Bill C-10

An Act respecting certain measures related to COVID-19

This enactment authorizes the Minister of Health to make payments of up to $2.5 billion out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund in relation to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) tests.
It also authorizes that Minister to transfer COVID-19 tests and instruments used in relation to those tests to the provinces and territories and to bodies and persons in Canada.

An Act Respecting Certain Measures Related to COVID-19

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Minister of Health]

moved that Bill C-10, An Act respecting certain measures related to COVID-19, be read the second time and referred to a committee of the whole.

[The Speaker, Anthony Rota]

Pursuant to order made earlier today, two members of each recognized party and a member of the Green Party may each speak for not more than 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes for questions and comments. Members may be permitted to split their time with another member.

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Québec, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am obviously very happy to rise this evening, during the 44th Parliament of Canada, to support Bill C‑10, which would give Health Canada the legislative authority to spend up to $2.5 billion to purchase and distribute rapid tests across the country.

This bill will help the provinces and territories meet their needs for COVID‑19 rapid tests and will continue to support the national program for COVID‑19 workplace screening, in addition to federal workplace testing and screening initiatives.

It is a critical time in our fight against COVID-19, and we need every tool at our disposal. Testing plays a key role in our effort to contain and mitigate the pandemic by identifying infected individuals—

[The Speaker, Anthony Rota]

I am going to interrupt the hon. minister and call for order.

Order. I want to point out to everyone that the minister is giving a speech and I want to make sure that everyone can hear what he has to say.

The hon. minister.

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Québec, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I forgot to mention that I will be splitting my time with the member for Winnipeg North.

Testing, as we all know, plays a key role in our efforts to contain and mitigate the pandemic. Identifying infected individuals helps to prevent further person-to-person transmission of the virus.

As everyone knows, health care services are struggling to meet the demand for polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, tests, because the omicron variant has a very high infection rate. Provinces and territories across the country are now relying on rapid tests to help fill this significant gap.

Rapid tests are a screening method that can more easily and quickly detect COVID-19 in a variety of settings such as schools, workplaces and other high-risk environments including long-term care facilities and hospitals, to name a few.

Using rapid tests in new settings can help detect the spread of COVID-19 and support measures to break the chain of transmission.

Not everyone who has COVID-19 will show symptoms. In fact, the prevalence of asymptomatic infection is probably a significant factor in the high rate of transmission of omicron. Rapid testing allows a person to detect the virus in as little as 15 minutes, which makes it a powerful tool that Canadians can use to help curb the spread of the omicron variant.

Since the introduction of Bill C-8, which provided additional funding for the purchase and distribution of rapid tests, Canada experienced an exponential increase in the number of cases and hospitalizations. The spread of omicron also led to an abrupt increase in demand for rapid tests. This is putting pressure on global supply, where supply chains are very tight, so clearly we need to get more of these tests, and we need to do it now.

Bill C-10 will allow Health Canada to purchase and distribute hundreds of millions of rapid tests across the country and help ensure equitable access in all jurisdictions. It also builds on commitments made in last December's economic and fiscal update, which included an additional $1.7 billion in funding for the procurement and distribution of rapid tests across the country.

Bill C-10 would also allow Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada to continue supporting provinces and territories by securing the rapid tests that they need to keep Canadians safe and healthy, including through expanded school and workplace testing programs.

Finally, Bill C-10 would allow us to continue supporting businesses of all sizes by providing rapid tests for workplace screening programs through direct delivery and partners such as chambers of commerce and pharmacies.

Throughout the pandemic, the Canadian government has worked closely with its provincial and territorial partners to ensure they have the tools they need to manage outbreaks and ensure the safety and health of everyone.

The federal government started buying and providing rapid tests free of charge to the provinces and territories in October 2020. The Government of Canada delivered more than 35 million rapid tests to provinces and territories in December 2021, and 140 million additional tests were delivered to Canada in January alone.

The Government of Canada also supports the Canadian Red Cross in its delivery efforts.

Companies with 200 employees or more, including federally regulated companies, can receive rapid tests free of charge directly from the Government of Canada. Small and medium-sized businesses and other organizations can also receive and have access to rapid tests through one of the Canadian government's delivery partners.

The Canadian government has spent the past two years enhancing its ability to respond quickly and efficiently to the many challenges associated with the pandemic.

Working with the provinces, territories and other partners, we are delivering the tools we need to protect Canadians in our health care system from the most serious outcomes of COVID-19.

As my colleagues know, this year started out with a marked increase in the number of COVID-19 cases when there was a surge in the omicron variant in Canada and around the world.

Recent modelling has shown that the increase in omicron infections has probably peaked. However, the number of daily admissions to hospitals and intensive care units is still high and many hospitals in Canada are under intense pressure.

Therefore, we must continue to do everything we can to limit the spread of COVID-19 and its variants.

In the short term, that means vaccines, boosters and strong adherence to public health guidelines.

Because nearly three million eligible Canadians have yet to get a first or second dose of the primary series and many other Canadians are also eligible for a booster, we want to improve our individual and collective protection with the COVID‑19 vaccines. This will help us keep fighting the omicron wave and any potential new waves and variants.

Looking ahead, Canada will need to continue to tackle future waves, which may or may not be smaller than the omicron surge depending on how the virus evolves.

Screening tests, combined with individual public health measures and vaccination, play an important role in protecting Canadians and reducing the risk of outbreaks, swiftly identifying and isolating cases, and limiting the spread of COVID‑19 and its variants of concern.

We are all tired after living with the COVID‑19 pandemic for the past two years and the most recent omicron wave. We all want to know when the pandemic will be over, but we cannot simply snap our fingers and decide that COVID‑19 is over.

We are at a critical juncture in the pandemic. We must do the right thing and act responsibly, and we need to do it now. We know that rapid tests will help us slow the spread of omicron. They will also help manage outbreaks and, ultimately, they will help keep Canadians safe and healthy.

That is why I urge all members of the House to support Bill C‑10.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise on behalf of the citizens of Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo. I would be remiss if I did not wish my wife Odette, my better half, a very happy Valentine's Day.

To get to the more germane issue and the minister's speech, about five weeks ago, I took the minister to have stated that vaccinations should be considered mandatory by some provinces. I want to ask whether the minister still holds the view that I perceived him to have and whether this legislation impacts that view.

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Québec, QC]

Mr. Speaker, maybe I should extend the same kind words to my own better half. I wish her a very happy Valentine's Day, but I doubt she will be watching us tonight. If our better halves are watching us tonight, and do not have other more important things to do, then a happy Valentine's Day to all of them.

On the issue of vaccination, obviously we know how important vaccinations are for getting through this crisis, and we know that vaccination mandates have worked in Canada. Some 99% of public servants have made the right choice and got the vaccines. They are protecting not only their own health, but also the health of their loved ones, including their better halves most likely, and the health of their colleagues at work and elsewhere.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would also like to wish my lovely wife Sheryl Palm a happy Valentine's Day, since I do not want to be left out in this. She is my sweetheart.

We have known from the beginning of the pandemic that testing and tracing are critical components of dealing with it, and I think that is still true today. We know that the authorization for $2.5 billion would purchase about 400 million tests because that is the information I got when I asked the minister's staff at a briefing.

Dr. David Juncker, department chair of biomedical engineering at McGill University, estimates that with the omicron variant, Canada could require 600 million to 700 million tests a month and then two tests per person every week once the wave subsides.

Does the minister think that 400 million tests are going to be anywhere near enough? If not, how many tests do Canadians need for the rest of 2022 to deal with this virus?

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Québec, QC]

Mr. Speaker, that is a great question, and I will answer it in two ways. First, obviously these are large numbers of tests, and we hope the House will support this so we will be able to start delivering them directly to Canadians either through the networks and partnerships I mentioned earlier or through the provinces and territories. These large numbers of tests have been added to the 140 million from January and the several million in 2020-21. That being said, it is entirely correct for me to monitor this situation and keep working with our partners in the provinces and territories to see how to equip them to protect the health and safety of Canadians as we move forward.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to wish all members a happy Valentine's Day, and I hope they will have a bit of time to celebrate later tonight.

I would like to ask the minister a question. First of all, in his speech, he talked about working closely with Quebec and the provinces and territories to find solutions and get through the pandemic. However, they unanimously stated that one of the measures that should be taken is to increase health transfers. We are saying yes to rapid tests and ad hoc support, but I would like the minister to explain his thinking, since all of the provinces have come up with a winning solution.

[Jean-Yves Duclos, Liberal, Québec, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have so many things that I would like to say about the winning solutions my colleague just mentioned, which are so important.

Vaccines were extremely important and have been very successful. There were also the 35 million rapid tests distributed to Quebec alone in January, not to mention all of the others that will be sent.

There are treatments like Paxlovid. Canada has already received 30,000 courses of this treatment, and it is one of the first countries in the world to get it. Thousands of courses of this treatment have been distributed to Quebec and the other provinces and territories free of charge.

There is also the $63 billion that was invested over the past few months on top of the Canada health transfer.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I want to start off by acknowledging our fine work. We often make reference to the Minister of Health, the Minister of Procurement and the Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister. However, it goes without saying and is important to state that the civil servants working for those respective ministers have done an outstanding job of ensuring that Canada stays on top of what has been an incredibly important file.

There are two aspects of it I want to highlight, one of which I am going to focus my attention on. One is the vaccines and the manner in which Canada was able to get them. They are the most important tool in combatting the pandemic, and we are arguably second to no other country in the world in terms of performance. I want to thank those individuals who ultimately made that happen, whether within departments or in the distribution once the vaccines arrived in Canada. They were getting them out to our provinces, territories, indigenous communities and so forth.

The second aspect is what this bill is all about. This bill, Bill C-10, as the minister has so well explained to members, is about the importance of this particular tool, rapid testing. I thought what I would do is provide some thoughts in regard to the comments I heard earlier today in debate, in particular coming from the Conservative opposition party.

One of the concerns the Conservatives constantly raised was the issue of why it took the government so long. They said they have been hammering for the government to have these rapid tests for years now, so I think we should recognize the uptake and usage of the rapid tests. If we take a look back to November of last year, for example, through the Government of Canada, we were able to build up stockpiles of rapid tests that were distributed in our provinces and territories. In some provinces very few were actually used. From a federal government's perspective, we were able to meet the demand. We did not have the provinces and territories saying they wanted to get more to add to their stockpiles.

Then something unique happened. One of my colleagues talked about it earlier, and I know this sentiment is shared among my caucus colleagues: We became tired of the pandemic. Unfortunately, we are not the ones who determine when the pandemic goes away. We need to continue to have faith in science and faith in our health care experts. As much as I want to see it go away, I cannot wish it away.

What we saw was the omicron variant come in like a storm. When it came in, the uptake of and demand for rapid tests quadrupled and, in some cases, went up tenfold. However, through the efforts of civil servants and others, we were able to acquire, as the Minister of Health has said, close to 140 million additional rapid tests for the month of January alone. Taking into consideration the population of our country, I believe as a government we were prepared for a variation of the coronavirus.

If we think about what Bill C-10 is all about, it is about rapid tests. That is why this is so urgent. However, it is only the New Democrats who have recognized the importance of the timing. Opposition members, whether from the Bloc or the Conservatives, have said the Senate does not meet until next week. They do not necessarily realize that there are a lot of things on the agenda that are of absolute critical importance to Canadians from coast to coast.

[Larry Maguire]

Name one.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I will name more than one for the members opposite. Today is an excellent example. Our provinces, territories, small businesses and big businesses alike are dependent on the federal government getting these rapid tests. We are supporting the people of Canada and our business community in Canada, and we are showing how we can work with provinces to make a difference.

The Conservatives and the Bloc seem to be fixated on not wanting to support the bill's speedy passage. In terms of the GIS, we can talk about the importance to seniors across this land in getting payments and the legislation coming up this week. It needs to pass too. Remember, there is a break week the following week.

We have an emergency in our nation. Hundreds of millions of dollars in trade is being threatened at our international border. That is another issue that needs to be brought to the floor of the House of Commons. We have a Bloc opposition day coming up this week. We have two short days also. The urgency is there. It is very real and it is important. It is time that we pass the legislation.

In listening to the debate today, I am a bit confused as I am sure anyone listening to the debate would be. The member for Cumberland—Colchester is a medical doctor and sits on the health committee. He talks about questioning the science and whether it is even necessary at this stage, suggesting that it is a waste. He is not alone. The member for Peterborough—Kawartha is also implying that it is a waste, calling into question the need for the rapid tests.

In fairness, they did have a member who was very clear. The opposition House leader said he recognizes the importance and he is going to be voting in favour of the legislation. I suspect the Conservatives will rethink their position and their speeches today. I would hope it would be unanimous in this House. Even the Bloc recognizes the importance of this legislation being passed. I would like to think that the Conservatives would also be supporting it.

People need to read some of the speeches and listen to what members of the Conservative Party are saying about rapid testing. We wonder why there is confusion and misinformation out there in our communities. It is there because of the mixed messaging coming from the official opposition here in Canada.

We have consistently, in the last couple of months, brought forward legislation to deal with rapid tests. First, it was Bill C-8 with $1.7 billion and today with Bill C-10 it is $2.5 billion. If we do not spend that money or if we do not make the commitment to get those rapid tests, we are telling provinces and territories they are going to have to do it. They will not be able to get the same bulk-buying power we can get as a national government. We already have the contacts and the network. Then we will work with provinces and territories to ensure we are able to meet those demands.

That is why this legislation is important. That is why I would recommend that all Conservative members join the rest of the House in supporting Bill C-10.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague's speech. He is talking about the lateness of getting the rapid tests now. When I was on the health committee, we hounded the Liberals in the House of Commons in question period for weeks, for practically the whole month of September in the fall of 2020, before the government finally said it would allow rapid tests. Then the provinces could not even buy them because the federal government had a control on them.

Now that they have that, they are getting them out late again. We did not have any at Christmas and New Year's when omicron was in a big outbreak. It reminds me of exactly what happened when the Liberals put all their eggs for vaccines in the CanSino basket in China and never even bothered to try to repurchase more vaccines for three solid months. They lost time.

Could the member for Winnipeg North, who knows these to be facts, explain why his party is now late to the party with rapid tests?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, those are misleading facts that the member has just put on the record. I would suggest it is Conservative spin in order to confuse and mislead Canadians.

The reality is, from what I understand, there was not one province or territory back in November of last year, just a few months ago, that was saying it was running out of rapid tests and needed more. In fact, our own home province was not even utilizing them. It was a small percentage. It was only because of omicron that the demand quadrupled and in some cases increased tenfold. The demand was created.

The federal government was there at the table when the demand was there. We had stockpiles of them and we ensured that provinces had stockpiles of them to distribute. Those are the real facts. That is the bottom line. For those who say we could have had more, we are being criticized by the Conservatives because we are allocating too much money for any more of them. They cannot say on the one hand that we should have more and then on the other hand say we cannot buy any more because they do not want the government to spend so much money.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by thanking my colleague from Winnipeg North for his speech. I always find him very entertaining.

I would like to ask him a question.

To hear him speak, one would think that PCR tests are the greatest thing since sliced bread. He kept going on about how important it is to take action now. Meanwhile, we hear a conflicting message from the official opposition and the other opposition parties. When it comes to acting quickly, members will recall that the government called an election in the midst of the pandemic, and then it waited two months before recalling the House. Now the government is talking about PCR tests when it has not done anything about health transfers.

Could my hon. colleague provide some clarification and talk about health transfers, since they are basically the only way to get through this crisis?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, during the pandemic there were many different elections across Canada, and in fact in North America with even the U.S. election. I believe that through our election there was a very clear mandate given to not only the government, but all members of this House, saying that the coronavirus was still there and we needed to continue to invest resources in the issue, which is what we are seeing today, substantial financial resources, that we needed to look at and implement mandates, and to continue to follow and listen to science and health experts. Ultimately, I believe we are on the right course.

What I am most proud of is the greatest tool: the vaccines. It is the positioning of Canadians and the uptake that has allowed us to see Canada do exceptionally well in comparison to other countries around the world. Canadians understood the importance of being double vaccinated.

In regard to the issue of financing of health care, whether it is mental health, long-term care, vaccines or the rapid tests we are debating today, the federal government has been there in a very tangible way with the expenditure of additional billions of dollars during the pandemic over and above historic amounts through equalization payments and direct payments in regard to the health care program.

I think that, as a government, over the last six years we have done exceptionally well in supporting health care. We know that health care is important to each and every Canadian from coast to coast to coast.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my colleague, the member for Fort McMurray—Cold Lake.

I rise this evening to speak to Bill C-10, an act respecting certain measures related to COVID-19. Specifically, what Bill C-10 does is allocate $2.5 billion toward rapid testing.

Since the outset of the COVID‑19 pandemic, Conservatives have consistently and repeatedly called on the government to make rapid testing a priority. It has now been more than two years since COVID arrived and throughout that time the government's record when it comes to rapid testing has been precisely the opposite of that. For more than two years, the government has repeatedly and consistently dropped the ball when it comes to rapid testing.

The numbers speak for themselves with respect to the government's failure when it comes to rapid testing. The government very recently made a commitment to deliver tens of millions of rapid tests to the provinces in January. It has failed regarding the promises it made to the provinces.

Take the province of Ontario, for example. The government promised the Province of Ontario 53.3 million rapid tests. It has delivered 17.6 million rapid tests. In other words, it has delivered less than a third of the commitment it made to the Province of Ontario for January.

In my home province of Alberta, the government promised 16 million rapid tests for January. It turns out it has delivered less than five million rapid tests, barely 30% of what it committed to for January.

Similarly, the Province of Manitoba has stated it has received only 2.5 million rapid tests, less than half of what the government committed to for January.

Those are the numbers. Talk about a failure.

Early on in the pandemic, business, small business owners and leaders of key sectors of the Canadian economy, including tourism and hospitality, urged the government to come forward with a comprehensive, robust rapid testing strategy to acquire and distribute rapid tests so their doors could remain open safely and they could avoid the kinds of lockdowns and restrictions that have shut down businesses and cost Canadians hundreds of thousands of jobs. What was the government's response to those calls? Very simply, the government ignored them.

Not only that, the government attacked the very people, including members on this side of the House, who were calling on it to prioritize rapid testing. In answer to a question posed by my former Conservative colleague, the then member for Cloverdale—Langley City, I can recall the Deputy Prime Minister, in this House in November 2020, saying that those who were promoting the use of rapid tests were selling snake oil. The Deputy Prime Minister and future leader of the Liberal Party of Canada was equating rapid tests to snake oil.

While the government was attacking those who were calling on it to come up with a plan to get rapid tests out, other countries took the opposite approach. They were procuring and distributing rapid tests. Many jurisdictions, such as Germany and such as London, England, were getting rapid testing kits out to their populations at little or no cost so that businesses could stay open. There is a long list of jurisdictions that did so successfully, but not Canada.

After more than two years of failure, now all of a sudden rapid testing is a priority for the government. All of a sudden, it has seen the light. All of a sudden, it is saying we have to ram through Bill C-10 with limited scrutiny and debate. I say, when it comes to Bill C-10, it is too little, too late. If anything, what Bill C-10 demonstrates is the complete and utter incompetence of the government and complete failure to come up with a plan with respect to rapid testing.

Speaking of incompetence and a failure to come up with a plan on the part of the government, today the Liberals, along with their NDP coalition partner, voted against a very reasonable Conservative motion simply calling on the government to come up with a plan to lift federal restrictions and mandates.

In fairness, the best that could be said of the Liberals is that they did something that they have not done in a long time, and that was to be honest. They admitted that they do not like plans, that they cannot plan, and that they have not had a plan throughout COVID. If the government did have a plan, we would not be debating Bill C-10 tonight. There would not be tens of millions of shortages with respect to rapid testing, and the $2.5 billion that the government is requesting would have been out the door a long time ago.

This is not about a government saving the day. This is about a government that is in a state of panic and scrambling to cover up its record of failure. After more than two long years, Canadians deserve a plan from the government when it comes to lifting restrictions and mandates.

With more than 90% of Canadians vaccinated, what is it going to take the government? What is the government's exit strategy? How much longer are Canadians supposed to wait? Canadians deserve to know when it is that they can expect to take back control of their lives. They deserve an answer from the government now.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, there is a fundamental flaw that the member has in his argument. It is quite simple. The member says that we were too late with the rapid tests, yet when the federal government provided the provinces and the territories with the rapid tests, they sat on shelves for months. They only started to be utilized in any serious number in November and December of last year. There was a huge surplus nationwide of stock. It was the variant that ultimately caused the demand.

Is the member saying that the provinces messed up, and that they should have been using the rapid tests? Is he pointing a finger at the provinces for not doing their job in using the rapid tests months and months ago?

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Mr. Speaker, what I am saying is that the government has messed up. The government has failed to provide leadership when it comes to getting rapid tests out the door. The government has dropped the ball repeatedly.

Is the hon. member proud of the fact that his government delivered a third of the rapid tests that it committed to delivering to the province of Ontario? Is he proud of the fact that this government delivered fewer than a third of the rapid tests it committed to the province of Alberta? The numbers speak for themselves when it comes to this government's track record on rapid testing. It equals a total and complete failure, and the parliamentary secretary knows that.

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

Uqaqtittiji, I appreciated the Minister of Health agreeing today that we cannot fight what we cannot measure. In Nunavut, out of the 25 communities, there is only one community equipped with lab technicians. Back in November, of the said eight lab technicians, five had resigned. Also, in January, the Government of Nunavut had decided to ration its testing for COVID-19 to only health care providers in Nunavut.

Does the member for St. Albert—Edmonton not agree that Nunavut residents deserve to have access to rapid tests? Qujannamiik.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for Nunavut for that question. I think she speaks to some of the serious problems that we have, in Nunavut specifically but also across the country, in terms of the lack of availability of rapid tests, which are a critical tool in managing COVID. In short, yes. I absolutely agree with her.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, to my hon. friend for St. Albert—Edmonton, I am troubled. It is not by him alone, obviously, but by the notion that human beings, Canadians, parliamentarians and governments are in charge, and we can accurately predict what this virus is going to do next and therefore we should be able to provide a road map and timeline.

I would ask the hon. member for St. Albert—Edmonton this: Is he confident that the pandemic is over, and that restrictions should be abandoned everywhere?

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, for that question.

No, the pandemic is not over. We will be living with COVID for a long time, but we are entering a new stage. COVID is endemic, and we need to come up with ways to live with COVID. That is why governments are lifting restrictions around the world. That is why provinces are lifting restrictions, and that is why public health officials are saying that vaccine mandates and other restrictions need to either be lifted or re-evaluated. If this government was following the science, it would move forward in that regard.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I will start this evening along the same lines as some of my colleagues. I wish my husband Niall a very happy Valentine's Day. I am very lucky to have him in my life, and I am sure that if he is not watching he will be following up with a clip later on. I thank my sweetheart, and I love him.

I believe that rapid tests are an important public health tool. I do not think that is a debate that I am willing to have. I am definitely not a scientist and I am not an expert, but I am a new mom. As a new mom, I was keen to seek out rapid tests when they became available in my community, and they were not easy to come by because the provinces were not getting their shipments in a timely manner, so there were some struggles. When my family did end up getting some rapid tests, we were pretty excited.

My family, like many families with young kids, came down with colds a couple of weeks ago. Having access to the rapid tests really protected our mental health because they allowed us to rule out COVID. Both my husband and I were symptomatic. We used our rapid tests, and they came up negative a few times. That allowed us to have some peace of mind as we were caring for our sick son.

Having a baby be sick for the first time is pretty scary, especially for new parents. It did not change our behaviours, and I want to make that clear. We did what we would have done had we had colds before COVID. We isolated, we stayed home, and we had friends and family bring supplies to our house to help us get through those times.

We did some things a little differently, but we were confident to treat it like a common cold. The phrase “know better, do better” came to mind in our case. Because my husband and I were both COVID-negative, we knew that likely meant that Eoghan, our little son, was also COVID-negative. When his breathing got to be a bit wheezy, we were more comfortable staying at home because we were pretty confident that it was a cold, so we treated him for a common cold. I am confident that had we not had those rapid tests available to us, we would probably have rushed to the hospital, which would have likely cost the health care system more money.

I share this as one small anecdote in a pile of stories as to why rapid testing can be a very useful tool, especially for people who are symptomatic. I am going to put this on the record, not that we necessarily need it, because everybody knows it at this point. If people are feeling sick, they should stay home. This was true 100 years ago, this was true 50 years ago and this is true today.

Having this bill pass today would not make any difference in how many rapid tests are available to Canadians tomorrow or this week, nor would it somehow end this pandemic. Parliamentary oversight in debates such as these, and having bills go through committee, are fundamental aspects of our parliamentary democracy and our democratic process as a whole. I fail to understand the urgency.

I understand that the member for Winnipeg has gotten up and shared about the busy parliamentary system. I appreciate that we have a lot of important bills that we need to discuss, and there are a lot of critical things that we want to try to get through before the end of this parliamentary week, when we go back to our constituencies for constituency week.

However, having a bill studied at committee is absolutely important, especially a bill for this amount of spending. We are talking about $2.5 billion. That is not a small amount of money, and it is not a small amount of money to my constituents. They expect that there is accountability, especially for a sum of money this large. They also expect that they are getting the best possible legislation from parliamentarians.

I have so many questions about this legislation that I would love to know the answers to. For example, is this too much? Is this not enough? Are the tests here? Who are the suppliers of these tests? Where are they being manufactured?

There are so many more reasonable and rational questions that deserve to be asked and deserve to be responded to in a committee setting. While I understand that Canada is currently in a struggle space, on this side of the House we want to see at-home tests available to Canadian families, Canadian families like mine. That would put us at ease.

However, we have seen failure after failure from the Liberal government on the COVID file, whether it be closing borders, opening borders, vaccine procurement, testing capacity and at-home test procurement, just to name a very few. Forgive me for wanting to push the pause button here for the sake of my hard-working constituents.

Canadians expect Canada's Conservatives to take our role as Her Majesty's loyal opposition seriously and to serve the public by applying a critical eye to all proposals and actions of the governing party. This is not something that we do simply to be difficult or obstinate. It is the role Canadians have conferred on us. Let that sink in. We are responsible to ensure that Canadians have the very best legislation available to them and that we are looking at both the intended and unintended consequences of the legislation.

We very well might not agree on what the path forward would be, but we deserve to at least be able to have the conversations to ensure that we have the best legislation. What I am asking for, and I would implore, is to slow things down just the smallest bit and give us an opportunity to have further study on this bill. Give us some time to hear from expert witnesses. As has been stated multiple times, the Senate does not return until Monday. We have the capacity to give this some further study.

Furthermore, this bill is retroactive to January 1, 2022. Even if this was delayed, I am not quite sure how that would impact this bill, compared with a bill that only comes into force upon proclamation.

I am imploring everyone in the House to just hit the pause button and allow some additional oversight to ensure that we are providing Canadians with the best possible legislation, because they deserve our attention and our care.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I also heard from many constituents in my province when omicron became a very grave situation at the end of December, prior to the holiday period, that the availability of rapid tests was an issue. The province had just started to give them out to citizens.

I know for a fact that many citizens went and got those tests. They stood in line in -10°C or -30°C weather to get those rapid tests because the holidays were coming and they wanted to make sure they did not infect anybody. They wanted to take the necessary precautions. They also said that they did not want to be in that kind of a situation again.

I also know that in about three weeks, in my home province, it is going to be spring break. I know that things are loosening up in my home province. People are going to want to have those rapid tests in the event that they become symptomatic. They are going to want to have them. Are we supposed to tell them we are sorry but we needed to study a piece of legislation that is literally two lines?

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I wish I had been able to have tests before Christmas. I really wish I would have. Many of my constituents and people across my province of Alberta wished they could have had them. Quite frankly, it was not always possible. I know we did not find availability for rapid tests in my home community of Fort McMurray until sometime in early January. I would have happily waited in -40°C in a line to get them, but it was not even an option.

We are not debating whether we should have stuff. What we are debating right now is simply having a little extra oversight. The bill is retroactive to January 1, 2022.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I too heard our colleague from Kingston and the Islands answer a question earlier about why the government did not include the amounts for rapid tests in Bill C-8.

He said that it was because there was no omicron variant when Bill C-8 was drafted in December, at the time the update was done. However, we did have the delta variant and a pandemic, and we knew it was not going to be over any time soon.

Does my colleague think that there is a certain lack of predictability, a lack of vision and, in this case, a lack of medium-term perspective from the government, which is rushing us to pass a bill that will not even be looked at by the Senate until next week since the Senate is not sitting this week?

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question.

I think she is absolutely right. When it comes to COVID‑19, the Liberal Party has not been transparent enough, especially on vaccine procurement. I think she made a good point. This is just one other aspect of the problem.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, what price would the member be immediately comfortable with so that parents across Canada could have the same peace of mind that the member enjoyed to make sure that their kids are healthy?

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is very important to state that it is not necessarily simply about the price. It is about making sure that there is a bit of oversight and that it goes to committee.

I am not against this bill and I want to make that exceptionally clear. This is an important public health tool that Canadians should have access to. The member for Nunavut very clearly outlined why rapid testing is very important in her region. I thank her for bringing that up because it is so important in many of our rural and isolated communities. It is not necessarily about the dollar figure. It is a question of having oversight.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, on this Valentine's Day evening, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from La Pointe-de-l'Île. I would also like to take this opportunity to give a shout-out to my partner, Yanick Thibault. We have been together for 26 years, and I thank him for sharing me with all the people of Laurentides—Labelle.

We have spent several hours today talking about Bill C‑10, which provides for a one-time payment of up to $2.5 billion to the provinces and territories for expenses incurred on or after January 1, 2022, for tests. The money is to help the provinces and Quebec absorb additional pandemic-related costs.

The government upped health transfers by $5 billion in the previous Parliament. That included $4 billion for urgent health care system needs and $1 billion for the vaccination campaign. We all agree that was necessary, but that money is completely separate from requests to increase the federal government's share of health care costs to 35%.

It has to be said. The Liberals will try to make themselves look good by saying that the billions of dollars they spent went directly to fixing the problems in health care. However, the Bloc Québécois is duty bound to point out that, despite the $60 billion or so that has been injected, the Liberals have not exactly done anything out of the ordinary. This spending was necessary to deal with this pandemic, which is an exceptional situation.

I am sorry to see the government using these sums as an excuse not to increase funding and to put it off until later, possibly 2027. This does not make sense because the problems will remain after the pandemic.

I want to be very clear that our voice will be heard over and over again, speaking for the Quebec government. I will continue to illustrate that this issue is crucial to getting through the pandemic.

The federal government stands alone on this matter. We cannot forget that the Quebec government and the Bloc Québécois have called for an increase in health transfers to cover 35% of health care costs. The federal government wants to postpone the issue of funding until after the pandemic, possibly until 2027. Not only is this completely out of touch with reality, but the federal government is also the only one to think that way.

The Bloc Québécois wants a society that has a universal, public health care system worthy of a G7 country. Without that, we cannot properly deal with health care problems.

In fact, that money could bring in alternative measures for the entire nation. For those watching us at this late hour, on Valentine's Day, remember that the federal contribution went from 50% of health care costs in the 1950s and 1960s to 22% today.

The division of powers between Ottawa and the provinces in 1867, which was quite a while ago, is quite simple. In 19th-century terms, if the issue directly affected people and how they organize their society, it fell under the jurisdiction of Quebec and the provinces. This included civil laws that codify interpersonal relations, the organization of society through social, health and education programs, and also cultural issues. If an issue did not directly affect people or the internal organization of their society, it could fall under federal jurisdiction. This could be monetary policy, international trade, and general trade and industry regulations.

To compensate for the withdrawal of the federal government's investment, Quebec and the provinces had no choice but to scale back services and run the system at full capacity.

The system broke down. Our young people, seniors, parents, business people and health care staff will not agree to lockdown indefinitely to protect the health care system. That is exactly why we need to start rebuilding our health care system immediately.

It is unacceptable. We know more money will not fix everything overnight. However, without funding we cannot start building our ideal health care system. That includes mental health services available to everyone when they need them; good working conditions for nurses and all other health care workers; training to hire staff, who are so invaluable; and support services for people dealing with addictions. This list goes on.

Once again, the government is completely alone on this issue. All of the opposition parties and the premiers of the provinces and Quebec—and that is big—are calling for an increase in health transfers, as are the health care unions, Canada's public health authorities, the majority of medical and patient associations, and even one of the government's own MPs. That is not to mention the fact that, on February 2, a poll showed that 87% of Quebeckers and Canadians were also calling for an increase in health transfers.

I urge the Prime Minister to acknowledge this consensus and to immediately meet with his counterparts, as he did today on another matter, to negotiate an increase in health transfers and get things moving. The federal government needs to stop arguing over jurisdictions. It is time to rebuild.

Since I have a little time remaining, I would also like to talk about vaccination in developing countries, because this pandemic will not end until that happens. Until all countries have adequate vaccine coverage, there will always be a risk of new, more contagious, dangerous or resistant variants.

The Bloc Québécois is calling on the federal government to take four actions to contribute to global vaccination coverage. Canada must provide logistical assistance to transport and administer doses; provide its surplus doses to developing countries on a predictable basis; support the waiving of vaccine patents; and participate in global vaccine outreach efforts to ensure that the vaccination campaign is a success around the world. It is important that people learn about the benefits of the vaccine, which is a challenge that both Quebec and the rest of Canada are facing.

In closing, I would like to take this opportunity to respond to a number of people who have contacted me recently about the Conservative motion we voted on today. The motion called on the government to table a plan by the end of the month, by February 28, that includes reopening steps. That is what the Bloc Québécois supported.

It is important to make that clear because some of the people who contacted me were misinformed. What the Bloc Québécois supported was calling on the government to govern and plan. Asking for a plan is the same as asking the government to govern, which is the least it can do. Nobody is asking the government to get rid of all public health measures by the end of the month. We are not even asking it to make an announcement on February 28 about a precise date when all public health measures will be lifted. All we want is a plan and some predictability.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague spent her 10 minutes talking about some very important subjects, but I did not hear her position on Bill C‑10, so I would like to know if she will support it.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned, there are several conditions for success. Of course, to make something happen, it has to be repeated. That is what I have learned from federal politics. I tell my kids that they have to do a thing a thousand and one times.

That is what we are doing. Many things are important, such as providing rapid tests and injecting one-time payments to meet a need. Those are part of it, but for the future and going forward, I will never stop calling for an increase in health transfers to 35% until that happens.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my hon. colleague on her speech. I think she gave a very accurate and compelling case for why the federal government needs to increase its Canada health transfers to the provinces. I think we all, on this side of the House, in the NDP, join in that feeling that the 22% share of federal health spending in this country is not sufficient.

I know the NDP and the Bloc Québécois have, to some degree, a difference of opinion on the jurisdiction of health care in this country. We also know there are conditions in the Canada Health Act. There are five major conditions that every province has to meet in order to get that funding.

I am wondering if the member would describe to the House what kind of accountability she would have the provinces demonstrate in exchange for that money from the federal government. Does she accept that the provinces should have to at least show that they are spending the money in health care, and maybe account to the taxpayers of this country how that money is being spent, or does she think there should be absolutely none of that whatsoever?

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

I would say, essentially, that jurisdictions must be respected. In other words, trust the expertise of each province when it comes to what services are needed.

When we talk about health transfers, obviously they must be unconditional, because it is the provinces that have the expertise, not the federal government. The provinces have everything it takes when it comes to both education and health care.

I tell people that it is important for everyone to mind their own business. It is often when we do not have enough to do that we interfere in other people's business.

In the context of a pandemic where there are global challenges and a critical situation, I think we all need to mind our own business.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his inspiring speech.

We are debating a bill. However, contrary to what my colleague from Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne was saying, just because we are debating a bill does not mean that we cannot consider items that are not covered by the bill but that are very important to us.

I would like to put a simple question to my colleague from Laurentides—Labelle, who has been asked about jurisdictions.

Since today is Valentine's Day and I love my country, I would like to know what she thinks would happen if Quebec got to keep its own money. Would the situation be the same?

Would we be dependent upon a government that wants to spend money in any area of jurisdiction and that is not meeting the people's needs? If we had full control of our own funds, would the health care system in Quebec not work a little better?

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague. I heard the words “predictability”, “expertise” and “jurisdiction". We must trust the people who have been saying for several months that they would have done things differently. Instead of crushing and pressuring the health care system, which broke down in Quebec, I believe we could have already introduced new solutions.

In the end, with predictability and money, we would clearly have done things in a completely different way.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C‑10 establishes a one-time payment of $2.5 billion to Quebec and the Canadian provinces for expenses incurred since January 1, 2022, in relation to testing.

We agree with that, but the main problem, and my colleague spoke at length about this before me, is that cuts to federal health transfers are compromising the health care system in Quebec and in the Canadian provinces. From our Quebec taxes that we send to the federal government, the money transferred to Quebec for health care formerly represented 50% of the funding for that sector in the 1970s. We cannot say it enough. Despite being increased a few times, like when the Bloc Québécois obtained a $3.3‑billion increase in transfers in 2007, Ottawa's share of the cost of health keeps going down. Today, the transfers represent only 22% of health spending.

Just before the election in 2011, the Bloc convinced Ottawa to catch up and to keep increasing the transfers by 6% over five years. Unfortunately, the Conservatives decided that starting in 2016, the transfers would stop keeping pace with the increasing costs and capped them at 3%. However, health care costs have been increasing by roughly 5% a year, due in part to population aging. In Quebec, where the population is aging faster than the Canadian average, we are being hit hard. That is what we call the fiscal imbalance. We are paying nearly half our taxes to Ottawa, but most of the public services are being provided by Quebec or the Canadian provinces, while the federal government does whatever it wants.

At the end of the day, Ottawa is undermining Quebec's finances, and Quebec taxpayers are paying the price and receiving fewer and fewer services. According to a study by the Conference Board of Canada, with the current transfer method, in 20 years, the federal government should rake in a $110‑billion surplus, based on this calculation method, but the provinces will run a combined deficit of $172 billion. That is how the federal government can afford to interfere in the jurisdictions of Quebec and the provinces.

If the trend continues, federal health transfers will drop from 22% of health care expenses to 18% within a few years. It is no wonder that Quebec and the Canadian provinces are calling for the federal government to increase health transfers to cover 35% of health care spending, which would be more than $6.5 billion for Quebec. The government's position of putting off discussing the funding issue until after the pandemic is completely out of touch with reality.

I have been a member of Parliament for the Bloc Québécois since 2016. The one thing that struck me when I came to the House of Commons was that the Canadian government is always quick to interfere in areas under the jurisdiction of Quebec and the Canadian provinces, but it does not step up when it needs to take care of its own business, in its own jurisdiction.

The federal government must not continue to use these payments as an excuse to increase its funding and interference in areas under provincial jurisdiction and put off discussing health transfers. The Bloc Québécois will continue to make the point that increased health transfers are a necessary part of getting us through this pandemic, and it will be even more difficult to rebuild and stabilize our health care systems.

The needs are urgent in my riding of La Pointe-de-l'Île. The proportion of people aged 65 and over is higher than in the rest of Montreal. Life expectancy is lower than the average. Approximately two in three people aged 65 and older in La Pointe-de-l'Île have at least one chronic illness. Lung diseases and respiratory illnesses are more common in La Pointe-de-l'Île. Quebec's health care challenges are not strictly a management issue. The refusal by the Liberals and the other federal parties to increase health transfers to 35% is a prime example of predatory federalism.

Quebec is the one providing health care services, and we are in the middle of a pandemic. Quebec pays close to half our taxes to Ottawa, yet provides the lion's share of the services.

The Bloc Québécois succeeded in passing a motion to increase health transfers even though the Liberals voted against it. We know more money will not fix everything overnight, but without higher health transfers on an ongoing basis, we cannot start building the health system we want. That includes services available to everyone when they need them, good working conditions for nurses so we can retain them, training to hire more nurses and doctors, and support services for people dealing with addictions.

We cannot make these decisions and achieve this vision unless the federal government agrees to give back the money it takes from our taxes to fund the health care system. Health transfers must be restored urgently so we can breathe life back into our system.

I would also like to emphasize a key point here. While it is up to Quebec to choose the specific health services it wants to provide, respect for jurisdiction is quite simply an essential condition for respecting democracy. There are provincial jurisdictions and federal jurisdictions. If that is not respected, when people vote for a government in Quebec, that means they are voting for any old thing because we do not have the power to fulfill our commitments.

Quebeckers need to be given the right to determine their specific preferences with regard to health. The Bloc Québécois is against the federal government's centralist tendency. Ottawa is using the pandemic as an excuse to interfere in all sorts of domains, including long-term care institutions, mental health services and pharmacare. These elements are provincial responsibilities. Since Quebec and the provinces know what their people need, they should be the ones to determine how this money is allocated.

As we have pointed out, the government is completely isolated on this issue. My colleague said so earlier. All the opposition parties are calling for an increase in health transfers. All the provinces are calling for an increase in health transfers. All the premiers of the provinces and Quebec are calling on the federal government to increase health transfers. A 2020 survey found that 81% of Quebeckers want the federal government to increase its health transfers. That should be clear enough, but it is never clear enough.

We ask questions all the time and remind the Liberal members of this, and we are told again and again that funding has increased during the pandemic and so on. An increase in health funding during a pandemic is not a recurring increase. If health transfers are not increased, the federal share of health care spending will steadily decline, and our health care systems will be under enormous pressure. The provinces cannot make cuts to hospitals. We are asking once again, and we will continue asking, that the federal government increase health transfers. It is urgent.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, whether one lives in St-Pierre-Jolys in rural Manitoba or St. Boniface in the city of Winnipeg or in rural communities in Quebec or the city of Montreal, I think there is a general feeling among people in all communities that they want to see co-operation among different levels of government on the important issue of health care.

Through the Canada Health Act, there is a significant flow of federal tax dollars to support health care so that there is a sense of fairness whether people require health care service in Montreal or in Winnipeg. I am wondering if the member could indicate why he does not believe there needs to be a sense of equality and fairness in the distribution of health care services, no matter where people live in in Canada.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, equality is exactly what we are asking for.

When we talk about increasing health transfers to 35%, it is not only Quebec asking for this, but all the provinces.

This is not something that only Quebec is asking for, as I just said. This really illustrates the problem we have with the federal system. We have a government that constantly centralizes power and makes decisions that interfere with the decisions made by Quebec and the provinces.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from La Pointe-de-l'Île for his speech.

I obviously agree with him that our public health care system has really been devastated by the Conservatives' cuts to provincial transfers, cuts that the Liberals maintained.

However, my colleague and I do not quite agree on the impact of a universal public pharmacare program, which would not only enable the public health network to save money on drugs, but would also help workers and businesses save too.

My colleague does not agree with the FTQ, the CSN, the CSQ and the Union des consommateurs du Québec that there should be a universal public pharmacare program to ensure better coverage for everyone and reduce the cost of drugs. It would also mean savings for Quebec's health care network.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Bloc Québécois has said it before, and we will say it again: Quebec leads the way on prescription drug insurance.

We are not opposed to the idea of Canada as a whole taking our lead and doing likewise. However, we do not want Quebec to be penalized because we are ahead of the curve.

We agree with my colleague's proposal, as long as there is a clause that lets Quebec opt out with full compensation so we can continue to improve our own system.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we are in the final hours of Valentine's Day, and Valentine's Day is all about love.

Who else but my colleague, who speaks French with such passion, energy and love, can teach the Liberals the difference between “recurring” and “sporadic”?

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would say that we in the Bloc Québécois love Quebec enough to hope that it manages to get by after all these decisions, which basically make us less effective in our government administration.

There is only one truly sustainable solution that would free us from being at the mercy of the federal government's health transfer cuts, and that is Quebec independence. That is what I want. I am convinced it will come to this, because we have no choice, especially given that, if we want to continue to exist and develop as a people, we must have full control over our finances, our economy, our language and our culture.

In the meantime, the Bloc Québécois is the only federal party that defends and promotes the interests of Quebec as a nation and actively works to promote independence. This is our only way forward.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise tonight to speak to this important bill. I am particularly pleased to split my time with the brilliant member for Elmwood—Transcona.

This legislation is extraordinarily straightforward and simple. It would authorize the Minister of Health to do two things: first, to make payments of up to $2.5 billion out of the consolidated revenue fund for any expenses incurred on or after January 1, 2022, in relation to COVID-19 tests, and second, to transfer to any province or territory or to any body or person in Canada any COVID-19 tests or instruments used in relation to those tests acquired on or after April 1, 2021.

New Democrats strongly believe that we must expand access to COVID-19 testing for Canadians and do so as quickly as possible. Therefore, we of course will be supporting this legislation.

COVID-19 has underscored the crucial role of testing and surveillance in controlling infectious disease outbreaks and guiding sound public health decisions. In fact, listening to the debate over mandates and whether we should or should not have them, I think one thing we can all agree on is that testing will be a critical component of our ability to relax and ultimately relinquish those mandates because we will be able to get quick and accurate information about the outbreak of disease, as is demonstrated in every country in the world that is using these tests.

However, it is also true that Canada has suffered from severe limitations on testing capacity through wave after wave of this pandemic as a result of the federal government's repeated failure to stockpile sufficient supplies or accelerate domestic production capacity. With the emergence of the highly transmissible omicron variant, an exponential surge of COVID-19 cases has once again overwhelmed Canada's testing capacity while the federal government now scrambles to secure supplies in a highly competitive global marketplace. As a result, COVID-19 testing has become inaccessible for many Canadians from coast to coast to coast; reported case numbers underestimate the true number of infections, making it difficult to plan public health measures; and contact tracing efforts have been largely abandoned. Canadians may remember the tracing app that the federal government unleashed to great fanfare; it is now nowhere to be found and abandoned.

In response to shortages throughout the omicron surge, many provinces have had to restrict access to PCR testing to individuals who are at higher risk of severe illness and those in settings where the virus may spread more quickly. PCR testing, of course, is more precise than rapid antigen testing, and positive results from rapid test kits are not even reported in official COVID-19 case counts, again underestimating the prevalence of COVID in our country. However, rapid antigen tests are considered an important screening tool. Research shows that they are instrumental in preventing asymptomatic transmission of COVID-19 because they provide quick and generally reliable results. Unfortunately, rapid tests have also been very difficult for Canadians to access, particularly during the recent holiday season.

To stop and summarize here, we have a bill with two sections: one for $2.5 billion to get rapid tests and the other to transfer them to the provinces and territories. What do my colleagues in the Conservative Party and the Bloc Québécois say? They say we need to slow this down. They say they need to study this.

There is nothing to study. We are in an emergency. We are in a pandemic. Testing and tracing are especially important for asymptomatic Canadians and are key tools in returning to normal, so when the Conservatives say they want to reduce mandates but are slowing down the delivery of rapid tests, one of the tools to help us reduce and get rid of the mandates, it is inconceivable.

Second, there is a shortage of all tests in this country, both PCR and rapid tests. Canadians know this. In every province and territory, Canadians cannot get access to the rapid tests or the PCR tests that they need. Provinces and health care systems are rationing access to tests. What is the Conservative and Bloc response? Wait, slow it down; we need to study this. Again, there is nothing to study.

We have an emergency, we have a shortage and we have a pandemic. We need to act and, again, the Conservative and Bloc members now oppose fast-tracking the delivery of these tests to Canadians.

I want to talk for a moment about accountability, because that has been raised by the Conservatives. I agree that $2.5 billion is a significant amount of money. What did the NDP do? We identified that feature to the government, and we did what every responsible opposition party should have done. We did not hold up delivering rapid tests to Canadians; instead, we negotiated accountability measures with the government. I give the government credit, and I want to thank the Liberals for this. They agreed that they will report to Parliament, every six months, the number of tests delivered, where they were delivered and when, providing accountability not only to Parliament but to Canadians. That is responsible behaviour in a minority Parliament. That is effective opposition.

We know that the $2.5 billion will provide about 400 million tests. That sounds like a lot of tests, but it is not. Dr. David Juncker at McGill University estimates that we need 600 million to 700 million rapid tests per month, and then after omicron subsides, we would need two tests per person every week. We are already hearing that there is another variant on the way, omicron B.1, so we know that testing is going to be a requirement in this country for months if not years ahead. We also know that Canadians need them now.

I want to chat for a moment about what I have to describe as disarray in the Conservative Party and a total contradiction. Its members say it is the party of law and order, but they are now supporting anarchy and lawbreakers in the streets. They said for a year and half that rapid tests were what we needed. They identified rapid tests as critical to Canada's COVID strategy repeatedly, in every week and every month, right up until February of this year, and they were correct to do so. They were right. However, today, when this simple bill to get rapid tests quickly to Canadians comes before us, what do they want to do? They want to delay. They do not want rapid tests to go out tonight. Instead, they take up valuable time in the House so that we have to debate that we need rapid tests for Canadians, even though for years this is exactly what they have been calling for. They want to study it, but study what?

Today, I was shocked to hear a member of the health committee, a physician, question the value of testing and the science of testing. There is no science or reputable scientist in this country that supports this view. No one has raised the issue of the validity, the necessity or the utility of telling Canadians what their COVID status is or giving them the means to have a quick test. Ironically, that fits with Conservative MPs when they were resisting mandatory vaccination to come in the House. They told us to give them tests so they could show us they were negative to come into the House. They wanted rapid tests for themselves, but stand here in the House today and tell Canadians they cannot have rapid tests and they do not need them right away because we need to study this. That is rank hypocrisy of the highest order, and it is bad public health policy.

I want to end by talking a bit about equality, something that has not been mentioned in the House.

Federal measures to increase the supply of rapid testing kits are expected to particularly benefit people who are most at risk for contracting COVID-19 with severe outcomes. This includes people over the age of 60, people with chronic medical conditions, members of racialized communities and low-income Canadians, particularly those who work in frontline positions, like the clerks working in our stores, who come to work every single day to work with the public. The Conservatives and the Bloc tell us to hold up getting tests to those people, when they are putting their health on the line for us. Those working frontline jobs stand to benefit from reduced transmission, and they get that because of increased rapid testing, among other things.

Women are also overrepresented among the beneficiaries of this investment. We know that women comprise 53% of those aged 60 and over and 66% of those aged 90 to 95. Racialized women also stand to benefit, as they are more likely to be in essential frontline industries. In 2016, they accounted for 17% of those in health care and social assistance, compared with only 10% of overall employment.

I look forward to answering questions from my colleagues.

[Ya'ara Saks, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Families]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend my colleague on his remarks in the House this evening. It has been a very long day.

I want to talk about how we work together in the House. My colleague made a lot of really important points about the importance of science, the importance of data, the importance of a timely response and the importance of equity. I am sure my colleagues across the way would like to hear how important that really is.

In addition to the importance of rapid testing, we know we need more of it to have a sustainable supply to contend with omicron in the future. We have had much debate, and my colleagues across the way keep holding things up, including this legislation. However, they are also holding up the ability for us to collect the timely data we need from the Telus data for good project.

I would like to know if my colleague from the NDP will be supporting us in our efforts to work together to make sure we have all the science and all the data to keep Canadians safe.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague raises something very important, which is that health policy in this country should and must be driven by data, science and evidence. It should not be driven by political interests or wedge issues. I was very disappointed to see members of the Liberal caucus stand up and accuse the Prime Minister of using the COVID pandemic as a partisan wedge issue. I think members of the Conservative Party, who are flirting with insurrectionists in this country, are also engaging in politicizing this pandemic. Canadians can see that, and this should have nothing to do with how we deal with it.

We need data, and I want to point out, as I said in my speech, that when we do not have enough tests, we do not get an accurate view of how many people are testing positive or negative. When we do not have that data, we cannot create the kinds of public health responses we need, or target them in the right regions or areas, to respond appropriately.

We need to get this legislation passed right away. We need to get testing and every other public health tool into the hands of Canadians as soon as possible.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. colleague from Vancouver for his great speech here tonight. One of the things folks back home are wondering about is the Liberal-NDP coalition that we seem to have in this place. I wonder if he could give his thoughts as to why he voted against our opposition day motion that we voted on earlier today.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad my hon. colleague called my speech “great”.

There are a number of reasons for this. I think I speak for all Canadians when I say that we are entirely fatigued by COVID. Everybody wants to see a return to normal as soon as possible. However, we in the NDP believe that should be based on science and data, not on politics. We saw the interim leader of the Conservative Party move a motion in the House to get rid of mandates right after she was out publicly cavorting with the convoy and the people who are calling for an insurrection in this country. They are anti-vaxxers. They are flying swastika flags and Confederate flags. It shows the Conservatives are playing politics with this matter. The truth is that we are still in a pandemic, and we need public health officials to be guiding policy in this country, not politicians who are playing politics with the pandemic.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I already asked the member this, but I think he told me that the NDP would support health transfers up to 50%, even.

I asked him why he often proposes programs that would infringe on the jurisdictions of Quebec and the provinces.

We are not against pharmacare or dental insurance. However, as these fall under provincial jurisdiction, we want them to be put in place by Quebec and the provinces.

Could he elaborate on that a bit?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the major difference, with great respect, is that the people in the Bloc Québécois continually misconstrue the Constitution. They think health care is exclusively a provincial jurisdiction, but it is not. It is a shared jurisdiction. The Supreme Court of Canada said the federal government has the spending power, the criminal law power and other powers to enter into this area. We will not find the words “health care” in the Constitution. All that is in it is the establishment and maintenance of hospitals. That is what the provinces have. It does not say anything about dental care.

We need all levels of government working together to build the kind of health care system we need in this country. I believe the federal government should be a partner with the provinces. It is not just an issue for the provinces alone.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, because Bill C-10 is about funding rapid tests and we have been talking a lot in the House today about the pandemic, the nature of public health measures and how long they should or should not last, I want to start by recognizing how tired everybody is of the pandemic. Whether people support lifting all public health measures right now or not, we are all feeling pretty fatigued and we would like to see our way out of this. However, it is not something we can just declare an end to by fiat. If we could do that, we would have done it a long time ago.

I do not really believe anyone is happy about the restricted lives we have all had to live over the last two years. It is something we did out of necessity before the vaccine in order to protect ourselves from infection, the consequences of being infected with COVID and the severity of it from a health point of view without vaccination. Since vaccination, we have continued to live a restricted lifestyle because transmission continues and we know we are up against a virus that is adapting even as it spreads. It is one of the reasons it is so important that we get vaccines distributed to the rest of the world. Vaccinating those in Canada or in one particular country will not be enough. These variants multiply, and given how small a planet we now inhabit with the technology of travel and everything else, variants eventually come here to roost. That is why we are not out of the woods yet.

As much as the political debate has intensified in light of recent events and some provincial governments have decided to change course, we may well end up getting different advice from federal public health officials in respect of federal mandates. However, all that Dr. Tam has said so far is that it might make sense to re-evaluate them. She has not called for lifting them. I am firmly in the camp of those who believe that this debate has to be led by public health officials, who have our best interests at heart. I know they are trying to keep up to date with the emerging science of the pandemic and are giving their best recommendations for how to reduce suffering and death as a result of COVID-19. It is our job to focus on how we support people through the economic challenges that we have to face, while the health challenges are addressed by public health officials and frontline health workers who treat those who have been infected.

COVID-19 tests are going to be an important part of that and, indeed, it was not that long ago that it was the preferred solution by the Conservatives, who now seem to be of the view that we can lift all public health measures and be done with them. However, governments have tried that before, and we do not have to go outside the country to see that. We just have to look at Alberta as one example. In the summer, it decided to lift all public health measures, and it very quickly found itself in distress with high rates of hospitalization. It is pretty clear that when we take that approach, it does not work out in the way that we would all hope and wish for. We have an obligation as decision-makers to be sober-minded about these things, listen to what public health officials are saying and look at the evidence. That does not mean there is no room for debate, and the country is currently having a very lively debate. However, it does mean that we still have to let public health officials lead that discussion based on the best available evidence.

One of the important tools for public health officials, to the extent that they want to collect data about what is happening with COVID, is a testing regime, and rapid tests are important in that regard. It is difficult in Canada right now to access rapid tests. Even if we do not take the macro point of view of a public health official, there are a lot of Canadians out there who maybe want to go visit their mom and dad or granny and grandpa or a vulnerable family member who is immunocompromised. They want to take a rapid test before they head over there because they know that COVID is around and is easy to catch.

Someone may have it and not be symptomatic, so folks would like to be able to have access to tests as a best practice or an added layer of protection or reassurance in order to be able to make those visits and have some confidence that, when they visit their loved ones or their friends, they are not taking COVID-19 into their home and into their life. That is another reason, beyond the public health arguments and beyond the economic arguments in terms of testing, if we are going into a workplace, why it is important to have access to rapid tests and why this money is important.

There are some real issues around accountability with money in the Liberal government. I will spare members the list, because I certainly do not have enough time to give it all, but as the member for Vancouver Kingsway, my colleague and NDP House critic, was just highlighting, that was why when we were negotiating with the government around the swift passage of this bill, which is just a two-paragraph bill that authorizes spending for rapid tests and their distribution to the provinces, we were keen to include some better financial reporting requirements in there. That is why we got a commitment from the government to table information every six months in the House on how this money is being spent, such as how many tests and where they go. That is important. It is important, because we are talking about large sums of money. It is important, because there have been legitimate questions raised about the way the government has spent some COVID-19 funds, including around sole-source contracts. I think Canadians should get information on how this money is being spent and they should get it in a timely way.

One of the most recent reports by the Parliamentary Budget Officer highlighted the fact that the government was late in tabling its public accounts. It didn't table them until December. Normally, in the countries of most of our allies and trading partners, that happens on a six-month timetable after the end of the fiscal year, so tabling them in December was very late. I think it is true, especially when the government is spending large sums of money, that accountability and transparency become that much more important. They do not become less important because we are spending more money; they become more important as we spend more money.

That is why I am proud that the NDP has been able to negotiate some reporting requirements around this. I look forward to trying to secure a similar reporting requirement for Bill C-8, which includes another $1.72 billion in spending authority for rapid tests.

That was not the only thing negotiated around the passage of this bill. We in the House all know and Canadians listening may well know that the government made a choice to claw back the CERB benefits from working seniors who were on the guaranteed income supplement.

We were talking about it as New Democrats before the last election. We talked about it during the election. We have talked about is since the election. The government finally, just as a result of public pressure, felt an obligation to say something about it in the fall economic statement. They said money would be coming, but then it seemed it would not come until May. Then we heard maybe June. Then we heard maybe July. As part of the negotiations around swift passage of this bill, earlier today we were able to secure a commitment from the government that those seniors who have had their GIS clawed back would be paid no later than April 19, and for some of those in the most desperate need, that help may flow as early as mid-March.

That is a real concrete benefit for Canadians who were hurting. I have talked to seniors who have already been evicted from their homes. We have heard reports of seniors who have taken their lives because they had no sense of hope when they heard it would be so long until the GIS clawback was rectified. We have heard stories of seniors who have had to pass up on medication or are going hungry. This demanded swift action. It was something we were hoping to see the government do around Bill C-2, and we finally got it done.

To get Canadians access to more rapid tests and to get some of our most financially vulnerable seniors the help they need in order to stay in their homes or to be rehoused after being evicted all in one go I would say is a good day's work for a parliamentarian, and I am proud of that work.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I acknowledge everything my colleague said. Yes, we need rapid tests. That being said, the Senate is not sitting until next week.

We are not talking about having endless debates and studies, but simply giving ourselves the rest of the week to discuss and ensure that we are able to propose amendments that would guarantee that the money goes to the tests and the right companies, not to the Liberals' friends.

Why this rush to pass this bill on a Monday instead of on Thursday or Friday, or not at all according to the studies—

[The Deputy Speaker, Chris d'Entremont]

The hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is because there are other bills to be studied. If I am not mistaken, Bill C-12 addresses the guaranteed income supplement and would ensure that what happened with the GIS and CERB will not be repeated in the next taxation year. There are other priorities.

In my opinion, Bill C‑10 is a fairly simple bill, and we have already approved much large expenditures by unanimous consent in the past. The NDP has received assurances that there will be a proper reporting of the expenditures under Bill C‑10. That is enough for me, and we can move on to other priorities.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, one thing I would add to the exchange between the member of the Bloc and my colleague from Elmwood—Transcona is that the Prime Minister invoked the Emergencies Act today, and that is going to require it coming before Parliament. That may take up the remainder of this week. It is quite time sensitive that we get this bill passed.

My colleague was very good at underlining just how important these are to many working families. I wonder if he would expand on the fact that while we all are very much wishing for this pandemic to be done with us, it is not finished. We are done with it, but it is certainly not done with us. What kind of peace of mind do rapid tests offer to people who often find themselves in high risk situations, having to make those calls every day, especially if they are living with vulnerable people in their households?

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, at this point in the pandemic it would be hard to find people in the country who have not had the experience of doing a rapid test or knowing someone who has done a rapid test, and who have not felt some anxiety about visiting family members who they feel might be vulnerable.

These two things go well together. If people have access to rapid tests, then one of the things people could try to do to give themselves a little peace of mind and to give their friends or family members they might be visiting, who might be immunocompromised or otherwise vulnerable to COVID, that little extra peace of mind, and to feel that they are doing their part, is to take that test.

While it is true that if people are asymptomatic, those tests can certainly give false negatives but in terms of whether people ultimately have COVID or not, they do say they are pretty accurate for predicting whether people are contagious for a period of several hours after taking the test. That is where a lot of peace of mind comes from.

That peace of mind can only be accessed if there is access to a test. That is why it is important to authorize these funds and to be able to get those tests out the door, so that they can find their way into the hands of Canadians.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, in this House we listen to partisanship constantly. We listen to people yelling at each other, calling each other names and ignoring the issue on the table just in order to be partisan. The hon. member for Vancouver Kingsway made me proud tonight. He was non-partisan. He was clear. He talked about the science. He talked about the facts. He smoked out all of the partisanship and the hypocrisy.

This is an important bill, yet we hear everyone going off on tangents about everything other than a very simple bill. COVID-19, omicron or whatever form it is going to mutate into, kills people. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians have died as a result of it. They were preventable deaths. We are talking about dealing with preventing death here. We are not talking about transfer payments and whatever else people want to do as a red herring. Let us just talk about our having the power to help to save lives. Let us talk about how we do it. I want to congratulate the hon. member for Vancouver Kingsway.

When there is a pandemic, there are some very simple things to do. The first thing we have to do is find out what the vector is, what is causing it, and how it is spread. In this case, we thought originally it was spread by droplet infection. We now know it is spread by aerosol. How it is spread is important for us to understand. The second thing we need to find out is how we get vaccines against it and how, if we can, prevent people from getting it. Containing the spread is an important part of it.

The federal government has been giving out rapid tests since October 2020, for a year and five months. I am not being partisan about this. It bothers me that my Province of British Columbia was given seven million free tests by the Government of Canada and no one knows how the tests are being handed out. British Columbians keep writing to me saying they cannot get a test to save their life and do not know where to find them. At the same time, I have grandchildren in Ontario who can get rapid tests at school and bring them home.

Let us talk about saving lives here. Let us talk about dealing with a virus that does not really care what political party we belong to or what province we live in. It does not give a hoot about the Constitution. It does not care about legislation or anything. It is a virus and it knows how to do only one thing, and that is to spread and make people ill. The longer it stays with us, the more we are going to see it change, evolve and mutate into different forms. Right now, we all think of omicron, that it is easy to pick up. Omicron is actually very mild.

On the other hand, we need to talk about why we should have rapid tests and what the importance of rapid tests is in this. We have identified the vector. We have decided how it is spread. We have decided we are going to contain it. We have vaccines. We have treatments ready. The question then is what the rapid tests are going to do. We know the tests are not always very reliable, but the important thing that rapid tests do is the third part of public health protocol, and that is surveillance and tracking.

If we can find out where omicron is, or B.1 or whatever the new strain is, we are able to do not only a widespread, scattered approach, but we can look at that little town, little village, little space or little part of the city where there are more positive tests. Surveillance is a part of public health. It is a part of looking at a pandemic. They get surveillance and track it. The federal government put in a tracking mechanism, an app. Most provinces ignored it and the app became useless because nobody was tracking. Surveillance went by the board. Surveillance is key to knowing where to expend the resources and where they are going to find the virus spread so as to be able to curb it. It is scientific. It is a simple, basic method.

Therefore, it is important that we get rapid tests out to everyone as soon as possible. Yes, it helps people if they want to visit their grandma to know that they are okay and that they will not give her omicron. That is all very good, but the bottom line is it is important for surveillance and for tracking. Because we did not have an app that everybody used, there was a problem.

Again, I want to say that I am certainly not being partisan tonight. I am talking about Ontario having done one good thing. My daughter-in-law who lives in Ontario went out one day with her friends. They went for dinner. It was the friend's birthday, and there were three of them. When she got home, she got a message from the app in Ontario, the same federal app we are talking about, which told her she may have been in a room with and in touch with people with omicron.

The next day she went for her proper PCR test, not a rapid test. She went out. She isolated herself. She was able to take those kind of steps. This is what these protocols are for. This is why it does not matter how it is spread. It does not matter what is happening in the pandemic. These are some basic steps in epidemiology and in looking at pandemics, which began at the beginning of the 20th century when we first discovered public health, and we began to understand how to track things.

This is not a silly thing. There is nothing to study. This is real. The facts are there. This is the science that has been around since the early part of the 20th century, and we need to use it. We need to care about how we can prevent lives being lost. I am a physician. The idea that people could die from a preventable death bothers me to no end. It really does. I lose sleep at night over this. It really bothers me because it is in our power to do the right thing.

In my province of British Columbia, 92% of people have had a vaccination, so we can see that people do care. They want to do the right thing, yet we have people in the Conservative Party talking about how we should have no more vaccine mandates and no more whatever. Obviously, there is no understanding of what science is about, what public health is about, when it started, how it started, how it is tracked or how it works.

The most important thing we should be worried about is how to stop the spread and how to save lives. I support this bill. I would love for us to stop talking about everything else and just focus. Let us get this thing passed. Let us get the rapid tests going.

Hundreds of thousands are going to be done. Yes, it is money spent, but that money is important, because saving lives has got to be the number one priority for any government, anywhere, anyhow. Any party that wants to be in government has got to think about that.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I was wondering if the hon. member could comment on the apparent NDP-Liberal coalition we have going on here and the vote we had earlier today on our opposition day motion, in which the NDP supported the Liberal government and voted against that motion.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will answer that question. However, that is an example of what I was talking about and what the hon. member from Vancouver Kingsway was talking about.

Once again, it is the politics of the thing. It is, “Oh, look at the coalition. Look at how they are getting into bed.” This is science. Everywhere one goes, regardless of their political party, if they understand the science, they will agree with this. This is not about getting into bed with someone and forming coalitions. That is the kind of low-grade partisanship that actually puts people's lives on the line because it is more important to be political than to get the right things done.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, perhaps it is because it is very late in the day today, February 14, but I am somewhat shocked.

I am especially shocked by my colleague, who is so knowledgeable. She said that they want to save lives and prevent senseless deaths, so why did people on my street have to go through triaging because health care services were not available? It is because there was not enough money, not because they did not have access to a test. I agree with having tests.

I am just trying to understand. We heard several times that partisanship is at play, but I believe that the Bloc Québécois should not be included in that because it is the only party that is not looking for power. We are here to protect Quebec's interests, which means we will support what is good for Quebec.

I would like to hear from my colleague, who is the expert. It sounded like she was saying that with respect to the health transfers, the triaging and deaths that occurred were not part of it.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I think this is hilarious. In the first instance, the member spoke tonight about provincial jurisdictions. The provinces are being given these rapid tests. They are being shipped to them. We are actually seeking in this bill to get them shipped directly to provinces, so provinces can distribute them.

If the hon. member cannot find them in her province, she is going to have to ask her provincial government why they have received so many hundreds of millions of tests they have not distributed yet. That has to be my answer. We cannot have it both ways.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciated listening to the member's speech tonight. The fact that she is a physician gives her an opportunity to explain a number of things to Canadians. Of course, saving lives is key to any physician and I really appreciate her passion for that. Could she explain something?

She said omicron was less infectious, but spread more. I wonder how the member would answer this. The nature of a virus is that it wants to survive. What is the member's understanding of the role of a virus that initially comes out very strong, then eventually becomes far more contagious but less dangerous? That is what has happened here.

I would like the member to speak to the fact that emergency vaccines are required only when it is determined that there are no available early treatments to prevent people from getting to the place where they are in ICUs and on ventilators. What is her view of the importance of recognizing how a virus mutates?

I would also like to hear her view on natural immunity. Before we provide vaccines, should that not be determined and find out how many people have very strong T cells and natural immunity capability?

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would be happy to answer that question. Viruses are unpredictable, as we have seen with this virus. Omicron wants to get to as many people as it can to spread itself. Its spread has been decreasing with vaccinations. Fewer and fewer people are getting it. Its spread therefore has become more mild mostly because a lot of people are already vaccinated and have had booster shots. Therefore, they have some degree of immunity and are not getting as sick as they could have. That is the first reason.

Omicron right now is spreading rapidly, but is milder in certain people, but we do not know whether that is only because of vaccines or whether it is the next iteration, B.1. I do not know whether that comes up. Maybe it is far more lethal and it has a lot of problems. We do not understand that, because we do not know and we cannot predict that until it happens.

The other thing is are we going to wait to see if people have natural immunity? This is a case of saying I am going to roll the dice and if someone does not have natural immunity and they happen to die from omicron because they are 80 or older and they die from it, then that was a mistake. I thought that person had immunity. The bottom line is to give—

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

That is a good use of a vaccine.

[The Deputy Speaker, Chris d'Entremont]

Order. I know it is late at night. I know we have not been using Zoom for very long. Let us just make sure that we allow the member to answer. Then we will go back and forth as we normally do.

The hon. member for Vancouver Centre has the microphone.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to finish that thought. Vaccines do convey natural immunity. Where do people think immunity comes from? Someone gets antibodies in response to an antigen. In this case the RNA of the virus will actually cause someone to develop antibodies. Our bodies develop antibodies.

The point is there are many people who are immunocompromised. There are many people with chronic illnesses who do not how susceptible they will be. I, as a physician, am not prepared to roll the dice on whether someone has natural immunity or not. The bottom line is to try and make as many people as immune as we possibly can so we can decrease the damage done.

We still do not even know the long-term effects for people who are getting omicron. We may be getting milder forms. We do not know what is happening long term. A lot of countries are now saying there may be chronic long-term problems.

[The Deputy Speaker, Chris d'Entremont]

I hate to cut things off, but we have to get a few more questions in before the time runs out.

The hon. member for Peace River—Westlock.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is not often we get to go twice in a debate like this, so I am appreciative of that.

The hon. member talked about the science of this. The motion we put forward last week called for the government to put forward a plan, give us some benchmarks or give us some timelines, and show us the science of when we will break out of this pandemic and when we will be able to lift the mandates.

Would the hon. member like to tell us, according to her plan, how many people would have to be vaccinated in her ideal world for the mandates to be dropped and for life to return to some semblance of normal?

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is very important to know what the plan of action is. A plan of action is not one that tries to second-guess a virus, which we cannot do because it has behaved very erratically, and viruses do that.

The bottom line is to ask how many people we can prevent from getting this virus. We need to look at vaccination as a first step in a plan; the plan is vaccination. The next plan is to try to isolate people wherever possible so the spread is contained. Those are some of the things we plan.

We do not plan as a partisan issue. We plan according to what we must do when we have a pandemic, whether it be the flu at the beginning of the 20th century or the plague. A plan is based on what we know, on the science and what has been shown over generations about how to deal with viruses or bacteria, if they happen to be the source of the pandemic. That is a plan. It is a scientific plan. It is not a plan that says we are going to second-guess and say that on March 4, 2022, the virus is going to go away. One cannot tell people that because we do not know that.

Something we have seen with this virus is that it has fooled us over and over again. A plan, for me, is to follow the protocols that every good public health professional has understood from the beginning of the 20th century. What do we do, how do we do it and how do we prevent people from dying?

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, two weeks to flatten the curve, do we remember that being said? Two weeks to flatten the curve is what we all signed up for around here back in the spring of 2020, two years ago.

Here we are two years later and we still do not have a plan for how we are going to pull out of this pandemic. We put forward a motion last week calling on the government to provide us with a plan. We left it fairly wide open. We asked for a plan for how we would end the mandates and return to some semblance of normal.

The Liberals joined with their coalition partners, the NDP, and voted that motion down, so here we are without a plan for how to end the pandemic. We heard about the vaccines and we called for rapid tests, which is what we are talking about tonight, but here we are without a plan.

The Liberals could have voted for our motion earlier today and could have put forward a plan. We gave them a month to come up with a plan. They have essentially had two years to come up with a plan, and one of the major frustrations from people across the country is that there does not seem to be a plan. We seem to be flying by the seat of our pants.

There is also no humility in this to say that the government actually does not know. That would be an acceptable plan to give, but the government keeps saying it is following the science. Show us the science. Use the science and build a plan. Give us a percentage. We have heard things like “when 70% of the population is vaccinated”, “when 80% of the population is vaccinated” or “when 90% of the population is vaccinated”. Those are all nice targets, but that is kind of like shooting a hole in the target and then painting the bull's eye around the hole we just shot.

If we do not know what the target is, it is pretty hard to have a plan. It is hard to have an idea. As well, the goalposts keep changing. The target keeps changing. The bullet hole is there and we have painted the bull's eye around it. That is essentially where we are at with this whole COVID-19 pandemic.

It has been two years. We have seen jurisdictions around the world removing their vaccination mandates, removing their travel restrictions and opening up their sports arenas. They are watching hockey again and having a good time. Here we are in Canada behind plexiglass and masks and all of these things while other parts of the world are—

[Dan Vandal, Liberal, Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, the member has been speaking for three minutes and has not talked about rapid tests once yet. This is a debate about rapid tests. I urge the Speaker to try to get him back into the lane.

[The Deputy Speaker, Chris d'Entremont]

I thank the minister for that, but the member did mention rapid tests at least once in his speech so far. We have given lots of leeway in our debate tonight to all sides. I will make sure the member keeps to the bill at hand, and I am sure this nudging will keep him there.

The hon. member for Peace River—Westlock may continue.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the fact of the matter is that we have given the government the opportunity with this motion last week for a dramatic out, a way to reduce the pressure in this country around the two years that this country has been under moving goalposts and shooting first and then drawing a bullseye on the target after the fact. Here we are today asking the government for a target before we get to the plate.

Today, the bill before us is very straightforward. It talks about getting rapid tests. We have been asking for rapid tests for over two years. We were asking for rapid tests before there was a decent vaccine on the market, before we had approvals for the vaccine. Why? There were cutting-edge Canadian companies that were showing up in this place and telling us they had a rapid test that we could use if only they could get Health Canada's approval.

I remember writing a letter asking the health minister to expedite the testing of these rapid tests so that we could use them. Why? It was so that we could maintain our border. One of the first things that we learned in a pandemic was to shut the borders and try to keep the pandemic out. What did the government do? It called shutting the border racist. Had we had rapid tests at the border, we could have tested people and significantly reduced the effects of people coming from overseas and bringing COVID-19 here. We would have been able to quarantine the sick rather than quarantining everybody. Quarantining is for the sick. It is not for the healthy.

That was one of the major frustrations that we saw, these ham-fisted practices that went on, putting people in these “rape hotels” across the country after they came in to ensure that they were not spreading COVID to other people, in worse conditions than many of the prisons in this country, worse food for sure. Forgive me when I am not willing to grant the Liberals a lot of leeway on this bill around rapid tests when we have been calling for them for a very long time.

[Ya'ara Saks, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have a point of order. I really hope that I misheard my colleague in his description of the quarantine hotels. As someone who has been helping put forward a motion on gender-based violence, if it was referred to as a “rape hotel”, I find that profoundly offensive to women not only in the House but in this country. I would ask that the member apologize.

[The Deputy Speaker, Chris d'Entremont]

It is not necessarily against the rules of the House to refer to certain things but maybe the member could retract the statement or maybe explain it a little. I do accept that maybe it is improper.

The hon. member for Peace River—Westlock.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I will rephrase that. I apologize for any offence I may have given.

I will rephrase that. We placed returning visitors to Canada in places where there was no gender-based analysis done upon their return to Canada. We heard horrific stories of things that happened in those places. I am adamant that one of the things we could have used to prevent people from ending up in those quarantine hotels was rapid tests. Rapid tests were one of the ways that we could have reduced the influx of COVID into our own country, and it was one of the ways we could have managed the border. Those were things that we called for early on, very early on.

Other things that we have seen with this pandemic is the mismanagement of our PPE stockpile. After SARS there was an effort in this country to stockpile PPE. In 2017, those stockpiles were no longer funded. They were in disarray. They were not managed. There we were when 2020 came around and we had a pandemic but we did not have a stockpile of PPE. That goes to show that I do not have faith in the Liberal government's ability to manage vast numbers of these products.

The other thing that we are concerned about with this particular $2.5-billion bill is who is going to supply these particular rapid tests. I have already talked significantly about rapid test companies that have approached my office. They probably approached every member's office in this place, showed the tests and said, “Hey, we are a Canadian company. We are a cutting-edge, health technology company in this country and we think we've developed a rapid test for COVID.” That was early on in 2020. We said, “Okay, this is great. We will put it forward and promote it” and those kinds of things, yet we never saw them get approved. I do not know. They went to the United States and other jurisdictions and those same rapid tests were approved in those jurisdictions, but they were not approved in ours.

Then we saw similar things happen with vaccines. We saw the Government of Canada sign up with a company called CanSino. It spent millions of dollars on that particular project, only to abandon it later. Never mind the Baylis Medical fiasco. I am not sure if colleagues remember that one. Ventilators that were not approved by Health Canada were bought. Several thousand of them were bought by the Canadian government to be stockpiled for the pandemic. I do not begrudge that, but there was a member of Parliament named Frank Baylis who happened to be associated with Baylis Medical. Somehow that company got this multi-million dollar contract to provide ventilators to fight the pandemic. There are multiple examples of why we would have questions about the suppliers of the rapid tests. Never mind the WE scandal. In the middle of the pandemic, we had the WE scandal where the Prime Minister was trying to give his buddies nearly a billion dollars.

Here we are with a $2.5-billion new spending bill and we have questions about who will be the suppliers. We have seen this movie played before. We have watched it. We had the WE scandal. We had the CanSino disaster. We had the Baylis Medical thing. We have seen that.

Other countries around the world, though, have had a great record with rapid tests. Germany, for example, adopted rapid tests very early on and have used them extensively.

Here we are at the last minute, in what are, I hope, the dying days of this pandemic, and suddenly we are rushing the bill through Parliament. We are not sending the bill to committee. We are just rushing it through Parliament, and for what? I am not exactly certain why. Is it to distract from the Liberals' disastrous vote for a plan to end the mandates? Is it because they are embarrassed about that and want to hide from it, so they put this on the table and then tell us to jump through all the hoops?

It is still Monday, the first day of the week, although it may be getting close to Tuesday, and the Liberals brought this to Parliament, out of all the things we have to be concerned about today, never mind the special Emergencies Act and things like that going on. Suddenly, after two years of asking for this, today of all days, here we are having to ram this through, and we are not using the normal means of Parliament, but a programming motion to ram this through Parliament to bring it to the Senate, which is not sitting for another week. The committee could hear it, sit down and ask questions of the government specifically, such as who the suppliers are and where the money is going. Let us get a schedule of where the $2.5 billion is being spent and let us have a plan. Perhaps somebody on the Liberal side can explain to me why, today of all days, suddenly this bill has to be debated and programmed through and have multiple votes on it.

I would like to congratulate the clerk for her amazing ability to remember all of our names for those. Even though, because of the COVID rules, I sat in different seats today, she still managed to get my name right. I congratulate her on that.

Nonetheless, it still begs the question: Why today? What was the science that brought us to today? Fundamentally, I think rapid tests are important, were important, and would have been a real help in the fight against COVID early on.

I know that my own province of Alberta was using rapid tests. They were handed out at school and my kids took them home. We very much enjoyed having rapid tests to be able to have that peace of mind. However, there is no recording of those rapid tests. There is no data collection. They are used, and they give me and my family peace of mind, but then they go in the garbage. There is no data collection. They are an incredible tool for individuals to use, but not beyond that.

We have heard members on the other side talking about collecting the data and all these kinds of things, and that is great, but if a person is self-administering it, there really is no data collection, unless there are some digital ones that I do not know about. The ones that I have used are analog outfits that do not collect data and do not have a time-stamp on them. They are good for my own personal peace of mind, but not necessarily useful in tracking and tracing.

It would have been useful for going to events, crossing borders and those kinds of things. They would have been extremely useful two years ago. Here again, we see that the Liberals are a day late, and seem to have another reason for bringing this forward today other than them being concerned about rapid tests, which is newfound from my perspective.

I am thankful for the opportunity to speak this evening, and I hope that I have laid out the reasons why rapid tests are important and the Liberal failure to bring forward rapid tests in a timely manner.

[Ken McDonald, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Mr. Speaker, it never ceases to amaze me, no matter what we do on COVID, when it comes to the Conservatives, if it is something that the Liberals are putting forward, they are against it. They were against the measures to help businesses. They were against the measures to help individuals. They were against the mandates. They were against doing anything related to COVID whatsoever. Now, all of a sudden, it is like they found a new religion when it comes to the rapid tests, but it is not a new religion.

When I travelled back to my riding the last time from here, I had to get a box of rapid tests at the airport. For five days in a row I was doing tests. Nobody tracked it, but it enabled me to know that it was safe for me to be out in the community after those five days of testing.

I would ask the member this: What does he have against the measures that we have taken to help people through this pandemic?

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate the member's story about rapid tests. It is too bad we did not have them two years ago. We could have managed COVID much better. That was kind of the entire thrust of my speech.

Rapid tests would have been an immense tool to help stop the entry of COVID into our country. I am frustrated. Here we are, at this late hour in the pandemic, and finally the Liberals have had their “come to Jesus” moment and are now willing to talk about rapid tests.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I wanted to hear my colleague's thoughts on vaccination. What does he think about the fact that there are still thousands of people in hospital and a large number of the patients in the ICU are unvaccinated?

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I think that vaccines are an important tool in the fight against COVID.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I was partly disappointed that the member did not ask me a question when I gave my speech, because he has been asking about the NDP's vote on the Conservative opposition day motion. The answer to his question is in the motion itself, which quotes Dr. Tam as saying that it might be worthwhile to re-evaluate some of the public health measures to date. The motion jumped to recommending the end of all public health measures, and having a plan to do that. Of course, those two things are not the same.

If public health officials are prepared to re-evaluate some of the policies they have had in place to date, that is a good thing and they can do that, according to what they think are the criteria that should be used in that reassessment. However, I think it was one jump too far for the House of Commons to come to conclusions about what the outcome of those re-evaluations should be.

On the question of some financial accountability, I would say that a lot of the questions that the member is asking, with respect to the spending for rapid tests, are questions we have been asking at the finance committee, because the Liberals are also asking for money under Bill C-8. We have had some assurances about better reporting from the government. In fact, there is still an opportunity to discuss some of these issues around spending on rapid tests in the context of Bill C-8, and I do not think it is a bad thing for Parliament to sometimes do its work efficiently.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member seems to have confirmed my suspicions of an NDP-Liberal coalition.

Nonetheless, I would go back to my analogy of shooting a hole in the target and then painting the bull's eye around it after the fact. If we do not set a target, how do we know when we have met it? We do not have a list of steps we need to take in order to end the mandates, to reopen the economy, to reopen the border, to lift the travel restrictions and to lift the testing when we travel. If we do not set those parameters before we get there, how do we know if we have actually met a target? How can we measure if we have no solid point to measure from?

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Mr. Speaker, earlier in debate, we heard the Liberal member for London North Centre talk about biomanufacturing, how important it was, and how the government had given a $30-million contract to a Canadian company for rapid tests. It was a company from British Columbia, I might add.

One thing we are not going to be able to do, because of the way the Liberals have rammed through this bill, is to take it to committee to actually find out about any kinds of requirements to purchase Canadian rapid tests.

It is $2.5 billion of spending, yet there is nothing in this bill that says that Canadian companies will benefit. Does the member believe that the government is really at a loss here, when it comes to transparency and supporting Canadian businesses? It talks a good game, but unfortunately it forgets it in the fine print of its bills.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River for the bill he has put forward calling on companies to have to report their supply chains, to ensure that forced labour and slave labour are not found in Canadian supply chains.

One of the interesting things that people note and point out, and that I have been trying to promote, is that the federal government is not necessarily held to the same standard. The government has been caught flat-footed, in terms of procuring PPE and other items during the pandemic, and it is rumoured that forced labour had been used to produce those things. To the Liberals' credit, the minister has worked fairly diligently recently to correct some of those issues.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague certainly described a lot of reasons for the lack of trust in the government that exists at the level it does today across the whole nation.

I want to talk about the fact that early on, Canadian companies were creating very quick, very efficient, very high-quality rapid tests in this country, yet they were given a pass. That was the time, as the member mentioned, to have rapid tests so that people did not need to miss two weeks of work and shut down our economy.

Can the member talk a little more about this being a significant reason why Canadians have lost faith and trust in the government's managing of this pandemic per se, and its inability to be transparent in its actions?

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague could not have summed it up better. There are big trust issues in this country with our institutions and with the way the government has operated. We have heard right from the mouths of Liberal MPs how the government has used the pandemic and vaccines to divide and drive wedges between Canadians.

Rapid tests were something Conservatives called for early on. They are not a replacement for vaccines, but an alternative to things the government brought in to mandate vaccines or encourage vaccination. Rapid tests were also more widely available early on than vaccines. They took less time to build and to test, and they are not nearly as invasive as a vaccine. There would have been widespread adoption very early on and they were something we called for, but that seemed to have been ignored while the government put all of its eggs in the vaccine basket.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise late this evening to speak to Bill C‑10.

I am pleased to stand today. I know the hour is late, but it still is Valentine's Day here in Ottawa. I think my husband at home is watching. I have never before stood in this place and been able to reference a husband. We have been married for less than three years, so I do want to say happy Valentine's Day to my sweetheart. I really love him a lot and I hope he will stick with me. It has not been long enough that I am really sure. No, I am sure.

I want to reflect on a very serious topic. As other members have mentioned tonight, it is hard to switch from love and romance to killer viruses, but I will. My middle name is Evans, for my great-grandmother, who died in the Spanish influenza outbreak about a hundred years ago. It left a mark on our family to this day. I was raised by a mother who was raised by a mother who lost her mother when she was three. It has an impact on a family, and I look at the Spanish flu outbreak and I think, it lasted two years and it killed somewhere between 25 million and 50 million on a planet which, at that time, had fewer than two billion people.

The planet has changed a lot. That outbreak managed to make its way around the world without the benefit, like right now, of the things modern society has done to increase the lethality and the longevity of viruses. We are now seven billion people and we have jet travel.

I want to look at this issue from the point of view of humanity separate from political parties, even separate from national identity. I want to look at it as humanity and an invisible parasite, and I want to say to my fellow human beings, be they Conservative, or Liberal, or Bloc, or NDP, Canadians, or New Zealanders, or Brits, there is an unhealthy degree of hubris at the moment on the part of humanity, whether someone is pro-vax or anti-mask or sure of themself in some way or another. We are too sure of ourselves. Humanity seems to think we are in charge, that we can debate in this place at what point we decree the pandemic is over. “No more masks; they are so annoying; we are so sick of it,” we say, worrying about the vaccines, saying they are not working so well anymore. Well, we can guess why they do not work so well anymore: the pandemic is operating with humanity as its petri dish.

I want to read something into the record. I do not usually do this, but this has educated me a lot about COVID. I read through the scientific papers, but this Canadian author and scientific writer, Andrew Nikiforuk, wrote a book in 2008 called Pandemonium, subtitled Bird Flu, Mad Cow Disease, and Other Biological Plagues of the 21st Century. He wrote it in 2008. I want to quote from his most recent articles that appear in an online newspaper called The Tyee, starting with one from about a year ago, January 2021.

Andrew Nikiforuk titled his article “It's Me Again, COVID. Meet the Variant”. This is first-person writing from the point of view of the virus:

I explained then that I am the fire, and you are the fuel.

Many of your species believed that my presence couldn’t change everything....

Meantime, I’ve been evolving rapidly, as only the undead can do in a sea of endless hosts.

And your white coats are now expressing—what’s that splendid phrase?—“widespread concern” about my variants.

You didn’t notice the first one, D614G, which took off last March.

It became the dominant strain in the world because it did a better job, as your white coats put it, “infecting upper-airway epithelial cells, and [replicating] in greater numbers” than the Wuhan strain.

Natural selection just favours the bold.

And then came B117 in England in October.

Next arrived 501.V2 in South Africa in November.

Not to mention the mink variants in Denmark and the Netherlands. And that Brazilian variant, B1128, which just flew into Japan

There are others I daren’t even tell you about. So many opportunities. So much change.

This is nothing personal, of course. Mutating is what the undead do. The more human cells we hijack, the more opportunities we have to replicate. And every replication is a chance to mutate and play with the genome (my genetic bits) at a rate of one or two a month.

But when 10 or 20 mutations arise, well, it can transform my character and ambitions altogether, making it easier for my kind to kill, spread faster or better evade your immune defences. And right now, I am lethal enough to spread far. So, I am concentrating on spreading faster.

The scale of this you can’t comprehend. The more hosts we conquer and infect, the more mutations that occur.

And let me boast for a minute. Every thousandth of a litre of contagious fluid in a host’s nose harbours something like one hundred million to one billion viral replicators.

...The me that embarked from Wuhan on our great global journey is no longer the me riding ambulances in Ireland, Denmark and France.

Learn this: You will never meet the same virus twice.

...So let me give you hosts some humble advice. Party on. Don’t wash your hands. Gather in poorly ventilated places, and let me flourish and spread. Throw away those silly masks. Forget about public health and focus instead on the economy and the viral glories of global travel.

Praise politicians who go on holidays, debunk the exponential function, and design lockdowns with more holes than Swiss cheese.

Let your contact tracing systems fail. Let your leaders pretend that vaccines will solve all your problems.

Don't test. Or test badly.

Support a vaccine conspiracy.

Storm a capitol.

Or just don’t believe in me.

I know that’s not too much to ask. You have been a most generous and obliging host. Now just let my variants go.

Aren’t we all in this together?

Remember: I am the fire, and you are the fuel.

That is what Andrew Nikiforuk wrote in The Tyee a year ago, so I want to know if he is feeling a bit more relaxed now about where we are with omicron.

This article appeared in December 2021. It reads:

Omicron’s Here. We Invited It In

With good policy this massive fifth wave could have been avoided. Instead our leaders embraced four big myths.

The four big myths we chose to embrace, according to him, were these:

We find ourselves in this bad place because of the easy currency of bad ideas in a technological society.

These dangerous ideas—and I’m only going to deal with four—are worth reviewing again because if we don’t challenge and abandon them, we will be fighting COVID for years.

He goes on to discuss the work of a U.S. virus expert called Dr. William Haseltine, a renowned expert who had this article in Forbes on December 17, 2021, which I recommend my colleagues look up and read, “How Omicron Evades Natural Immunity, Vaccination, And Monoclonal Antibody Treatments”. He notes that Dr. Haseltine has made the point that the coronavirus has been around for a million years at least and can infect various animals, “The next variant might well come from an infected population of mink or deer.”

This is what I think we really need to think about when we think omicron is almost over and that it was really mild. Dr. Haseltine says this, and Andrew Nikiforuk quotes him:

...the seventh coronavirus to plague humans [which is COVID] “is capable of far more changes and far more variation than most ever thought possible and it will keep coming back to haunt us again and again.”

Dr. Haseltine points out that there is no assurance at all, not scientifically, that omicron is mild because we are in the direction of inevitably going to milder viruses.

I will quote the article by Andrew Nikiforuk, which states:

Hasletine adds that a variant more transmissible and [more] deadly than Omicron is entirely possible given the dismal global response to the pandemic so far.

Know that when I am talking about the global response I am not politicizing this at all. We need to take care of Bill C-10. For sure we need to look at testing, but we need to pay attention to what the human petri dish globally is doing.

Here are Andrew Nikiforuk's four myths:

Myth 1: Vaccines will get us out of this.

...A vaccine-only policy will prolong the pandemic and exhaust our health-care systems. Only nuanced policies that focus on eliminating transmission with the strategic use of testing, improved ventilation and restraints on international travel [are all needed].

Myth 2: Pandemics are unpredictable and have nothing to do with policy or human behaviour.

Not true. Our global technosphere has provided a perfect environment for COVID to flourish. Two human behaviours in a technological society have fed and accelerated this pandemic. The first is unrestricted global travel, which guarantees the circulation of variants. The second is poor ventilation in our artificial living and working spaces....

I heard myth three today in the House in debate, so I really want to underscore that this is dangerous talk. I go back to Andrew Nikiforuk's article:

Myth 3: We can live with this virus, and it will become milder over time.

Really? How’s that working for you?

...[Getting rid of the virus] matters for several key reasons. For starters there is no guarantee any new virus will evolve toward a milder state. It is a complete scientific myth.

Let me repeat Haseltine’s pointed warning that we have not seen the [worst] COVID can deliver yet.

At the same time the cost of “living with the virus” is growing exponentially. The variants keep adding to those political, economic and psychological costs by increasing transmission, severity and lethality of COVID-19.

More variants equals more mutations which equals more risk for all of us. And the variants are now clearly outracing the vaccines....

Myth 4 is a really dangerous one. The article continues:

Myth 4: COVID is just a flu-like virus.

Just because a novel coronavirus may provoke flu-like symptoms doesn’t make it a flu. Or even a close relative....

As many physicians have argued, it is best to think of this novel virus as an evolving thrombotic fever.

It attacks the vascular system and can destroy brain cells.

It inflames the heart and can destabilize immune systems.

It can even lower sperm counts and motility.

Even people with mild symptoms can suffer from chronic disabilities (fatigue and brain fog) a year after infection. To date we have no clear idea how an infection might undo a person’s health a decade from now.

Please take this final line to heart, my friends:

Any politician who still dismisses or compares COVID to a flu should be forced to clean and bathe the dead.

We have choices as Canadians. We have choices as elected people. We have choices as governments and as opposition. We can focus on what needs to be done to keep us all safe. We can decide that the hubris that tells a virus it is time for it to go is laughable. In fact, sometimes I think the virus is laughing at us.

We have to be careful with each other. That includes not demonizing others, whether they are anti-mask or anti-vaccine or pro-mask or pro-vaccine. We are all in this together. It is an example of how humanity and wealthy industrialized countries can be brought to their knees from something invisible that comes out of nature and decides we are the host or, as Nikiforuk says, it is the fire and we are the fuel.

We have to do some things rapidly. We need to do a much better job. Thank goodness we are getting rapid testing through Bill C-10, but we have to use those tests. We have to use them well. We have to recognize that vaccines are not the whole answer; they are part of the answer. Testing is not the whole answer; it is part of the answer. Being sure we keep to social distancing, being sure we keep to our masks and being sure we listen to public health advice are all things we must do.

Again, this is a tough one because everyone wants the restrictions on global travel to be lifted. However, when I read what a knowledgeable person like Andrew Nikiforuk says about the difference that air and jet travel have made in the spread of this virus, we have to be careful. We have to listen to public health advice and make sure we do not give COVID any more free rides.

This is the enemy. The enemy is not another political party. The enemy is not a provincial leader who does not get it right. As Canadians and, let us face it, as earthlings, we have two big enemies right now, two big threats. We have the climate crisis, which is getting pushed to the side during this debate over viruses, over convoys and over protests. The climate crisis is a bigger threat to humanity than the virus, but the longer the virus is allowed to live among us, the scary idea that we can live with it is a dreadful fallacy.

We need to work together and we need to protect each other. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. There is no one in this place that I would not trust with my life. If push came to shove, there is not another MP here who would deny me help if I went to them and said I needed help. We are here for each other at a very human level.

Right now, humanity is not in the driver's seat. This virus is in the driver's seat. I wish we could say, “Here is the timetable and here is the date.” The only reason I could not vote for the Conservative motion earlier today was that it said there was a certain date when everything would have to be lifted, and here I am thinking that we are not in the driver's seat. We do not know when the next variant might come, but the more we learn about this and the more we know about it, the more we know we have to be careful and protect each other, and make sure we do not encourage the virus to spread.

It now represents a serious threat to the world and to us as human beings. We are all in the same boat. That reality is quite clear.

We have to take care of each other, and I think that means we have to recognize that we have only one enemy stalking us and its name is COVID-19. It is not the Conservatives, it is not the Liberals, it is not the New Democrats, it is not the Bloc Québécois and it is not the Greens. We are in this together.

I beg of you to let us pass Bill C-10 and get the tests out so we can use that tool. Let us not make the mistake of thinking that will be enough, as we do not know how long this may last. Please God, let us make better choices than we have made so far, and I include all of us in that, in order to protect ourselves, our families and the developing world, which desperately needs the vaccines. We desperately need to ensure vaccine equity and for Canada to side with South Africa and India. Let us get rid of the patent protections under the TRIPS agreement of the WTO. These are things we can do to make sure this virus, which is circling the globe and treating humanity as its petri dish, is stopped. Let us put humans together, saving each other, and stop fighting among ourselves.

[Fraser Tolmie, Conservative, Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK]

Mr. Speaker, happy Valentine's Day. I want to commend you on your robe. You look very nice. I used to wear one as a mayor, but I am known better now for wearing a bathrobe.

That leads me to my question for my hon. colleague, and I do appreciate her speech. Numerous times within the speech, she mentioned air travel and global travel. I ask if she could please explain her trip to Scotland and the climate conference that was going on there. Did she make that trip? If so, could she please explain that and give me some alignment with regard to the comments in her speech?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to answer the question. I struggled with the decision to go. I work hard at those events. They are not junkets. I was part of a very careful COVID protocol, which involved testing before I left and daily testing on site. The British National Health Service did an amazing job of preventing that event from being a superspreader event.

I think we all worked hard, and it is certainly the only trip I will take internationally. The only trip I ever take internationally is to go to a climate negotiation, because the threat of the climate crisis, as I mentioned, is the only thing that eclipses COVID right now, short of a nuclear war.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, that was an excellent speech. Everything the member said was true. It was factual.

Everyone is talking about lifting vaccine mandates and getting back to taking care of ourselves, and we have seen—

[The Deputy Speaker, Chris d'Entremont]

There is a point of order.

There are some technical difficulties. There is no translation going on.

You have it back now.

The hon. member for Vancouver Centre.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleague for her really excellent speech. It was pointed and it was factual.

The member talked about people saying that we need to learn to live with the virus. A lot of countries have been quoted as saying, “Oh, look at how this country is living with the virus.” Today there was a graph put out by some of the health authorities globally that showed that Denmark, which has been continuing to open everything and has been letting everybody roam freely and has been saying that they are going to live with the virus, now has skyrocketing numbers. The graph shows a skyrocketing that is almost vertical. That is what is happening there.

I would like to ask the member what her position is on this idea of opening up everything and living with the virus. What is her position on that?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I absolutely think there could be almost nothing as dangerous as saying “let us live with the virus”. There is almost nothing as dangerous as saying it has become sort of an average flu and we can just get used to it.

Again, this is not a flu. This is a dangerous parasitic coronavirus that could get worse, and we must not do anything that gives the virus a free ride.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the speech by my colleague, the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands. She is a neighbour of mine. Cowichan—Malahat—Langford and Saanich—Gulf Islands are quite close to each other.

I very much appreciated her comments about how we are nowhere near to being out of the woods yet. So many Canadians still live in dreadful fear of contracting COVID-19 because of their own immune situation or that of a family member.

What I want to talk about is the part of her speech that linked this virus with worldwide air travel as well as environmental exploitation. She and I participated in a debate during the last election. It was a debate on our getting further and further into the wildlife trade and trade in exotic species and the link to the novel viruses that they could emit.

I am wondering if the member has further comments on that, and how this is all linked together.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, absolutely, this is the case. The origins of COVID-19, as best we can determine them, had to do with trade in wild animals in a market in Wuhan. The leap between species is something that we know coronaviruses can do. The more humanity encroaches on spaces for wildlife, the greater the risk that we will see novel viruses that are more deadly.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech.

First I would like to say that the coronavirus is in charge, and we cannot dictate to it when it ends. Could the hon. member please tell us how Bill C-10 would help?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I think Bill C‑10 will help us fight COVID‑19 as a society. We clearly need rapid tests and that is the point of this bill.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, hospitals were already weakened as a result of underfunding and reduced health transfers. No matter what anyone says, the fact that the federal government covered 50% of health care spending in the 1960s and 1970s but only 22% today is what has made hospitals very fragile. Cases have to be triaged, which means that some cancer patients were unable to access care because the hospitals were full.

What does my colleague think about the fact that Quebec and the provinces are calling for health transfers to be increased to 35%? I think this is another crucial measure to help us get through the pandemic.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my Bloc colleague from La Pointe-de-l'Île for his question. I think he is right.

Clearly, COVID-19 has weakened the public health care system, but it was struggling long before COVID-19 came along. More investment is needed, because the virus is putting a burden on the provinces when it is the federal government's responsibility to protect our universal public health care system.

I think there is also a new threat to our universal public health system. Some provinces have decided to allow the private sector to provide certain exams and other treatments to reduce the stress on the public health care system.

We need to pay the workers in this sector better, and we need to protect our public health system. To do this, the federal government needs to give more, such as grants to the provinces to support their work, so that all Canadians and Quebeckers have access to an excellent public health care system.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her comments this evening. She really respects this particular individual and the research and literature he has produced, so I have a question for her regarding that.

I want to bring to the member's attention something that concerns me. It is a red flag. There are many highly reputable, recognized, published and award-winning members of our society, such as scientists, epidemiologists, professors and researchers, who have high reputations until they challenge the science. I think challenging it is really important to ensure that we are getting good information. Canadians are concerned about that.

What would the member say about the fact that the highest medical professional in South Africa indicated that omicron should be allowed to spread, to some degree, to build natural immunity and strength within humanity?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is good to see my hon. colleague from Yorkton—Melville, and I look forward to seeing her in person again.

I do not think we can gamble with a virus this dangerous based on the opinion of a minority of scientists. I do not doubt there are people who are reputable. I have seen them and I have read their literature. If I could find peer-reviewed studies published in renowned medical journals that would confront the basics of what I shared with the member and the House today, I would love to be wrong.

This is dangerous, and I do not think we can gamble with the health of the entire planet. We need to get vaccines to developing countries. We need testing, tracing and social distancing. We need to maintain our public health protocols as best we can and work to eliminate the virus. We cannot live with it. It feeds on us.

[The Deputy Speaker, Chris d'Entremont]

We are out of time for questions and comments. Are there any other members who wish to speak to this? I hear no one.

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Deputy Speaker, Chris d'Entremont]

The question is on the motion.

If a member of a recognized party present in the House wishes to request a recorded division or that the motion be adopted on division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.

The hon. member for Winnipeg North.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, we ask that there be a recorded vote, please.

[The Deputy Speaker, Chris d'Entremont]

Pursuant to an order made earlier today, the division stands deferred until Tuesday, February 15, at the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions.

Accordingly, pursuant to order made earlier today, the House stands adjourned until Tuesday, February 15, at 10 a.m. pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).

(The House adjourned at 12:19 a.m.)

The House resumed from February 14 consideration of the motion that Bill C-10, An Act respecting certain measures related to COVID-19, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[The Speaker, Anthony Rota]

It being 3:16 p.m., pursuant to an order made on Monday, February 14, the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at the second reading stage of Bill C-10.

Call in the members.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #28

[The Speaker, Anthony Rota]

I declare the motion carried. Accordingly, the bill stands referred to a committee of the whole.

Pursuant to the order made on Monday, February 14, 2022, Bill C-10, an act respecting certain measures related to COVID-19, is deemed considered in the committee of the whole, deemed reported without amendment, deemed concurred in at report stage, deemed read a third time and passed.

(Bill read the second time, considered in committee of the whole, reported without amendment, concurred in, read the third time and passed)