Thank you very much.
At the onset of the pandemic, the Trudeau government discovered it had dismantled a critical and successful early warning system. When the world began border closures to protect citizens, the “do as I say, not as I do” health minister Hajdu held to an ideology decrying conspiracy theories, accusing critics of being racist and parroting the People's Republic of China talking points and outsourcing critical national interest decisions to a World Health Organization bent on destroying its own credibility.
Bill C-293 is not a pandemic inquiry. It barely begins to assess pandemic prevention and it begs that we pay better attention to what decisions were made in that time.
Dr. Barrett, in the past you've stated that you're a fan of keeping masks on faces and have defended mandates on social media.
Let's see how that played out. The Alberta Medical Association survey cites 77% of parents who have reported that the mental health of their children aged 15 and over is worse than before the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, during the first year of the pandemic, almost 25% of hospitalizations for children and youth were mental health-related.
Let me ask you a question. These mandates destroyed the mental health of Albertans and Canadians, and destroyed small businesses and destroyed the livelihoods of thousands of people who are now afflicted by an opioid crisis. Do you still stand by your comments today?