Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Minister, thank you for being here and I'd also like to thank all those accompanying you today.
As you know, Canadians are sick and tired of the sweeping public health restrictions all their governments are imposing on them, but they are standing strong against the COVID‑19 threat. Canada has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world. Actually, I thank the Conservatives for pushing so hard to make sure we had enough vaccines from the start.
We knew right away that we needed to focus on vaccination. We can applaud the resilient people who, nearly two years into the pandemic, have made Canada a country with one of the highest vaccination rates.
Unfortunately, it seems the government hasn't learned much from the difficult months we have just gone through. The federal government has normalized lockdowns and restrictions to deal with the pandemic, at the people’s expense.
Mr. Minister, I had COVID‑19 over the holidays, and rapid testing was completely unavailable to me and some of my family members. We were unable to do the tests ourselves.
How do you explain the failure to make rapid testing available to all Canadians during the holiday season?