Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I think this is the first time in my parliamentary history, in my years as a member of Parliament, that I've had a colleague say that revealing documents and transparency will add to misinformation that's out there. That is from my colleague Mr. Powlowski, I'm really surprised.
I think the best step forward would be the motion that we have in the House today. Because of that misinformation that's out there for Canadians, don't you think the best solution would be to reveal the documents and reveal the path and decisions that went into getting us to where we are?
There's a very strong list of exemptions in that motion, and we had this debate last week. We debated this through a full day, and we said time and time again that there are exemptions in the motion to ensure that we protect some of those things, such as deals with or agreements with corporate Canada.
I find it interesting that you're concerned about this. The Minister of Health has put in an interim order that gives her special powers right now to compel drug companies across Canada to give her documents. There's a bit of hypocrisy here when you are concerned about revealing trade secrets or agreements with corporate Canada and drug companies through the documents we're requesting, yet the government has no problem whatsoever in allowing the Minister of Health to compel the drug companies and corporate Canada to give those same documents to the government.
I think it's really important that we have transparency. I know my constituents—and I'm getting many of the same questions that Mr. Powlowski is—want to know what decisions were made for us to get here. I think we should be waiting for what happens with the motion that's in front of the House today. We're going to be voting on that, and then if it fails, Mr. Powlowski can bring his motion up afterwards.
All of the opposition parties seem to be in support of the motion that's in front of the House today. The only group that isn't in favour is the Liberal party. I think that shows that the opposition parties have worked together to put this motion forward to ensure we are supporting our constituents who want some answers. They are worried about their health and they're worried about their safety, but they're also worried about their businesses and their jobs and their families. They want to know the details behind the reason our early warning system was dismantled, why we don't have access to rapid testing, and clearly, to Mr. Powlowski's question, they want to know the future with vaccines. Are they going to be accessible? How are they going to be distributed? Who is going to make those decisions? What are we basing our best practices on?
I think it's important for us to focus on the motion that's in front of the House today. We had this debate, and now we're putting the cart before the horse.
Mr. Powlowski, you're already assuming that the motion this afternoon is going to fail. We've had this debate out there, and for you to be trying to neuter this already.... Despite the arguments that you and your colleagues had in the House last week, I think it's really important that we stand up for transparency and accountability, for scrutiny of these documents, and to understand, to know....
I just want to conclude with this. There were a lot of arguments last week that we want to start looking forward. Mr. Fisher and I had this discussion on a panel last week: “We want to look forward. We want to look forward.”
Mr. Powlowski, if you were treating a patient as a medical physician, you would want to know whether the treatment was working. I would think you would want to look at what the treatment was throughout the process before you decided to continue forward. I would not say, “Let's not worry how I've been treating this patient for the past eight months; let's just continue. We don't need to worry if it's actually working or not, or whether it's maybe actually harmful.” You want to assess that process as you go along.
The argument from the Liberals right now is that they don't want to assess how this has been going. They just want to look forward. I think that is very wrong. I think we should be assessing this process every step of the way, to ensure that we make the best decisions for the best outcomes for Canadians.
We cannot ignore how we got here, the decisions that were made to get us here, the dollars that were spent, if we have any hope of ensuring that we make the best possible decisions over the next few months.
I will conclude there.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.