Mr. Lauzon, thank you for the important work you do as parliamentary secretary for our seniors. It is absolutely essential work, and you do it brilliantly.
The pandemic changed everything. It has affected our seniors more than any other group. What has happened is absolutely unacceptable. We realized that our seniors were much more vulnerable than we thought and that our social safety net was not as strong as we thought. Too much was falling through the cracks. The number of deaths among our seniors is incredibly sad.
We stepped in as much as we could to lend a hand, in collaboration with the provinces, by the way. We collaborated well with Quebec and all the provinces, but we had to do this restart, that is to say press a button and start again.
At the beginning of the pandemic, the government had made its first Speech from the Throne and we were just coming out of a fresh election campaign. Who would have thought that we would be talking about a pandemic, an economic crisis, outbreaks, rapid tests, masks, hand sanitizer, wage subsidies, vaccination campaigns? No one did. We dealt with all this as much as possible. Again, I repeat that we did it in co-operation with all parties—I see Mr. Therrien, Mr. Deltell and Mr. Julian—because it's not just the responsibility of government alone to look after Canadians, it is the responsibility of all parliamentarians. We were all elected for the same reason.
This is why, once again, I would like to thank my colleagues from the different parties for their co-operation. This has allowed us to pass a series of bills that have given us the means to help people. However, towards the end of the summer, we realized that there would be a second wave. The question was no longer whether there would be a second wave or not, but rather what the impact would be. We wondered how we were going to respond and what tools we would need to deal with it. That's when we made the decision, as a government, to press “pause” and refocus all of our actions, not just those of the executive, but of all public servants.