Health Committee on Oct. 23rd, 2023

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Chair, is this CPC-4?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

It's CPC-3.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

I'll save my comments for the next one. Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you.

Are there any further interventions with respect to CPC-3?

Seeing none, are we ready for the question?

(Amendment negatived [See Minutes of Proceedings])

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Mr. Thériault, now is the appropriate time to move your amendment. You have the floor.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

I move that Bill C‑293, in section 4, page 2, be amended by deleting lines 24 to 26.

Lines 24 to 26 read as follows:

b) in collaboration with provincial and municipal governments, assess the public health and pandemic response capabilities of those governments;

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

I'd like to clarify one thing, Mr. Thériault.

The amendment that was submitted to the committee indicates that clause 3 is the subject of your amendment, but, in your intervention, you mentioned clause 4.

Can you confirm that this is indeed clause 3?

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

I'm sorry, it's paragraph (4) of clause 3.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

All right, thank you.

The amendment is in order. I believe it has been circulated.

The debate is on the amendment that Bill C-293 in clause 3 be amended by deleting lines 24 to 27 on page 2.

Are there any interventions with respect to the amendment that is before us?

Seeing none, colleagues, are we ready for the question on BQ-1?

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

I'd like to request a recorded vote, please, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

We'll have a recorded vote.

(Amendment negatived: nays 6; yeas 5)

That brings us to....

Do you have another amendment to move, Mr. Thériault?

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Yes.

I move that Bill C‑293, in clause 3, at lines 25 and 26 on page 2, be amended by deleting the words “public health.”

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

The amendment is in order. We can now debate it.

Mr. Clerk, do you wish to speak?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Jean-François Pagé]

I want to make sure I understand your amendment, Mr. Thériault.

If adopted, it would read “in collaboration with provincial and municipal governments, assess the pandemic response capabilities of those governments;”.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

It's only “en cas de pandémie.” There is no “et.”

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

The debate is on the amendment. Are there any submissions?

Go ahead, Dr. Ellis.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

You will be very happy to know, Mr. Chair, that I simply have a question, even though it's perhaps not the right time to ask it.

The clock is at 1:30 p.m. I understand we're time-limited on this bill and on getting it back to the House. I don't see any way for us to get through the rest of the bill at the current time. I'm wondering whether the chair has a plan for going forward.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

It's Wednesday.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Are there any further interventions with respect to BQ-2? I'm seeing none.

Are we ready for the question?

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

I request a recorded vote, please.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

A recorded vote has been requested for BQ-2.

(Amendment negatived: nays 6; yeas 5)

That, I believe, brings us to CPC-4.

Is there someone who wishes to move CPC-4?

Go ahead, Dr. Ellis.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thank you, Chair.

This is an amendment that everybody should feel capable of supporting. We know very clearly that three groups of folks—children, seniors and essential workers—were impacted so impressively by COVID-19 that they should have special mention in any type of movement forward.

We know children were taken out of their routines. They were taken out of their socialization events, such as musical theatre, piano lessons, singing lessons or skating lessons. We also know they were taken—as with skating—out of their sporting events. There was no hockey, no lacrosse and no gymnastics. Sadly, those specific areas for children are and continue to be—and always have been and always will be—a significant part of their maturation and their socialization.

To understand very specifically.... I would reflect upon two years ago, when we proposed a study on children's health. The study on children's health was supposed to be an entire study based on how COVID-19 affected children. Sadly, it morphed into something significantly different from that. The actual format it took was not conducive to being able to help Canadians understand the significant impact on children per se.

I've talked very briefly about their socialization in the sense of events, sporting events, etc., but that surely does not account for non-specific socialization, such as when you're young and your mother says to go outside and play. We certainly did not see that happen, given the fact that at one point during the pandemic—and I hate to remind people of this—every single park and recreational space in the country was closed. Perhaps they weren't at the same time, but they were certainly closed. That ability for children and for adults to just get out and socialize disappeared totally.

That doesn't take into consideration the educational suffering that happened with the need and ability to move from in-person instruction to virtual instruction. We know very clearly there are children out there—because all of us in this place have heard from our constituents—who continue to suffer the effects of the change in how their educational instruction was delivered. When we begin to examine that, I think it's important that we have experts who come and focus specifically on the instruction and educational opportunities afforded to children and how we may or may not do that differently in the future.

I can't underscore enough how important education is for children, as well as the socialization, of course, that exists with that.

Moving on to seniors, I would suggest that there were many seniors who died because of the pandemic and because of the conditions in which they were living. Many people, I believe, knew about these before the pandemic, but because of the nature of the illnesses those seniors had, a blind eye was turned toward them and the situations in which they were living.

That must be balanced with that freedom of choice, in the sense that if one knows you have a limited amount of time left on this earth, we all need to choose how we may spend that. Of course, we all know we have a limited amount of time on the earth. We just don't know how much it is, which can present some existential difficulties for folks.

That being said, when we know that as we advance in age we come closer and closer to that, and that once we are in an alternative-living situation the survival time becomes less, then it becomes part of our requirement and our freedoms as individuals to decide how we might spend it.

For example—and this may not apply to everyone—if you knew you had only three years left to live, would you choose to spend it being not able to leave an institution or would you choose to spend it with your family, even though you might get a deadly illness? I don't know the answer to that, Chair. I do think that perhaps it's an individual decision. However, sadly it does impact society and how we restrict the freedoms of folks, including seniors, and what that means to them.

We also know very clearly that many Canadians had funerals during the pandemic, and we know that funerals are also a time for Canadians to come together to share that grief. During my time, before coming here, you would see families around a bedside who would share their grief, who would tell stories of that individual, often humorous ones, sometimes not so much. However, there was always a requirement there and a grieving process so that they were able to come together and understand very clearly what this person meant to them in their life. Not being able to have those celebrations during the pandemic negatively affected families and individuals and how they interacted. I would be quite concerned that there would be ongoing negative impacts to families going forward from this lack of ability during COVID.

Finally, Chair, I would focus on essential workers. Being a physician during that time, I guess I was an essential worker. Some people question your sanity when you leave a very well-respected profession and become a politician. That being said, hopefully you have a voice you can bring forward.

Many health care workers have lost their jobs based on their COVID-19 vaccination status, having, for whatever reason, decided that they did not want or need the vaccine. That, of course, has presented them problems further on down the road with respect to their employability. We also know very clearly that other essential workers—truck drivers, for instance, those heroes who were lauded throughout the early days of the pandemic—kept working and crossed the border and brought in essential goods. Then what we had was a Prime Minister who chose to ignore them and create division inside this country when they came to protest.

Do you know what? That all could have been very easily avoided if the Prime Minister simply would have met with those people in the convoy to hear what their concerns were, but no, Chair, what did he decide to do? He decided to call them names. Indeed—you know what—in the House of Commons he called all Conservatives a name that, given the sensitivities of the day and what has happened in the last two weeks I will not even repeat. The Prime Minister called every Conservative in this House that particular name. I don't know if the Bloc feels as though they were included in that, and maybe even the coalition with the NDP felt as though the Prime Minister was calling them that. We know that is a name that shouldn't be tossed around in any way, shape or form as something that is simply a pejorative. It has a very specific meaning with respect to the events that have been happening in Israel and the Middle East at the current time.

We would draw people's attention back to the essential workers, who, again, were lauded as heroes early on in the days of the pandemic and then simply relegated to the trash heap later on and called names and shamed and blamed for the propagation of the pandemic and for their freedom to choose whatever it was that they wanted to do on a very personal basis.

Now, when we look at those kinds of things, I think it is also important that we outline and highlight very clearly that to continue to ask people about their vaccination status would be akin to me asking very personal questions of colleagues across the floor as well. I would never, for instance, ask any of my colleagues for the status of their chronic lung disease, their prostate cancer, their erectile dysfunction or anything like it that really existed. I would suggest to you that it would be an inappropriate comment, but when people ask you for your vaccination status, that seems to be an acceptable thing, which, again, is a very personal part of your own health information. If we don't get that right again, there are going to continue to be problems associated with the ability to move freely and have freedom inside our country.

I would suggest that it's important that we take a very close look at those three groups—children, seniors and essential workers, who are among the most vulnerable to another pandemic—and pay them a special focus as those who have borne the brunt of the pandemic, and who, especially as children, will continue to bear the brunt of the pandemic for many years to come. I suggest that it would be very important to highlight those folks. All of those three groups deserve special mention for those reasons that I have highlighted very clearly. Hopefully, Chair, this is something that is useful to the other members of the committee, and we could have agreement that those three groups of folks would be paramount to a good inquiry and to understanding how very specifically and negatively the pandemic affected those three groups of individuals.

I thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

We have Mr. Doherty, please.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

For the benefit of our colleagues, I want to read what we are suggesting with CPC-4. It would amend the bill in line 2 on page 3 by adding, to “analyse the health, economic and social factors relevant to the impact of the pandemic in Canada”, the following words: “with a special focus on children, seniors and essential workers.”

My colleague Mr. Ellis has been succinct, I think. As the day has gone on, I think that was a pretty succinct explanation as to why it's important, but I thought I would take this opportunity to remind our colleagues and those who are listening about the profound impact the pandemic had on these three groups.

In Quebec, I believe there was an inquiry as to how seniors were handled or on the impact on seniors. I remember family members and families reaching out to us during this and pleading with us to do something for their loved ones who were all alone in care homes. Their relationships were relegated to basically plexiglass or a window in between their loved ones. How heartbreaking it was for the seniors to basically be all alone in their final days in this pandemic. Sheer loneliness swept through our care homes for seniors.

My brother works for large care home facilities in British Columbia. He's a supervisor there. He would relay stories to us about his patients. Their health absolutely plummeted during this time. He said there has to be a study. There was a correlation with this loneliness and isolation of seniors that he said was just profound. It was not only that. It was also how COVID swept through these care homes. You had essential workers, and for the first part of this, because there was such a shortage, you had nurses and staff going from one care home to the other. They were carriers of COVID and were in fact infecting other facilities.

With children, as was mentioned by my colleague, I don't think we have yet seen the total impact of COVID in terms of the impact that loneliness, isolation and not being with their peer groups had on the mental health and well-being of our children.

I'll go back to my motion on safe supply. Overdose is the leading cause of death for children aged 10 to 18 in my province. I can't help but think that the pandemic has contributed to that. I wish I were able to continue on, because that's what I was leading towards at that time. We know that 11 Canadians die by suicide every day. A further 275 will attempt suicide each and every day. Those are the stats that we know. We know that those numbers are actually higher coming out of the pandemic. We also know that domestic abuse and domestic violence actually increased. Lateral violence increased during this time because of the confinement of these families.

Coming out of the pandemic, we know over a quarter of our population is now forced to use food banks each and every month. Think about that for a second. The most recent statistics say that almost eight million Canadians have to use food banks across our country. That's one-quarter of our population. It's staggering.

Speaking of violence, I have a bill in committee now regarding violence against our first responders and health care workers. We saw an increase of that during the pandemic toward our essential workers. Our country was shut down, yet there was a very targeted group that had to go to work each and every day, given all the uncertainties circulating online and all the stoking of fears about the unknowns of this illness. These people had to don their uniforms each and every day. They'd very often encounter absolutely horrific sights, sounds and smells, but they also had to fear for their lives, whether they were just showing up to work or getting into their cars...being followed. It's unbelievable. The stress of that alone is unbelievable.

As was mentioned—I hope it comes out in this study or bill—the impact alone of our top leaders...on vilifying those who wanted their own choice. Our Prime Minister said, “Should we even tolerate these people?" It's crazy. We divided families. We divided communities. I shouldn't say “we”. Families and communities were divided over this, vaccinated or unvaccinated: “Do you believe in it, or don't you?” The prevalence of forcing people to be isolated, alone and turning to social media....

I go back again to my motion. We know how easy it is for kids and teens—for anybody looking for it—to now get drugs online. It's staggering. I hope our colleagues will vote to include this in there.

I want to mention one thing. We're talking about our essential workers and all the bad stuff that came out of the pandemic. I think something like this will also focus on some of the good things that came out of the pandemic.

In my community of Prince George, we have a first nations drumming group, the UHNBC drumming group. Every Monday night, through rain, snow or minus-40 temperatures...to this day, they still do it. From the very early days of the pandemic, they went outside of our hospital and they would drum and sing songs for the workers and patients in the hospital and care homes. What a moving image, Mr. Chair: seeing these people who have been torn away or separated from their loved ones. They would come up to the window and put their hands on it. It was so moving. The University Hospital of Northern British Columbia drumming group is led by my good friends, Wes and Ivan. They do that to this day.

I think that's one of the amazing things that came about, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention it.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

With that, I think we should move to adjourn.