- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- Churchill—Keewatinook Aski
- Manitoba
- Voting Attendance: 60%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $142,937.96
- Government Page
Madam Speaker, I am honoured to rise today to debate Bill S-209, an act respecting pandemic observance day, proposed by the hon. member for Vancouver Centre, which would designate March 11 of each year as pandemic observance day to give Canadians an opportunity to commemorate the efforts to get through the pandemic, remember its effects and reflect on ways to prepare for any future pandemics.
First of all, it is important that we first recognize the incredible toll COVID has taken on our country and indeed our world. In Canada, already more than one in 10 Canadians has had some form of COVID. Almost 50,000 Canadians have died as a result of COVID-19. Around the world, the numbers are horrific: 625 million people infected and over 6.5 million deaths.
We know people's lives have been shaped irreparably, in some cases, as a result of COVID. Lives have been put on pause, finances have crumbled, and weddings, funerals, new births and last moments have been missed. Special moments and milestones with loved ones have been missed as well. I would argue there is not one family in our country that has not been touched by the tragedy of COVID-19.
What we are also here to talk about today is the clear fact that much more could have been done, both within our borders and abroad. If we look back to the last couple of years, we need to talk about the support Canadians so desperately needed. We cannot forget the Liberals only wanted to support Canadians with a one-time payment in the face of not just a public health emergency but also a financial crisis for many Canadians. It was the NDP that successfully fought for regular CERB payments, which helped to lift many people up during this time of crisis.
Now, unfortunately, the government is targeting the benefits of people who relied on CERB throughout the pandemic, including many in our region. All the while, wealthy CEOs, who used tax avoidance schemes to avoid paying taxes, and who received support during the pandemic, are getting a free pass. We need to see amnesty for those who needed CERB and applied for it.
Unfortunately, this is in character for the government. It cut the guaranteed income supplement for the most vulnerable seniors, leaving low-income Canadians in desperate situations until New Democrats forced it to reverse the cuts. Recently we learned it cut the Canada child benefit for families struggling to feed their children. It is clear whose side the Liberals are on.
Rich companies that used the wage subsidy, even though they were making profits and gave millions in dividends to their shareholders, are not being asked to pay the money back they received. The government is not hesitating to make hard-working Canadians, who are struggling to make ends meet, to pay back the CERB they desperately needed throughout the pandemic. The reality is that the COVID-19 crisis held up a mirror to the country we have built and the cracks at its foundation.
No one need to look further than the reality of first nations during the COVID-19 pandemic. First nations in our region, such as the Island Lake first nation, which does not have regular hospital access, communities such as OCN, Shamattawa, God's River and others, had such bad COVID outbreaks that the military needed to come in to help. A lack of PPE, testing kits and even nurses and doctors left communities fending for themselves. They were scrambling and without support.
Then we had communities such as Pukatawagan, where the government decided the best way to help community members to isolate was to give them tents in the middle of winter, which nobody from that community asked for. It was not quite the heartlessness of the Harper government sending body bags during the SARS pandemic and H1N1, but it was awfully close. The worst part is that no one in the community even asked for this. We looked into it, and it turned out a board member of the company that made the tents also sat on the COVID-19 supply council, whish was designed to advise the government on procurement during the pandemic. When this came to light, that person was forced to step down.
COVID showed us how vulnerable so many of our institutions are and how ill-prepared we were. A COVID outbreak at a Cargill meat processing plant highlighted how unserious our country is about workers' safety. Over 1,000 cases were linked. People died because they worked in unsafe workplaces.
Throughout the pandemic, we also saw how ill-suited our institutions were in ensuring that the most vulnerable in our society were protected. Our health care system, for which the Prime Minister and the government never replaced the cuts to transfer payments brought in by the previous Conservative government, was stretched beyond its absolute limit. Nurses complained about the lack of PPE while they put their lives on the line to keep people safe and to save what lives they could.
Our behaviour as a country was no better abroad. It was the Liberal government that blocked countries like Bolivia from accessing a Canadian-produced generic vaccine, preferring to put the economic profits of giant pharmaceutical companies ahead of the lives of people around the world. Do not forget that Bolivia reached an agreement with the Canada-based drug manufacturer Biolyse to acquire desperately needed vaccines for a country that, at the time, had only been able to vaccinate 5% of its population. The government, despite publicly stating that it was doing everything in its power to get the vaccine to the global south, worked to block Bolivia's efforts at the WTO. Canada has put lives at risk.
It is abundantly clear that much more could have been done and could still be done, both at home and abroad. The government did the bare minimum and it was up to Canadians to pick up the pieces, with people checking in on their neighbours when they were sick and helping them out with things like groceries and basic necessities.
When we talk about the cracks in our foundation, we also saw the way in which the loss of our vaccine production capacity rendered us at risk. The inability to produce the PPE we needed here at home put us at risk. Publicly owning the capacity that we need to be safe in a pandemic is something that we as Canadians need to act on. We cannot be vulnerable the way we were during the pandemic.
I also want to highlight that many have pointed to the lessons we should be learning from this pandemic. I appreciate the work of Nora Loreto, who wrote a book called Spin Doctors: How Media and Politicians Misdiagnosed the Covid-19 Pandemic. It talks about how the media, in many cases the mainstream media, overlooked the reality that was afoot in our country, and how politicians and public health officials were mostly given the benefit of the doubt that what they said was true and that they acted in good faith, when, in many cases, we know that this was not necessarily the case.
Her book documents each month of the first year of the pandemic and examines the issues that emerged, from the disproportionate impact on racialized workers and the people who died in residential care to policing. Her book demonstrates how politicians and uncritical media shaped the popular understanding of the issues. It very much argues that we desperately need to move beyond the idea that individual actions will keep us safe and move toward collective action, backed up by the political will to ultimately put people's lives ahead of profit, something that we did not see happen the way it should have throughout the pandemic.
In wrapping up, I want to share my thoughts with the many people across the country, including here in our north, who lost loved ones to COVID-19. Our thoughts are with them.
We also know that thoughts are not enough. What we need is clear action, so that lives that were lost were not lost in vain and so that we are there to protect workers, people on the margins, indigenous communities and people living in long-term care. We need to protect them going forward.
This requires political will. This requires public investment. This requires supporting our health care system and our health care professionals. It requires public ownership when it comes to the production of vaccines, PPE and the materials we need to keep our community safe. It requires ending the housing crisis in first nations and building hospitals where they are needed for indigenous communities. It requires lifting people up in concrete tangible ways and ultimately making it clear that lives, whether they are in Canada or around the world, are much more important than profit.
We need to act now.
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- Nov/25/21 5:40:30 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my colleague, the member for Parliament for Victoria.
I am proud to speak in 100% support of the motion to move back to a hybrid Parliament. I am proud that the NDP has been pushing for a hybrid Parliament. I am proud to rise in the House for the first time in this Parliament. I am honoured to fight for the people of northern Manitoba. It is rooted in where I come from and who I represent that I rise in the House to make it abundantly clear that we need a hybrid Parliament.
I am frankly shocked that in the year 2021, in the throes of a fourth wave of a global pandemic, after a year and a half of creating and making a hybrid Parliament work, that we are even having this debate. It is a failure of leadership that we are even here having this debate, frankly. We should have gone straight back into a hybrid Parliament.
Let me start by making it clear. It is reckless to push for an in-person Parliament. We are in the fourth wave of the global COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 is very much still spreading across our country. It is making people sick, including those who are doubly vaccinated. In Manitoba, two double-vaccinated MLAs have COVID-19 right now. We also know that COVID-19 is still killing people, and I want to share my condolences with the family of Senator Josée Forest-Niesing.
What do we know right now? We know that COVID-19 cases are on the rise once again in our country. We know that people are being encouraged to get their booster shots to ensure vaccine efficacy. We know that there is greater chance of transmission in crowded enclosed spaces, particularly during winter months as people move inside. We know upgrading our masks when inside is the way to go, but somehow this does not seem to apply to some people on planet Parliament.
I was here on Monday when we elected our Speaker and when we voted for the Assistant Deputy Speaker. There was no social distancing. There was overcrowding, and in the lobby, more than one Conservative MP at a time was not wearing a mask. We know that some Conservative members are also choosing not to disclose whether they are vaccinated.
We were told early on in this pandemic that we were vectors in the spread of COVID-19. Today, we have 338 people travelling from various parts of the country, including hot spots, all in one place. We are vectors once again.
We have to be concerned not only for our colleagues, but for our loved ones and our constituents, and we cannot pretend that we are the only ones working here.
Our work is made possible by the hundreds of people who work on Parliament hill, from our party staff to pages to interpreters to technical staff to security guards to cleaning staff to catering staff. Their health and safety should not be put at risk because we as MPs refuse to acknowledge the ongoing reality of a global pandemic. We can make a difference with a hybrid Parliament that takes advantage of virtual technology, that allows us to participate in our communities rather than everyone having to be here.
Let us also be clear that a hybrid Parliament makes sense in terms of logistics. It has become harder for us to get to and go back from Ottawa. Many flights and many routes have been cut since the beginning of the pandemic. The regional carrier, Calm Air, servicing my community, Thompson, the largest city in my riding, has cut almost half of its flights to and from Winnipeg. Air Canada has no direct flights from Winnipeg to Ottawa and back. These flights have not been restored, and they will not be restored anytime soon, making our travel to and from Ottawa longer and oftentimes a logistical nightmare.
My message for colleagues who feel they are okay, because they can simply step on a flight or get in their car to get to Ottawa, is to look beyond their own personal circumstances. We need to find solutions that ensure we can all do this work safely.
Beyond the pandemic, a hybrid Parliament is the way of the future, a future where more women can get involved. We are not in the 1860s anymore, when male MPs left their kids with their wives at home and went to Ottawa to live their lives unencumbered by the responsibilities of being a parent or a caregiver. It is 2021. We can and must do our work differently in a way that reflects values of gender equality and the need to see 50% of the House represented by women.
I have been asked many times about how we can get more women elected, and I cannot say how many times I have heard from women who are thinking of having kids, or who have kids, that they cannot imagine running to be an MP and doing this work because of the travel, the time away from home, the lack of child care and the need to be there for their kids. I know this reality well, as someone who did this work for nine years without kids and now for four years with my twins. It is not easy and that is an understatement.
Right now I have to be in Ottawa. My partner, a veteran, is finishing his education degree and is just starting his teaching placement in the semi-remote Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation, a first nation community outside of our home in Thompson. I do not have child care here in Ottawa and I have to leave my kids, one of whom is sick, with my parents in Winnipeg so that I can be here today. It is not rocket science. One of the ways of making Parliament accessible to women, and to all parents, is by ensuring a hybrid Parliament.
Let us also get in line with so many workplaces, including the federal public service, where virtual work and hybrid work are seen as the legitimate, effective work that they are. We have done this before. We did it for a year and a half and it worked. We can do this.
Finally, let us be clear. A hybrid Parliament is necessary as we face a climate emergency. Climate change is here. It is wreaking havoc across our country and around the world. COP26 made clear that we need to drastically cut our greenhouse gas emissions. We must drastically cut our carbon footprint here in Canada. We know that Canada's climate record is the worst of the G7 nations', and time is running out. We must end subsidies to oil and gas. We must cancel the TMX pipeline and new fossil fuel infrastructure. We must phase out the burning of fossil fuels and move to green energy, and we must stand with land protectors such as those on Wet'suwet'en territory. We must invest in a green new deal.
We must also find immediate ways to cut down our carbon footprint. With a hybrid Parliament, we do not all have to fly back and forth every week from every corner of the country. Let us not forget that our work is rooted in our communities. It is driven by the people we represent. It is time we work in a Parliament that reflects today's reality. A hybrid model allows us to stay rooted in our home communities and regions. This is the way of the future.
I propose that Parliament strike a committee to find ways to modernize Parliament, including having a permanent hybrid Parliament: a Parliament in tune with today's reality and the immense challenges we face. Let us put aside the anti-science, COVID-conspiracy-driven politics and the 19th-century family model that continues to set women back. Let us face today's reality of climate change and find ways to do our work in a better way.
The choice is clear between a 19th-century vision of Parliament and a 21st-century vision of Parliament. We can do this. Let us be on the right side of history.
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