Bill C-278

Prevention of Government-imposed Vaccination Mandates Act

An Act to prevent the imposition by the federal government of vaccination mandates for employment and travel

This enactment amends the Financial Administration Act to provide that the Treasury Board may not require as a condition of employment in the federal public administration that a person receive a vaccine against COVID-19. It also amends the Canada Labour Code to provide that regulations may not be made that require, as a term or condition of employment in or in connection with the operation of a federal work, undertaking or business, that a person receive a vaccine against COVID-19.
In addition, the enactment amends the Aeronautics Act , the Railway Safety Act and the Canada Shipping Act, 2001 to provide that no regulation, order or other instrument made under any of those Acts to prevent the introduction or spread of COVID-19 may prohibit or have the effect of prohibiting a person from boarding an aircraft, a train or a vessel solely on the ground that they have not received a vaccine against that disease.

Prevention of Government-Imposed Vaccination Mandates Act

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

moved that Bill C-278, An Act to prevent the imposition by the federal government of vaccination mandates for employment and travel, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Madam Speaker, it is always an honour to rise in the House of Commons and represent the people of Niagara West. I appreciate their support for the past 19 years, and I want to make sure they know I never take it for granted. They sent me here to be their voice in Parliament, to speak to issues important to them and our beautiful riding of Niagara West.

I proudly rise to introduce a private member's bill that is important not only to my constituents but also to over six million Canadians. The bill reads:

This enactment amends the Financial Administration Act to provide that the Treasury Board may not require as a condition of employment in the federal public administration that a person receive a vaccine against COVID-19. It also amends the Canada Labour Code to provide that regulations may not be made that require, as a term or condition of employment in or in connection with the operation of a federal work, undertaking or business, that a person receive a vaccine against COVID-19.

In addition, the enactment amends the Aeronautics Act, the Railway Safety Act and the Canada Shipping Act, 2001 to provide that no regulation, order or other instrument made under any of those Acts to prevent the introduction or spread of COVID-19 may prohibit or have the effect of prohibiting a person from boarding an aircraft, a train or a vessel solely on the ground that they have not received a vaccine against that disease.

The title of the bill is “an act to prevent the imposition by the federal government of vaccination mandates for employment and travel”, or simply, the “prevention of government-imposed vaccination mandates act.” As I said earlier, this bill is incredibly important to my constituents and more than six million Canadians across the country, more than actually voted for the Liberal government in 2021. This bill is about freedom. It is about reining in the ballooning and intrusive government that got used to interfering in Canadians' lives with extreme outreach. The bill was initially introduced by our Conservative leader, the member for Carleton, and because there was quite a bit of overlap between his bill and my previous bill, we agreed I would go forward with his. I am grateful that his views are aligned with mine on this issue of freedom. After all, freedom is at the core of our Conservative way of thinking and is essential to governing and to government.

This bill, if passed, would prohibit the federal government from discriminating against federal public servants, federally regulated workers and federally regulated travel based on health status. Specifically, it would prohibit the federal government from mandating COVID vaccines for employment and travel.

For far too many Canadians, the last three years has been among the most difficult times in their lives. During the pandemic, many Canadians made the personal choice of remaining unvaccinated, specifically and only with respect to COVID. Their personal choice about their health put them in opposition to the views of the Prime Minister. As a consequence of this, they suffered deeply. They were shut out of their churches, banned from travelling, banned from seeing their loved ones and fired from their jobs. Some Canadians were stripped of their employment insurance benefits.

I know that, to many, this seems like it was long ago, so let me refresh people's memories of these egregious government actions. It was May 2021. While the country was going through the COVID pandemic, the Prime Minister said in an interview, “We are not a country that makes vaccinations mandatory.” The Prime Minister clearly stated that he did not support vaccine mandates in May 2021. That all changed after he saw the political opportunity and after he saw the polls. He saw an opportunity to win a majority government by wedging voters on their personal health choices. He saw that he might gain votes if he divided Canadians and pitted them against each other. He did this by putting in place mandates that restricted the freedoms of Canadians. When Canadians disagreed with the Prime Minister's policy, he appeared on television, calling them misogynists and racists. He also said that they held unacceptable views.

Next, the Liberals introduced the country's first mandates, a divisive, vindictive, stigmatizing and cruel measure. In an instant, millions of Canadians were, because of their personal medical choices, put on unpaid leave and banned from taking federal transportation. This was in addition to being ostracized by friends and strangers alike, sometimes even by their family, as a consequence of the Prime Minister's divisive rhetoric.

Let us just say it how it is. The government saw this as an opportunity for political gain and took it. Even when the world began to open up, the government kept these measures in place, continuing to restrict the personal freedoms of millions of Canadians. Soon after mandates were introduced, an election was called. The Prime Minister ran a campaign largely advocating the violation of some of the most fundamental civil liberties that Canadians have.

Not long after, mandates were extended to members of the Canadian Armed Forces. CAF members who chose to remain unvaccinated were rendered unsuitable for further service and were booted out. This decision caused turmoil among senior CAF members who questioned the legality of this. In a decision of May 30, 2023, the Military Grievances External Review Committee found that this vaccine mandate had breached the charter rights of military personnel. I am sure that, in the coming months, we will see more of this decision when it condemns the government's divisive and unscientific vaccine mandate. The Liberal government looked soldiers in the eye and said they were unsuitable because of their personal health choices. It almost sounds like a dystopian movie plot where the Liberals play the villains, punishing citizens who speak out of line or think for themselves. Quite frankly, that is a movie I would not want to see become a reality, but, unfortunately, in many ways it has become so.

This was just another display of the Prime Minister's wanting more control over Canadians. Big government overreach divided Canadians, turning neighbours and families against one another. To the Liberals, it is always about winning; it is not about Canadians, and certainly not about compassion in difficult times. For those who made different personal medical choices, the government made them outcasts in their communities, firing them from jobs, banning them from travelling and ostracizing them from their friends. Canadians should have the freedom to make personal health decisions for themselves, without social and economic threats from the government. They have the freedom to do so, a freedom that should never, ever be cast aside again. However, if one did not agree with what the Prime Minister decreed was right, one was punished. The scale of this was unprecedented in Canadian history.

Millions of Canadians voiced their worries and concerns, including hundreds to my office. They emailed, called and wrote to me and many of the MPs here in the chamber. One of the stories I listened to was from a young man named Daniel. Daniel chose to remain unvaccinated because of his own personal fears of a fairly new vaccine, especially since he had had a bad reaction to one before. Because of his personal health decision, he was scoffed at and treated differently. He watched in horror as different levels of government treated Canadians who were unvaccinated like they were some sort of criminals, all because of the example of, and the pressure to fall in line exerted by, the Prime Minister and his Liberal government. Unscientific mandates kept Daniel from seeing his friends, his family and especially his grandparents. He could not go watch a hockey game with his grandfather or go to a restaurant to celebrate his sister's birthday. Most of all, he could not see his grandmother while she sat alone in a nursing home, unable to spend the holidays with the family. Daniel spoke up and sent me a letter because he was inspired by what our current leader and many other caucus members had said. He says that he will be forever thankful that, on this side of the House, we speak up for what we truly believe in.

What happened to Daniel was not a one-time thing. I personally know of a friend incredibly close to me who also suffered. As a father, he watched as his child was banned from playing basketball, a sport they both love. His son was told he was not accepted; this was not as a player on the court, but as a person, all because of one personal choice. Outside of sports, his son was kept from playing with his friends and was even denied entry to stores, where he was forced to wait outside in -40° weather.

These Canadians were not hateful. They were not conspiracy theorists or science deniers, like the Liberals were so disgustingly saying at the time. These are labels, might I add, that some Liberals still repeat. These were good folks who just wanted to live their lives without government forcefully telling them what to do. All they asked was to be left alone, and because of that simple request, they experienced hardship like they never had before, hardship that was facilitated by legislation, and rhetoric sparked by the Liberal government.

The Liberals took not just the jobs of these Canadians; they also took their livelihoods and their reputations. One can see this with the government's invoking the Emergencies Act, where Liberals accused protesters of being arsonists and thieves. In reality, Ottawa Police Service had unequivocally said there was no connection between the fires and protesters. Despite this, the Minister of Public Safety, the leader of the NDP and Liberal members like the member for Pickering—Uxbridge shamefully used these false stories to justify their use of the Emergencies Act.

This misinformation and disinformation were peddled not just by government officials. The media, mostly the CBC, which is a good pal of the Liberals, tried to claim that Canadian-led fundraisers supporting the protests were being funded by foreign agents in Russia and the U.S. Later, they had to walk back those remarks because the overwhelming majority of donations, close to 90%, came from Canadians who were upset about how their fellow Canadians were being treated. The legacy media, the Liberals and the NDP did not care about the facts. All they relied on was unconfirmed online chatter. They were desperate to cling to something.

In August 2021, the front page of the Toronto Star had a now infamous opinion piece quoting the line, “I have no empathy left for the willfully unvaccinated. Let them die.” This was one of the lowest points in our country, to see something like that happen to folks, some of whom live in my riding. In January 2022, a Quebec judge ruled that a father could not see his son after the father made a post on social media that was critical of vaccine mandates. The judge labelled him a conspiracy theorist who was too dangerous to see his own son. There is even more.

Not even students were safe from being targeted. Across Canada, universities and colleges banned students from going to classes or participating in campus events. Students' chances of graduation and access to quality education were put in jeopardy because of these mandates.

Canadians were being singled out for their personal medical choices and punished because of the hateful rhetoric of the Liberal government. While protesters were outside protesting for their freedoms in the freezing cold of Ottawa, the Liberals sat in their cushy warm offices, freezing Canadians' bank accounts. The Liberals kept them from buying food, paying rent and paying for utility bills and other essentials. They wanted to paint the protesters as evil, so they falsely told Canadians the protesters were ransacking offices, another complete fabrication to justify their complete and total overreach.

While the Liberals covered their ears and called people names, I was listening to people. I knew that compassion, understanding and empathy were the way out of this Liberal-created crisis. I listened to the stories of Canadians in my communities and across the country. These stories also inspired members of the Prime Minister's own Liberal Party to speak up.

In February 2022, the member for Louis-Hébert said he was uncomfortable with how his government was handling the pandemic. He pointed out how the government had changed and taken a more stigmatizing and divisive approach to its pandemic policy. He reminded the Prime Minister to not demonize people who just disagreed with his policies. The member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin also agreed, saying that there were more in the Liberal caucus who felt the same way.

With all of this, the Liberals set an egregious example to the provinces and municipalities. Premiers and municipal politicians across the country felt forced to get in line and follow Ottawa's lead. If they did not, the legacy media, so closely aligned with the Liberals on almost everything, would have made them pay a heavy political price. Clearly this was about control.

Thankfully, members of our Conservative Party stood up and spoke their minds, including our leader. He stood up for the freedom of personal choice. We want Canada to be the freest country on earth. We must ensure that Canadians will never lose their medical freedom. I will never let people forget how the Liberal government trampled on the rights of Canadians for three long years, how the Prime Minister treated them during that time or how he froze Canadians' bank accounts, got them fired, stripped them of unemployment insurance benefits and banned them from travelling.

The Liberals did all these things to achieve one goal: political success. The Liberals capitalized on fear and made their opponents their scapegoats. These millions of Canadians deserve a voice, and they deserve accountability from the government. Only Conservatives will give these Canadians a voice and stop excessive government overreach so that they can take back control of their lives. Only the Conservatives will bring home freedom.

The COVID-19 policies put in place by the Liberal government were simply too much. It was not right. We all know that, or at least I hope we do.

We cannot go back to firing people for a personal medical choice, something so intimate to Canadians. What Canadians choose for their health is their freedom and theirs only. We cannot go back to stripping people of their employment insurance benefits because of a personal medical choice. We cannot go back to prohibiting people from travelling or working because they made a decision for themselves. It was cruel. There was no compassion for our fellow Canadians who may have thought a bit differently than the government. It violated the rights of Canadians for way too long and without any scientific basis.

I hope all members in the House will show compassion, empathy and understanding by supporting this bill and making sure that our fellow Canadians are never treated with such disdain by their government ever again.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate)]

Madam Speaker, I note that the member brought forward a petition to this House on March 2, 2022, and what makes it interesting is that the individual who initiated the petition is from Vancouver, so not even within the same province as the member. What is most interesting about the petition that he brought forward is that it calls upon the Government of Canada to suspend the use of COVID-19 vaccines in pregnant women, children, youth and adults of child-bearing age. That is a petition he presented for Canadians, and it was a petition initiated outside his riding.

I am curious if this bill goes far enough for him, or if he would like to see the COVID-19 vaccines banned for pregnant women, children, youth and adults of child-bearing age.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Madam Speaker, this bill is about choice. That is all we have said. It is about the ability to choose for one's self whether they would like to do that and to not exclude people because of that choice. Whoever wants to take it, that is up to them. The point is that they will not be excluded from society, which the Liberal government did for three years, and that is completely unacceptable.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Madam Speaker, this bill is a bit of a nightmare. We had pretty much forgotten all about the pandemic for a year, and all of a sudden, this afternoon, just before the summer break, we are being forced to revisit the pandemic and the restrictions.

I wonder whether my colleague would not agree with me. Instead of proposing a vaccination ban, why not introduce a bill that would require the government to properly fund the health care system so that, if we ever end up in another nightmare, if we ever have to live through another pandemic, we can tackle the real issues that we faced during the pandemic, namely the underfunding of the health care system?

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Madam Speaker, this bill is merely about choice. All things need to continue.

We realize that health care is still underfunded. We need to do more in that respect. This is about allowing people to make their own medical decisions. This is about people not being excluded from travelling. This is about people not being excluded from going to school. This is about people not being excluded from going to work. It is absolutely ridiculous.

A bunch of people paid into EI and were not even allowed to use it over a medical decision. That is completely heartless on behalf of the government.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Madam Speaker, it was a very poignant speech made by the member. I heard several things.

I think it is important for Canadians to note something: Many of the restrictions in place during the pandemic were provincial regulations. Whether they were Conservative or New Democratic governments, they often instituted those uniformly, particularly in my province of Alberta. The former member of this chamber Jason Kenney instituted many of those mandates.

I think the member is conflating public health measures and the measures taken federally. It is important to note that governments, at one point in this country, were unified on ensuring that Canadians' lives were saved. World War I and World War II veterans were saved because of vaccinations. Today, we have the convoy party talking about how inappropriate vaccinations are.

How many lives have to be lost before he takes deadly pandemics seriously?

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Madam Speaker, this bill is about freedom. It is someone having a choice to take the vaccine or not, and not be excluded from going to their job. The government was heartless to say that someone cannot go to work and collect a paycheque.

On the issue of the provinces, whether it was done federally or provincially, it was still wrong. A lot of pressure was exerted by the federal government pressuring the provincial governments to do that.

This bill is about federal workers and about national travel. We have shortages in hospitals while people are still not allowed to go back to work. When we have a health care crisis, that is absolutely ridiculous.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate)]

Madam Speaker, I certainly hope that nobody will need to go to the Library of Parliament anytime soon to look up any information on vaccines because we do not have a librarian as a result of the petty politics being played in the House.

Typically, we will just approve the librarian through a UC motion. We did it in 2018 for this particular librarian, but the Conservatives are not even willing to let us appoint a librarian. How much more political can they get on an issue than to refuse to appoint a librarian?

Moments ago, the member for Calgary Centre called me a “jack dot, dot, dot”, and members can fill in the blanks, as a result of questioning why the Conservatives would not approve a librarian, but here we are. I hope we do not have to go to the library to get any information on vaccines any time soon, because we do not have a librarian.

In any event, I am talking about Bill C-278, which has come forward, presented by the member for Niagara West moments ago. We are having second reading on this. I am particularly concerned. I do not think it should go without saying that I will not be—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

We have a point of order from the hon. member for Calgary Signal Hill.

[Ron Liepert, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

Madam Speaker, I would ask the member for Kingston and the Islands to clarify what he just said. He tried to accuse the Conservatives of blocking the vote. He is incorrect. I would ask—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

The hon. member is weighing in on debate and not a point of order.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am happy to do it anyway.

In 2018, we appointed our current librarian. I would bet that the member does not even know the librarian's name. I would bet that just about everybody in this room probably does not know the librarian's name. We just attempted to extend that appointment for 16 months through a UC motion, like we did in 2018, but the Conservatives are insisting on having a vote from the House. That is what just happened.

The member for Calgary Centre called me a—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

I have another point of order from the member for Calgary Signal Hill.

[Ron Liepert, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

Madam Speaker, just for clarification, the librarian's name is Heather Lank.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

Again, I want to remind members that they might want to look up what a point of order would entail before they rise on a point of order.

The hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, the best part about that, and what the public could not see, is that while I was giving that answer, another member went behind the curtain to meet him. He got the name, and then he jumped up to say that, so the member did not know the name. In any event, it is irrelevant.

Let us talk about the bill. I do not think it should surprise anybody that the government will be opposed to this bill. This is not a bill that respects the will of Canadians. I do not think it would accomplish what the member is seeking to do.

The member for Niagara West mentioned a couple of times about charter rights and EI. I would remind the member that this has been challenged in some courts, including the EI scenario specifically, all of which have been struck down by the courts. Therefore, when we talk about the court involvement in the House, perhaps it is wise to indicate the outcomes of those courts, which were not in favour of what this member would probably like to have seen.

I will reflect on the fact that this bill would specifically also amend other acts in addition to the first part about ensuring public sector employees could not be required to be vaccinated in certain settings. The bill states that it would amend other acts:

to provide that no regulation, order or other instrument made under any of those Acts to prevent the introduction or spread of COVID-19 may prohibit or have the effect of prohibiting a person from boarding an aircraft, a train or a vessel solely on the ground that they have not received a vaccine against that disease.

These were some of the most influential policies the government created and they led to our success, relatively speaking against other countries, when it came to dealing with the COVID-19. It was the Conservatives who were calling for certain measures in the beginning of the pandemic, who now seem to be confused by the fact that these actually worked. Restricting people's ability to move on trains or airplanes helped to prevent the spread of the virus.

Members should not take my word for it. Why do we not listen to a former Conservative prime minister? I am reading from an article, which states that just days ago, Brian Mulroney “praised the government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, its [dealings with] NAFTA and its ongoing support for Ukraine in its war with Russia.” This is what former Conservative prime minister Mulroney said: “I have learned over the years that history is unconcerned with the trivia and the trash of rumours and gossip floating around Parliament Hill. History is only concerned with the big ticket items that have shaped the future of Canada”.

The article continues: “He said [that the current Prime Minister] and the premiers 'conducted themselves as well as anybody else in the world' in dealing with COVID, something Mulroney called 'the greatest challenge that any prime minister has dealt with in Canada in 156 years.'”

That is former primer minister Brian Mulroney praising the work that this government did in dealing with the pandemic. This is a former Conservative prime minister, a Progressive Conservative prime minister, I might add. I am not sure where we are today. The Conservatives keep moving further and further to the right. This piece of legislation that has been introduced today is just another example of that.

However, at the end of the day, we did what was needed to be done. We see that through the fatality rate in Canada. Not one death should be considered acceptable, but when compared to our counterparts throughout the world, we did an incredible job of dealing with this pandemic. That is something that has been reverberated not only in the House of Commons by Liberals here, but also by a former Conservative prime minister just days ago.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Madam Speaker, I usually say that it is a pleasure to rise and comment on a bill, but this time I am not sure it is a pleasure.

The bill seeks to amend the Financial Administration Act so that the Treasury Board can no longer impose mandatory vaccination. The bill also seeks to amend the Canada Labour Code, the Aeronautics Act, the Railway Safety Act and the Canada Shipping Act, 2001. According to the bill, all those laws should provide that mandatory vaccination is a thing of the past and can never again be required for COVID‑19. I feel there is something missing in this bill. In the health bill, we could also prescribe a disinfectant to make sure that we do not get any germs, as Trump did in his public statements when COVID‑19 first hit and we were waiting for a vaccine. That element is missing from the bill and we could move an amendment to that effect.

This bill is just one more attempt to politicize vaccination. The hon. member for Niagara West was behind Bill C‑285, which was similar to this one. It is easy to descend into demagoguery. At the time, the hon. member compared the vaccine mandate for federal public servants to something that the totalitarian regimes of China and North Korea would do. I can say right away that the Bloc Québécois will be voting against the bill and that it refuses to play into the hands of conspiracy theorists.

I say this with all due respect, because everyone is entitled to their opinion. The hon. member's past positions on vaccines and the kinds of petitions that he has sponsored, however, make it difficult to see what he is trying to do with this bill as anything other than yet another attempt to discredit vaccines. I only have 10 minutes to speak, but if I had more time, I could go back in history and talk about the times when there were no vaccines. I could talk about infant mortality, the Spanish flu and the First World War. We have seen how much of a difference vaccination has made.

The sole purpose of this bill concerns an issue that should be off-limits to partisan games. COVID‑19 has been a tragedy, not a conspiracy. The seven waves of COVID‑19 took the lives of nearly 18,000 people in Quebec, more than 50,000 people in Canada and 6.5 million people worldwide.

The Conservatives, however, have no sympathy for the victims, for the health care workers or for our young people and all the sacrifices they made to protect our seniors. Their sympathy is for pandemic deniers. The Conservatives decided to turn their backs on it all and vote against the principle of Bill S‑209, which called for March 11 to be designated as COVID-19 pandemic observance day. Shame on them. Pandemic denialism may be part of their DNA, along with denying climate change and insisting that it is not real. Both these realities, however, are having profoundly negative societal effects in terms of health and poverty. I think these issues deserve more attention, not a sideshow.

The Conservatives not only do not want to recognize this tragedy, but they are now proposing to deny the vaccination that allowed us to save many lives and get through the pandemic. I am not absolving the Liberals, who were not entirely innocent throughout this pandemic. They also used vaccination for partisan purposes.

Let us not forget that in 2021, they called an election for no reason in the middle of the pandemic, when health measures were in force. The Liberals hammered home their message on mandatory vaccination for partisan purposes. It was a game against the Conservatives to go after a segment of the electorate. It was no more edifying than that.

That is a dangerous game, because it just diminishes a debate that should be based on knowledge and evidence, not partisan interests.

As we know, the government often improvised or delayed taking action when managing the crisis. Take, for example, border controls and the delays in procuring equipment and vaccines. We understand that it was a crisis situation and that sometimes urgent action needs to be taken. However, in the end, some major setbacks fortunately forced us to rely on getting people vaccinated very quickly. It was almost unprecedented how it was possible to create a vaccine that then helped us to significantly stabilize the situation.

France, Germany, the United States, England, the list of countries that adopted a vaccine passport for transportation is very long. We have to remember the situation we were in. Hospitals around the world were overburdened. We saw the images, not just in Canada, but in Europe. So many people died that people did not even know where to put the bodies. That was a tragedy. Vaccination finally enabled us to see a little light at the end of the tunnel. I think that goes to show that research and development and science help us move forward when we are confronted not with a minor cough but a global pandemic.

To deny that by banning vaccine mandates in labour laws and in transportation, and to say that if someone has COVID-19, it is open season and they can show up without being vaccinated and completely ignore a vaccine mandate, that is like giving up the tools we have to protect ourselves in a public health situation.

Making vaccine mandates permanent would have been going too far, much like saying that Parliament should be hybrid permanently is going too far. That is too much. We have to be able to consider the context. The Bloc Québécois has never been in favour of making vaccination mandatory, because that would be impossible. Mandatory vaccination is not possible, unless you round people up and force them to get the shot before they can leave. That would be impossible. There were, however, constraints placed on those who did not want to be vaccinated, and those constraints were warranted.

What is regrettable about the Liberals' partisanship at the time when it was made mandatory is that it did not take into account a position-by-position analysis. Were there any positions where this was not an issue? Were there any other work positions? This is true for both federal employees and those in federally regulated businesses.

Labour relations analysts and advisers were very serious in saying that employers should assess the situations in which the work was carried out by staff. That was not done either. It was done indiscriminately.

Some unions decided to go to court on behalf of their members. There was not much in the way of case law, but case law did support demanding this as a condition of employment, given the specific context we were in. With this bill, the Conservative Party wants to say that they are against this, that it does not make sense and that it should be eliminated from all our laws.

Our labour and transportation laws already do not require vaccination. Our laws say nothing about this. They will certainly not be amended to explicitly say that, in the future, there will never again be an obligation to be vaccinated.

Just think of the H1N1 flu epidemic. It was a serious flu. People were asked to be vaccinated if they wanted to travel. I had to travel, so I got vaccinated. That is life, when there are—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

I am sorry to have to interrupt the hon. member, but her time is up. I even gave her a little more time.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Port Moody—Coquitlam.

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

Madam Speaker, before I move into the bill, I want to acknowledge the sacrifices that every Canadian has made over the past three years.

The high school graduates of this month are the first cohort to have spent all of their high school years under COVID. I think about all the rites of passage that were missed and compromised in an effort to keep people alive and well during COVID–19, such as missed weddings, celebrations of life, graduations, births, birthdays, all of it. I think about Canadians across this country who fought for the last three years to keep their families healthy and safe. I think about the unpaid caregivers who gave up their work and sidetracked their careers to support the needs of their families and friends. Of course, I think of the frontline workers and paid care workers, like nurses and long-term care workers, who took on all of the institutional care when families and volunteers were shut out. I acknowledge their heroic work and that they are experiencing high levels of burnout and moral stress. This needs to change. These workers deserve better working conditions and respect.

This pandemic has also disproportionately affected women and immigrant women, who are the backbone of the care economy. Their employment and educational opportunities have been sidelined as they stepped up to take on more paid and unpaid work.

Women have also experienced an increase in gender-based violence throughout the pandemic.

Women have shouldered a significant burden in the health and social care sectors, accounting for 70% of the workforce dedicated to combatting COVID–19 globally. These brave women have faced heightened risks of infection, while grappling with the challenges of maintaining their own health and safety.

By considering the broader societal impact, we recognize the importance of prioritizing the health and well-being of all individuals irrespective of gender. That reality is protected in our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Unfortunately, last week we saw a bill brought to this House by the Conservatives to create a double standard when it comes to who should have health freedoms. The Conservative Party wants to uphold what its members would call health-related freedoms in Canada, but at the same time oppose reproductive health freedoms for women and diverse genders.

The bill we are talking about today, Bill C-278, claims to protect the health rights of those who choose not to vaccinate, yet the double standard shows that the Conservative Party has a biased view of who should have access to health care and who should not. This bill emerged from the Conservative leadership race, initially introduced by the member for Carleton, who has been a vocal opponent of the COVID–19 vaccine requirements, labelling them as a means to exert control over individuals' lives.

In addition, the member for Niagara West, who brought this bill forward, actively supported the 2022 convoy occupation in Ottawa, and aligns himself with an ideology of medical freedoms while actively opposing reproductive rights. Although I will not speculate here on the motivations of the sponsor of this bill, I will note that decisions regarding vaccination policies should be based on evidence and the advice of experts rather than driven by political considerations.

The New Democrats firmly support an approach that balances the rights of individuals who have chosen not to be vaccinated with the collective rights to health and safety. We must ensure that public health decisions and laws are grounded in scientific research and data rather than being influenced by political rhetoric or ideology.

Coming back to the bill, this proposed legislation has faced criticism in the community. It has been called out because it solely targets COVID–19 related vaccine requirements. The potential ramifications of this legislation have not been duly investigated, and at a time when health organizations and experts have already called for an end to the vaccination exemption, this bill is not aligned with reality. However, the Conservatives have no concern for reality, but prefer to work to advance their partisan agenda.

Let us look at what they are proposing. They are proposing to amend the Financial Administration Act, the Aeronautics Act, the Railway Safety Act and the Canada Shipping Act without due diligence. It has taken over a year to get the Canada disability benefit through this House and here are the Conservatives proposing to change a number of acts. It is just not bound in reality.

These wide-ranging changes do not help workers or the economy, so let us get back to reality. Current and past Liberal and Conservative governments were not prepared for a pandemic. Our health care systems were underfunded. There was a shortage of Canadian-made vaccines and PPE, as previous governments sold off our manufacturing capability. Long-term care workers, nurses and workers across the nation were exploited and continue to be exploited. They were taken for granted for decades. They deserve better.

The New Democrats support these workers and all workers that make society function. Workers deserve to be supported, and we must ensure that they are protected with laws that matter to them and funding they need to support all Canadians, pandemic or not. They deserve no less, and the NDP will fight to correct these long-standing deficits.

Just yesterday, the member for New Westminster—Burnaby tabled a bill, Bill C-345, to protect firefighters, paramedics and other responders. The member for Vancouver East continues to fight tirelessly for immigrant workers to get the immigrant status that they deserve. It is our collective responsibility in society to protect workers as they protect us.

The current nursing and health care shortage has certainly proved that there is a lot of work to do to improve working conditions. The Liberals need to take seriously the work of solving the health care crisis, including nursing shortages, and to take immediate action to work with provinces to fix critical needs, including by investing in housing that workers need. The Prime Minister must not continue to let down nurses, care workers and all workers.

The Liberal government has a responsibility to be part of the solution and to act on other gaps, such as protecting Canadian manufacturing of vaccines and PPE and investing in research and development in every corner of this country. The Liberals and the Conservatives need to do more to support workers and communities, put people ahead of corporate profits and spend less time on ideological partisanship.

I close by reminding the government that Canadian health systems are on the verge of collapse. Frontline workers have been heroic, yet this heroism has resulted in burnout, fatigue and early retirements. As we work through this reality, more federal investments are needed in health care and community. There needs to be respect for women in the care economy, because they have always been the true backbone.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to my colleague's private member's bill, Bill C-278, an act to prevent the imposition by the federal government of vaccination mandates for employment and travel.

This bill is an important chance to right some of the wrongs Canadians endured during the COVID-19 pandemic, including and especially the violations of their rights and freedoms.

Formally, the bill amends the Financial Administration Act to provide that the Treasury Board may not require as a condition of employment in the federal public administration that a person receive a vaccine against COVID-19. It also amends the Canada Labour Code to provide that regulations may not be made that require, as a term or condition of employment in or in connection with the operation of a federal work, undertaking or business, that a person receive a vaccine against COVID-19.

The bill also amends the Aeronautics Act, the Railway Safety Act and the Canada Shipping Act, 2001, to provide that no regulation, order or other instrument made under any of those acts to prevent the introduction or spread of COVID-19 may prohibit or have the effect of prohibiting a person from boarding an aircraft, a train or a vessel solely on the ground that they have not received a vaccine against that disease.

This bill was initiated by our leader before it was taken up by my colleague, the hon. member for Niagara West.

The right to one's own medical choices is sacrosanct. The COVID-19 pandemic presented an unparalleled challenge to daily life for all Canadians across all areas of life and business. In its haste to ensure Canada was able to weather the pandemic as well as possible, the government of the day made some decisions that ultimately had serious negative effects on thousands of Canadians across the country.

The pandemic was undoubtedly a scary time for all, but instead of working with understanding and compassion, the Liberal government employed rhetoric that was cruel to its opponents. In particular, those who were hesitant to receive COVID-19 vaccines were made to be ridiculed and were discriminated against.

We now have the chance to take a sober second look at the outcome and aftermath of the pandemic. While it can be argued that the vaccines helped many, the way the government mandated their use in certain areas cannot be repeated. I am speaking about mandating vaccines as a requirement for employment and travel.

Particularly when it became clear that the vaccines were not a silver bullet and could not stop the spread of COVID-19 wholesale, the serious restrictions put on unvaccinated Canadians became unconscionable. In August 2021, the Liberal government mandated vaccination against COVID-19 for all federal public servants, employees in federally regulated transport industries and passengers on commercial air travel, interprovincial rail service and cruise ships. In all, more than 1.235 million employees were subjected to that mandate, more than 8% of the total number of workers in Canada. Those who could not or would not receive the vaccine and did not have an exemption were put on unpaid leave or fired.

Thousands of Canadians were denied their rights to freedom of mobility. The charter grants them the freedom to enter and leave Canada, but for a period of almost three years, six million unvaccinated Canadians were trapped in their own country.

Certainly at the beginning of the pandemic, in the first three weeks, nobody knew what this was, how serious it was or what we should do. After three years, it was clear that people who were fully vaccinated, such as I am, could get and transmit COVID the same as the unvaccinated. All the members of this House, many of whom had COVID during this time, were busy flying back and forth and taking trains in the country, but the unvaccinated were unable to go anywhere. That was discrimination.

Thousands of Canadians were unable to see loved ones across the border. It was a situation I became well acquainted with in my border riding office. Families were split apart. Parents were unable to share custody of young children. Loved ones were unable to say goodbye to dying older parents on the basis of mandates not based on science.

I have people in my riding who are married to people who live just across the border. They were prevented from being with their spouses for years. This is just unacceptable.

Worse still, some workers who lost their jobs were ineligible for employment insurance benefits as of October 2021. Employment and Social Development Canada issued a notice at the time to enforce vaccine mandates to help them fill out records of employment, documents that are necessary in applying for the benefits. According to The Canadian Press, “The department said if an employee doesn't report to work or is suspended or terminated for refusing to comply with a vaccine mandate, the employer should indicate that they quit, took a leave of absence or were dismissed potentially disqualifying them from EI.” While indeed it is an employer's right to set the rules of conduct for their workplace, for the federal government to instruct the employer to deny employees Canadian government benefits they had paid into was wrong. How many Canadians suffered and how many families went without because of this direction?

The EI system is an insurance premium system. A person pays their premiums, qualifies with their hours and collects the benefit, yet at the same time that the government was handing out CERB cheques of $2,000 a month, it was preventing people who were terminated for not being vaccinated from getting any money at all.

Furthermore, a year ago in June, the government refused to repay employees who lost their jobs due to the mandate the first time. Reporting in the National Post at the time states: "The ... government says it will not repay any salary to federal public servants who were suspended since October because of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.” This was at the time the mandate was being lifted. This was after months of calls for the government to reverse the mandates, not only from me and my colleagues but also from the major public service unions, including PSAC, PIPSC and CAPE. All had filed policy grievances against the employer's vaccine mandate for federal bureaucrats. At the same time, many other countries had released and stopped their mandates, following the advice of the World Health Organization after it said they were not effective. It took the government much too long to reverse these policies after much harm had been done.

I must say that it was not just Conservatives who opposed these divisive policies that had been imposed by the Prime Minister and the government. A few Liberals even had the courage to call out the Prime Minister for his efforts to divide Canadians. The Liberal MP for Louis-Hébert said, "A decision was made to wedge, to divide, and to stigmatize," further saying, “I fear that this politicization of the pandemic risks undermining the public’s trust in our public health institutions.” Even the former Liberal finance minister admitted that the Prime Minister used vaccines as a political wedge, saying, "I didn't see that as something that was helpful."

Today, millions of Canadians remain unvaccinated against COVID-19. We cannot allow the freedom of millions of people to make their personal medical decisions to ever be compromised again. We cannot discriminate against millions of people for their personal medical choices. We cannot stand in this House and say we stand up for Canadians while leaving out a significant portion of the population.

it is clear that this extreme restriction of freedoms must never happen again. Hopefully we will never see the like of another COVID-19 pandemic, but there could be other similar threats out there, and we need to be prepared. It cannot be our main line of defence against a pandemic to arbitrarily limit the rights and freedoms of its citizens.

This bill, Bill C-278, will help to ensure that. We must not limit employment or travel on the basis of vaccination. We must not limit the operations of our House of Commons or our federal public service or our important industries on the basis of vaccination; it must be down to the individual's choice.

I will share one example of something that happened in my riding of Sarnia—Lambton.

At the beginning of the pandemic, nurses were heroes on the front line. They wore their personal protective equipment and there were no vaccines. Then, subsequently, when the vaccines came forward, there was a vaccine mandate put in place. Even though all the nurses were wearing the same protective equipment and there was no science or evidence that there was any transmission and the unvaccinated ones were being tested every day, which gave even more of a guarantee, the unvaccinated ones were all fired. Four weeks after all the unvaccinated nurses left the facility, there was an outbreak of COVID-19 among the COVID-vaccinated nurses. What was accomplished was misery in many people's lives and nothing positive whatsoever.

It is time to replace the fear sowed by the Liberals with a new hope. We must take these lessons learned and enshrine them into law. We can have a Canada where personal medical choice is protected, a Canada with productive and profitable trade and travel. We can bring it home to your home, my home, our home. Let us bring it home.

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

Madam Speaker, I do not really know what to think of the slogan from the members opposite, “My home, your home, bring it home”, or what they are really trying to get at. However, at the end of the day, it is definitely not about freedoms. They should look in the mirror and talk about women's rights and quite possibly apply that same principle of freedom.

I am thinking in terms of what we have witnessed over the last few years. I believe that Canadians from coast to coast to coast have come together and recognized that, as the world went into this pandemic, it was going to take a team approach. I want to acknowledge the sacrifices that were made by virtually everyone in dealing with the pandemic.

In listening to the comments from members opposite, we heard a lot about the sacrifices that were made, some very personal. They dealt with deaths, births and everything in between. I want to acknowledge that at the very beginning and commend the actions of Canadians as a whole.

My colleague made reference to Brian Mulroney, a former prime minister, and quoted what he had said. Before I expand on that, I want to make reference to the fact that, as a national government, right from the very beginning, we were clear that we would have the backs of Canadians—

[An hon. member]

What did John Manley say?

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

Order. I want to remind members that there are no questions and comments during this part of the debate. I would ask them to hold on to their thoughts. If they wish to debate this, they may put their names up when I call for resuming debate.

The hon. parliamentary secretary.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, what Canadians knew and understood was that, whether it was the Prime Minister, the cabinet, members of the Liberal caucus or others, we made it very clear that we would have the backs of Canadians going through this pandemic. We took a team Canada approach, as we worked with provinces, territories, indigenous leaders and many other stakeholders at a time when we needed the country to come together. Therefore, when former prime minister Brian Mulroney ultimately provided the compliment to the Prime Minister and the government, I think that same principle applied. As a government, we did a good job, but it was a collective good job. It was Ottawa working at its best with the different stakeholders, and we made a difference. Lives were saved as a direct result. A lot more time was saved with people not having to be in hospitals—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

The time provided for the consideration of Private Members' Business has now expired and the order is dropped to the bottom of the order of precedence on the Order Paper.

The House resumed from June 20 consideration of the motion that Bill C-278, Prevention of Government-imposed Vaccination Mandates Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, the other day I talked about how reckless the opposition party is. It can be a great risk to talk about many of the things it talks about. I would like to suggest that, when it comes to the reckless behaviour of a political party, all one really needs to do to get an appreciation of that is to listen to how the Conservative Party has been talking about COVID-19.

We have a very active ongoing interest in COVID. Contrary to what some Conservatives might believe about COVID-19, people are still testing positive for it today. It is very important, not only for the federal government but also other levels of government of all political stripes, to recognize the health hazard that was caused as a direct result of COVID-19. It varied depending on population and density in different regions of our country. That is one of the reasons we took a team Canada approach to dealing with COVID-19. It was a worldwide issue, a pandemic that did not spare any country.

Here in Canada, we had strong leadership coming from the Prime Minister's office, all the way down, working with the different provinces, municipalities, indigenous leaders, not to mention numerous stakeholders and some opposition parties. It was taken very seriously. We saw some provinces even put in a curfew. Most provinces had mandatory masking put into place.

A couple of the Conservatives are a little sensitive about this because they opposed all that in many different ways. They certainly did act as if they were very proud of that fact, which is good for them.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, at the end of the day, there are many Conservatives who opposed mandatory masking, no matter whether it was coming from progressive Conservative provincial governments or from the Government of Canada in certain situations. The difference is that those who were in power, the provincial governments, municipalities and the federal government relied on health care professionals, individuals who had the expertise as opposed to—

[An hon. member]

Oh, oh!

[The Deputy Speaker, Chris d'Entremont]

Order. The way I look at it is that, the more we interrupt the hon. member, the longer we have to listen to the speeches, and the longer it will take to get through PMB.

The hon. parliamentary secretary has the floor.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your trying to tame the Conservatives on this particular issue.

What transpired, virtually from day one of the pandemic, was an educational curve for all of us. We saw things, such as the importance of masking, become a reality. Initially, that was not necessarily being advocated for. We learned the importance of washing ones hands and of ventilation for collections of people in groups. We also saw different provinces in particular coming to the table with their health experts, recognizing something that the Conservatives did not recognize, which was that it was a public health issue.

Contrary to what the Conservative Party tries to espouse, vaccinations worked. Vaccinations made a difference. That is why we saw the different provinces and stakeholders get behind it in a very significant way. There were some protests. We saw that first-hand. We saw a number of Conservative members of Parliament who went out to protesters, gave them a pat on the back and applauded them for what they were doing. Public health, what the City of Ottawa was going through and what was happening at border crossings, with billions of dollars put at risk, did not matter. The reckless direction coming from the Conservative Party was truly amazing.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. A number of Conservatives have come in to listen to the member for Winnipeg North, but I cannot even hear him because they are heckling so loudly. Perhaps you could ask them to tone it down a little so I can hear the member.

[The Speaker, Greg Fergus]

I thank the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands. I did not think the tone had reached that level yet, but I will ask members to please be respectful of the member for Winnipeg North, who has the floor.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased that members have come in to listen to me getting wound up over an important issue.

We got a lot of resistance when we started talking about the behaviour of some of the Conservatives. I truly believe that there some who recognize the importance of public health and see the value of vaccinations, but a good portion do not, and this is from the leader down. The person who really gave birth to this legislation was the leader of the Conservative Party.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, not all of them are clapping, we will notice, because they recognize the irresponsible behaviour and the reckless attitude the Conservative leader has taken on this legislation.

He has passed it on to another member, but the fact still remains that, as a health issue, we have seen other jurisdictions of different political parties recognize that vaccinations do in fact work. They care about the environment that people work in and want safe working environments. When people board an aircraft or a tube in the sky, air ventilation is important. These are the types of things about which we should all be concerned.

The only ones who seem not to care are in the official opposition, the Conservatives. I do not know if they have mustered any other support, but I do not think they have. I do not think there is another political entity in the House of Commons that is against vaccines, let alone within provincial governments, especially since provincial governments put in things such as curfews, mandatory masking and wanting to get vaccines to the public. Many of them took the initiative of providing proof of vaccination. They should take a flip-flop on this issue.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, as I said at the outset, I am running for prime minister to put Canadians back in control of their lives by making Canada the freest nation on earth. That freedom includes bodily autonomy, the freedom to decide what people put in their own bodies. That is why I was proud to introduce a private member's bill in the House of Commons that would put an end to COVID mandates in all of the federal sector. I want to thank the hon. member for Niagara West for having adopted my private member's bill so we can move it forward even faster.

Before the Prime Minister proceeds once gain to maliciously divide and attack, let me remind him that the position put forward in the bill is now not only the position of the common-sense Conservatives, but also the position of the majority of provincial governments, of the Liberal member for Louis-Hébert and of the military review complaints commission, the tribunal responsible for hearing grievances from members of the armed forces.

I will also remind the Prime Minister that the position reflected in the bill is now his position. Members may question why I would say that. The reason is that the Prime Minister had the temerity to go on television about three months ago and claim he never forced anyone to get vaccinated. He claimed it should be a matter of personal choice. He wanted us all to forget the way he divided, insulted and name-called millions of people right across this country who are patriotic, law-abiding, decent people. If he really believes he never forced mandates on anyone, surely he will be happy to vote for this bill to ensure those mandates do not apply anymore and will never be imposed again.

Let me be clear about what this bill would do. This bill targets the unreasonable overreaches of the federal policy and unjustified abuses of federal government power. The bill targets these overreaches and abuses of power based on two different but important types of evidence. First, it follows the scientific evidence about COVID-19 vaccines, how they work and what they do. Second, it responds to the evidence from the experience of the government's decision to exploit a public health situation for partisan political gain.

This was most clear in the Prime Minister's deliberate decision to go beyond guiding and protecting Canadians, to punishing people who chose not to take the COVID-19 vaccine. Let us remember that the Prime Minister originally said vaccines would be a matter of personal choice. Then he did a poll showing that it would be popular to target a small minority of people who chose not to be vaccinated. He flip-flopped and said he would make it mandatory, and three days later, he called an election and attempted to exploit that political moment in order to regain power.

This is funny: When he announced that the vaccine mandates would be imposed on the federal sector, he did it with such political haste, based on the advice of not public health experts but polling experts, that even his own human resources team at the Treasury Board put out guidelines suggesting that it would be a matter of personal choice, not mandatory imposition. While he was advocating for a mandate, his own bureaucracy published rules against a mandate. That is because they were following the medical science and he was following political science.

This bill would put into law a prohibition on the government imposing COVID mandates again in the future. Members may wonder why the government would need such a prohibition given that it has reluctantly agreed to remove mandates for most federally employed workers. The answer is that the government has kept open the possibility of reimposing mandates, both on federal workers and on federally regulated travel.

Furthermore, there continue to be military service members who face vaccine mandates today. It is ironic that these same military service members could legally go into a bar and French kiss with a perfect stranger, but they could not do their jobs in the armed forces. How is that scientifically sound? They could not, for example, go out into a field and practise with their fellow members in infantry, but they could do things that involve far greater and more intimate personal interaction in public places, according to the law. How could that possibly be based on science?

We know that it is not and never was, because we now know that the military grievance tribunal has ruled that the government's imposition of mandates on service members violated the section 7 charter rights of those members and that the violation was not justified under section 1 of the charter, which gives the government the ability to override rights in order to uphold reasonable public interest requirements. The government's own grievance tribunal has found that the mandates violated the charter when it comes to members of the armed forces, yet still the mandates remain in place in open violation of the Charter of Rights. That is not according to the Leader of the Opposition and not according to the countless civil libertarians who have been advocating for an end to these mandates, but according to the government's own grievance tribunal and according, moving out of the military to the rest of the federal sector, to the PIPSC, the CAPE and the PSAC, three public sector unions representing 300,000 federal public servants, who have brought legal challenges against this government saying that its blanket policy was “punitive”, “unreasonable” and an “abuse of management authority”.

To quote the unions, “There was no proper consultation, nor a comprehensive process of correctly identifying all the possible circumstances faced by our members. Appropriate solutions were not developed by the employer to deal with many individual situations.” However, the Prime Minister did not listen to them. He continued to go forward with firing federal employees who were not vaccinated, and he kept this policy in place even after his public health officer said, “we do need to get back to some normalcy.”

I will go back to the Military Grievances External Review Committee on this point, which said:

...I conclude that the limitation of the grievors' right to liberty and security of the person by the [Canadian Armed Forces] vaccination policy is not in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice because the policy, in some aspects, is arbitrary, overly broad and disproportionate. Therefore, I conclude that the grievors' rights protected under section 7 were infringed.

However, that policy goes on.

The review committee continued:

...I find that termination of service for some members was a disproportionate response to their non-compliance with the vaccination policy.... I conclude that it was overly broad and not using the least restrictive option in its implementation.... I find that the disputed provisions of the CAF vaccination policy are unconstitutional and, therefore, invalid.

This is the government's own grievance tribunal saying this, yet our heroes, soldiers who loyally serve, follow the law and put their lives on the line for this country, are out of jobs, out of income and out of justice. My bill, the bill now adopted by the member for Niagara West, would restore that justice by putting an end to COVID vaccine mandates and ensuring that no such new mandates are reimposed in the future on our brave soldiers, sailors and airmen, on our public servants and on Canadians seeking to travel in federally regulated sectors.

The Prime Minister has withdrawn and apologized for some of the extremely incendiary and divisive comments he made about Canadians who made different medical decisions than he would have made. Adopting this bill would be a recognition that this ugly chapter in our history of turning Canadian against Canadian and using a public health matter to pull apart our country and grab more power is permanently behind us.

Let us recognize that Canadians have freedom of choice over what they put into their bodies. Let us adopt this legislation. Let us restore personal freedom. Let us give Canadians back control of their lives in the freest nation on earth.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-278, the prevention of government-imposed vaccination mandates act. To begin, I believe it is important to note that the discussion surrounding this legislation has been highly politicized and riddled with misinformation from the day it was first introduced by the member for Carleton during the Conservative leadership race.

At that time, the bill was promoted by the member as a means to “scrap all vaccine mandates and ban any and all future vaccine mandates”. This is, of course, simply not accurate. The text of the legislation before the House now only references a single disease, which is COVID-19.

Indeed, Bill C-278 would legislatively restrict the federal government's future ability to set COVID-19 vaccine requirements, regardless of the future trajectory of the virus or the development of new vaccines. If a future variant turned out to be extraordinarily deadly and a vaccine was developed that could stop its transmission, this legislation would legally prohibit the government from imposing any kind of requirement to have that vaccine, even if the health of millions of Canadians was put at risk.

The member for Carleton has also incorrectly described to the House the current status of the mandates. The COVID-19 vaccination requirement for federal public servants was lifted on June 20, 2022. Employees who were placed on administrative leave without pay for non-compliance with that policy in force were contacted by their managers to arrange their return to regular work duties.

As of June 20, 2022, the vaccine requirement to board a plane or train in Canada was also suspended. In addition, federally regulated transport sector employers were no longer required to have mandatory vaccination policies in place for their employees. Finally, effective October 1, 2022, the federal government removed proof of COVID-19 vaccination requirements for anyone entering Canada.

With the record a bit corrected, I would like to proceed with what New Democrats believe. We support an approach to vaccination policy that appropriately balances the rights of people who have not been vaccinated and who choose not to be vaccinated with our individual and collective rights to health and safety. We believe that decisions with respect to imposing or suspending vaccination requirements should always be based on the best available evidence, current science and the advice of experts, not politicians speaking from the House of Commons with little or no background in any of those things.

The Conservatives cannot argue that it was wrong for the Liberal government to politicize Canada's COVID-19 response, which I think they did, while simultaneously asking politicians to legislate our country's vaccination policy indefinitely into the future without any evidence.

If the Conservatives sincerely wanted to take an evidence-based approach to COVID-19 policy, then they would have supported an independent inquiry into Canada's pandemic response when they had the opportunity to do so. However, shockingly, when the NDP moved an amendment at the Standing Committee on Health yesterday to legally mandate that a COVID-19 inquiry, under the Inquiries Act, be struck within 90 days, the Conservatives sat on their hands and abstained, allowing the Liberals to kill that inquiry.

I can see why the Liberals might be reluctant to call an inquiry into their own COVID-19 response, but this reversal from the cover-up Conservatives is truly shocking to see. Under the leadership of their previous leader, Erin O'Toole, the Conservative Party repeatedly called for an independent, expert-led inquiry into Canada's COVID-19 response. The Conservative Party pledged to call such an inquiry during the last election. We will need to leave it to the current Leader of the Opposition to explain this departure from his predecessor's position and the party's public pronouncements.

I believe it is unacceptable that the Liberals and Conservatives joined and worked together yesterday to block an independent review of Canada's response to the most severe pandemic in a century, because serious issues remain unexamined. Some of them include the following. We started the pandemic with not enough personal protective equipment: not enough gloves, masks, gowns and respirators. We had no proper national inventory of the personal protective equipment.

Canadians may remember that we had to throw out millions of pieces of PPE because they were expired. We saw no vaccine production in Canada, a shocking omission that has stretched over Liberal and Conservative governments for decades, who watched as Canada's ability and capacity in this regard was left to wither and die.

There was little to no public guidance on infection-acquired immunity. There was a curious dismantling of Canada's early pandemic warning systems. Canadians had no access to whole vaccines, only MRNA vaccines. There was confusing and contradictory information on the impact of vaccination on transmission. The impact and effectiveness of mandates remains a question.

Border controls were inconsistently enforced. Effectively, border controls in Quebec and Alberta were virtually absent. There were ravages through seniors' homes, overwhelmed emergency rooms and ICUs, and uncertainty about the efficacy of vaccines on mutating variants.

Now, instead of papering over previous mistakes or relying on pseudo-science to set public health policy, we must leave no stone unturned to learn from the past and prepare for future threats. Many prominent public health and security experts have called for the federal government to launch an expert-led independent inquiry into Canada's COVID-19 response.

The NDP has proposed an inquiry under the Inquiries Act, because such an inquiry would be independent. It would be led by an impartial person, notably a judge. It would be properly resourced with counsel. It would have the power to subpoena documents and compel the attendance of witnesses. It would be conducted in public. At the end of the day, it should do a searching root-to-branch comprehensive analysis of every issue that Canadians have raised during the pandemic response by the federal government.

Again, the Conservatives had a chance to make that happen, because the NDP and the Bloc were voting in favour of this motion, but they said no. They abstained. Instead, the Conservatives want to legislate science from the floor of the House of Commons. That is irresponsible.

Prominent Canadians, such as David Naylor, co-chair of the federal COVID-19 immunity task force, and the former chair of the federal review of the 2003 SARS epidemic, thinks there should be an independent public inquiry. So does Richard Fadden, former national security adviser to Stephen Harper. Recently, the British Medical Journal, one of the world's oldest general medical journals, published a series that examined Canada's COVID-19 response and called for an independent national inquiry.

Why do the Conservatives not want one? Again, they would rather play politics. The New Democrats do not and will not allow the Conservative Party or the Liberals to play politics with Canadians' health.

The British Medical Journal documented a number of deeply troubling pandemic failures in Canada, including that Canada's emergency response was impaired by long-standing weaknesses in the public health and health care systems. These included fragmented health leadership across federal, provincial and territorial governments. They noted that pandemic performance varied widely across Canada's provinces and territories, hampered by inconsistency in decision-making, inadequate data, infrastructure and misalignment of priorities.

They noted that lacking an independent federal inquiry allows others to step into the frame. We have seen the so-called National Citizens Inquiry, led by Preston Manning, for example, which appears to be fuelled by vaccine safety misinformation and ideological concerns with government public health measures. This is far from the full, national and public inquiry led by independent experts that Canada's pandemic performance deserves.

An inquiry would help deliver on Canada's ambition to be a global leader, and most importantly, it would deliver answers to Canadians, whose confidence has been shaken. At the end of the day, a public inquiry is needed to restore the Canadian population's confidence, to ensure accountability for decisions that have been made and, most importantly, to find out what went well and what did not. Thus, we could better prepare for the next pandemic, as experts tell us that it is not a question of if, but when.

While the Leader of the Opposition pontificates, pretends and politicizes this very important public health issue on the floor of the House of Commons, New Democrats are pushing for what Canadians really want. That is a full, independent, public, impartial, searching and comprehensive public inquiry.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this is the first time I rise to speak since you were elected Speaker. I want to take this opportunity to congratulate you and wish you a long reign.

I want to begin by saying that the Bloc Québécois, the adult in the room, is opposed to Bill C-278. The summary of this bill reads as follows:

This enactment amends the Financial Administration Act to provide that the Treasury Board may not require as a condition of employment in the federal public administration that a person receive a vaccine against COVID-19. It also amends the Canada Labour Code to provide that regulations may not be made that require, as a term or condition of employment in or in connection with the operation of a federal work, undertaking or business, that a person receive a vaccine against COVID-19.

In addition, the enactment amends the Aeronautics Act, the Railway Safety Act and the Canada Shipping Act, 2001 to provide that no regulation, order or other instrument made under any of those Acts to prevent the introduction or spread of COVID-19 may prohibit or have the effect of prohibiting a person from boarding an aircraft, a train or a vessel solely on the ground that they have not received a vaccine against that disease.

What can I say about this bill? First, we will begin with a short step back in time. Back in the day, Bill C‑285 required reasonable accommodation for people who refused to get vaccinated and wanted to use various means of transportation like trains, planes or ships. It also prohibited employers from retaliating against people's health decisions. The bill stated that a person who lost their job for refusing treatments such as a vaccine could not be denied employment insurance. This was understood to be the COVID‑19 vaccine.

Bill C‑278 essentially does the same thing, but this time it prohibits restrictions related to vaccination status specifically for COVID-19. Bill C‑285, on the other hand, targeted all types of medical treatment. What disturbs us about this bill are the reasons that led to it. Still, I would rather speak to the House about the reasons why we think it makes no sense.

We consider that the restrictions, such as the vaccine mandate for international travel, were justified. They were temporary and necessary in the context of COVID‑19. Although some measures seemed unreasonable, for example, the vaccine mandate for all federal public servants, even those who do not come in contact with the public, these measures were up for debate during the 2021 election campaign and were upheld by the courts.

The Bloc Québécois also refuses to buy the conspiracy theories the member for Niagara West is selling. The many statements this member has previously made on vaccines, as well as the nature of the petitions he has sponsored, make it difficult to see his initiative and this bill as anything other than the umpteenth attempt to discredit vaccines. This is what we are talking about when we talk about the reasons that motivated the member to bring in this bill.

Let us not forget that the restrictions specific to COVID-19 and the borders have all been lifted since October 1, 2022. As for the vaccine mandate for federal employees, it was dropped on June 20, 2022. What is more, this bill seems to be aligned with several anti-vax petitions that contained many false statements based on dubious sources. Nevertheless, the member sponsored these petitions.

The Bloc Québécois will not be fooled. It knows that the bill's intention is to curry favour with the base of the member's party by spreading misinformation. COVID‑19 was not a conspiracy; it was a tragedy. The different waves of COVID‑19 in Quebec and Canada cost close to 18,000 lives back home in Quebec, over 50,000 in Canada and close to 6.5 million worldwide. This is no dream; it is reality. However, we see here that the Conservatives' sympathies do not lie with the victims, the health workers or all our young people who made sacrifices to protect our seniors. Neither do its sympathies lie with my friend Annie, an immunocompromised kidney transplant patient who risks death simply by getting COVID‑19. The Conservatives' sympathies lie with pandemic deniers.

The Conservatives have chosen to forget all of that by voting against the principle of Bill S‑209, which calls for the designation of March 11 as pandemic observance day.

Not only do they not wish to acknowledge the tragedy, but they are now proposing that we deny that vaccines saved many lives and enabled us to emerge from the pandemic. They can be the ones to tell those who lost a family member to COVID-19, those who were separated from their loved ones for a long time, or those who suffer from long COVID and are still affected by the virus, that this pandemic is nothing but a conspiracy, a hoax. They can be the ones to ask the guardian angels who have propped up our hospital system all this time whether COVID-19 is a sham, an invention.

Misinformation is a growing problem in our society, and it is very alarming. Misinformation has become an illness amongst the Conservatives. We need only look at the falsehoods they are spreading about the carbon tax, pretending that it applies to Quebec because it suits them to say it does.

It is preposterous to claim to be the party that will form the next government by spreading falsehoods. We can argue about a lot of things, and people can be more right leaning or left leaning. The Conservatives can even shamelessly criticize the current government's decisions on the pretext that it is too left-wing. However, they cannot lie to people just to gain power, although that is exactly what the Conservative Party is determined to do. It is unfortunate for democracy, for the people, and for the trust and honesty that we must honour in this place.

I invite the Conservative Party to reconsider the methods it uses to gain power. People are not naive. The shift towards lies and misinformation is dangerous. Fortunately, the Bloc Québécois is elevating the debate and bringing some lucidity and maturity to the conversation. The Bloc Québécois is responsible and will vote against this bill because, from the beginning, the Bloc has always supported bills that make sense and opposed those that do not.

By refusing to recognize the value of COVID‑19 vaccines, the Conservatives are once again denying science. If this bill passed, our entire society could someday have to sacrifice its very safety and security to the anti-vax beliefs of a small group of people who are still in denial. That would be completely unacceptable. We have to ask ourselves if individual freedom ends where collective freedom begins.

The Conservative Party needs to go redo its homework, because I am sure that the people who supported it up until now will be put off when they see the party's true colours. It is a party of lies that need to be debunked right now.

[The Speaker, Greg Fergus]

Before I give the floor to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities, I would ask that all members take care when they use the word “lies” or accuse someone of lying. That is very important, even when one is not addressing an hon. member present in the House. One must be very careful when using those words.

The hon. parliamentary secretary.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Housing]

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to see that the Conservatives have decided to take a break from denial of climate change and go back to an old debate, denial of vaccine effectiveness. Vaccines save lives, right off the top. It is not something I have heard today from the other side. This is the priority today of the Conservative Party. It is the priority of its leader to deny vaccines.

There was no mention, not that I heard, that more than 54,000 Canadians have died of COVID-19. That is more than the number of Canadians who died in the Second World War. Some 751 Niagara residents died of COVID-19, and in the past month, there have been six in intensive care in Niagara. They could be constituents of mine or of the member for Niagara West, who is sponsoring this bill on behalf of the Leader of the Opposition.

Vaccine denial is not a new thing. Vaccine denial is as old as vaccines. It goes back to the 19th century, when the first vaccines against smallpox came around. Funnily enough, at that time in the 19th century, vaccine denial was led by people who were selling snake oil and trying to make money on the side with their snake oil remedies to combat smallpox, which did not have any effectiveness. We see the grift continue here, but it is disappointing to watch the official opposition dive in head first again and again. The more things change, the more they stay the same, and unfortunately, when dealing with a massive health crisis, there are those in His Majesty's loyal opposition who echoed the disinformation and misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines.

I would like to go back a bit. I wish it was not more than 20 years ago, but when I was in my early twenties, I got a job in the labour pool at a paper mill in the Niagara region. I got through the interview and there was a requirement that I show proof of vaccination for tetanus. I had not had the vaccine within the past 10 years, so I had to get it before I could start work at the paper mill.

Every doctor, nurse, soldier, firefighter, pilot or police officer whom any Canadian has ever met in their lives has had a vaccine and had to have a vaccine before they started work. What is the reason for this? The Conservatives talk about having to protect our soldiers, having to do this and having to do that. Through world wars we have required soldiers to get vaccines because it protects their health and that of the person next to them in the trenches or foxholes. However, Conservatives do not care, and it is truly unfortunate that they are trying to take us back to square one.

Vaccines, as I mentioned, are safe, and it is alarming that we have not heard that from the official opposition. All its speakers gloss over that. They gloss over the effectiveness. If our ancestors saw that, it would be unbelievable to them that we would give away this miraculous medical breakthrough on all the diseases that have killed so many people through the years, including COVID-19.

One of the most horrific stories that I heard during the pandemic, and heard it time and again, was about nurses. Do members remember when they were our health care heroes? Well, that has faded, unfortunately, for the Conservatives and the Leader of the Opposition. They had to sit there and watch people die, people who listened to the misinformation and disinformation. People were begging on their deathbeds for a vaccine from nurses and doctors, only to be told they would have had to get it before they got sick and could not get it at the last moment.

Again, there was deafening silence from the Conservatives on that. I am not sure who they are trying to rally to. Actually, we do know who they are trying to rally to. They closed down this city for a few weeks. They closed down international borders. They tried to grind the economy to a halt.

The Conservatives talk a good game, although usually only during question period, about vulnerable Canadians. They talk a good game of wanting to stand to protect vulnerable Canadians. In this case, vaccines do that. I may be lucky, and most of us here may be healthy enough that, if we contracted COVID–19 and the disease progressed to a point, maybe we would be okay, but maybe not.

What about small children? What about seniors? What about people with severe illnesses? I hope members never have to witness a baby with whooping cough, for example, who did not get a vaccine. It takes a second. I can understand some people being concerned about it because it is a needle in their arm, but they should speak to their physicians about it because they know best about their patients' health.

My doctors told me to get it as soon as it was available. That is how much confidence they had. I know my doctors are good doctors. The doctors throughout the Niagara region, and throughout Canada, are highly regulated. These are people who are here to protect our health and would tell us to get the available vaccinations immediately.

Through the course of human history, disease has ravaged us so much that perhaps we are benefiting from its success if we can say in 2023 that we do not need these vaccines or to worry about things such as polio, smallpox or measles. I am sure many members of the House had measles when they were a kid and think it was okay, but kids die of measles. There was a kid in New York State who contracted polio in 2023. Mercifully, there was no outbreak, but there could have been. As more politicians like those in the Conservative Party try to make political hay out of vaccines and vaccine mandates, there is an acceptance that these snake oil sales people are trying to make us less healthy, which is truly disappointing.

I want to thank the vast majority of Canadians who did their part. Canadians stood up to protect their neighbours, families, loved ones and co-workers. They knew it was the right thing to do. It is shameful that the Conservatives would stand up to cheer on those who would stand against that, but there is no willingness on their part to stand up for the most vulnerable. They talk a good game during question period, I will grant them that, but after those 45 minutes are done, and sometimes it is a little longer, we do not see any of that. Their disregard for public health is absolutely shocking.

For more than 150 years, vaccines have been a valid public health tool, and in a crisis such as COVID–19, something we had not seen in our lifetime, it was a valid public tool to use. To take it off the table just shows the Conservatives' denial for science, for what is best for the Canadian people and for the protection of vulnerable members of society. In another pandemic, we would not want that party in charge. It is just not worth the risk.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will do my best to be enlightening during the time allotted to me.

As we know, thinking is not a crime that leads to death, unlike COVID-19. All of the bills introduced here, even the most ridiculous, can be debated. When I think of the word ridiculous, I cannot help but think of this bill from the member for Niagara West.

Over the course of my career as an ethicist, I heard half-truths, short answers, evasive statements, ridiculous statements and frankly idiotic statements. In fact, I think that is exactly what we find ourselves facing today: idiocy.

What is idiocy? It can be recognized by its love of inaccurate statements. Idiocy is the opposite of reason. When we debate a subject here, we have to be able to give meaning and direction to what we say. When what is being said makes no sense, it is akin to going the wrong way and getting lost. Without meaning, we go astray, get out of line, which leads to mistakes. That is where we are at today, because this bill is fundamentally a mistake. I will try to demonstrate that.

Generally speaking, the public must be given information. It is interesting that this word basically comes from two separate words. It means to put words “in formation” in order to understand and learn, because learning enables us to make a decision.

The opposite of reason is what we have often heard from the member for Niagara West in his speeches, which are ridiculous on more than one level. We often hear about freedom, but it is important to understand that one person's freedom ends where another's begins, as we have always said. It is also important to understand that there are others to consider.

These days, it is annoying how, since we got cellphones, like iPhones for example, if we want to know where we are, we just have to open Google Maps and there is a little blue dot showing us where we are. We are the centre of the universe, and everything else revolves around us. That is how I feel when I read this bill. It seems as though the person who drafted it feels like they are the centre of the universe and that everything revolves around them. It is not very inspiring.

Bill C‑278 prohibits quite a few things, but what I mainly see is that the sponsor of the bill is asking us to believe the same thing he believes. He wants us to share his obsession with vaccines and adopt his views, which he is attempting to pass off as the truth. I have a problem, which is that Bill C‑278 would put beliefs ahead of the public interest.

Of course, the Conservative Party will support this bill. That is obvious. When a person does not believe in climate change, they are likely to believe in anything. It is deplorable. However, the Bloc Québécois will not support the bill because it contains theoretical views that are at odds with science and common sense, the thing the Conservative Party likes to crow about and say it is championing.

This bill is meaningless. It is nonsense. It is a mistake.

[The Speaker, Greg Fergus]

The hon. member for Niagara West for his right of reply.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the debate we have had regarding this bill, although I do not agree with all my colleagues from the other parties.

As we conclude second reading, it is important to keep several things in mind. It was wrong to divide and discriminate against Canadians based on a personal medical decision. It was wrong for the government to demonize Canadians who did not agree with the heavy-handed approach of imposing unscientific mandates on compelling folks into a medical treatment. It was wrong for the Prime Minister to call more than six million Canadians nasty names. He called his fellow Canadians racists, misogynists and a fringe minority, and he dared to say they held unacceptable views. It was wrong for the Prime Minister to say that these Canadians should not be tolerated because of a personal medical decision. It was wrong for the Liberal government to freeze the bank accounts of Canadians who did nothing wrong.

More than six million Canadians disagreed with the Liberals’ heavy-handed approach. Tens of thousands went out to protest throughout the country when they had no other avenue for expressing their concerns. Many of these folks lost their jobs. That includes truckers, government workers, doctors, nurses, crown corporation workers, our very own military members and many others. Why did the Prime Minister do this? He did it because he saw a political opportunity and did what he does best: divide.

Last week we saw the same thing happen with the Prime Minister's anti-energy, anti-resource development bill, Bill C-69, punishing mostly our western provinces by trying to limit their economic abilities to grow their own economies. The Prime Minister’s divisive tactics based on Canadians’ health is just another example in his playbook, which we have seen for eight long and miserable years of his tenure.

I was happy to see that common sense prevailed earlier this year when a ruling by the Canadian Armed Forces grievance board found that the Canadian Armed Forces mandates violated the charter rights of a member who was released for choosing to remain unvaccinated. The board stated that the Canadian Armed Forces mandate infringed on the member’s right to liberty and security of the person, under section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The board also found that the policy was arbitrary, overly broad and disproportionate. It was the right decision.

In addition to all of this, it was difficult to watch as other levels of government felt pressured by the Prime Minister’s rhetoric to implement more ridiculous and unscientific mandates. Municipal and provincial officials did not want to get ridiculed, so they reluctantly imposed their own mandates. These mandates, as everyone knew at the time, did nothing to prevent transmission or illness.

What the mandates did do, however, was damage our country like I have never seen before. Folks were fired. Folks lost their livelihoods. Folks were forbidden from travelling. I cannot believe this actually happened right here in Canada. Folks missed birthdays, funerals and other important events of friends and family across the country and abroad. It was sheer vindictiveness by the Liberals, plain and simple. They wanted to exact some sort of punishment on folks who did not agree with their stance on imposing unscientific mandates that drove a wedge with families, friends and neighbours. Families were torn apart because of the government’s stigmatization of Canadians.

This must never happen again, ever. My bill seeks to do that at the federal level, where we do have jurisdiction. We can never introduce such egregious and vindictive measures. We are not that country. We cannot do that to our people. We are Canadians. We show compassion and understanding for one another. We do not seek to get someone fired or to ban them from travelling because they think differently or want to handle their own medical decisions in their own particular way. They have every right to do so. It is their health.

How did the government ever think it was okay to overstep such a sensitive boundary? I have heard from thousands of Canadians first-hand. They are still disillusioned about what happened. They are still in shock from what their own government did to them. Many people who went along with the mandates realized, as time passed, the punitive methods used in this ordeal. Many have lost trust in government in general. Some will likely never trust government again, including many of those six million Canadians who were affected. I would also fully agree with the Leader of the Opposition that the imposition of the Emergencies Act to crush the civil liberties of Canadian citizens who protested for their freedoms was one of the most despicable acts we have seen under the Prime Minister’s government.

I hope we all make sure this never happens again. I do not believe we can move on from what took place until there is accountability. This bill is a step in the right direction. Let us start with Bill C-278, and let us continue to work until there is full accountability. I know I will.

[The Speaker, Greg Fergus]

The question is on the motion.

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

[Dan Muys, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask for a recorded division.

[The Speaker, Greg Fergus]

Pursuant to Standing Order 93, the recorded division stands deferred until Wednesday, October 25, at the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions.

The House resumed from October 24 consideration of the motion that Bill C-278, Prevention of Government-imposed Vaccination Mandates Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[The Deputy Speaker, Chris d'Entremont]

The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at second reading stage of Bill C-278 under Private Members' Business.

Before the Clerk announced the results of the vote:

[Claude DeBellefeuille, Bloc, Salaberry—Suroît, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I would like to seek unanimous consent for the member for Beloeil—Chambly to record his vote as being against the motion because he was unable to use the app. It was not working.

[The Deputy Speaker, Chris d'Entremont]

Is there unanimous consent to apply the vote of the hon. member for Beloeil—Chambly?

[An hon. member]

No.

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

Vote #434

[The Deputy Speaker, Chris d'Entremont]

I declare the motion defeated.

I wish to inform the House that, because of the deferred recorded divisions, Government Orders will be extended by 76 minutes.

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Calgary Rocky Ridge, Finance; the hon. member for Bow River, Carbon Pricing.