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Results: 31 - 45 of 559
View Lindsay Mathyssen Profile
NDP (ON)
View Lindsay Mathyssen Profile
2021-05-06 20:18 [p.6849]
Mr. Speaker, we have been talking a lot about the impacts on southwestern Ontario. My riding is quite close to Sarnia, and those job impacts will be felt if the closure happens quickly.
The member did an excellent job of showing that there needs to be that smart transition and what New Democrats have been calling for in terms of heading towards a low-carbon economy in the future.
A few days ago there was a study conducted by Western University, Lawson Health Research Institute. It talked about the evidence that showed exposure to high levels of pollution could significantly hinder the development of children and that it causes a lot of asthma. We have seen that in Sarnia. It is actually quite a bit higher, the incidence of child—
View Derek Sloan Profile
Ind. (ON)
Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to raise my concern with the idea, not expressed by this particular member, but by others, that lockdowns are the answers to all our problems. Of course, we can cherry-pick different examples that seem to have been effective, but there are many studies that undermine the idea that blanket lockdowns are effective. There are many jurisdictions, for example Florida in relation to California, that have not been doing the lockdowns and are doing quite well.
Acting quickly is advisable, and targeted measures can be advisable, but locking everyone and all businesses down, in my view, is not helpful. I would like to also mention that Canada has failed to implement any other treatments. I am just reading the latest issue of the American Journal of Therapeutics that has a meta-analysis of 18 different studies that show significantly reduced risks of contracting COVID-19 with the regular use of ivermectin. Let us try new things and do whatever we can to address this virus.
View Mike Lake Profile
CPC (AB)
View Mike Lake Profile
2021-05-05 21:52 [p.6737]
Mr. Speaker, I am not sure I sensed a question in that, so maybe I will give someone else a chance to actually ask me a question.
View Mark Gerretsen Profile
Lib. (ON)
Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Pickering—Uxbridge, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health.
It is an honour to rise today to talk about such an incredibly important issue.
The member from Edmonton asked why I was taking the approach that the Conservatives are being overly partisan about this. It is because they have come into the House, and every Conservative, one after another, has only talked about vaccines. Yes, vaccines are very important. They are important to getting through this. They are important to getting through to the other side, but there are other important things too.
When the Conservatives come in here and only talk about vaccines, it makes me wonder why they will not talk about things that the provincial governments are responsible for, or other things the federal government could be doing. I think there is a lot of criticism to go around.
As we look back on this years from now, we will be able to say the federal government should have done this, or the federal government should have been more prepared. I hope we learn from this. If we do not learn from this, then what will we have accomplished?
First and foremost, I hope we learn that we need to do something about our vaccine manufacturing in this country, our biomanufacturing of vaccines. We need to make sure that when the next pandemic happens, because history tells us it will at some point, we are better prepared.
I am willing to let that responsibility go around, and I am willing to say that Liberals were just as responsible for that as Conservatives were in the past, but I do not think anyone saw it coming. Therefore, there was not an urgent need placed on it. Yes, we do need to do something about making sure that it is better.
When history looks back on this, we will also look at ourselves and say, when we were weighing the options, did we put too much emphasis on the economy and not enough emphasis on the advice of medical professionals? I really get a kick out of some of the stuff I have heard, not just today in this debate, but over the last number of weeks and months, and how sometimes there seems to be a complete disregard for the experts and for science.
It is based on emotion. I do not want to say ideology, but it is based on emotion. I want this to be over too, but that does not mean I should believe everything I see on the Internet that suggests there is an easier way.
From the beginning, I have always said I will take my health advice from the Chief Public Health Officer of Canada and, more importantly, the medical officer of health in my riding of Kingston and the Islands, Dr. Kieran Moore, who has done a phenomenal job of taking care of our community. For some reason, there has been this desire out there to disregard experts. If we do not shut that narrative down, we are only complicit in helping that narrative snowball and build momentum. I think that people in the House are responsible for allowing narratives to continue on.
Who else should we trust? If I am on an airplane and the pilot suddenly passes out, and we are looking for someone to fly the plane, and someone says they are a pilot, I am going to tell them to get in the cockpit and land that thing. Likewise, I am going to believe the experts and the medical officers of health, the people who have studied pandemics and have planned for them, and take their advice.
When they say lockdowns are important, then I am going to believe them. I do not understand how a body such as this, the House of Commons, has come to a place where we regularly disagree with medical experts. It absolutely boggles my mind.
When the Conservatives come in here, they are only talking about vaccines. Yes, there is a lot we could have done to do a better job of making sure we were prepared, and that includes Conservatives, Liberals and opposition parties pushing the agenda.
I know there were no Conservatives before March 2020 asking why we were not making more vaccines in the country or where our manufacturing is for this. Nobody was saying that over the last five or 10 years. No Liberal was saying it when Stephen Harper was the prime minister either because we did not see this coming.
In the same regard, we have to respect the fact that we can criticize this government's approach and delivery of vaccines as a result of the infrastructure and resources that were in place. We can criticize that. It is fair to criticize. I think history can look back on that and see where we went wrong, where we went right and how it played out.
What we cannot be critical about is that the government did lay out the exact plan. The provinces knew what the timeline was going to be. They were told in the late fall what they should expect in terms of vaccines coming along.
The only part of that plan that had a hiccup was the 10 days back in February, which the Conservatives keep talking about, when one of the primary delivery manufacturers of vaccines retooled its plant so that it could produce more vaccines, but we still ended up getting caught up very quickly.
By the end of March, provinces received more vaccines than they were told they were going to have. They were originally scheduled to get 29 million vaccines by the end of June, but now they will be getting closer to 50 million. They are getting more vaccines than they were told they were going to get.
Yes, we can be critical, but the provinces knew this was the schedule. In Ontario, and I am sure it is the same in Alberta, the province, on February 11, had its projection of the third wave and knew exactly what it would be getting and when it would be getting it. The federal government delivered more than it promised, yet the provinces still did not use other measures in order to curb the third wave. Instead, they relied on hoping that maybe, miraculously, things would go even better than the schedule, which was a horrible plan.
I regret that we are here and having this conversation, as I am sure everybody does, but at the end of the day, I genuinely believe that, if a province wants to work with the federal government, it has to take the information we have been giving it on vaccines and plan according to that. They need to understand that medical experts are going to give them advice, and they could say the vaccines we are going to get will not get us beyond the third wave. They could say we better do something about this now and start talking about other measures, such as lockdowns.
I have yet to hear a Conservative tonight say that they support lockdowns, which I cannot understand because they have happened throughout the entire world, and they have been shown to be effective. This is just like two years ago when they could not utter the words “climate change”. They cannot even utter the words because they are afraid of saying it, and I do not know why.
View John Barlow Profile
CPC (AB)
View John Barlow Profile
2021-05-05 22:04 [p.6739]
Mr. Speaker, my colleague said that all the Conservatives are talking about is vaccines and how important they are, and that is exactly right. My colleague also said there is no way anyone predicted this pandemic was coming, which is patently not true. That is what our early warning was in place for, the GPHIN program, but the Auditor General's report showed how poorly the Liberals mishandled the early warning system by dismantling the GPHIN program.
Would my colleague not admit dismantling the GPHIN program, our early warning pandemic system, has played a significant role in the position we are in today?
View Mark Gerretsen Profile
Lib. (ON)
Mr. Speaker, I go back to what I was saying. History can look back and judge that stuff, absolutely, but the situation Alberta is in right now—
An hon. member: It would have been better.
Mr. Mark Gerretsen: No, the member cannot say that would have been significantly impacted. It has been a year. It has been over a year. How can he possibly say that?
Medical experts, as in Ontario, were predicting the trajectories of the waves for Alberta and could calculate that against the arrival of vaccines. They did the calculations, they knew how it was going to go. In Ontario, unfortunately, it happened exactly as predicted because the province would not put in the lockdowns when it should have.
View Sean Fraser Profile
Lib. (NS)
View Sean Fraser Profile
2021-05-05 22:07 [p.6739]
Mr. Speaker, it is important we reflect on the fact this motion is about an absolute public health crisis going on in a Canadian province right now. It is not just the risk to an individual. When our health system's capacity is overwhelmed, if someone gets in a car accident there may not be a place for them to go.
The Conservative argument has been essentially that their vaccines did not come quickly enough. If we accept their argument, which I do not, I still do not understand how it justifies not putting in place the other public health measures we know will save lives. Can the hon. member offer his thoughts on the importance of putting those public health measures in place until there is herd immunity through vaccination to ensure we can save lives we know will be lost in the absence of these kinds of measures?
View Mark Gerretsen Profile
Lib. (ON)
Mr. Speaker, this is the point I have been trying to make, and the parliamentary secretary is absolutely correct.
The province knew when it was going to get the vaccines. It also received professional medical advice from the experts as to what the waves would look like, yet it still chose not to take additional measures.
Absolutely, if vaccines came sooner we probably would not be standing in this place right now, but my point is the provinces knew we would be in this place right now. That is the whole point. They knew we would be here because they knew the trajectory of vaccines, and it has only been better than what they had been promised.
View Jennifer O'Connell Profile
Lib. (ON)
Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to follow my colleague, the member for Kingston and the Islands. I could have listened to a 20-minute speech by him. The member for Saanich—Gulf Islands also gave a speech that I really appreciated this evening. I will pick up on her speech, as well as the speech just given by the member for Kingston and the Islands. The point of this debate is truly important and they both touched on the theme. I am sure others have, but I am calling these two members out in particular.
Where the member for Kingston and the Islands finished off is where I would like to begin. He spoke about how we can look back at where we could have done things better, where things were done well, where we were a success story or where we need to be better prepared. He and I both came from municipal politics, where there were all these plans in place and after years and years of a pandemic or an emergency not coming, unfortunately, sometimes plans sit on the shelf. I am not saying that is the right approach, but the lessons we are learning are incredibly important and a constant reminder to never take our eye off emergency preparedness.
The member for Kingston and the Islands said that we can look back and do that work, but what has been frustrating in listening, in particular, to Conservative members is all they are doing is looking back. I made note of some of them. One pointed out where we were 52 days ago. My God, how the people of Alberta must feel hearing that tonight. What are we going to do today, tomorrow and the days and weeks after that to support and help the people in this country? We can look back on vaccines, we can look back on whatever else the Conservatives want to look back at, but are we not going to focus our collective energy to support the people in this country now?
I am listening to this debate as a member from Ontario and people in my home province are living it now. I think about the anxiety people felt when these spikes first happened, the confusion, the lockdowns, no lockdowns and the pointing of fingers. I think of my friends, neighbours and family who just want to know how we are going to get through this. That is what our government has been focusing on.
Many members have spoken about no country being perfect, but that does not mean we stop acting. It means we continue to move forward, to provide the supports the provinces and territories need. It means getting vaccines faster, getting the Red Cross out to support the vaccination efforts, if need be. It is seeing health care providers in Newfoundland and Labrador coming to Ontario to help support health care workers. It is seeing people step up in unimaginable ways during this time. It is what else the federal government can do.
As the member for Kingston and the Islands just said, we will work with provinces and territories and provide whatever they need, particularly in Alberta, providing mobile health units, contact tracing, rapid tests, funds for the safe restart agreement to help protect and insulate between the second and third waves, even between the first and second waves. The government has provided whatever each province and territory has needed. Every province and territory in this country is different, has different needs and requires different resources. We have been there. We have heard Quebec members talking about the supports needed in long-term care. We were there for that. We were there for PPE.
We should not be talking about all the things that we have done; we should talk about all the things we are going to continue to do until we are through this. That is what Canadians expect of us. That is what this debate should be about and why I noted the speech of the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands. This is the debate we should be having.
Conservatives consistently stand up and say there is confusion and mixed messaging. Nothing has frustrated me more because the confusion and mixed messaging is coming from the Conservatives themselves. They can go back to early March of this year when their own health critic was saying to remove border restrictions, ease the border restrictions, that all they need is a pre-boarding test and then a test when they land and people should just go on their way. If we had listened to them, we would not have caught those people who had tested positive after being tested when they landed. They would not have been in isolation and they would have been out in the community. Again, there are additional measures we can continue to take and we will happily be here to support Canadians to do that.
They are Conservatives who constantly stand in this place and say, “we do not need restrictions, we need freedom”. The member for Carleton posts pictures when he is sitting outside, eating on a patio and goes, “freedom”. Then, they have the nerve to come in this place and say that vaccines would have solved everything when they refused to listen to the public health experts, and not even Canadian public health experts if they do not want to trust Canadians. Globally, we know that vaccines are an important tool, but they will only work if the public health measures are also in place.
The Conservatives love to quote the U.S. or Israel or the U.K. for their programs, but the U.K. and Israel both saw, during their vaccination campaigns, that as they lifted restrictions too quickly they saw spikes. We heard testimony from experts at the health committee. Governments there quickly realized that vaccinations are not the only tool, they have to be done in conjunction with strong public health measures to give vaccinations the time to work, the time to be distributed across the communities and to become effective.
It is this ignorance of listening to the public health advice, which is not governments' opinions but public health advice, that is frustrating to watch because I see people suffering, I see small businesses close and I see people being sick. To send out a message saying that if only we had done this nobody would have suffered is simply unfair to Canadians. We need to be honest with Canadians that as our vaccine campaign is rolling out and everybody needs to roll up their sleeves and get vaccinated, we also need to listen to the public health advice. Those mixed messages coming from the Conservatives, saying lockdowns are not needed and looser border measures would be okay are just not truthful, are not helpful and are certainly not going to help the people of Alberta or those in my home province of Ontario or anywhere else across this country as we battle this third wave.
I hope we get to the point where we are having conversations about what more we can do to support Alberta, what more we can do to support any jurisdiction in this country to get through this third wave, and actually acknowledge and admit that the public health measures are there to work in conjunction with vaccines and that we are only going to get through this if we listen to the experts and medical health professionals who know what they are talking about. We have seen it work in other countries, so we do not even need to imagine it; we know it is real. I truly hope that the Conservative members will come and work with us on helping to support our fellow Canadians during this difficult time.
View Sean Fraser Profile
Lib. (NS)
View Sean Fraser Profile
2021-05-05 22:53 [p.6745]
Madam Speaker, for reasons others have articulated previously this evening, I vehemently disagree with the member on the success of Canada's vaccine procurement. However, if I accept her position that the federal government's procurement strategy has been insufficient, I cannot find a charitable interpretation of her argument that would suggest that public health measures today in Alberta would not be required to stem the spread of COVID-19.
What public health measures does the hon. member think should be implemented in order to protect the public's health until sufficient vaccines are present to innoculate the population?
View Stephanie Kusie Profile
CPC (AB)
View Stephanie Kusie Profile
2021-05-05 22:53 [p.6745]
Madam Speaker, I know the parliamentary secretary had a brief residence in Alberta. I had the pleasure of sitting on the status of women committee with him.
The way out of this is the vaccine. It could not be more crystal clear than that, so the focus should be on receiving the vaccines, distributing the vaccines and getting them into the arms of Canadians. Everything that is going on now, this week, all of the sacrifices that Albertans have been making and will continue to make even more severely in the coming three weeks are the residue of this government's inaction.
View Garnett Genuis Profile
CPC (AB)
Madam Speaker, it is an honour for me to be able to speak about Alberta, the province I grew up in, live in, represent and love so much.
This is an important debate. I will say it has also at times been an odd debate, odd I think because the federal New Democrats, especially my hon. friend from Edmonton Strathcona, are using the federal House of Commons to offer a highly partisan critique of the UCP government in Alberta. I am not here to praise or critique the UCP government. I think I have enough to do seeking to hold the federal government accountable in the federal House of Commons, to push it to adopt policies that are in the national interest and protect Canadians by getting us out of this pandemic.
The NDP members have declared that Canadians do not care about jurisdiction, they want politicians to act. To this, I would observe that jurisdictional details are actually extremely important to how we resolve this crisis. The federal government cannot impose gathering restrictions and provincial governments cannot control borders. Everyone needs to do their job in their own area of jurisdiction. It is silly to pretend that jurisdictional responsibility does not matter. Jurisdictional responsibility is crucial. Politicians need to understand where their responsibilities lie. Then they need to act in those areas of responsibility to do their part to get the outcomes that we are all looking for.
What we have seen during too much of this crisis is an obscuring of responsibility. It is not just the NDP; many federal Liberals have also taken every opportunity to slam the actions of various provincial governments. That might be understandable if the federal government had carried off its own responsibilities flawlessly, but that is far from the case, so now instead of acting effectively it is often shifting responsibility.
I want to pose what I think is the fundamental question for this conversation, the question Canadians have been asking for a long time. Let us end the finger-pointing between different levels of government and let us establish who is responsible for solving the problem of COVID-19 in Canada. Who is responsible for getting us out of this crisis, for charting a course to something different, for building a plan to get us beyond the current pandemic? Who is responsible?
Too often we hear from the provinces that the feds should do certain things, we hear from the feds about what the provinces should do, meanwhile both are saying they are deferring to experts. The public health experts in different jurisdictions do not always agree with each other and do not actually have the ability to publicly contradict the politicians they report to.
Further, when it comes to expertise, it is, by its nature, specialized. One expert may be well placed to tell us about the spread of a disease, but less able to explain the social factors that contribute to whether or not people follow guidelines in certain situations. A different expert still may be required to explain the impacts on life and well-being that are associated with large-scale unemployment caused by certain kinds of policies. The point is that generally we expect politicians to gather the feedback of different experts and make a decision that synthesizes that feedback and applies collective values as dictated by the electorate. That is the point of having a democracy instead of an aristocracy of expertise.
Today, the politicians say they are deferring to the experts when in reality the experts still report in private to politicians and politicians are the ones actually taking decisions, so again there is a lack of clarity about who is actually responsible. When I say “who” is responsible, I am not intending to refer to the World Health Organization, although it is evident that many people in this government would like to defer responsibility for their decisions to the WHO, even though it has been clear from the beginning there have been serious flaws in its approach and recommendations. The WHO is ultimately constrained by its member states. As we have seen, that has limited its action in particular, for instance, in response to identifying issues coming out of China at the beginning. There has been a lot of just passing back and forth the—
View Garnett Genuis Profile
CPC (AB)
Madam Speaker, I was of course intending to say that I was splitting my time. I was saving that for the ninth minute, just to make sure Sean and Sebastien are still awake.
There has been much passing back and forth of responsibility throughout this. It goes without saying that there have been mistakes made at lots of levels, but what we need now is to stop this extended process of finger pointing, and for someone to finally stand up and say, “I am responsible and I have a plan to get us out of this.” That person, the person we need to show national leadership, take responsibility and give us a plan for getting us out of this pandemic is the Prime Minister. He has the opportunity, better late than never, to step up and work to unite this country and work to build a safe recovery by leading from those critical areas of federal responsibility.
In my view, the most critical actions required for a long-term solution to this pandemic are all in federal jurisdiction. Therefore, I want to give the Prime Minister some suggestions about what a path would look like to get us out of this in federal jurisdictions.
Making vaccines available to Canadians is critically important. Much has been said, I think very well, by my colleagues about the government's failure to do that. However, as we have also discussed, vaccines are not the whole picture.
We live in an increasingly interconnected world where pandemics are going to become more and more common. Locking ourselves down and bringing our nation to the precipice of a debt crisis every time there is a novel virus outbreak or a vaccine-resistant variant, and then waiting for vaccine development is likely not going to be a viable strategy in the 21st century.
We need to learn how and act to build a system that allows us to stay safe and stay open during pandemics like this. Some countries have done that. Some countries beat COVID-19 long before there was a vaccine. I spoke about that in a question that I addressed to the health minister on March 25, 2020, well over a year ago. Here is what I said at the time:
Madam Chair, Canada must look at international comparisons and copy strategies used by countries that have been successful in controlling COVID-19. South Korea provides one such example. Its approach emphasizes widely available testing and tracking of the spread of the virus, making people aware of specific places where they might have been exposed and providing them with the test results as quickly as possible. This targeted testing and tracking approach has helped South Korea turn the corner. Taiwan's approach has been similar and similarly effective.
Has the government studied, and is the government preparing to adopt, the very successful containment model used by Asian democracies which also have more experience at pandemic control?
I asked the health minister that on March 25, 2020, more than a year ago, and the health minister replied that yes, they were looking at these models and different experiences around the world, and yet, we still have not seen the plan to implement some of those successful measures.
Earlier than that, on March 11 of the same year, I tabled a petition in the House calling on the government to strengthen border screening, including having effective temperature testing at the border. Because the federal government has responsibility for developing and approving new testing technology, for coordinating national systems of tracing, for securing our borders and, yes, for providing clear and accurate advice on masking, something else that the government unfortunately failed to do, it has failed to act and has, in many cases yet to act, in terms of putting in place the systems and charting the path that is going to get us out of this. That points to why we are still really in the midst of a third wave that has not hit many other countries around the world, a third wave that is in Canada and it is hitting every province at different magnitudes in different provinces. We have a third wave hitting this country because of a failure of the federal government to act in areas of its jurisdictions.
I agree strongly with my colleagues about the vital necessity of making vaccines available. The Province of Alberta has been rapidly deploying vaccines as they have been made available, but we also must develop systems of effective border control, testing and tracing, things that the federal government must lead on.
On the issue of responsibility, it is important to say that it is not just about government. All of us are responsible. For our collective response to COVID-19 to work, citizens must choose to be engaged and there has to be a level of social trust.
People have to listen to health directives and follow them. It goes without saying that the spread of COVID-19 is determined by the practical actions of people on the ground, and it is only affected by the regulations that are in place insofar as those regulations are followed. However, trust also has to be earned. When we have a national government that has been inconsistent in the advice it has given, and that is routinely attacking the Province of Alberta and other provinces, it unfortunately undermines trust. The government, in addition to the policy measures, needs to work to rebuild trust with people on the ground, especially people in my province.
With that, I look forward to responding to questions.
View Elizabeth May Profile
GP (BC)
View Elizabeth May Profile
2021-04-29 11:12 [p.6387]
Mr. Speaker, as luck would have it, today is the day that I get my first vaccination. I am 66 years old. I have been waiting my turn, and I am being very careful.
I regret this kind of debate because of the level of partisanship in it. I suspect that if the constitutional responsibilities were different so that it was up to the provinces to order the vaccines and up to the feds to do other aspects, the Conservatives would want to debate how terrible it is that the vaccine rollout is bad and what a great job the provinces are doing in ordering vaccines.
I do not think that is the right approach. I think we run a risk. Number one, I wish we were doing better in getting our vaccines rolled out, and I agree with much of what the member for Calgary Nose Hill has said. However, I also think we are at a real risk with the variants, as many have warned, including the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.K. and Israel. They are all looking at the situation and saying that people should not reduce their level of caution because they have gotten the first vaccine. We could run a risk with variants that are resistant to vaccines. The longer the variants move in our population, the more we will get.
In a holistic approach, does my hon. colleague agree with me that we need to do more to protect ourselves from the variants, as they move as aerosols, not as droplets?
View Steven MacKinnon Profile
Lib. (QC)
View Steven MacKinnon Profile
2021-04-29 11:13 [p.6387]
Mr. Speaker, first of all, I am very glad to hear that the hon. member will be getting her jab. I know she will feel, as millions of Canadians have, the relief that comes with it. I certainly wish her good luck, and hope, of course, that she continues to be cautious when it comes to looking after her health.
Indeed, we want to follow the most up-to-date science in making sure that Canadians protect themselves against all possible permutations of this virus. We want to make sure that Canadians continue to follow all of the public health prescriptions for masks, distancing and washing hands, and do that right through to when we achieve herd immunity. I know we are all looking forward to that day.
We will continue, on our part, bringing in vaccines as quickly as possible so that Canadians can get the two doses that are needed in most cases, except with the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The two-dose regime will bring a lot of relief, and it will bring a lot of hope to Canadians that the pandemic will soon be behind us.
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