- Member of Parliament
- Liberal
- Vancouver Centre
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 57%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $106,078.52
- Government Page
- Jan/31/24 8:12:02 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think that is a very important point, and I think we know that zoonoses are on the rise. Once again, it is that people are in contact with the animal world more than we used to be in contact with them. We are visiting game farms. We have the ability to meet wild animals in the wild.
What we learned and must remember in this pandemic remembrance day is that zoonoses are very important. The transmission of viruses, bacteria and other diseases from animals to human beings is actually very possible.
I am glad the member asked that question because that is a reason for pandemic observance day. It is to remember that we have learned some things, and that is one of them.
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- Jan/31/24 8:01:59 p.m.
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moved that the bill be read the third time and passed.
She said: Madam Speaker, this is a simple bill. Everyone has heard about it. In simple language, the bill states that throughout Canada, each and every year, March 11 would be known as “pandemic observance day”.
There are about three reasons to do this. The first is to remember that, to date, 57,000 people in Canada have actually died from COVID-19, to remember and honour those people, and to also remember that 57,000 is more than all the Canadians who died in the Second World War. This is a huge number of people who died from a pandemic. We also need to remember their suffering and try to find how we can support all the people who are the family members and other bereaved people from throughout this crisis.
The second part of what we need to do is continue recovering from COVID-19. I use the word “continue” because since the so-called pandemic was lifted, 7,000 more Canadians have died. Up to today, that is the number. Therefore, we know that COVID has not disappeared; COVID actually continues to be a variant. It continues to adapt and change, as we know all viruses have a tendency to do. Each time, we do not know what the variant will be.
The important thing for us to do is remember that we are continuing to recover and that we must continue, therefore, to apply solid and strong public health commitments to what we do. In other words, we must continue to recognize that while this virus continues, we must wear masks when we are in an unventilated place, continue to wash our hands and continue to do all of the things we did during the pandemic, because we do not want to have the pandemic recur in large numbers.
We need to therefore remember the day and learn of the evolution of the pandemic. We have tests and vaccines. Get the tests, vaccines and booster shots. People must make sure they are protected. They do not want to be counted and increase the number from 57,000 to 58,000. Please reflect on that and remember that viruses are totally unpredictable.
We have independent, trusted science that we must remember, think about and follow, and we must make sure that Canadians are informed. If we are not worried and we think we are invulnerable, will never get COVID and can walk around ignoring it, we must remember that we have a duty to the people around us who could get sick and who could in fact be impacted by it. Let us not forget that this is a duty to others as well in a pandemic.
With respect to recovering from COVID, we must also remember that COVID-19 was a pandemic, the first true pandemic we have had since the influenza after the war. Therefore, what we need to remember about this is that there will no longer be epidemics; we are going to have pandemics. Because of globalization, people who have never travelled before are travelling all around the world and bringing back viruses, diseases and illnesses. We are talking about people from every corner of the globe. The transmission of any illness or disease is quicker and easier in this world of globalization. We need to remember this if a pandemic begins and we feel we have not taken steps to prevent it from happening. Many countries had six times the number of deaths that Canada had because they did not have the resources. Many countries suffered a great deal. Is that what we want for other countries in the world? This duty of care is ours to remember.
Our third duty is to be prepared for any other pandemic, be prepared for the recurrence of COVID-19, make sure we learn something from the COVID-19 pandemic and apply what we learned. Let us not repeat it. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Let us not have a repetition of another COVID-19 in this country or anywhere.
We remember the people who lived in homes and institutions, the elderly people who died who did not have to and who died alone because they did not have family with them to look after them because of the isolation that was needed.
I am asking members to remember, for those reasons; to learn our lessons; to look at how we apply those lessons to preventing future pandemics; and to make sure we always mark this day.
This is a Senate bill. It was brought in by a senator who was previously a family physician, Dr. Mégie. As a physician, like I am, she understood the need to apply science to things like pandemics. Science is clear and evidence-based. Science will learn from the things we made mistakes on and from the things we learned how to do to deal with future occurrences. Let us be mindful of science. Let us not apply ideology to pandemics. Viruses do not particularly care whether one lives in Ontario or in Newfoundland. COVID-19 did not did not care; it did not understand or respect provincial boundaries. Let us remember that when we talk about how we deal with scientific evidence in order to protect ourselves and others.
Again, as parliamentarians, our own duty is to remember to be aware of science and our duty of care to all the people we represent in the House, all of Canada. We have a duty to care for them in the same way we care for them when they do not have good drinking water or when they are suffering from poverty and say that food prices are too high. Those are the ways we care. Let us continue to care.
When I hear of people who continue to debunk science and say that it is nonsense and that politicians make decisions, I say that politicians should make informed decisions based on good knowledge and good information. Therefore, they need to look at that information and what it tells them they should do, and look at whether they may get results from what they are doing because they are following good, evidence-based decision-making.
There is not too much else I can say about the bill, but I would ask members this: Why do we have Remembrance Day on November 11 every year? It is because we want to remember the wars. We want to remember the number of people who died. We want to remember the damage. We want to make sure it does not happen again. We want to commit ourselves to peace. We want to commit ourselves to preventing war.
Similarly, we want to commit ourselves to preventing pandemics that kill people. We need to be aware that the deaths of 57,000 Canadians could have been prevented if we had known and understood the pandemic when it first started. We now know what the pandemic did. We now know how to stop it. We now know the steps we need to take to remedy it. Let us remember this every year so we do not repeat the same mistakes we made and so we learn our lessons and use evidence-based, scientific methods to help protect the Canadian population.
It is a simple bill, and I hope all members will support it.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank those members in the House who spoke so passionately and eloquently in support of this bill. The bill was brought forward, as was said, by Senator Mégie, who is a fellow physician from the Senate. I then brought it to the House.
The need to remember is very important. With Bill S-209, we want to remember, and we want to learn. Remembering means that we learn from our mistakes. There are so many things we did wrong. We need to learn from them for the next time there is a pandemic, and there are going to be more pandemics because we are now a global world in which everyone travels. Everyone moves from place to place, and therefore disease can spread globally very rapidly. Therefore, we need to learn from our mistakes.
We also need to learn from the things we did well; we should maybe do them sooner or deal with them differently. A pandemic is all about science. Science is all about evidence. There is evidence in this pandemic that we need to learn from. That is one of the reasons for remembering.
The second reason for remembering is that we need to honour the frontline workers, the heroes in this pandemic. They went out there, gave their lives and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. We now have a problem in our medicare system because all our frontline workers are burned out. They do not want to work anymore because they are so burned out by the trauma of going through this.
We also want to remember the victims, specifically all those people who died. We heard everyone speaking eloquently about the seniors, as well as about the youth, whose education was interrupted and who were alone and did not have anyone to turn to. We heard about all of the people who were not able to meet and the families disrupted. We need to remember that. We need to remember the 50,000 Canadians who died from this particular pandemic. We need to remember those things.
A day of remembrance is not unknown. We have Remembrance Day every November 11 because we want to remember World War II. This was the war we thought was going to end all wars, but it did not. As we are now living through the war in Ukraine, we remember what we should have remembered and should have learned to prevent some of these things from happening and to make sure they do not continue to happen.
Pandemics are like wars. They indiscriminately affect, kill and wreak destruction in the path of people. They do not pick and choose. Now that we are a world that is together, as my hon. NDP colleague said, we need to remember that we are now a global community. We are no longer isolated in our own little nation states.
The next time there is a virus, bacteria or something that is going to destroy us, we know it is again going to be a global pandemic. The World Health Organization remembers and recalls this pandemic. It is warning us about future pandemics to come. If we can learn, remember and honour, then this is what this pandemic remembrance day is all about.
I want to thank those who supported my bill from Senator Mégie.
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