was the message at the beginning. Likely, part of the reason that message was pushed, in a context where doctors and nurses were using that equipment but the general public was told not to use these things because they are counterproductive, was that there was a shortage of supply. The government could have been more honest about acknowledging the fact that there was a shortage of supply and that it had failed to plan and prepare for that reality.
This speaks to another point. There is the lack of preparedness in terms of having the PPE available, but also we would have been much better off if governments and public health authorities had been more willing to openly acknowledge the things they did not know. I think early discussions around masking were a good example of the tone we had. People were told that if they were for masking when they were supposed to be against masking, they were anti-science and they were pushing an anti-science message. Later, there was the revision, in terms of the government's messaging.
Our public health authorities and governments could have shown a greater degree of humility right at the beginning of the pandemic and said that there were just things they did not know and that masking was a reasonable precautionary measure. However, it was a very assertive approach that carried itself throughout the pandemic with respect to any diversity of opinion in terms of pandemic strategy. If people were disagreeing with the prevailing consensus, then they were supposedly anti-science. As members have pointed out, the way science progresses is through some degree of open debate and challenging presumptions. The reality is that public health bodies and governments were expressing certainty about things that they were less than certain about.
Let us acknowledge that throughout the pandemic there were various revisions. I recall, for example, that when vaccines first came out the government's message was to take the first available vaccine. Then the government said not to take AstraZeneca and recommended Pfizer or Moderna but not AstraZeneca. At the same time as the government was not recommending AstraZeneca for Canadians, I had constituents who did what the government told them to do with the first shot, and now it was telling them that they were supposed to have a second shot of a different kind, which was apparently totally fine in Canada, whereas other countries were saying that people needed to have two doses of the same kind. I understand that as the science is unfolding there are going to be things we do not know, but if the government had been willing to acknowledge in a more honest, transparent way throughout that process that there were some things we did not know, we would have been much better off.
I want to conclude by saying that I am very concerned about some of the social and cultural impacts of this pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, we were already seeing trends where there was sort of a breaking down of traditional community and a greater political polarization. People were less likely to be involved in neighbourhood and community organizations, community leagues, faith organizations and these kinds of things and were becoming more polarized along political lines. Those existing trends were dramatically accelerated through the pandemic, where the restrictions made it difficult for people to gather together in the kind of traditional community structures that had existed previously, and we have seen a heightened political polarization, with people being divided on the basis of their views on masks and their vaccination status.
As we evaluate what happened in the pandemic, and this is more of a cultural work than a political work, we need to think about how we can bring our communities back together, reconcile people across these kinds of divides and try to rebuild the kinds of communities we had previously, where people put politics aside and were willing to get together and focus on what united them.
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- Oct/4/22 6:43:32 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak today about a subject very close to my heart, which is the contribution that Taiwan could make to global discussions around health.
The report we are debating and seeking to concur in reflects a motion proposed by my colleague from Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes. I want to congratulate him for his excellent work on the health file and in supporting Taiwan's contributions when it comes to global health conversations. I know he is a strong advocate in the House and a great friend of Taiwan.
I want to focus my comments today on two specific points. First, I want to speak to Taiwan's own success in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, and how Canada and other countries could have benefited from engaging with and listening to Taiwan more.
I recognize that our engagement with Taiwan, and pushing for its inclusion in these kinds of COVID discussions is, in part, out of a commitment to support Taiwan and its democracy. It is also in our own self-interest when we engage with and learn from Taiwan. If we hear its experiences and perspectives, we are better off. When we trade more with Taiwan, it helps to create jobs and opportunities here in Canada. There are various other examples.
I am going to speak first to Taiwan's success with COVID-19 and how we could all benefit, but I want to spend some time as well addressing some of the current issue of escalating threats from the mainland government towards Taiwan. We can learn from our failure to deter the Russian invasion of Ukraine to talk about the steps we need to take now to respond to the threats that are being made toward Taiwan.
Let me talk about Taiwan's success in response to COVID-19. Right when the COVID-19 pandemic started to be a major issue here in Canada, all of us as politicians were trying to grapple with what we should do about it. We were wondering what things we should have been proposing and what things we should be have been talking about.
The discussion quickly shifted to support measures to support Canadians and businesses through those circumstances. Those were important conversations, but in a way, a prior conversation was about how we minimize the impact of the virus. How do we manage the public health side of it so that more people can continue to work, and be out and about if possible?
My approach was to look around the world at the data from different countries on the impact of COVID-19 on those countries and to ask which countries are doing the best in the world when it comes to responding to the pandemic, then bringing those insights to the House and saying to the government that we are able to observe that infection rates and death rates are lower in certain places than others and asking if we could we try to emulate the approach being taken by countries which have been more successful at responding to this pandemic.
Looking at the numbers at the time and since, it was very clear that, in particular, it was some of those East Asian democracies, particularly Taiwan and South Korea, that had been extremely successful in their response to COVID-19, both in the early days and since. Notably, these East Asian democracies are much more densely populated than Canada, and they are much closer to the epicentre of the outbreak of the pandemic. Just considering those factors, one might assume that they would be more vulnerable to the spread of COVID-19. However, these places had very effective strategies in their responses.
At the time, I asked the then health minister, and I think members of my side have repeated it, recognizing how successful these East Asian democracies had been in responding to the pandemic, if we could learn from their experience. Of course, they were learning from past experience. These countries had dealt with, to a much great extent than we did, previous SARS outbreaks.
It was clear from the data that Taiwan was succeeding. The government of Taiwan was pushing the message internationally that Taiwan could help if we were to recognize Taiwan's participation in international conversations around health. It was about including Taiwan and giving it the opportunity to participate on an equal basis, as it should. It was also about recognizing that Taiwan had been so successful in its response to COVID that it could contribute and share its insights. If we had been more prepared to push for the inclusion of Taiwan, and if the global community had included Taiwan in more of these conversations and listened to them, many people would be alive today who are tragically not. The concrete benefits of Taiwanese inclusion, I think, were very clear.
What were the strategies that Taiwan deployed? Right from the beginning, the Government of Taiwan was encouraging masking as a tool for responding to the pandemic. Right from the beginning, Taiwan had in place strong border measures. There were mandatory quarantines for those who were coming from elsewhere. Taiwan did not take the information that was coming from the Government of China at face value. Taiwan had enough experience to realize that there was a high risk of misinformation from a Communist government. That should not be a particularly novel insight. It should be fairly obvious that authoritarian Communist regimes pushing misinformation and disinformation is part of what they do, but I think when it came to issues of health, we were a bit too naive on that. Taiwan had strong masking and strong border measures.
Also, for our East Asian democratic partners, moving quickly on putting in place testing protocols and tracing were parts of a successful toolkit, which included being critical of information that was coming out of the mainland, masking, border measures, and testing and tracing. It is easy to forget perhaps, but right at the beginning those insights were very different from what was being pushed by members of the government. A representative of the government, the chief public health officer, had implied at committee that it would be bigoted to impose border restrictions in response to the pandemic. That led to a slowed-down response.
Of course, the irony with the government is that it put in place the wrong measures at the wrong time. We should have had strong border measures at the beginning. We did not have those strong border measures, and then the government persisted in having ineffective border restrictions much later, even after the point when the virus was already in different parts of the world and most Canadians were vaccinated. The border measures were particularly important at the beginning to try to keep the virus from getting here, to try to delay its arrival on our shores, but once the virus was actively very present in all countries, border measures obviously had less utility.
If we had listened to Taiwan, and if we had learned from Taiwan's insights, we would have been able to respond earlier and respond faster. It is also easy to forget that public health authorities in Canada and the United States were discouraging mask use at the beginning of this pandemic at a time when, of course, the science was there about the value of masks at that time because, again, Taiwan and other East Asian democracies were using masks and supporting the use of masks.
It was perplexing to a lot of people when we were told by the government to trust what public health authorities were saying, yet public health authorities of similar stature in other countries were saying different things. The science on the pandemic should not have been different from country to country. What I and other members of our caucus suggested at the time was to look at what the public health authorities are saying in those countries that had been the most successful and effective in their response to the pandemic.
We should have been listening to Taiwan. We should have been moving quickly to have those testing and tracing border measures in place early. Had we done that, I think we would have been able to avoid devastating lockdowns that significantly exacerbated mental health challenges for many Canadians and caused many businesses to go under.
If we had taken that strategic approach, learning from Taiwan, South Korea and other partners in East Asia, we could have done so much better, which speaks to the value of including Taiwan and the benefits to Canada for including its perspective on public health.
Let us recognize that Taiwan donated a significant number of masks to Canada and other countries in that early phase, but I think, unfortunately, some of the initial incorrect information alleging the masks did not work from the government may have reflected the fact that it did not have enough masks available for those who needed them. At the time, when there was a shortage of masks, Taiwan really stepped up to try to support other countries around the world.
As well, broadening the conversation a bit, there are so many benefits for Canada associated with the inclusion of Taiwan and more international organizations and active engagement with Taiwan on the trade front. I am proud to represent an energy-producing riding in western Canada. Many of our partners in East Asia, and Japan is another example, do not have the same steady, certain access to energy from like-minded countries that we take for granted here in Canada. We should be working to export more of our energy resources and build partnerships where we can sell our natural resources to Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and other East Asian democratic partners. I think there is an immense opportunity to expand our trading relationship with Taiwan. Energy is one example, but I think there are many other examples as well.
Of course, we could talk about the positives, about how Taiwan can help with the global response to future pandemics and other health conversations that may come up about how increasing trade between Taiwan and Canada would be very beneficial for our economy. We need to recognize, alongside those positive opportunities, the storm clouds that are on the horizon as well. We have seen escalating threats and very menacing behaviour from the Government of China toward Taiwan, and this comes in the wake of the illegal genocidal invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin's regime.
I very much think that the Government of China has been watching the Russian invasion of Ukraine and contemplating its own actions with respect to Taiwan, and we can see the close partnership between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin as well as how some of the same kinds of rhetoric are being used toward Taiwan that was and continues to be used toward Ukraine. If Xi Jinping is observing and learning, we should also note what has happened with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and do all we can to prevent a repeat situation, where authoritarian power invades a neighbouring democracy and denies it its right to exist and the right of its people to self-determination.
What are the lessons we can learn? One is that we need to be clearer and firmer upfront in trying to deter that invasion. I think a big part of why Putin chose the path he did was because we were not effective enough at deterring that invasion. Signals were sent from certain western powers that suggested to Putin that Ukraine would be on its own if it was invaded. Many countries have stepped up to supply weapons and apply debilitating sanctions and the Ukrainian army has been very successful thus far, so the war did not go the way Putin expected it to go, fortunately. However, if we had been able to send stronger signals earlier about the supports that would be there, then we might have been able to deter this aggression in the first place.
We need to be willing to pursue peace through strength. That is, in the case of a prospective invasion of Taiwan by China, we need to send clear meaningful signals about what we would do to support Taiwan. The goal of sending those signals is, of course, to prevent the invasion in the first place. If we want peace, we have to be strong and firm in deterring aggression.
The risk is that Putin's invasion of Ukraine kind of sets a precedent. It changes norms in the world, such that other countries start to think they can get away with using force to take territory within what they consider their historical sphere of influence. Therefore, defeating Putin in Ukraine is important for Ukraine's sake and for Russia's sake, as we hope for a free and democratic Russia to replace the Putin regime, but it is also important in terms of the precedent it sets for the world.
I hope that, in the context of the bellicose rhetoric toward Taiwan that we have seen, we would be clear and firm in standing with Taiwan in terms of our preparation for the possibility of aggression, but also be clear in standing with Taiwan in terms of the everyday opportunities to include Taiwan in international conversations, in the World Health Assembly, in ICAO and in international conversations around a broad range of issues, and by recognizing the contributions Taiwan can make in terms of trade with Canada. There are many different ways we can collaborate with Taiwan, and we should pursue that collaboration to a much greater extent. The Canadian government needs to step up more and do more to support our friends and allies in Taiwan.
If I can make a couple more points going back on the issue of Taiwan's COVID response, some of the commentary coming out of COVID recognized a bit of a scattered response in certain western countries, and certainly in Canada, and the lack of preparedness from the government for this crisis. Some people said maybe China handled this better than democratic countries and asked if this was another case where supposedly the authoritarian model was more effective. Then, we look at the success of Taiwan, South Korea and other East Asian democracies, and it becomes very clear that democracies actually handled the pandemic better. If we look at comparable areas, in terms of experience with pandemics, geography and other factors, it was democratic countries that were more effective in their response.
We continue to see that today, where Taiwan, and I think this is characteristic of democracies, is adapting its approach. It has moved away from a COVID-zero approach and now it is adapting to more of a “living with the virus” type of approach. It has been appropriately able to respond to the virus and also adapt in response to new information, whereas the Government of China has been really calcified in its response, and we are seeing a very brutal application of a COVID-zero policy on the mainland.
I think it is an important point to reflect on how Taiwan's adaptability and success really outshines the response on the mainland and it outshines many other countries. This underlines the importance of engagement with Taiwan, of strong relations, of learning from Taiwan and also of supporting fellow democracies by building partnerships with Taiwan and with other democracies all over the world.
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Madam Speaker, I would be happy to have that debate in detail at another time. I think that, in front of us, we are discussing the issue of affordability for Canadians. There is a lot of work to be done on the health care front. There is no doubt about that. There have been many challenges that have been exposed through the COVID pandemic that require significant work.
I look forward to further analyzing, discussing and debating those issues when that issue is up for debate in the House.
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- Apr/6/22 3:45:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the next petition I am tabling is about the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically drawing the attention of the House to the various evidence and scientific literature about the connection between low vitamin D levels and higher risk of COVID-19. The petitioners cite various medical analyses that have been done and note further that people get vitamin D from sunlight exposure. Increased awareness about the way they get vitamin D, and the benefits of it, are important, especially in a cold climate where people spend relatively less time outside. The petitioners want the government to recognize the emerging scientific evidence that low levels of vitamin D are associated with poor outcomes from COVID-19, and work to increase public awareness of the importance of maintaining recommended vitamin D levels.
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- Apr/4/22 6:41:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the next petition I am tabling also relates to the COVID-19 pandemic, and it is about the importance of vitamin D. It notes that an early systematic review of applicable scientific literature found that blood vitamin D status can determine the risk of being infected with COVID-19, the seriousness of COVID-19 and mortality from COVID-19. Additionally, it further recommends the public maintain appropriate levels of vitamin D to be able to cope with the pandemic.
Petitioners cite various other statistics involving the relationship between low vitamin D levels and higher risk from COVID-19. Petitioners note that people get vitamin D from sunlight exposure, so during the season when Canadians are less likely to spend time outdoors, increasing awareness of vitamin D is particularly important.
Petitioners call on the Government of Canada to take the following actions: recognize the emerging scientific evidence that low levels of vitamin D are associated with worse outcomes from COVID-19 and work to increase public awareness of the importance of individuals maintaining recommended levels of vitamin D.
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Mr. Speaker, it is important to understand what was particular about that moment in March and April of 2020. We did not have many of the tools that we now have.
Our view as a party is that we should be moving beyond a virtual Parliament and having these debates in person. Nonetheless, we have these tools available to us. These tools were not even available at the beginning of the pandemic.
We had to do some exceptional things with the hope and understanding that we would correct any mistakes that were made, and that they would not be setting any precedents. The government has been reluctant to correct errors, but it has also tried to use a very limited set of circumstances to justify extending that precedent and using draconian programming motions whenever it wants to, going forward. That is unacceptable. That is a permanent undermining of the effectiveness of our democratic institutions.
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Mr. Speaker, I first wish to thank the Bloc Québécois members for voting for our motion.
It is too bad we did not have more support from other members in other parties.
The motion was clear in calling on the government to put forward a plan to end all mandates, and of course many Canadians would like to see that plan involve unwinding these mandates as quickly as possible, especially when many of these mandates were not based on science and did not make sense in the first place. There was never a reason to have this trucker mandate in place. They are people who work alone and had an exemption throughout the entirety of the pandemic up until January. These things were never based on science in the first place. The government has no data to justify its decision to say someone has to be vaccinated and that a rapid test is not a legitimate alternative for air travel.
These are the points we have made. I think it is legitimate and right for us to be clear and principled in opposing these mandates while not—
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Mr. Speaker, I am not going to disagree with the member, but here is the point: We were saying these things in the House two years ago, and the record shows it. The record shows that in my very first interventions in March 2020, I said to the Minister of Health that we should look at the countries that have been most successful at fighting the virus and do the things they did. I suggested looking at Taiwan, South Korea and countries that deployed this kind of testing and these tracing regimes, and those proposals were, at the time, dismissed by the health minister, who allegedly was the authority on all things science.
It is great to see this late-stage conversion. As we are likely moving out of the pandemic phase of COVID-19, it is great to see the government now say that testing is important, but I think we need to recognize the reality of what is happening here and the clear failure of the government to be on this train when it would have made that much more of a difference.
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