Bill S-209

Pandemic Day Act

An Act respecting Pandemic Observance Day

This enactment designates March 11th in each and every year as “Pandemic Observance Day”.

Prevention of Government-Imposed Vaccination Mandates Act

[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.

[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—

Message from the Senate

[The Deputy Speaker, Chris d'Entremont]

I have the honour to inform the House that messages have been received from the Senate informing this House that the Senate has passed the following bills, to which the concurrence of the House is desired: Bill S-203, an act respecting a federal framework on autism spectrum disorder, Bill S-209, an act respecting pandemic observance day, and Bill S-227, an act to establish food day in Canada.