- Member of Parliament
- Member of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians
- NDP
- Vancouver Kingsway
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 59%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $153,893.57
- Government Page
- Nov/1/23 3:24:01 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, the NDP moved a motion at the health committee to launch an independent public inquiry into Canada's COVID response. Shockingly, the Conservatives joined with the Liberals to defeat this common-sense proposal.
New Democrats believe that Canadians deserve transparency on and accountability for how their government handled every aspect of the pandemic. No stone should be left unturned. Can the Prime Minister explain why his party teamed up with the Conservatives to block this overdue, essential inquiry?
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Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-278, the prevention of government-imposed vaccination mandates act. To begin, I believe it is important to note that the discussion surrounding this legislation has been highly politicized and riddled with misinformation from the day it was first introduced by the member for Carleton during the Conservative leadership race.
At that time, the bill was promoted by the member as a means to “scrap all vaccine mandates and ban any and all future vaccine mandates”. This is, of course, simply not accurate. The text of the legislation before the House now only references a single disease, which is COVID-19.
Indeed, Bill C-278 would legislatively restrict the federal government's future ability to set COVID-19 vaccine requirements, regardless of the future trajectory of the virus or the development of new vaccines. If a future variant turned out to be extraordinarily deadly and a vaccine was developed that could stop its transmission, this legislation would legally prohibit the government from imposing any kind of requirement to have that vaccine, even if the health of millions of Canadians was put at risk.
The member for Carleton has also incorrectly described to the House the current status of the mandates. The COVID-19 vaccination requirement for federal public servants was lifted on June 20, 2022. Employees who were placed on administrative leave without pay for non-compliance with that policy in force were contacted by their managers to arrange their return to regular work duties.
As of June 20, 2022, the vaccine requirement to board a plane or train in Canada was also suspended. In addition, federally regulated transport sector employers were no longer required to have mandatory vaccination policies in place for their employees. Finally, effective October 1, 2022, the federal government removed proof of COVID-19 vaccination requirements for anyone entering Canada.
With the record a bit corrected, I would like to proceed with what New Democrats believe. We support an approach to vaccination policy that appropriately balances the rights of people who have not been vaccinated and who choose not to be vaccinated with our individual and collective rights to health and safety. We believe that decisions with respect to imposing or suspending vaccination requirements should always be based on the best available evidence, current science and the advice of experts, not politicians speaking from the House of Commons with little or no background in any of those things.
The Conservatives cannot argue that it was wrong for the Liberal government to politicize Canada's COVID-19 response, which I think they did, while simultaneously asking politicians to legislate our country's vaccination policy indefinitely into the future without any evidence.
If the Conservatives sincerely wanted to take an evidence-based approach to COVID-19 policy, then they would have supported an independent inquiry into Canada's pandemic response when they had the opportunity to do so. However, shockingly, when the NDP moved an amendment at the Standing Committee on Health yesterday to legally mandate that a COVID-19 inquiry, under the Inquiries Act, be struck within 90 days, the Conservatives sat on their hands and abstained, allowing the Liberals to kill that inquiry.
I can see why the Liberals might be reluctant to call an inquiry into their own COVID-19 response, but this reversal from the cover-up Conservatives is truly shocking to see. Under the leadership of their previous leader, Erin O'Toole, the Conservative Party repeatedly called for an independent, expert-led inquiry into Canada's COVID-19 response. The Conservative Party pledged to call such an inquiry during the last election. We will need to leave it to the current Leader of the Opposition to explain this departure from his predecessor's position and the party's public pronouncements.
I believe it is unacceptable that the Liberals and Conservatives joined and worked together yesterday to block an independent review of Canada's response to the most severe pandemic in a century, because serious issues remain unexamined. Some of them include the following. We started the pandemic with not enough personal protective equipment: not enough gloves, masks, gowns and respirators. We had no proper national inventory of the personal protective equipment.
Canadians may remember that we had to throw out millions of pieces of PPE because they were expired. We saw no vaccine production in Canada, a shocking omission that has stretched over Liberal and Conservative governments for decades, who watched as Canada's ability and capacity in this regard was left to wither and die.
There was little to no public guidance on infection-acquired immunity. There was a curious dismantling of Canada's early pandemic warning systems. Canadians had no access to whole vaccines, only MRNA vaccines. There was confusing and contradictory information on the impact of vaccination on transmission. The impact and effectiveness of mandates remains a question.
Border controls were inconsistently enforced. Effectively, border controls in Quebec and Alberta were virtually absent. There were ravages through seniors' homes, overwhelmed emergency rooms and ICUs, and uncertainty about the efficacy of vaccines on mutating variants.
Now, instead of papering over previous mistakes or relying on pseudo-science to set public health policy, we must leave no stone unturned to learn from the past and prepare for future threats. Many prominent public health and security experts have called for the federal government to launch an expert-led independent inquiry into Canada's COVID-19 response.
The NDP has proposed an inquiry under the Inquiries Act, because such an inquiry would be independent. It would be led by an impartial person, notably a judge. It would be properly resourced with counsel. It would have the power to subpoena documents and compel the attendance of witnesses. It would be conducted in public. At the end of the day, it should do a searching root-to-branch comprehensive analysis of every issue that Canadians have raised during the pandemic response by the federal government.
Again, the Conservatives had a chance to make that happen, because the NDP and the Bloc were voting in favour of this motion, but they said no. They abstained. Instead, the Conservatives want to legislate science from the floor of the House of Commons. That is irresponsible.
Prominent Canadians, such as David Naylor, co-chair of the federal COVID-19 immunity task force, and the former chair of the federal review of the 2003 SARS epidemic, thinks there should be an independent public inquiry. So does Richard Fadden, former national security adviser to Stephen Harper. Recently, the British Medical Journal, one of the world's oldest general medical journals, published a series that examined Canada's COVID-19 response and called for an independent national inquiry.
Why do the Conservatives not want one? Again, they would rather play politics. The New Democrats do not and will not allow the Conservative Party or the Liberals to play politics with Canadians' health.
The British Medical Journal documented a number of deeply troubling pandemic failures in Canada, including that Canada's emergency response was impaired by long-standing weaknesses in the public health and health care systems. These included fragmented health leadership across federal, provincial and territorial governments. They noted that pandemic performance varied widely across Canada's provinces and territories, hampered by inconsistency in decision-making, inadequate data, infrastructure and misalignment of priorities.
They noted that lacking an independent federal inquiry allows others to step into the frame. We have seen the so-called National Citizens Inquiry, led by Preston Manning, for example, which appears to be fuelled by vaccine safety misinformation and ideological concerns with government public health measures. This is far from the full, national and public inquiry led by independent experts that Canada's pandemic performance deserves.
An inquiry would help deliver on Canada's ambition to be a global leader, and most importantly, it would deliver answers to Canadians, whose confidence has been shaken. At the end of the day, a public inquiry is needed to restore the Canadian population's confidence, to ensure accountability for decisions that have been made and, most importantly, to find out what went well and what did not. Thus, we could better prepare for the next pandemic, as experts tell us that it is not a question of if, but when.
While the Leader of the Opposition pontificates, pretends and politicizes this very important public health issue on the floor of the House of Commons, New Democrats are pushing for what Canadians really want. That is a full, independent, public, impartial, searching and comprehensive public inquiry.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased, as always, to stand and speak on behalf of the people of Vancouver Kingsway, bringing their concerns, ideas, hopes and aspirations to this chamber.
As health critic for the New Democratic Party, I am always happy to see a bill that addresses the state of health in our country and proposes a solution. This bill is very specific. Bill C-295, an act to amend the Criminal Code, targeted at the neglect of vulnerable adults, would do two things.
First, it would:
[amend] the Criminal Code to create a specific offence for long-term care facilities, their owners and their managers to fail to provide the necessaries of life to residents of the facilities.
Second, it would:
[allow] the court to make an order prohibiting the owners and managers of such facilities from being, through employment or volunteering, in charge of or in a position of trust or authority towards vulnerable adults and to consider as an aggravating factor for the purpose of sentencing the fact that an organization failed to perform the legal duty that it owed to a vulnerable adult.
All Canadians were horrified over the last two years to see residents in Canada's long-term care homes living in the deplorable and, frankly, outrageous conditions that so many of the people who built this country are forced to live in. We saw how seniors in long-term care homes have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In Canada, long-term care residents accounted for 43% of all COVID-19 deaths.
Between March 1, 2020, and August 15, 2021, over 56,000 residents and 22,000 staff in Canada's long-term care and retirement homes were infected with COVID-19, resulting in more than 14,000 deaths among staff and residents. Frankly, the most astounding figure that I saw was that Canada had the worst record of all OECD countries, the highest percentage of deaths in long-term care homes on a per capita basis of any OECD country. That speaks to a deplorable and long-standing issue in our long-term care sector.
Throughout the pandemic, there was a difference between for-profit long-term care facilities and public or non-profit facilities. The for-profit facilities had much worse patient outcomes than not-for-profit homes in general. According to an analysis by the Toronto Star, residents of for-profit facilities have been more three times as likely to catch COVID-19 as those in a non-profit facility, and for-profit facilities have seen more than twice as many staff infections per bed. Resident deaths have also been more common in for-profit facilities.
All Canadians were stunned when we saw that the provinces of Ontario and Quebec had to call for the Canadian Armed Forces to be deployed in some of the hardest-hit long-term care homes across Canada, where they documented horrific accounts of inhumane treatment, abuse and substandard care. “Assault” is not too strong a word.
According to the CAF reports, residents in two Ontario nursing homes died not from COVID-19, but from dehydration and neglect. The stories were documented by soldiers. I have read those documented notes of CAF soldiers, who simply wrote down in unembellished form what they saw when they entered those homes. They read like a horror story from a third world. They found residents lying in bed in soiled underpants. They found instructions that care aides were not allowed to change the bedding on a bed for 24 or 48 hours, even when the patient had an incontinence problem. Incorrect medications were given to patients. Patients were malnourished and were not fed properly. This was simply outrageous.
I want to make the point that COVID did not cause these problems. COVID exposed these problems in Canada's long-term care sector.
To date, more than 30 proposed class actions have arisen from the COVID-19 pandemic across Canada, and several of them allege that the owners and operators of long-term care and retirement facilities failed to take appropriate health and safety measures to protect their residents from COVID-19. Several provincial governments have adopted legislation limiting the potential liability of long-term care owners and operators.
For example, under the Supporting Ontario's Recovery Act, 2020, plaintiffs now need to show that those operating long-term care centres were grossly negligent to avoid statutory liability protection. That is a higher standard than applies to ordinary negligence claims. In this country, what provincial Conservative governments have done is to act not to protect the vulnerable patients in long-term care homes, but to protect the managers and owners of those long-term care homes who were responsible for unbelievable incidents of abuse and neglect. That is shameful.
The courts have not yet considered the meaning of “gross negligence” under that legislation, but the phrase has been defined by the Supreme Court of Canada going back 80 years. I can state that it is a very marked departure from the generally required standard of care or even simple negligence.
Under section 215 of the Criminal Code, it is currently an offence for a person to fail to provide the necessaries of life to a person under his or her charge if that person is “unable by reason of detention, age, illness, mental disorder or other cause, to withdraw himself from that charge,” and “is unable to provide themselves with necessaries of life”, and “the failure to perform the duty endangers the life of the person to whom the duty is owed or causes or is likely to cause the health of that person to be injured permanently.” That is a very high standard, because it requires death or a permanent injury to be the foreseeable outcome.
Bill C-295 would create a specific offence under section 215 of the Criminal Code where a person is an owner or manager of a long-term facility and fails to provide necessaries of life to residents of the facility, and where “the failure to perform the duty endangers the life of the person to whom the duty is owed or causes or is likely to cause the health of that person to be injured permanently”.
We have some concerns about even that test, but the point is that bringing the attention of Canadians and members of the House to the deplorable conditions in the long-term care sector in this country is a valuable and worthy exercise of our time in this place. Anything that we can do to address that is needed.
We think that Canada's New Democrats have a much better and more structured approach to this problem. We want to end for-profit long-term care and bring long-term care homes under the public umbrella.
Long-term care is part of our health care system. When seniors are in hospital, they are in a health care system. Very often after that they are transferred to a long-term care home and suddenly they drop off the health map. That is incomprehensible and it endangers these people. The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the reality that for-profit companies cannot be reliably counted on to protect our loved ones and keep workers safe.
We also believe that the victims of negligence in Canada's long-term care facilities deserve justice. That is why, due to the confidence and supply agreement, the one that the Conservatives scoff at, the New Democratic Party was able to force the Liberals to commit to tabling a safe long-term care act, to ensure that seniors are guaranteed the care they deserve no matter where they live.
I was in this House for nine years of the Conservative government. It never passed a long-term care act. With the current government, in the seven years since the Liberals have been in power, they have never passed a long-term care act. It took the New Democrats to come to this House and demand that on behalf of Canada's seniors. That is a positive step that we look forward to enshrining in this place.
Although Bill C-295 is a step in the right direction, it of course will not solve the problem. Rather than addressing the issues through a private member's bill, Canada's New Democrats expect the Liberal government to honour the confidence and supply requirements through government legislation. We will be present for that.
Finally, the Liberal Party promised in the last election to invest $6.8 billion in long-term care, $1.7 billion to ensure personal support workers are paid $25 an hour and $500 million to train personal support workers. That money has not flowed yet and New Democrats are calling on the government to honour its commitments and start putting money into the long-term care sector so that every senior in this country, no matter where they are, gets access to safe, quality, long-term care as their age and their contributions to our society so dearly benefit and deserve.
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Mr. Speaker, it is always a privilege to rise in this House and speak on behalf of the great people of Vancouver Kingsway and as the health critic for the New Democratic Party of Canada.
Tonight, I speak to Bill C-293, which, in our view, represents an unacceptable attempt to provide the illusion of accountability and oversight with respect to Canada's response to the most severe pandemic in a century.
I am going to briefly review the measures the bill calls for. If enacted, it would require the Minister of Health to establish an advisory committee to review the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. It would require the Minister of Health to establish, in consultation with other ministers, a pandemic prevention and preparedness plan.
It would amend the Department of Health Act to provide that the Minister of Health must appoint a national pandemic prevention and preparedness coordinator from among the officials at the Public Health Agency of Canada to coordinate the activities called for under the act.
From the very inception of this pandemic back in early 2020, New Democrats have been calling for a root-to-branch, independent, penetrating and comprehensive review of Canada's COVID-19 preparedness and response. Unfortunately, the measures outlined in Bill C-293 fall far short of that standard.
By way of background, the National Advisory Committee on SARS and Public Health was established in May 2003 by the then minister of health, Anne McLellan, following the outbreak of SARS. The committee's mandate at that time was to provide a “third-party assessment of current public health efforts and lessons learned for ongoing and future infectious disease control.”
The next year, in 2004, the Public Health Agency of Canada was established in response to the advisory committee's recommendations. That agency was specifically mandated to be Canada's lead organization for planning and coordinating a national response to infectious diseases that pose a risk to public health.
Canadians expected that the federal government would build and maintain the capacity to protect them from future pandemic threats. Instead, both the Liberals and the Conservatives allowed that capacity to atrophy under successive governments.
Canadian officials first became aware of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, on December 31, 2019, yet PHAC did not assess the pandemic risk posed by COVID-19 or the potential impact were it to be introduced to Canada.
As a result, the agency underestimated the potential danger of COVID-19 and continued to assess the risk as low until March 15, 2020, nearly a week after the World Health Organization had declared a global pandemic. By then, Canada had already recorded over 400 confirmed cases and community spread was under way.
Even as the machinery of public health ground into action, deficiencies in the federal government's pandemic preparedness and response were glaring. Pandemic response evaluations conducted in Canada to date have documented serious deficiencies.
A scathing internal PHAC audit released in January 2021 found limited public health expertise at the agency, including a lack of epidemiologists, psychologists, behavioural scientists and physicians at senior levels. The audit also found a lack of emergency response management expertise and capacity within the agency, the very agency charged with preparing Canada for a pandemic.
PHAC communications were terrible. Internal auditors found that PHAC was missing sufficient skills and capacity for risk communications. Our chief public health officer is Dr. Theresa Tam. Her office noted that she often received information in the wrong format, with inaccuracies or in an inappropriate voice needed to convey information to the Canadian audience.
Canadians will remember the problems with Canada's so-called emergency stockpile. A May 2021 report, a full year after Canada declared a global pandemic, from the Auditor General confirmed that negligent management of Canada's emergency stockpile resulted in shortages of PPE for essential workers when COVID-19 hit.
Serious issues with the stockpile had been raised for more than a decade prior to that with nothing done. Canadians will remember we had to throw out millions of PPE in this country because they were out of date as PHAC was not accurately keeping track of them.
A March 2021 report from the Auditor General found that PHAC only verified compliance with quarantine orders for one-third of incoming travellers and did not consistently refer travellers for follow-up who risked not complying.
Later in that year, in December 2021, the Auditor General found that PHAC was either missing or unable to match 30% of COVID-19 test results to incoming travellers from February to June 2021.
In addition, because the agency did not have records of stay for 75% of travellers who flew into Canada, it did not even know whether those who were required to quarantine at government-authorized hotels had in fact complied.
As for long-term care, in May 2020, a report from the Canadian Armed Forces documented shocking and disturbing conditions in long-term care homes where approximately 1,600 trained military personnel had to be deployed. It highlighted serious concerns about shortages of personal protective equipment, staffing levels and failures to follow basic procedures of infection control to keep both residents and staff safe.
That is a sample of what we know to date. PHAC officials have said that they will address identified shortcomings by incorporating “learnings from the pandemic into its plans and test them as appropriate.” In response to the Auditor General's report, PHAC has promised to update its plans within two years of the end of the pandemic.
I want to stop there for a moment. This bill would have the Minister of Health, who is in charge of PHAC, appoint an advisory committee, not even an independent committee with powers but an advisory committee, to assess his or her performance and the performance of PHAC, which is under the aegis of the health minister. Talk about a conflict of interest. That is like the defendant appointing the judge. That is completely unacceptable on its own.
In April 2021, the then Liberal health minister said that a full investigation into Canada's COVID-19 response is required at the “appropriate time”. She noted:
We are still in a crisis and so our focus remains right now on getting Canadians...through this global health crisis...and when the time is right, our government will be very open to examining very thoroughly the response of this country to the COVID-19 crisis.
In September of this year, our current health minister said in an interview that there should be a broad-based review of how the COVID-19 pandemic was handled. He noted that a government decision could come “soon”, without specifying when or what kind of formal review should be held. However, when asked if it should be independent of PHAC, he would only say a “strong” review is necessary.
To date, the Prime Minister has deferred all questions about an inquiry or review of the pandemic response, saying that there will be time for a “lessons learned” exercise but that it must wait until the pandemic is over.
New Democrats want the federal cabinet to launch an independent public inquiry into Canada's COVID-19 response under the Inquiries Act without delay. Throughout the pandemic, we have called for such an investigation and the time is now. We are past the emergency phase of the pandemic. We are approaching the third-year anniversary of COVID coming into this country. Now is the time for that root-to-branch inquiry.
Rather than providing a transparent, independent and comprehensive review of Canada's COVID-19 response, this bill would not do that. The measures do not meet the standard. Rather, this legislation represents an unacceptable attempt to provide the illusion of accountability and oversight with respect to Canada’s response to the most severe pandemic we have ever faced.
The Inquiries Act would establish an independent chair of that inquiry. It would empower that inquiry to subpoena witnesses, to order the production of documents and to hold evidence in public and under oath. It would allow them to retain appropriate experts, including counsel and technical experts to advise them.
Most importantly, the inquiry would be done independently of the government and in public. Every Canadian was affected by all governments’ pandemic response and Canadians have to have confidence that any inquiry that looks at the decisions that were made and the mistakes that were made is done in an honest way with integrity.
I note that experts across the country agree with the position of the NDP. Dr. David Naylor, chair of the federal COVID-19 Immunity Task Force and former chair of the federal review of the 2003 SARS epidemic, has called for an independent review. Richard Fadden, former national security adviser to the Prime Minister, has called for an independent review. Dr. Adrian Levy, Dr. David Walker and Dr. David Butler-Jones have all called for such an inquiry.
We do not need a citizens’ inquiry that is called for by Preston Manning, because we do not want this to be a political circus. We do not want a Liberal bill that stickhandles this inquiry into safe waters for a whitewash. We do not want a political circus. We do not want a whitewash.
The NDP and Canadians want an independent, objective and searching root-to-branch inquiry into all aspects of the federal preparation and response to COVID-19 and we will not stop until Canadians get that.
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Mr. Speaker, first of all I just want to say how much I respect my hon. colleague and thank him for the bill, but with great respect I have to say there are some serious flaws with the bill. We in the New Democratic Party have, for a long time now, said there would come a day when we needed to have a public, comprehensive, searching and fearless review of the federal government's response, from both a preparation point of view and an execution point of view, with respect to COVID-19.
The bill before us, which purports to do that, would have the Minister of Health appoint an advisory committee, presumably to examine the behaviour of the Minister of Health, and it would have no power to order production of documents, summon witnesses or hold hearings in public. There would not even be a requirement to table a report in the House.
Does my hon. colleague not agree with the NDP that what we need is an inquiry under the Inquiries Act, chaired by an objective third party, to hold hearings in public with the full powers of an inquiry, so that all the questions can be asked and answered, so Canadians can have confidence in the review that is done, and so we can not only learn from the past and expose the errors that were made but also, more importantly, plan for the next pandemic and emergency that will come in the future?
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- Nov/1/22 3:31:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the opening line of this motion says, “That, given that (i) the cost of government is driving up the cost of living,” and I just want to drill into that a bit.
I have done some research. In the OECD, which is made up of 38 countries, the average inflation rate is 10.2%. The inflation rate in Canada at the same time is 7.6%. Of the 38 countries, a very healthy majority are conservative governments, including the U.K. The U.K. has had a Conservative government for the last 12 years, and its inflation rate is 8.8%. Hungary's inflation rate is 13.7% and it has a very right-wing government. Poland's inflation rate is 15.8% and it has a right-wing government.
Where does the member get his data or rationale for the statement “the cost of government is driving up the cost of living,” when just about every right-wing government in the world has inflation exceeding what ours is in this country?
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- Jun/7/22 3:14:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, experts are clear that we will not control COVID until the world is vaccinated, yet only 10% of people in low-income countries have received a vaccine, compared to 77% in high-income nations. The Liberals promised to send 200 million doses to COVAX, but fewer than 15 million have been delivered to date.
Last year, the WHO said we stood “on the brink of a catastrophic...failure”. Today, Doctors Without Borders says that we have fallen off the cliff.
Why are the Liberals failing to deliver for Canadians and the world?
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- May/19/22 2:46:07 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is now clear that long COVID cases are spiking across Canada. Half of all Canadians infected with COVID‑19 are expected to develop significant long-haul symptoms. Experts are warning that this will create a mass disabling event with serious and debilitating impacts on patients, yet the Liberals have ignored long COVID in their public health policy and guidance. What concrete steps is the government planning to take to help people suffering from long COVID?
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- May/19/22 12:28:02 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to also say what a pleasure it is to sit on the health committee with my hon. colleague from Montcalm. I appreciate his contributions there and in the House.
I absolutely agree with the need to recognize the horrific impact that COVID has had on the Canadian economy and, in particular, industries such as tourism and hospitality. I get letters about that constantly, and I think we absolutely have to have effective measures that are based on public health and only based on rational data and science.
I do agree—
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- May/19/22 12:26:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think the essence of science and research is to listen. If he were listening, my hon. colleague would have heard me quote in my speech research that shows that being vaccinated now appears not to have any significant impact on preventing or transmitting COVID. I said that in my speech. Had he been paying attention, he probably would have caught that.
That is why I think it is so vital that we base public policy decisions on science, and on a rational, calm and data-based review of the current evidence. It is only by doing this that we will keep Canadians safe.
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- May/19/22 12:24:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague raises a very poignant and, I think, foundational point, which is that, when we engage in breaking new ground and experiencing something as unprecedented as a global pandemic, it will raise very difficult public policy issues concerning the rights of individuals versus the protection of public health.
That is why playing politics with a pandemic is so harmful and dangerous. Seeking to exploit an individual sense of grievance and frustration at the risk of public health absolutely ought to be rejected by any right-thinking person in the House and in Canada. We need to find that balance but, first and foremost, we have to always remember that public health rules are meant to protect the public, and we should only craft them, lift them, remove them or put them into place when the science and data supports that, not when politicians such as the Conservatives try to exploit people's frustrations.
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- May/19/22 12:13:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as always, it is a privilege to rise in the House to speak to important issues of the day, not only on behalf of the great people of Vancouver Kingsway, but on behalf of Canadians from coast to coast to coast.
I want to start with an observation. As health critic for the New Democratic Party of Canada, I have had a front-row seat to the issues, unfortunately, since the beginning of this pandemic, having sat on the health committee way back in 2019 to 2020 when COVID-19 first emerged. One thing I can say for sure over the last two-and-a-half years of policy for COVID-19 is that Canadians are never well served when any political party plays politics with the pandemic. I think we have seen that practised by the government at various times. In fact, government members themselves have publicly stated that their own government has sought to use the pandemic and abuse the pandemic for partisan political purposes. I think we see it here today.
Any time that politicians prey on frustration, ignore science and data, use partial facts or misleading statements and practise poor public health policy, Canadians are not well served. I regret to say to the House today that this motion really has all of that. As my great colleague from Skeena—Bulkley Valley just stated, this motion does contain some things that are true, but unfortunately it also contains some statements and conclusions that are dangerously false.
It is interesting to me that this motion was introduced by the Conservative transport critic, not the health critic. As the underlying issue here is public health policy and the pandemic, that speaks volumes about the motivation behind this, because the motion ignores fundamental truths and facts from the health world and attempts to exploit the frustration of travellers to result in what would be an incredibly ill-advised health policy decision.
I want to start with some things I agree with. I agree that the vaccine mandate ought to be questioned and replaced if it proves ineffective. There is growing and significant evidence that there is little impact of vaccination on the ability to transmit the virus, at least post-omicron. It is also the case that Canadian public policy has failed and continues to fail to recognize infection-acquired immunity. There is overwhelming evidence that infection-acquired immunity is real. There is substantial evidence that it is as strong and durable as immunity achieved from vaccination, and perhaps even more so.
Countries such as Austria have recognized this for many months. Citizens in that country can access public facilities and services by proving they are vaccinated, as we require in Canada, but if they can produce serology tests that prove they have been exposed to COVID and recovered, that is accepted as well, because it is basic vaccinology 101 that no matter how we recover from an infection and how our bodies produce antibodies, it has the same result.
Those two facts suggest that disallowing unvaccinated Canadians, particularly those who have been exposed to COVID and recovered from travelling, may not be science-based any longer. That, to me, should be explored and changed based on data and evidence. In fact, I have spoken to many constituents, as recently as last night, who question the vaccine mandate policy today in light of the mounting evidence.
Unfortunately, that is not what this motion before us states. It goes far beyond that to indefensible and unsafe areas. It wants us to agree that we should revert to all prepandemic rules. The motion says:
the House call on the government to immediately revert to pre-pandemic rules and service levels for travel.
That is completely irresponsible and belied by the science. For example, requiring foreign travellers arriving in Canada to be vaccinated is absolutely still necessary for one major reason, among others: to protect our strained health care system so that travellers do not get sick and clog up our ICUs. It is still the case, as we know, that being vaccinated significantly reduces one's chance of becoming seriously ill or dying.
Here is another example. Mask mandates are probably the single most effective measure we have for helping to reduce the spread of airborne viruses. This is especially the case in crowded indoor places, where physical distancing is not possible. I would venture to say that airplane cabins are, perhaps, the quintessential example of this, yet this motion introduced by the Conservatives states we should have no rules in this regard.
Every single expert who has appeared at HESA and been questioned on this issue has agreed that we need to maintain masks as a precaution. Not a single one has said it is wise or time to abandon them, yet the motion and the Conservatives ignore this fact. It is only common sense.
We know COVID is spread in aerosolized fashion as a respiratory illness. It is well established that masks help to stop the spread of such viruses. It is no surprise that the Conservatives would ignore that fact, as they continue to refuse every day, and in fact today, to wear masks in the House, a crowded indoor place, despite public health advice to do so—
An hon. member: Why aren't you speaking with one?
Mr. Don Davies: Madam Speaker, someone asked why I am not wearing one. We take masks off when we speak, and they know that. It is for the interpreters. The Conservatives understand that, but the fact that they would heckle on that point shows how bereft of rationality and evidence they really are.
Again, this motion calls for the policy to immediately revert to prepandemic rules. That assumes things have returned to normal. Like every Canadian, I wish that were so, but it is not. This motion presumes to refer to experts, but not one epidemiologist or public health expert has testified at the health committee that we are in an endemic phase. The Conservatives know that or they should know that.
I predict there is a high probability we will see a resurgence, perhaps a seventh wave, in the fall. Why? It is because nothing has changed. The virus is still present, mutations are occurring, the omicron BA.2 variant is still in circulation and there is detection of others, including something called the “deltacron” variant.
Vaccination in the developing world is still shamefully behind. We know vaccine efficacy wanes, and it does not prevent infection. Sloppy habits, like the Conservatives refusing to wear masks in crowded indoor rooms like this one, help contribute to the spread of airborne respiratory illnesses.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Mr. Don Davies: Madam Speaker, I hear the Conservatives laughing at that. Maybe they should go back to medical school and take a beginner's course in virology.
This motion also attempts to blame the problems of Canadian airports on public health rules. This fundamentally misunderstands what is happening.
The core problem is that there are few flights due to reduced traffic and, more importantly, reduced staffing due to the shortages of workers, especially in security and baggage handling. The causes of this are poor pay, poor hours, shift work and poor working conditions. Airports are having trouble attracting workers back to work because of these things.
Did I say that? No. People in the airline industry say that, yet the Conservatives vote against every attempt to improve workers' conditions. They will not raise minimum wages, they oppose better unionization rules, they fight occupational health and safety improvements and they even wanted workers to work until they were 67 years old before they could retire, which would be especially hard on blue collar workers, who find physical work and shift work more difficult as they age.
If we want to do something to help workers and get airports flying better, let us get improved conditions for workers in every airport in this condition. We are never going to get that from the Conservatives, but we will get that from New Democrats.
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- Mar/24/22 12:24:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am sure that Quebeckers are so grateful to the NDP for working co-operatively with the Liberals in the 1960s to bring them public, universal, comprehensive health care, which he clearly supports because he wants more money for it. That is because the NDP, unlike the Bloc Québécois, works constructively and positively in Parliament in order to deliver for Canadians, which is something they do not do.
Absolutely, the NDP is the party of health care. We are going to continue to fight for more federal contributions to get the federal government up to its 50% contribution to public health care in this country, as it should be.
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- Mar/24/22 12:22:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I agree completely. There is really a number of fundamental flaws in this motion before the House today. Again, it assumes that politicians should be making public health policy. I personally do not agree with that. The Conservatives seem to think that should be the case.
Second of all, I believe that the decision should be data-driven and it should be accurate. Again, this motion, as I have pointed out, suffers from a number of inaccuracies, if not outright mistakes.
Finally, I would say that we have been through this before, where we get a temporary lull because of the public health measures and we get case counts coming down, so we prematurely move to relax public health measures. What have we seen? We see a flare-up again. I believe in the prudent, precautionary approach. I personally believe we should be moving very carefully and cautiously for the health of Canadians.
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- Mar/24/22 12:20:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as a person interested in science, I am sure my hon. colleague is also interested in the accuracy of numbers. It is not 90% of Canadians who are vaccinated. It is 81.6%. Of course, as I pointed out in my speech, only 46% of Canadians have had their third booster, which, in my view, now ought to be considered required to be considered fully vaccinated.
We know, based on the science, that the impact of vaccinations wanes over time. After three, four or five months, we know that the efficacy of the vaccine, particularly the mRNA vaccines, can go down to very low numbers, so getting that third booster is incredibly important.
I would just say that federal policy should be to encourage people to be vaccinated and to do everything possible to ensure that all Canadians receive their third boosters. Relaxing and withdrawing mandates, in that respect, at this time, I think, is not only irresponsible but harmful to the health of Canadians.
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- Mar/24/22 12:08:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as we enter the third year of this pandemic, Canadians are feeling exhausted, frustrated and anxious about the future. Instead of divisive political pandering, they deserve honest answers and responsible leadership from their elected officials.
Far from feeling this pandemic is over, Canadians are deeply concerned about what is coming next. People are worried about the emergence of new variants and the potential that COVID-19 will be circulating for years to come. However, after two years and many flawed and changing public health measures, New Democrats believe that Canada is due for a re-evaluation of our public health strategy for the COVID-19 pandemic. That is why New Democrats are taking a responsible and science-based approach, calling for a review of all federal public health measures that is transparent, data-driven and informed by the advice of public health experts.
New Democrats believe the prompt completion of this review is in the public interest and should proceed without political interference. That is why, last week, we wrote to Canada's chief medical officer and requested that the Public Health Agency of Canada conduct a thorough review of every federal COVID-19 health policy based on data and science, with a goal of either confirming that we are on the right path or making changes if we are not. Unfortunately, the motion introduced by the Conservative opposition today is the opposite of this approach.
By calling for an immediate end to all federal vaccine mandates, the Conservative motion is premature and politicizes a decision that should be based on science. Wedge politics and polarization are not going to end this pandemic. Rather than reckless declarations from the floor of the House of Commons, New Democrats believe that we must take a cautious and informed approach to protect public health until the COVID-19 pandemic is over.
This motion before the House violates these principles and this approach in a number of ways. First, it is premature and a threat to public health. This motion assumes, incorrectly, that we are done with the pandemic. It assumes, without scientific basis, that we have entered the endemic phase. This is something no responsible science has declared. It ignores what is happening in countries around the world, especially those that have relaxed their public health measures too quickly.
Second, it is politically motivated. Both the Liberals and Conservatives have played partisan politics with the pandemic over the past two years. That has been irresponsible and dangerous. I can do no better than to quote a Liberal member of the government: the MP for Louis-Hébert. He stated:
I can’t help but notice with regret that both the tone and the policies of my government changed drastically on the eve and during the last election campaign. From a positive and unifying approach, a decision was made to wedge, to divide and to stigmatize.
He added:
I fear that this politicization of the pandemic risks undermining the public’s trust in our public health institutions.
He was right. Politicians should not be deciding public health measures; health professionals should. Public health decisions should be based on data, evidence and science, and not on political considerations. This motion reflects the Conservative Party playing the very same game.
Third, it is precise yet overly broad. This motion calls for the immediate lifting of all vaccine mandates, yet there are very different mandates with different purposes and impacts. For example, there is a clear difference between requiring vaccination for a federal health professional who visits a remote indigenous community to treat vulnerable seniors with compromised immune systems and for an Ottawa bureaucrat who works from home, yet this motion makes no distinction whatsoever and would immediately remove both. There are different considerations when we consider passengers on an airplane sitting inches apart in a closed environment for many hours, than for those on a bus where people may be able to physically distance. Some mandate aspects might indeed be properly removed, yet it may be prudent to retain or perhaps alter others. This motion precludes that approach.
Fourth, it is factually incorrect and misleading. The motion erroneously claims that all provinces have lifted or have plans to lift their vaccine mandates. What is correct is that all provinces have lifted their proof of vaccination requirements for people attending certain social and recreational settings and events, except for British Columbia. The requirement will be lifted there on April 8. In British Columbia, mandatory vaccination policies remain in place for workers in health care, long-term care and public service. New Brunswick has dropped its COVID-19 vaccination mandate for most employees, except for those who work in health care and other vulnerable sectors. The Government of Nova Scotia has indicated that higher-risk areas in the front lines of health care and long-term care will still require COVID-19 vaccinations when the mandates in other sectors are lifted in the province.
When the motion claims that Canada has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, it is referring only to a two-shot vaccine series and ignores the third booster vaccination figures. While it is correct that the two-jab rates are in the 82% range, still leaving almost 20% without full vaccination, incidentally, that rate drops to less than half of Canadians, 46%, with booster shots. This motion misrepresents the vulnerability of Canadians and risks their health in doing so.
We know that vaccination continues to be the best course of action to protect Canadians from serious illness, hospitalization and death. According to Canada's chief public health officer:
...with the Omicron variant, having two doses—the protection against infection and further transmission goes really low. You really need a third dose to provide augmentation against transmission. All that should be taken into account as the federal government looks at the policies going forward.
In addition, we need to study the impact of infection-acquired immunity, transmission dynamics and the viability of future treatments.
We also know that this virus knows no borders and what happens elsewhere is certain to affect us in Canada, so let us look at the current state of COVID-19 cases globally. After a consistent decrease since the end of January, the number of new weekly COVID-19 cases globally has now increased for a second consecutive week, with a 7% increase reported from March 14 to March 20 as compared to the previous week. According to the World Health Organization, a combination of factors is causing the spike, including the highly transmissible omicron variant and its BA.2 subvariant, as well as the lifting of public health and social measures.
The emergence of the BA.2 subvariant has led to a steep rise of cases in the U.K., Germany, Finland, Switzerland and other European countries in recent weeks. Hong Kong is now reporting the world's highest death rates from COVID-19. China is also seeing major outbreaks in major cities, putting millions of people under lockdown and halting production in major international manufacturing centres, providing grave implications for supply chains. South Korea recently set a new daily record, with reported infections topping 600,000. Australia and New Zealand, which had previously held cases to low levels, have also seen spikes in recent weeks, as have Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Here in Canada, a spike in early surveillance signals across the country has experts worried we could be on the verge of another resurgence. While BA.2 does not appear to be associated with more severe illness in vaccinated populations, it is still capable of causing severe disease among people without prior immunity, which underscores the importance of getting up to date with COVID-19 vaccines, including a booster.
What do respected health experts say as opposed to Conservative politicians? The WHO director said this:
There are different scenarios for how the pandemic could play out, and how the acute phase could end—but it is dangerous to assume that Omicron will be the last variant, or that we are in the endgame.
On the contrary, globally the conditions are ideal for more variants to emerge.
Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease physician at Toronto General Hospital and member of Ontario's COVID-19 vaccine task force, said this:
Even though we're in a much better place now than we were one and two months ago, there's still a lot of COVID around and there's still a lot of people in hospital with COVID....
Sadly, this is not over yet.
Finally, Dr. Jason Kindrachuk, assistant professor of viral pathogenesis at the University of Manitoba and Canada research chair of emerging viruses, stated:
Watching what's going on in terms of case numbers in Europe, I think should be certainly a bit of a stark reminder that the virus has not disappeared....
BA.2 should, in my mind, kind of reinvigorate us to realize we're not through with this yet and in fact the virus can still change.
The NDP is fully committed to reviewing all federal vaccine mandates and restrictions, as I said earlier, so we would propose that we amend the motion in the following way.
I move that the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the words “has lifted or” and substitute the following: “is planning to lift vaccine mandates, the House call on the Public Health Agency of Canada to conduct a comprehensive review of all federal vaccine mandates and restrictions based on the most recent data and best available evidence to determine whether such mandates should remain, be lifted or be altered and request that this review be tabled in the House within four weeks following the adoption of this motion.”
By accepting this amendment, we can put this decision in the hands of those it should be, those of scientists, based on data, based on evidence and for the protection and best health of Canadians.
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- Feb/20/22 10:55:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think the Emergencies Act is relegated to specific circumstances, and every time it is possibly invoked, it needs to be carefully studied.
I wonder if my hon. colleague is worried that the provinces might use the notwithstanding clause more often. Is he worried about a slippery slope? Of course, the notwithstanding clause is only engaged when there is an acknowledgement that the charter rights of citizens have been violated. Otherwise, we do not need to use the notwithstanding clause. That was my point, and I just wonder if he should have a conversation with his provincial colleagues in Quebec to warn them that using the notwithstanding clause may lead to a slippery slope if they are tempted to do it again. I do not think that is a valid—
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- Feb/20/22 10:52:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague raises a very important point, which is that the Emergencies Act is only supposed to be triggered when the current laws in Canada have proven ineffective in dealing with the current situation. I think the word “ineffective” is very important, and I will note two examples.
The current laws, for instance, have proven ineffective in stopping the flow of funds, money and supplies into the blockade in Ottawa. It is not a crime to walk down the street carrying a gas can full of gasoline. There is no law in Canada that would prevent that. However, by invoking the Emergencies Act and saying that anybody who is supplying the blockades is acting illegally, that now becomes a criminal act. That is an example where the Emergencies Act was necessary.
Another one is towing. I do not think it was an accident that this very well organized blockade used heavy equipment and machinery to block public roadways in this country. When towing companies and their trucks were being intimidated, there was no way to commandeer those companies to get them working to clear the roadways, except by the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
These are a couple of examples that I think make it is necessary to have that special power.
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- Feb/20/22 10:50:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I hear two main points. The first one gives us an opportunity to again thank all of the frontline workers and health care workers in this country who, while we debate this legislation, are tasked with the critical job of dealing with vulnerable people, helping patients and getting us through what is still a pandemic. I think that is always important to keep in mind as our attention is taken elsewhere.
Second of all, it was a major part of my research and speech to note that the Emergencies Act was carefully crafted in response to the excesses of the War Measures Act and contains within it many parliamentary oversights, restrictions and careful parameters to ensure that the excesses of the War Measures Act are not repeated. I think that is also a very vital point to make to Canadians to assure them that their rights remain paramount, even with the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
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- Feb/20/22 10:39:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we come together today at a precarious moment in our nation's history. Over the last month a cascading series of intelligence, policing and governance failures have resulted in an unprecedented situation that no Canadian of any persuasion is contented with or approves. We have all witnessed a siege of our nation's capital, an economic blockade of our international borders and threats to the political stability of our society.
Ironically, Canadians on all sides of the issues feel abandoned. Public confidence has been shaken and communities are divided. The institutions citizens expect to protect them have proved unresponsive. They have looked for leadership from their governments that has not been delivered.
After speaking to many constituents in Vancouver Kingsway, two things are crystal clear to me. First, the current crisis has been badly mismanaged by the Prime Minister, who was virtually absent as it developed. Second, this situation should never have progressed this far, so it disappoints me profoundly to see that our Parliament has to debate the application of measures that are by design intended for the most serious situations of turmoil and danger.
Nonetheless, we indeed find our nation in crisis. As such, it is for us to determine the best course of action to restore public confidence, stability and security to our society.
I would like to state that this is also a time of great sensitivity and emotion. The issues engaged cherished principles that are equally valued and difficult to reconcile. I think that thoughtful people of good faith can rationally differ with views that deserve respect and careful consideration. I believe our nation could use a generous application of compassion and understanding.
At the outset, I think it is important to delineate what the present situation is and, just as importantly, what it is not.
First, we are not dealing with a peaceful protest. We are dealing with an economic blockade, accompanied by both threats and actual violence, with an attempt to force political change by mob behaviour and, in substance, hostage diplomacy. A review of the facts bears this out.
We saw a serious border closure at the Ambassador Bridge, interrupting some $350 million in trade every day and threatening Canada-U.S. trade relations. Canada's crucial auto industry and manufacturing sector in the Golden Horseshoe were affected at a time of already constrained supply chains.
A cache of weapons and murder conspiracy charges emerged in Coutts, Alberta. We witnessed a blockade for nearly a month in our nation's capital, with citizens threatened, workers intimidated and hundreds of businesses shut down.
Undercover intelligence revealed plans to expand the border blockade to other essential Canadian infrastructure, including airports and ports. An openly publicized manifesto calling for government change was released. We have seen foreign interference and funding in our domestic political affairs. There is far-right involvement, with clear connections to the same forces that led the charge on Washington last January.
We have seen threats to towing companies and drivers to intimidate them into not doing their jobs. We have seen the use of heavy equipment, tractors and trailers as weapons of blockade.
The events of the last two days further bear this out. Blockade participants refused to leave the parliamentary precinct when ordered to do so, assaulted police officers and tried to seize their weapons, threw bicycles at mounted officers, and spat upon and assaulted journalists. These are not the acts of peaceful protesters.
Second, this was never really about truckers.
This fact is rendered nakedly bare by the fact that not a single demand was ever made to address the very real issues truckers face, like low wages, long hours, fatigue, occupational safety, inadequate rest stops, poor road conditions and high expenses.
It was never truly about truckers' vaccine policies either. This is also easily seen by the fact that it is the United States that set a requirement that all Canadian truckers must be vaccinated in order to enter the country, and that nothing done in Canada could alter that fact.
Third, the legislation before us is not the War Measures Act. As a New Democrat, I have always taken tremendous pride in the moral courage that Tommy Douglas demonstrated in opposing Pierre Trudeau’s invocation of the War Measures Act, despite strong public support for the move.
In 1970, civil liberties were suspended, the military was deployed, and hundreds of innocent people were arbitrarily rounded up and held without charge. Habeas corpus was suspended by cabinet fiat, with no recourse to democratic institutions or the courts. None of that is occurring here.
Unlike the War Measures Act, the Emergencies Act does not suspend Canadians' civil rights. Emergency orders are subject to judicial review and must be charter-compliant. Indeed, in 1970, Canada did not even have a charter of rights with constitutional force. Unlike the War Measures Act, the Emergencies Act is subject to extensive parliamentary oversight and democratic protections. For example, this very debate we are having was triggered by the declaration of a public order emergency. Parliament will have the opportunity to affirm or revoke the declaration tomorrow. A parliamentary committee will be able to amend or revoke all emergency orders, and a motion signed by 20 MPs can trigger a vote on revoking the declaration. The truth is that the Emergencies Act has many legal and parliamentary protections, as it was expressly designed to have.
I also think it is important to note that the six measures applied under the act are targeted in scope, duration and purpose. It is critical to remember that they provide powers to address the current crisis that would not otherwise be possible, such as ensuring that towing equipment can be marshalled to clear heavy machinery used to block public roads, criminalizing the supply of goods to blockades that were crippling our nation's capital and interrupting the flow of foreign funding to interfere in our domestic political affairs.
On this latter point, I note that over 50% of the funds used to support the blockade came from outside of Canada. Hundreds of donors were Americans who have been linked to far-right groups or those involved in the attempted insurrection at the U.S. capitol last January. This constitutes direct foreign interference in Canadian domestic affairs that cannot be tolerated.
To my Conservative and Bloc colleagues who oppose the emergency measures used to intercept and freeze these funds, I ask this: If we substituted Russian for American donors sending money to try to change Canadian government policy, would they still have no problem with this? I know the answer. To me, it is imperative for the sovereignty and territorial and security interests of Canada that we act strongly and resolutely to address foreign interference in our internal political affairs.
Some have argued that invoking the Emergencies Act will set a dangerous precedent that could be applied in the future to disruptive protests that are otherwise peaceful. They say Parliament should not act lest it start down a slippery slope to irresponsible behaviour. Somewhat ironically, this is said by members of the Bloc Québécois and Conservative Party, whose provincial cousins have invoked the notwithstanding clause of the Charter of Rights to actually violate the rights of their own citizens, something the Emergencies Act does not do. Apparently, their concern for slippery slopes does not extend to their own sectarian interests.
I fundamentally agree that the right to peaceful protest is indispensable in a free and democratic society and must never be subject to unreasonable limitations. However, I categorically reject the assertion that we cannot act in appropriate circumstances because future parliamentarians may not do so. I also believe that every single parliamentarian today and in the future well knows that this legislation is extraordinarily targeted and reserved for the rarest of circumstances. I trust in their judgment, in the Canadian public and in institutions to ensure that happens.
Finally, others have argued that this crisis does not meet the threshold set out in the Emergencies Act for the declaration of a public order emergency. I have carefully read the act and agree that reasonable people may disagree on this point. While I respect those who feel otherwise, it is my view that, given the facts that have emerged over the last four weeks, the act is properly engaged. Further, I believe that the invocation of the act is already proving to be effective in resolving the crisis, paralysis and threats that so clearly have gripped our nation. I strongly agree with those who argue that the invocation of public order emergencies should never be normalized. Instead, it should be reserved only for rare circumstances such as this, where decisive action is needed to address urgent threats to the security of Canada.
If we hope to emerge from this pandemic as a strong and united country, then every member of the House must put aside their partisan political interests and work together to regain the public's confidence. Rather than wedge politics and polarization, Canadians need honesty, accountability and responsible leadership from their elected representatives. I believe it is time for all parliamentarians to provide just that.
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