Hon. Leo Housakos: My question is for the government leader in the Senate. I’d like to take us back, unfortunately, to COVID-19 which was a terrible time for all Canadians, and directly and indirectly touched us all.

Government leader, I have to rise today to ask questions about Canadians who were intimidated, persecuted and victimized by the incompetence of this Trudeau government, particularly with regard to your tool — which was, on many occasions, brought into question here — called ArriveCAN or, as I called it during COVID, “ArriveCAN’T.” Will your government apologize and pay reparations to those Canadians who, despite using the app, were forced into quarantine because of glitches in the app, as well as those who presented their paper copy proof of vaccination upon re-entry to Canada but were fined for not using the app itself, including Canadians like Joanne Walsh?

What does your government intend to do? Does your government have any plans to compensate these Canadians whose right to enter this country unimpeded was breached because the Trudeau government just couldn’t admit that they messed up and their ArriveCAN “ArriveCOULDN’T”?

Senator Housakos: Government leader, on a number of occasions, I brought my preoccupation to you on this very floor while this injustice was happening to Canadians. This has nothing to do with protecting Canadians from COVID; this was just a messed up, inappropriate process — that the government put into place — that unfairly persecuted Canadians. Canadians who were exercising their legitimate right to return home were slapped with fines of as much as $8,500, despite showing proof of vaccination. They were then threatened with more fines of as much as $750,000 if caught breaking quarantine — quarantine was used as a punitive measure rather than a medical one.

Was it to pay for your government’s total failure on that ill‑conceived, terrible and costly app? You saw the bill going up and up. I asked you about that in the middle of COVID on this very floor.

Is this just another revenue grab? Is that why innocent, law‑abiding citizens were wrongfully ordered to quarantine: to pay for this government’s failure in regard to this app? Why this injustice?

Senator Housakos: Thank you, Senator Loffreda, for expressing very eloquently the government’s point of view as independently as you might have done. I will, independently of course, ask some questions on behalf of taxpayers in this country — starting with the fact that we saw the Auditor General put out a report very recently calling into question $27.4 billion of COVID spending that you allotted the government. Of course, we participated in getting a lot of that COVID spending out the door very quickly. Clearly now, the Auditor General has questioned the transparency of a lot of that spending.

What in this bill — what mechanisms — and what action has the government taken to make sure that a lot of the programs you just highlighted, and a lot of the new spending that will be taking place, will have better checks and balances than, clearly, the previous couple of budgets that we approved?

Senator Loffreda: Thank you for the question, Senator Housakos. It’s very relevant as, in my previous life, I was an auditor — way back more than 20 years. I started in 1984. How many years is that? I lost count. It’s 38 years, right? So it’s over 20 years.

But I think what does matter here is there are a lot of measures that are there for tax avoidance. A lot of measures are there to show that fiscal responsibility is imperative. I think the government is showing that.

You are right; the Auditor General did state that there has been a lot of COVID spending that has been distributed that must be recovered. We have to recover those funds, so we have to put measures in place to adequately look over as to how they could be recovered.

But this bill — Bill C-32 — is basically the Fall Economic Statement. It’s going forward. It’s putting in measures of tax avoidance, updating the Income Tax Act and looking at ways that we could go against tax avoidance. I’m fully in support of these measures in the bill. Hopefully, in the future, we will have additional measures that will be productive, and go against the unnecessary COVID spending that did occur.

Senator Housakos: Senator Gold, as mentioned, two of the most COVID-locked-down nations in the world during this pandemic, New Zealand and Australia, have dropped their vaccine requirements for international travellers. Others are going even further. Nations, like our allies in the United Kingdom, have dropped all restrictions, including masking when travelling on planes.

You just mentioned, Senator Gold, what I think is not accurate. I do not see anywhere the Public Health Agency of Canada having put out a statement saying that the science backs up what this government is doing. Furthermore, if you can, also point out any medical journal around the world that will back up what this government is doing. If you have something that justifies this nothing-more-than-vindictive policy on the part of this government, please table it in this chamber in a concrete, written form.

Will you provide in this chamber the justification for what clearly the rest of the world and all our other allies don’t seem to be aligned with? Why are we continuing to have these restrictions?

Senator Housakos: Where I do disagree with you, senator, is your claim that there’s evidence that people that are older in age have a higher propensity of catching COVID. That I disagree with. There is a case that the dangers increase with people of a certain age. That I totally agree with.

Having said that, we have seen now that with people who are fully vaccinated, it has completely mitigated the risk factor of getting sick to a huge extent. We see it in our hospitals.

Furthermore, you can take a bunch of steps that we have taken in this institution to protect individuals as they do in every other place of work.

All I’m simply saying is that there is an inherent danger with COVID. Every single profession faces it — police officers; ambulance workers; doctors, on a daily basis; respiratory therapists, of which my wife is one. So if these people have been taking the steps in their professions to mitigate the risks but still show up to work, I think it’s incumbent on us to do the same thing, to take the mitigating steps to make sure that we can do our job in an effective fashion.

But it’s inexcusable that our committees are operating at a third of the output that they’re supposed to be operating at. It’s inexcusable that we’re sitting fewer days over the last two years as this country faces a huge crisis. And what we’ve done is, during that crisis — some legitimate, some illegitimate — is set world record spending with the least amount of oversight. So, yes, there has to be a balance.

But currently, the general view is — and this is my view — we have completely put all the emphasis on making sure we’re safe and not enough of an emphasis on making sure that we can do our jobs while being safe.

Senator Housakos: Government leader, COVID-19 was discovered more than two years ago, although that sometimes feels far longer. There were two things that the Trudeau government was known for during the pandemic: inconsistent messaging and poor communications. Both of these issues are evident in this fiasco.

Canadians deserve better. Leader, when the quarantine is lifted, will your government communicate with everyone who has been caught up in this mess to inform them that their quarantine is over?

As I said, many of these people are seniors. Some of them don’t have smart phones or mobile data. How will you communicate with these people to let them know that the policies have changed yet again and that they can now stop quarantining?