I am thankful that our government continues to listen to Canadians and to adjust and improve support programs based on that feedback. In that vein, I trust that we will extend the CERB. I hope that we build it out on a negative income tax model.
Of course, we only face an economic crisis because we face a health crisis. We know that the answer to the health crisis is to test, trace, isolate and support, and yet for weeks now we've seen less than 50% of our national daily testing capacity of 60,000 tests is used, capacity that itself is insufficient and needs to be scaled up. While B.C. has managed to contain community spread, my province of Ontario has failed to test quickly, smartly or sufficiently. On tracing, Dr. Warner at my local Michael Garron Hospital has said that Ontario is “aspiring for mediocrity” and called these tracing efforts “inexcusable”.
To the Minister of Health, what are the obstacles to improving testing and tracing efforts? How will our federal government lean in, show leadership and help overcome these obstacles?