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Results: 76 - 90 of 362
View Patty Hajdu Profile
Lib. (ON)
Mr. Speaker, I agree with my colleague. The vaccines are an important tool in the fight against COVID-19.
In February, we announced $64 million to help Canadians get reliable information about vaccines. All of the vaccines are approved by Health Canada as safe and effective against COVID-19.
I encourage all Canadians to get vaccinated because the vaccine protects them and their loved ones.
View Cathy McLeod Profile
CPC (BC)
Mr. Speaker, we are a year in and many people are struggling with COVID. They rely on expert advice. I will quote just one person's frustration regarding vaccine messaging: “I am so tired. I was excited to get my first vaccine and suddenly I am told it is not the preferred dose. Now I’m questioning why I was told to take the first dose available. In the meantime, my 92-year-old father can’t get his second shot as advised.”
When will the minister take responsibility for these failures in communication and delivery?
View Jennifer O'Connell Profile
Lib. (ON)
Mr. Speaker, Canadians can rest assured that the approval and authorization of vaccine use in this country is left up to the world-renowned regulators at Health Canada. All vaccines that are authorized go through a rigorous testing process for safety and effectiveness, and that review continues even as vaccines are distributed.
Vaccines are an important tool for getting through this virus, and we encourage all Canadians to get a vaccine as soon as it is their turn.
View Andréanne Larouche Profile
BQ (QC)
View Andréanne Larouche Profile
2021-05-07 13:32 [p.6920]
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-210 at third reading. I have already spoken to this bill in the past, last November.
This bill seeks to amend the Canada Revenue Agency Act to allow the CRA to enter into agreements with the provinces and territories to collect, via income tax returns, any information that Quebec and the provinces require to establish or maintain an organ donor registry. The second part of the bill would allow the CRA to disclose this information to the provinces and territories with which it has entered into an agreement.
I will discuss three different aspects of this bill. First, I will lay out our party's position on this matter. Then I will describe the state of organ donation in Quebec, Canada and the world, and share some examples of cases. Finally, I will talk a little about the ongoing difficulties caused by the pandemic for organ donation.
I will start by stating the Bloc Québécois's position even though this bill will not affect Quebec at all. Let me explain. We still want Quebec to administer its own single tax return. That is no secret. Even though we have not yet made that happen, Quebec can get all the information it needs to have its own income tax return. The Bloc Québécois therefore has no problem with this bill, but Quebec is unlikely to want to enter into an agreement with the Canada Revenue Agency because Quebec, as I said, already has its own tax return.
Let me reiterate that what the Bloc Québécois wants is to implement a single tax return—I am giving a shout-out to my colleague from Joliette—that is administered by Quebec, which means that this bill would not affect Quebec at all. Even if Quebec wanted to enter into an agreement, we would have no problem with the idea of sharing this information. Quebec is free to enter into an agreement or not. This bill does not commit Quebec to anything or limit it in any way. Allowing the Canada Revenue Agency to collect information as part of an agreement with a participating province and sharing that information with the provinces is not a problem. It actually makes sense because the CRA handles all the tax returns outside Quebec.
I will give a few examples where that has already been put in place in Canada. Nova Scotia recently passed a law to reverse consent for organ donation. Nova Scotians are now deemed to be consenting unless they state otherwise. Nova Scotia's decision to adopt this policy of presumed consent to organ donation has pushed some provinces to consider whether that is the best solution to increase the number of donors. Survivors and loved ones think that it is, but the answer is not that simple for some experts.
Nova Scotia adopting legislation that assumes all citizens are organ donors has given the rest of the country something to think about. The Premier of Nova Scotia, Stephen McNeil, hopes that his initiative will snowball, but for now, nothing is certain. While New Brunswick is looking at the idea closely, the governments of Quebec and British Columbia will be closely monitoring what happens in Nova Scotia, and Ontario says it is happy with its system.
Some European countries like France and Spain adopted presumed consent several years ago. At this time, the data do not show a clear correlation between presumed consent and an increase in the number of donors. Marie-Chantal Fortin, a nephrologist and bioethicist at CHUM, said that it is a simple solution to a complex problem. She pointed out that countries with presumed consent like Spain have excellent organ donation rates, yet the United States, which does not have presumed consent, also has a similarly high organ donation rate.
What experts do agree on is that better training is needed for medical teams and, above all, people need to talk about organ donation with their friends and family. This is yet another argument for improving funding for the health care system.
This debate is gaining momentum in Quebec. I once had the opportunity to witness a heated debate on this topic at a policy convention. Quebeckers are supposed to indicate on their health card whether they consent to organ donation in the event of death. Quebec has all the information it needs to improve the situation.
According to experts, increasing the supply of organs would be very helpful, but we need more doctors who specialize in organ and tissue retrieval and transplants. This brings us back to the subject that the Bloc Québécois is still advocating for, which is the importance of increasing health transfers to Quebec and the provinces. It is only logical. Without additional funding, it would be difficult for Quebec and the provinces to have these medical specialists. The federal government had a chance to increase these transfers in the latest budget, but all we heard was radio silence.
In addition, the number of potential donors is relatively limited, which further complicates things. Statistics drawn from current events speak for themselves. There is not enough supply to meet the demand. Even though the number of transplants has increased by 33% over the past 10 years, there is still a shortage of organs in Canada, according to the latest data published by the Canadian Institute for Health Information, or CIHI.
In 2008, 4,351 Canadians were on a transplant waiting list according to CIHI figures. In the same year, 2,782 organ transplants were performed in Canada, and 223 people died while waiting for transplants.
The increased need for organ transplantation is in part being driven by the rising number of Canadians diagnosed with end-stage kidney disease, which went up 32% over the 10 years studied. One of the reasons for the increased number of transplants is that many countries have expanded deceased organ donation practices beyond brain death cases to include donation after cardiac death, meaning the heart has permanently stopped beating.
This has led to an increase of almost 430% in the number of donation-after-cardiac-death organs used for transplantation, from 42 in 2009 to 222 in 2018. The number of donors after brain death also increased by 21% between 2009 and 2018. That is an encouraging trend, given that a deceased donor can provide up to eight organs.
Data published by CIHI also reveal that there were 555 living donors in Canada in 2018. These are people who donated a kidney or a lobe of liver. There were also 762 deceased donors in Canada. The number of deceased donors increased by 56% between 2009 and 2018, whereas the number of living donors remained stable.
I will now talk about a few cases. I was recently very touched by the testimony of a mother who spoke about her son, Justin Lefebvre, who drowned at a party. He unfortunately died far too young. As we can read on the website, Justin, who was eight years old, became a superhero because, by donating his organs, he saved the lives of four children and helped them regain their health. One of his friends and his family had the idea of creating a foundation to honour his memory, but especially to promote organ donation, increase awareness and raise money for research. I therefore invite members to visit the Fondation Justin Lefebvre website to find out more about this touching story. His mother also wrote a book about his story, which I recommend reading.
I also already talked about Sammy, a young boy from Montreal who was diagnosed four years ago with Kawasaki syndrome, a childhood illness that leads to heart complications. He has been living with a new heart for three years now. He is in good health and obviously believes in mandatory organ donation.
Linda Paradis's life was turned upside down at age 60, more than two years ago, when her lungs started to deteriorate. This active businesswoman from Quebec suddenly learned she had a few weeks to live. She ended up getting a double lung transplant. She believes in presumed consent, but knows that no doctor can remove organs without the family's consent.
I would like to add that the pandemic has exacerbated problems with organ donation. According to an article published in July 2020, the organ donation rate is the lowest it has been in five years because of COVID-19. The provincial organization responsible for organ management counted only two people who donated organs to save five patients in April 2020, while the number of donors was already low. Despite the resumption of activities in April, Transplant Québec noticed a 50% drop in the number of organ donors and a 60% drop in transplants for the second quarter of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019.
In closing, I hope that we can come up with better solutions in this debate so that we can save lives without feeling uncomfortable talking about the signature on the back of the card. I invite people to visit the Facebook page “Le Don d'organes parlons-en, parlez-en”. Beyond just talking about it, however, I would suggest that we do something about it.
View Doug Shipley Profile
CPC (ON)
Currently, 4,600 Canadian are awaiting a life-saving organ transplant. Polls have shown that 90% of Canadians approve of organ and tissue donation, but the reality is about only 25% of Canadians have registered their consent with the province or territorial registry where they live. This creates numerous issues that I will address shortly, but Bill C-210 is simple. The legislation asks Canadians when filing their taxes if they consent to having the provincial or territorial government informed of their desire to be added to the organ and tissue donor registry in the province or territory.
One hurdle to this is that currently the Canada Revenue Agency forbids the use of the income tax form for any purpose other than tax administration. For this simple change to be implemented, asking a simple question regarding organ and tissue donation, a legal exemption needs to be created. This has been done before to allow Elections Canada to ask Canadians for updated contact information, so it is not out of context.
Making a simple line addition to the tax form would have little to no cost implications and it would not infringe on any provincial jurisdictional concerns or create any privacy concerns. The legislation would allow for the use of established protocols for information sharing between the federal government and provinces as they currently use an encrypted method to share sensitive information. Another reason that this simple addition to the tax form makes sense is that we see the current voluntary method of registering is not proactive or effective.
Another unfortunate complicating factor with donation, particularly when someone passes away, is a grey area that exists for hospitals and families. Sometimes there is confusion between family and what exactly the wishes of the deceased are with respect to organ and tissue donation.
In the Standing Committee on Health report on organ donation in Canada, Dr. Levy, vice-president of Medical Affairs and Innovation at Canadian Blood Services, says, “it behooves us not to miss the opportunity...to use that donation of an organ or set of organs.”
In 2016, 260 Canadians died while waiting for a transplant. While Canada has seen an uptake in living and deceased organ donations, Canada ranks among the top 20% of countries in the world when it comes to deceased donor rates. It was also noted that those rates were half the rate of some other high-performing countries in the world, for example, Spain.
Dr. Levy noted to the committee “Our living donation rate, on the other hand, compares quite favourably internationally...Canada ranked 14th internationally for living donors in 2016”, even with the rates declining or staying stagnant. We can do better; we need to do better. If we do not make changes now, the issue is only going to get worse.
Currently, donation rates are not meeting the needs of patients' needs. There is a fragmented approach across the country with respect to donation programs and some areas are considered the gold standard while others are facing challenges. It is incumbent upon us in the House to ensure that provinces have the tools to deliver for those in need. Supporting the private member's bill of my colleague from Calgary Confederation is the smartest and most effective way of doing that right now.
Several issues with respect to organ donation in Canada were highlighted to the committee in testimony. Some gaps in the systems and reporting and classification of the need and type of donation needed are a couple.
A couple of things jumped out to me as I was researching for this topic. The total annual costs of dialysis range from $56,000 to $107,000 per patient, where the cost of a transplant is about $65,000 in year one and $23,000 in subsequent years. It is estimated the health care system would save up to $84,000 per patient per transplant annually.
The National Transplant Research Program explained to the committee that organ transplantation was not only a treatment option for people facing organ failure, it was becoming the preferred treatment for ailments such as type I diabetes, kidney disease, cystic fibrosis, heart failure and congenital heart disease, lymphoma, myeloma and leukemia.
Giving the provinces the ability to obtain accurate and up-to-date information on donation intentions allows them to ensure their wait-lists are accurate. Knowing who intends to donate through a legally binding declaration would further address consistency for provinces when it comes to measuring and reporting those willing to donate so that they can better prepare. The member for Calgary Confederation's private member's bill would address all of these. This is not a political issue. As my colleague said in his original speech in the previous session, this is a human issue.
Anyone in this House, family or friends, could need donor organs or tissue at any time. Adding a simple line item to the tax form could save hundreds of lives. If we couple that with increased public education and awareness, we could see even more registrations. We saw in the fall of 2018, in the tragic accident with the Humboldt hockey team, that one of the victims, young Logan Boulet, had registered for a donation. That donation saved six lives, as Ms. Ronnie Gavsie, President and Chief Executive Officer, Trillium Gift of Life Network noted at committee when testifying.
The time has come for this legislation to pass this House and the Senate. My colleague from Calgary Confederation has spoken eloquently and dedicated his efforts to his friend, Robert Sallows. The legislation has received support from all parties in this House and stakeholders have been universally supportive of the bill. Families who have loved ones awaiting this are welcoming this legislation. It is now up to everyone in this House to make sure that we do not delay this much-needed legislation any further. We owe it to the hundreds of people who pass away every year on the wait-list. We owe it to the organizations on the front lines and we owe it to the provinces to give them the tools they need to adequately support and deliver their donation programs.
View James Bezan Profile
CPC (MB)
Madam Speaker, May is Skin Cancer Awareness Month, and with summer just around the corner, the Save Your Skin Foundation is focusing on increasing awareness and promoting treatment for skin cancer. My wife Kelly is a melanoma skin cancer survivor. While she was fortunate enough to beat it, many others have lost their battle to the stealthy disease, and many others continue fighting.
It was estimated that in 2020 approximately 8,000 Canadians would be diagnosed with melanoma and 1,300 would die from it. Sadly, these numbers rise every year. Skin cancer is caused by overexposure to UV radiation, with the sun and artificial tanning beds being the main culprits. In the past, I tabled a private member's bill that prohibited youth under 18 from using tanning beds and strengthened warning labels on artificial tanning equipment as carcinogenic. This was enacted by our previous Conservative government.
The good news is that prevention is easy. This summer, I encourage all Canadians to enjoy the great outdoors and be skin safe: Wear sun screen, cover up, seek shade, avoid tanning beds and, of course, have lots and lots of fun.
View Michelle Rempel Garner Profile
CPC (AB)
Mr. Speaker, given the need for clear, transparent and effective communications on advice regarding vaccine efficacy and safety, what concrete action has the Minister of Health undertaken this week to correct deficiencies and better coordinate public communications between NACI, PHAC, Health Canada, her office and cabinet?
View Patty Hajdu Profile
Lib. (ON)
Mr. Speaker, I think we have been extremely clear throughout this vaccination process that vaccines do indeed save lives and stop the spread. I want to thank Public Health Ontario for its recent reporting, which demonstrated exactly that. I will continue to say that in this House. Certainly, public health leaders are saying that.
We know Canadians are stepping up to the plate. They are getting vaccinated. We will continue to deliver the vaccines to the provinces and territories. We will continue to be partners in getting those vaccines into arms. We can see the finish line, and we need to get there together.
View Michelle Rempel Garner Profile
CPC (AB)
Mr. Speaker, no, the advice on vaccines from the federal government this week has not been clear. The confusing communications regarding vaccines the federal government has presided over cannot be allowed to continue, and the person who has the responsibility to make sure this happens is the Minister of Health.
Can she acknowledge there is a problem and tell us what action she has taken, or will be taking, to correct deficiencies and better coordinate public communications between NACI, PHAC, Health Canada, her and her office, and cabinet?
View Patty Hajdu Profile
Lib. (ON)
Mr. Speaker, I will be perfectly clear. Vaccines are indeed saving lives and stopping the spread of COVID-19. That is the goal that I think every member in this House would agree is an important one and that we are all striving for.
I will repeat this again: It is important that Canadians accept the first vaccine that is offered to them. If Canadians are questioning if vaccination is right for them, the best place to get credible information is from their health care provider or from a government website at the provincial, federal or municipal level. There are many players working to vaccinate Canadians. I would encourage all members in this House to get vaccinated when it is their turn and to encourage their constituents to do so as well.
View Michelle Rempel Garner Profile
CPC (AB)
Mr. Speaker, it really sort of stinks to be interrupted in the middle of that, because that is the key message here: My community cannot afford lockdown. Everybody wants to do their part, everybody wants to stop the spread of COVID, everybody understands how serious it is, but we need a durable solution, which has not been delivered to us, and the federal government has a major role in that.
What does the federal government need to do from a solutions perspective?
First, the government needs a stable supply of vaccines. The provincial government, every provincial government in the country, has seen supplies, like Lucy and the football from the Charlie Brown cartoon series, where vaccines are coming, but then they are not. We have not had a single dose of AstraZeneca delivered from the actual contract with the manufacturer. It has only been raided from COVAX, or charity from the Americans, or from the Serum Institute of India. We need to provide more details to the provinces about the future of vaccine rollouts. There needs to be stability. Again, every week, the numbers seem to change, and that is not going to provide a durable solution.
Having the public be able to look at the details of contracts so that Parliament can understand whether or not the government is doing its job in holding manufacturers to account on recourse could have been part of it as well. However, the federal government has not been transparent on that, and Parliament has not been able to do its job because of it.
I implore the health minister, and I know she may not like me, but she needs to talk to Health Canada, PHAC and NACI and get their act together on the confusing messaging that is coming out on vaccine efficacy and safety. It is her job. She needs to pull those people in together, knock their heads together a little bit and say, “What happened this week can never happen again.” It has happened numerous times now, and she needs to take a leadership role so that Canadians can have trust in public health institutions, and so that the debacle that happened this week does not happen again.
The government also needs to come up with some better use or national strategy for rapid testing. I think the federal government has really kind of wiped its hands of that. It could be providing advice and support for advice on that, but that has not happened. Even things like using rapid tests in airports for domestic travel are something that the government has not looked into. There could be more approval of over-the-counter rapid tests or home-purchased rapid tests. We have not seen that happen. Again, I understand that the regulator has to do due diligence on that, but certainly we can have diligence and a good review process to give more tools to people to stop the spread.
We could remove the hotel quarantine policy. It has been such an unmitigated disaster. We are hearing reports of COVID spreading in these facilities. I mean, I could litigate all the failures around the border, but how do we move forward from this, given the failures? There will be a time for inquiry, but moving forward the government could immediately cut down on the list of those who are exempted from quarantine until more vaccines can be deployed. It could limit those who are exempted to a very small number of critical workers, like truck drivers, and prioritize access to vaccines for those persons. It could put in place measures to ensure that every person entering Canada is required to be tested upon arrival, including at land and sea borders, with exemptions only for critical workers who are fully vaccinated.
The government could develop a clear set of parameters for identifying risks presented by emerging variants and present this to the public in an easy-to-understand format. I do not understand why we do not have a Defcon level ranking system for when variants are emerging, and why that is not being communicated to the public in terms of travel or even around essential travel. It is like, “The risk is low, but it is not.” The confusing messaging that the Auditor General rightly criticized the Public Health Agency of Canada for issuing at the front end of the pandemic could be fixed.
Also, we could provide a data-driven plan to provinces and Canadians on how and when lockdown measures will be lifted. The federal government still has not provided any benchmarking for what fully vaccinated persons could do. If we start telling the public what fully vaccinated persons can do, there will be more uptake of vaccines. For those who are having mental health challenges, there will be some hope in knowing that, “Okay, when I get both of my doses, I can do this.”
However, we know that is not coming forward, I would surmise, because the federal government does not have a line of sight on when everybody will be fully vaccinated, because of the shortage and because of concerns about what the dosing delay is going to mean for long-term efficacy. That needs to be solved.
I cannot stress enough how critical this is for the people in my community in Alberta, who have long-sufferingly provided support to the rest of the country through hundreds of billions of dollars in payments to the federal government and have not received a lot in return. We get forgotten by the federal government all the time. In these instances, at these times, casting aspersions or finger pointing or playing politics between the NDP and the provincial government is not going to cut it. What we need is a plan.
I wish I had three hours to talk about all the things that we could be doing right now that the federal government and the provincial government are not, but I do not. Suffice it to say, there are things that could be done that we are not doing, and I implore the federal government, I implore the health minister to put these things aside and start understanding that everything is not fine. It is not okay. We are not in a position of success federally in this country, and more must be done. That is why I needle the government every day. That is why I prep for committee, and that is why I hold the government to account, because we can and must do better.
Instead of casting aspersions that somehow Alberta is to blame, that the spread that is happening is the fault of the people of my province, legislators and leaders in this country need to start standing up and doing their job: being stricter on the border, doing better on vaccines, having better data, supporting people more effectively and giving them hope for when this is going to be over. I cannot say enough how hard it is to be in one of the hardest-hit communities in the country right now. It breaks my heart. It is the place from which I get up in the House of Commons every day and ask questions and demand better.
I implore the federal government to do this on behalf of every single Albertan who is listening to this tonight. We need more vaccines. We need a clear line of sight. We need clear communications, and we need the federal government to stop patronizing us in its response. When we are holding it to account and demanding better, that is its job, and hopefully there will be a solution for Albertans because of the work of everybody in Parliament who is doing their job here tonight.
View Michelle Rempel Garner Profile
CPC (AB)
Mr. Speaker, I do not understand why the member opposite did not support a motion to provide support and benchmarks for a clear path out of the pandemic and out of lockdown, such as what vaccinated persons can do or deploying more rapid tests. This is what we need.
I fully and deeply support ensuring that front-line workers have the resources they need to ensure that they can isolate. Often they do not have that right now, but we are a year and a half into this and we are talking about more programs to keep people at home. We should be talking about how we are getting them back to work safely through vaccination.
I am worried at this point. I think one of the cabinet ministers was talking about what would happen if there was a fourth wave. What? People need hope. They need to know when we are getting out of this. They need to understand what the path forward is and when they are getting those tools. That is what we need the federal government to be working on right now collaboratively with our provincial partners.
View Damien Kurek Profile
CPC (AB)
Then we see the members opposite trying to pivot the blame. They say that Conservatives spread the misinformation. I have dozens of pages of clear examples, numerous examples of inconsistent messaging and changing direction. The fact is that even the member for Kingston and the Islands said very clearly that had we gotten more vaccines, we would not be having this debate. A number of the Liberal members opposite have said things like “Well, we only want to talk about vaccines.” Well, it seems like the Liberals only wanted to stop talking about vaccines when their failures on the procurement of those vaccines became widespread. Then, all of a sudden, Canadians were seeing the consequences of that, and we see that now. This truly is the Prime Minister's third wave.
I think back to the beginning of the pandemic, when I, among many other Conservatives, started asking questions about securing our borders. They were valid questions about what was happening with this virus, which we did not know very much about, and we started asking about measures being taken. I remember the public safety minister stood up and said that the government had put in enhanced border measures, yet I would talk to constituents who had just returned home who said that they did not see any border measures. I talked to some constituents who saw those border measures, and literally, and I wish this was a joke, the enhanced border measure was a check mark on the immigration form. As the old saying goes, “An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure”, and I think that is the reality we are facing, with tens of thousands of lives lost and other significant challenges that we face.
I say often that the government is all style and very little substance. Unfortunately, that has been the case throughout this pandemic, and I would suggest the last five and a half or so years as well, as has been highlighted through the many other failures and tragedies of what this Liberal government has done.
I was speaking to somebody who closely follows the National Research Council, and even some of the regulatory changes that the Liberals brought in right after they were elected actually put Canada further back in terms of being set up to succeed in the case of needing to see rapid investment in emerging health technologies, like vaccines. This was a number of years before the word “COVID-19” was even known to the world, and that really comes back to the issue of good governance.
The Liberals will say, “Well, it is easy to be an armchair quarterback and speak from hindsight.” This is what the Liberals like to talk about to try to pivot away from their failures. However, we see time and again with the current government that truly it has been a failure of good governance. We see things like ministerial responsibility, which, in some cases, appears to have been abandoned. The Liberals simply use it as a way to cover up their scandals but then do not provide the oversight. I have filed hundreds of ATIPs since getting elected, and some of the things I see and do not see are astounding.
I have a couple of minutes left here to talk about some of the things that my constituents have brought up over the last number of months, such as the border issue that the government brought in. Conservatives were critical of the border hotels, especially when the minister himself said that there was no evidence that would work. There could have been other measures that were more effective.
On mental health, we have seen the government support a Conservative motion for a 988 number, yet it has done virtually nothing since. It has made some announcements in terms of dollars in its yearly budget, which was released a couple of weeks ago. Again, it is promising dollars but no action.
A great example is the Service Canada office that is located down the street from my constituency office, where I am currently giving this speech. A sign was put on the door saying that it was closed, and there was a website on it. Hundreds of people sought help from my office, because constituents could not be served by the government. Again, on good governance there was a lack of responsibility.
As I have mentioned, we see businesses falling through the cracks. We see mixed messaging on vaccines. This has been a big challenge. I have had phone calls this week, and people are asking what to believe and who to believe.
There is certainly much more I could say, but it has been good to participate in this debate. Hopefully I highlighted some of the issues that my constituents have brought forward to me over the last number of weeks and months, and in the last year.
View Jag Sahota Profile
CPC (AB)
View Jag Sahota Profile
2021-05-05 23:39 [p.6752]
Madam Speaker, I wish I could say that I am pleased to rise tonight to discuss the current COVID-19 situation in my home province of Alberta and in Canada, but I am actually sad that there is a third wave in my home province of Alberta and in Canada.
We have seen a record number of COVID cases. We have seen new lockdown measures in an effort to flatten the curve, yet our hospitalization numbers continue to rise and our ICU admissions continue to soar. I am also disappointed that we are here tonight because this Liberal government failed to protect Canadians and Albertans, both their physical and mental well-being.
We are in the middle of this third wave of the COVID pandemic. Many Canadians across Canada are struggling to cope with the rise of cases, harsh lockdowns and mental health struggles. This is very worrisome.
While our neighbours to the south are seeing their hospitalization numbers go down, businesses reopening, restaurant patios opening again just in time for summer and fans returning to in-person sporting games, Albertans are facing yet another summer of restrictive lockdowns. I cannot help but know that, if our Prime Minister and his Minister of Health took different actions at the beginning, we would now be getting ready to attend in-person sporting events and having brunch with family and friends on patios.
Make no mistake, this third wave and the damage it is doing to our mental health and the economy rests solely with the Prime Minister. Under this Prime Minister's leadership, the Minister of Health allowed our early pandemic warning system to be shut down just months before COVID-19 hit.
This Prime Minister sent hundreds of thousands of masks, gloves and gowns from the government's own reserve to China. A month later, health care professionals and first responders here at home were being asked to ration the use of personal protective equipment, recycle masks and limit their use of hand sanitizer, and in some cases they were using garbage bags as PPE.
The government refused to close our borders at the onset, letting the virus spread across the country. It flip-flopped on whether or not Canadians should wear masks. The Minister of Health repeatedly told Canadians that the risk of getting COVID was low. The Prime Minister was slow to roll out federal aid programs and wrong not to fix them when Conservatives raised concerns and offered productive solutions to help Canadians.
Protecting Canadians is one of the most important responsibilities of the government. We cannot continue with lockdowns and social distancing. Canadians are getting fed up. They want to be able to do what our neighbours to the south are able to do. Therefore, here are some of the things that the government can do to put Canadians first.
The government can develop a clear set of parameters for identifying risks presented by emerging variants and present this to the public in an easy-to-understand format. Canadians should have information on where the virus is spreading, emerging variants and vaccination levels.
The government can provide real-time warnings to the Canadian public when new variants are detected around the world as well as when hot spots for this spread are revealed. This applies to locations here in Canada as well as abroad.
The double variant first detected in India was detected in October 2020. The government could require anyone who has been in the variant hot spot to undergo enhanced screening, quarantine measures or a combination of both depending on the risk evaluated by public health officials. It could require immediate rapid tests at airports for all domestic airline travel.
We have lost so much during this third wave, but how long this third wave lasts is completely dependent on how quickly this Liberal government responds and acts to protect Albertans and Canadians. Albertans can take some assurance that it was the Conservatives who stood up and called for a real plan to protect Canadians from this pandemic.
In October 2020, the House passed a sweeping opposition motion to direct the health committee to study the COVID-19 pandemic and ordered the government to produce needed documents for the committee. This included information on the government's vaccine rollout and key related documents.
In November 2020, the member for Calgary Nose Hill penned an op-ed in the National Post calling for a better COVID-19 strategy from the government entitled “It's time for a better COVID strategy”. This included discussion of the government's inaction on vaccines.
Additionally, members were able to question the Minister of Health in a four-hour session in the House of Commons committee of the whole regarding the government's failed response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In December 2020, the House passed a motion calling on the government to be transparent on key information related to the COVID vaccine rollout.
In January 2021, we were able to secure an emergency debate in the House of Commons on the vaccine shortage in Canada.
In February 2021, we demanded that the chair of the health committee call an emergency meeting to discuss the COVID-19 variants and called on the Liberal MPs to stop the filibuster and to finally pass the motion to release the government's vaccine contracts.
The Conservatives' motion ended up passing, meaning the government will need to come clean on the details of the contract that it tried to hide. In March 2021, my colleagues at the health committee were able to hear from experts of the government ignoring the National Advisory Committee on Immunization recommendations to not administer AstraZeneca to the 65-plus age group.
It has never ended. Every proper and correct thing the government could have done to address this pandemic and help Canadians get back to some sort of normalcy, it did not do. Instead, the Liberals did the complete opposite. It is shameful that the Prime Minister has allowed Canada to fall so far behind our allies. We need the Prime Minister to do better. We need vaccines to be delivered, not the ones that our allies are sending us, but the ones under our own contracts.
Canadians want to return to normal life. They want to have barbeques with their friends and neighbours. They want to be able to go to the movies and watch the latest blockbusters. Most importantly, they want to be able to see their family members who they have not seen in over a year, give them a big hug and socialize with them.
View Erin O'Toole Profile
CPC (ON)
View Erin O'Toole Profile
2021-05-04 14:19 [p.6620]
Mr. Speaker, vaccination, rapid testing and accurate information are three tools to fight this pandemic. For months, we have been telling Canadians to get vaccinated.
The Canadian Pharmacists Association is worried that the government's inaccurate messaging will stoke vaccine hesitancy. Why are we getting a different message every week from the government?
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