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Decentralized Democracy

Member of Parliament

Niki Ashton

  • Member of Parliament
  • Member of Parliament
  • NDP
  • Churchill—Keewatinook Aski
  • Manitoba
  • Voting Attendance: 61%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $142,937.96

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 111 - Oct/17/22
Ms. Niki Ashton (Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, NDP)
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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