I guess that's my question. If Canada's flagship and, frankly, only legislation to deal with national emergencies is not invoked in what I think we all regard as about the worst emergency one can think of—certainly it's been described as once in a century—then to me there's either a problem with the legislation—it's either got too high a barrier to be invoked or it doesn't have sufficient powers or the right kinds of powers—or there is a political issue with it not being invoked.
What we do know is that it has not been invoked. What I'm trying to get at is where the problem is, because if we have a national government that can't invoke its full powers to deal with the issues that are national in scope.... I'm going to pause here and give you one example, and then I'll let you answer.
We know that a group of leading Canadian physicians and scientists have recently signed a letter calling for a nationwide circuit-breaker shutdown, and of course they point to the strategy of Australia, Taiwan, and the Atlantic bubble. They say if we had had one, we might have saved thousands of lives.
How do we adopt a nationwide circuit-breaker shutdown if we don't have the national government that can actually bring that in, and by what legislation would they do so if not the Emergencies Act?