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.