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Decentralized Democracy

Member of Parliament

Warren Steinley

  • Member of Parliament
  • Member of Parliament
  • Conservative
  • Regina—Lewvan
  • Saskatchewan
  • Voting Attendance: 67%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $123,656.05

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 291 - Mar/19/24
Mr. Warren Steinley (Regina—Lewvan, CPC)
Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to join this debate on this private member's bill, Bill C-293. There are a lot of conversations going around now about how a different approach to the pandemic would have looked. I want to go back a little and talk about how the pandemic did evolve, what the decisions by government were and how we should have a review of that. However, that review cannot be done by one of the Prime Minister's ski buddies. As my colleague, the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, said, it needs to be a transparent review. It was not too long ago that Canadians were not able to come together to celebrate Christmas or Easter. I remember Canadians were not able to celebrate birthdays or funerals with one another or with family. That happened so quickly. It drove a wedge between Canadians. That is what the Prime Minister is so very good at, wedging and dividing Canadians. That is what we saw with the government's approach during the pandemic. We saw the government stigmatize people who made different health choices. We saw people who were literally not able to travel. We saw people who wanted to work but due to a personal health choice were unable to go to work. Therefore, they were fired and were unable to support their families. I think we learned a lot through the process of the pandemic. Coming out of it on the other end, where we are now, I believe Canadians would never go back and agree to the decisions that were made over that period of time. We did have a review of the approach the government took, and it was found that the use of the Emergencies Act was unconstitutional. The constitutional rights of Canadians were broken by the government. How can we then have the same government put people in charge of doing yet another review? Trust has been broken. That is something that takes a long time to build back. There are so many things that happened during the months of the pandemic. We are now seeing that money was flying out the door, whether it be through CERB or CEBA, and how that money was allocated inappropriately. The flagship of inappropriate spending that we see right now is the arrive scam app. Literally, a two-person company was given $20 million of taxpayers' money, and it did not have any IT expertise. It is unbelievable, as we are looking at some of this. Mr. Kevin Lamoureux: It was millions from Harper too. Mr. Warren Steinley: Madam Speaker, my colleague, the current member for Winnipeg North, who is in trouble in his riding, is trying to get in as many words as possible. It is interesting that every time he thinks something is inappropriate, he says “Stephen Harper”. I actually feel quite bad for the member for Winnipeg North, because former prime minister Stephen Harper has been living rent-free in this guy's head for years, and we know how expensive rent is right now. It must be nice for Mr. Harper to have that ability. There is a fair bit of room there, so I think he would be quite comfortable. It does come down to what the Liberals say time and time again. If something goes wrong, they say, “Stephen Harper did it differently.” I guarantee that Stephen Harper would have done the pandemic differently. There would not have been billions of dollars spent on things that did not need to be done. The allocation of funds to Liberal friends would not have happened—
611 words
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