Procedure and House Affairs Committee on April 13th, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Okay, I'll try my best. Anybody can email me as well. I can try to inform the committee if there's any progress on that. You're free to email each other as well, and then speak to each other about that.

Mr. Turnbull.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

I'm getting the sense that maybe opposition members are willing to support my amendment, given that the heart of it really is to have the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Diversity and Inclusion and Youth come to the committee.

Is that the case, Ms. Vecchio? Maybe I can use the Simms protocol to ask you whether you're now supporting my amendment.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

It's very interesting, because the original motion already had all these things in it. We appreciate the very first one. Let's take it to a vote. Why don't we find out, Ryan? This would be a great time to take it to a vote, if you're asking. If I say to you I would not support, that doesn't mean we should not continue this conversation. We should end it and end this filibuster of the last 14 weeks. I'm happy to go to a vote, and then we'll go from there.

If we look back at the January stuff, I recall that being in that subcommittee report we brought back to PROC, in which they were already invited. Thank you very much to the clerk for looking into this. We've already supported things in your motion. It's just that we would like more to it.

Let's carry on this conversation, if you want, or open the door to the vote, as we can do.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Good. Thank you. Maybe we can make some progress through this dialogue.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

That would be great. I would really appreciate that. In particular, I'm hoping that my arguments here have swayed my opposition colleagues to support the amendment that I put forward.

Perhaps I can continue to make my best effort to bring you onside to the amendment. At any point, I hope you would express your willingness to support it, if I'm successful. I can only try my best. I understand that we all have our own perspectives and our own interests, etc., but I hope we'll get the support of some opposition members.

At any rate, I'll go back to my argument. That seemed like a long tangent. I want to continue to make my argument.

The hotel industry was impacted specifically in most of our urban centres most dramatically. I have here the statistics that were gathered by the hotel industry. This report here, from October 2020, is by CBRE Hotels, the world's leading hotel experts. It's specific to the Canadian impact of COVID-19. It's a substantive document. Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, Niagara Falls, Halifax, Toronto airport, Calgary airport, Montreal airport and greater Quebec City were the areas where the hotel industry was the most impacted and we saw the biggest declines.

In addition to all of the situational factors I mentioned, there were also influences on recovery that kind of mirror some of those situational factors. They demonstrate what the hotel industry is saying will really impact how quickly they can recover. I've heard locally that the hotel industry and some of the other industries don't expect to recover for quite some time. It may take them two years or more to recover from the pandemic. This was their perspective after the first wave of COVID-19, in some cases, so I would say that this has only extended the hardship and the recovery time it will take for those industries to come back in full effect.

Again, we talk about this stuff, and it tends to almost dehumanize. It's not intentional, but when we talk about it, it's.... We're talking about businesses here, but what does it really mean when it comes down to it? There are people and families at the heart of these businesses. It's people's livelihoods we're talking about. I really think it's about paying attention and taking the time to really understand these impacts on people and families and communities and local economies. I'm talking about industries, and I'm bringing stats and information, but again, it's about the lived experience of families and workers and business owners. They're hanging on by a thread, at this point, if at all. I think some of them are not.

Part of this is due to the pandemic wave after wave and the fatigue that comes with that. I've maintained from the very start of this... Well, I wouldn't say it was from the start. That might be a little too arrogant of me to say. I would say that somewhere along the way, I think between the first and second waves, or just as the second wave hit us, we came to realize that going through wave after wave of a pandemic is not the best public health or best economic approach. It's not.

In terms of mitigation versus elimination, I saw a recent study out of France, I think out of a university there. I have it somewhere here in my piles of paper. The study shows that the countries and jurisdictions around the world that focused on COVID elimination fared the best from a public health perspective. They also fared the best from an economic perspective, by far. It's undeniable, based on the evidence.

What's interesting is that in this case, we see differences of value, philosophy and so on between different parties at different levels of government, and we see a different approach at different levels. This has created more inequity in the impacts and, in some cases, multiple waves of the pandemic, which have exacerbated the initial impacts.

There has been an exponential impact and hardship on the families and people in the community I represent. They've expressed this to me over and over again. I can't tell you how many calls I've had with local business owners who are at the end of their rope and are hanging on by a thread. By that I mean that in many cases they've had to borrow money and access our government supports. Although we've continually extended them, most people are saying that supports are literally keeping them afloat. If supports come to an end prematurely or the pandemic continues for much longer, they don't know how they're going to survive and keep their businesses afloat. Really, the livelihoods of many small businesses are at stake.

I myself am a business owner of 12 years. I started a business with $160 to my name and grew it over 12 years to a sizable firm with 11 staff and 30 contractors. It was a full-time 24-7 job, and it was gruelling and hard work to be an entrepreneur and grow a company. It's one thing to own a small company and keep it at the same level. It's another thing to try to build a bigger company.

You make plans as an entrepreneur to earn enough profit, even if it's just a bit as a small company, to reinvest back into your company so you can have better staff, can provide more training and professional development, can offer benefits and can do all kinds of things for the people who are the heart of your company. Some businesses can also invest in new equipment. Depending on what kind of company you have, sometimes you have a higher reliance on equipment and there is a need for operational expenses to increase. Those are big investments. There are all kinds of planned investments that entrepreneurs have as they try to build a business, and we should think about how these plans are shattered right now for our entrepreneurs and small businesses, for the family-run businesses that are struggling through wave after wave of the pandemic.

There's so much uncertainty for these folks. A lot of it has to do with the evolving science. Our understanding of this virus is evolving. I know that at times opposition members feel very frustrated with the fact that they want answers. I think Canadians do too. I'm not patronizing anybody when I say this; I really understand the frustration. We want to know the solutions right now. We want predictability and the answers right now. The reality in a pandemic, in an evolving crisis, is that we don't have that information and don't have certainty. That is really uprooting. It causes a lot of anxiety out there, and I can really empathize with how this impacts the businesses in our communities. Many of them have anxiety about reopening. When are travel restrictions going to be lifted? They have so many questions about economic recovery, about whether their customers are going to feel safe and whether there's going to be predictability in the future.

If you go back to what I was saying earlier about planned expenditures and growth, plans are integrated into the families of small business owners. This is as much about the growth of their company as it is about their livelihood. These things are so closely tied together. When you're the owner of a family-run business, you have a very close connection between your business and your family.

I can think about the optometrists I've talked to, or the accountants in my community, or the hair salons and the small shops along the main street corridor. All of them are these types of businesses. There's the local cleaner. There are so many of them. They don't all fit into one bucket. They're all these really committed, hard-working, entrepreneurial-type people who have taken on great risk to do something they love and believe in. Often, it's not really for profit, at the end of the day. It's for the stability of their family. They really are the ones who are impacted by this pandemic.

I've talked about the many workers and individuals who have been affected by this pandemic and the inequities across our society in terms of how that's played out. Today I'm really focusing on the small businesses and the hardest-hit industries. I want us not to forget that the economic hardships on them have been truly challenging at multiple levels, so I will continue.

In the food service industry, Restaurants Canada gathered statistics in October 2020 as well. They produced those. It took a little time to do the analysis, I'm sure, but I think just in general the food service industry really experienced a deep impact. They claim to be the hardest hit, and I think they are. I think maybe some other industry groups may say they are the hardest hit, but I don't think it's worth arguing; they're all the hardest-hit industries. There's no doubt in my mind that they are all in need of attention, support, empathy and targeted measures to help them recover. I think the only way we get those is by listening to them and by valuing their perspective. Again, taking the time to prorogue and listen to those stakeholders I think was essential for our government. I fully support taking that time.

Some 800,000 food service workers were laid off or had their hours cut to zero during the first wave of the pandemic. While many industries could bring people back to work, they were hovering at between 1% to 10% below pre-COVID employment levels as compared with February 2020. There continues to be a significant gap in the food service industry. They are one of the hardest hit for sure, with employment 21% below February 2020 levels. Those were statistics from October 2020 or just before then.

Again, I'm trying to use information that was relevant at the time of prorogation. In this case, I think the data that was analyzed had covered the summer of 2020 but was analyzed into the fall. It was still really relevant. I know that these associations were in dialogue with our government at the time and I'm sure they gave us the feedback. Although I wasn't in those conversations with the national associations, I was definitely hearing the same things in my local community from my chamber of commerce and the local chapters of some of these associations.

Over half of restaurants planned to, and still probably plan to, reduce their table service. This is a huge deal, obviously, for them. Many of them, of course, will want to open as soon as they can open patios so that they can earn some revenue.

This, to me, really inhibits. Social distancing really has an impact on them, because when you get the business model of a restaurant that often had pretty razor-thin margins.... I've done about 15 different business plans for restaurants, catering and café businesses of different kinds. I mentioned the one earlier that the YWCA runs in downtown Hamilton called At The Table café. It's a café and catering business and wholesale baking business. What I can tell you from doing very detailed financial analyses of these types of businesses is that they do have very thin margins.

It looks like my Internet might be slowing down. Am I coming through clearly, Madam Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

You are.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Okay, great.

Essentially what I'm saying is that, even as the economy starts to recover, or as public health restrictions are safely lifted in the future.... I really must stress that they need to be safely and slowly lifted to ensure there isn't a fourth and fifth wave. We need to be extremely careful at all levels when doing any reopening.

What's important to realize about a restaurant or food service business, which includes more than just restaurants, is that their margins are thin already. Within the pandemic, their operating costs have gone up slightly due to some of the equipment and public health measures and protocols they've had to implement. Some restaurants have put the kind of plexiglass, or whatever it's called, around the booths where people sit in the restaurant, but even the social distancing and not having as many people.... Everything depends upon how many tables you turn over in a day. Most of these businesses literally count down their cash at the end of every day.

Am I still coming through? It seems like I'm pausing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

No, you're coming through okay.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

For me, it seems like I'm pausing. It looks like I'm getting a bit of an Internet issue right now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

We hear some static now. We're seeing it at your end a little more quickly than we were.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

I can confirm that it seems like time is standing still, yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you, Mr. Calkins.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Was that Mr. Calkins? We haven't heard from him before, but thank you for your comments.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

He's listening. He's letting you know.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Speaking of standing still....

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

It looks like you're in the middle of a stream there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

I think the clerk was also having some Internet difficulties a little while ago.

Mr. Clerk, can you let us know if Mr. Turnbull's Internet connection is stable?

[The Clerk]

Madam Chair and Mr. Turnbull, I'm just checking now with the IT techs in the room to get them to assess your connection. It does seem to be occasionally catching, but I think everyone can still continue to hear you okay.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

I will close down some other windows and then keep going. Sometimes that helps. Thank you for that.

Where I was going with all of this is really that the restaurant industry, because of the unique challenges with reopening and how dependent they are on volume and expenditure, sort of the average spend per table that they turn over in a restaurant, they're really going to struggle to essentially turn any kind of profit or have any margin as they recover.

As much as we want to help them, I think there are significant structural barriers for their industry that are unique because of the reliance on the physical space, the dining experience and how they normally operate, which creates some very unique challenges for the restaurant industry that I think we need to recognize and support.

I know that they feel like some of the provincial public health restrictions that have been implemented.... They've voiced this to me, many local restaurants in my community.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

I have a point of order, Madam Chair.

We are now talking about getting into the provincial stuff as well. I know that we've all enjoyed this, but just about 15 minutes ago when Ryan opened the door for perhaps negotiations, they seemed to drop very quickly and went back into a filibuster speech. I'm wondering if this is a time where we can really actually negotiate and say who wants what. I'm happy to bring this to the table. I'm happy to have these discussions. I thought Ryan was actually going to go there and start talking about how they really want to have Minister Freeland. We understand that. We hear that. However, perhaps there's somebody who we might want to see and not just who the government wants to see. If we're really negotiating, perhaps we could say, “Yes, we're happy to see this person if we can see that person.”

Ryan, perhaps you're willing to negotiate. I'm just wondering if you're going to continue with the talk, or if we really want to get down to the core of what this motion is and start dickering away at it and get it done. Let's get this stuff done.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Madam Chair, I did hear what Ms. Vecchio said, but my Internet seems to be skipping and stalling. It's really not working well. Perhaps I need to log out and log back in. If you can still hear me, I appreciate Ms. Vecchio's comments and would welcome some conversation about that, certainly.

Perhaps I can ask for a quick.... I can either cede the floor for the moment to one of my honourable colleagues.... I think I need to log out and log back in to try to reset my Internet connection here because it's really not working for me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

We can pass the floor to Mr. Amos. You can disconnect and reconnect, and we'll wait for you.

I'm glad that you appreciate what Ms. Vecchio said. Maybe it will take us somewhere. You can have the conversation, obviously, however you like, whether it's in committee or off the record. It's whatever you guys choose to do, but I definitely encourage the conversation.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

I have a point of order, Madam Chair.

I thought the entire idea of having a business committee meeting was to discuss it, and this is exactly where we are. We are at a committee table where we are discussing committee business. This is committee business about how we can negotiate on who is there and who is not. I'm sure that everybody has read the Hill Times. I'm sure that everybody has read that publication and has seen where we're at. If the public knows, I believe that the NDP, the Bloc—and perhaps they will speak on this—and the Conservatives.... There are many things for which we are saying let's talk about this. Perhaps Daniel or Alain can say what they would like to see as well, but let's actually start negotiating. Let's actually say that, yes, we respect that you want to see Ms. Freeland—we absolutely respect that—but in exchange, we would like to see the Prime Minister. Let's call it what it is. We would like to see the Prime Minister. If we want to look at other things that we can start breaking down, let's go for it, but let's stop wasting time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

You're right, Ms. Vecchio. Absolutely, I stand corrected. This is the place to have the conversation. Hopefully, that conversation does begin to evolve more quickly than what we have seen. I appreciate your making that interjection.

As Mr. Turnbull has to log off and log back in, I am going to give the floor next to Mr. Amos at this point. Perhaps Mr. Amos can shed some more light on this and maybe continue rolling that ball forward.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

As an irregular participant on this committee, I do greatly appreciate the opportunity to contribute and to learn.

I'd like to tip my hat to Mr. Turnbull, whose contributions this morning have been illuminating.

I'd also like to appreciate that MP Vecchio is seeking to transact parliamentary business as between the parties, and I'm sure that the proper individuals on our squad will ensure that conversations happen, as appropriate. Being an irregular member, I don't want to interfere in any way that would be untoward, of course.

Members may recall when I had the opportunity last week to reflect on the relevance of prorogation and the particular point in the pandemic where we were late last summer. Obviously, we've moved to a different place now, and I think there is actually a fair point to be made that this entire exercise is a moot one. We're long past late summer.

As we appreciate it, we responsibly prorogued for a brief period of time in order to come back with a Speech from the Throne that could lay out a concrete vision in a moment where Canadians were looking for what are the next steps. We felt that was the responsible measure to take, as a government, and that's exactly what we did and why we did it.

That moved directly into a fall period of significant parliamentary activity, leading right up to the fall economic statement, which laid out a large number of concrete measures. I want to get into some of those today because I think one can only understand the relevance and the importance of the prorogation component by appreciating exactly what it led to: the Speech from the Throne, which recommenced parliamentary proceedings; going straight into a fall economic statement; and then of course more parliamentary debate through the winter, leading to the budget. So there is a continuum here.

I think it's important for Canadians to understand that this is all regular and dutifully conducted parliamentary process that is required as part of good governance and it's required as part of our Westminster parliamentary democratic tradition. I think we're all well aware of where prorogation fits into the tradition that we come from, as part of the Crown's various reserve powers.

We all appreciate that we are no longer at a point in history where all of governance is the product of royal prerogative. Nowadays there are very few such royal prerogatives, including prorogation. Centuries ago, when pandemics wreaked havoc on many societies, in both the Commonwealth and beyond, we lived in an era when the king or queen owned all the lands, made all the laws, raised armies to defend the people and attempted to conquer new territories to increase the wealth of the kingdom, and enforced the laws and then meted out justice. Over the past four centuries, those royal prerogatives have been whittled away and now we are at the point where Parliament controls virtually everything. Our democratic system is much more robust and there are very few powers, as I said, prerogatives that reside in the Crown, and one of them is prorogation. That is why the Prime Minister is required to bring to the Governor General that request for prorogation, and it was done responsibly.

I think that MP Turnbull and my learned colleagues have repeatedly articulated the rationale for this, and obviously the motions on the floor would seek to bring some greater level of clarity and accountability around the prorogation decision.

As I have said before, my own opinion is that this is a moot discussion. Canadians would want us to focus on the future and the future of vaccines, the future of economic recovery, the future of a return to normalcy for Canadian families and for seniors like those at St-Joseph's Manor, who I visited this morning via Zoom, who want nothing more than to say hello to their families in person.

I'll pause on this tangential point just because it is such a lovely thing. I learned this morning that the good residents at St-Joseph's Manor in Campbell's Bay got their second shot this week. That's stupendous news for those good people in Campbell's Bay on the north side of the Ottawa River, maybe 80 kilometres west of Gatineau.

That's what people want to be focused on right now. They want to focus on what we are doing to get to the next point of bringing us back, and that's what our government has been dong all along. Every single moment, every single decision has been focused on how we are contributing to making sure that Canadians can return to seeing their loved ones and can spend more time doing the things they want to do with fewer restrictions, how we can invest in the necessary fashion to procure and distribute vaccines to rebuild our biomanufacturing sector, how we can render more robust our overall health care system, how we can assist other levels of government, and how we can collaborate with other levels of government to bring about additional supports at critical times of need.

I think our hearts go out and our support is extended to those regions of the country that are, right now, really struggling, that are so challenged by this third wave, whether it's Peel Region, Nova Scotia or Alberta. We have regions that are really just focused on the here and now, and rightly so, because that's what matters.

I think many of my constituents in the Pontiac would express great frustration at the notion that there is a national debate to be had around prorogation decisions made late last summer with a view to enabling a pivot after the first wave and before the second wave took hold.

Let's take a quick step back, and think about what prorogation enabled. This is why it's so important to focus on MP Turnbull's amendment, and what he would propose that we focus this committee's work on. If indeed there is to be time spent staring in the rear-view mirror, let's focus on what prorogation enabled.

The prorogation allowed us to come up with an action plan for the second phase of the pandemic by means of a throne speech. Everyone knew that this second wave was coming, because we had seen what was going on in Europe.

We knew that we had to prepare for it by providing assistance to our workers, our small and medium-sized businesses, and our communities, which were suffering seriously as a result of the pandemic. The throne speech clearly indicated what emergency measures our government would be introducing. Additional protection was needed for our municipal players, and more funding.

That's what led to the throne speech and the 2020 fall economic statement. A wide range of measures and economic analyses of the situation were presented. In November 2020, the 2020 estimates had not yet been tabled because of the pandemic. It was therefore both necessary and important for our economic players to properly understand the situation through reliable data so that they could plan the April 2021 estimates.

My colleagues are no doubt aware of the contents of the 2020 fall economic statement. The information therein was about priority problems for the Canadian public. Table 1 showed the number of doses of potential vaccines obtained per person. Last fall, the discussion was about the number of doses that Canada had obtained from various companies, including Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and Novavax. It's interesting to see how the discussion has evolved since then.

We are now in a completely different position. On my Twitter account, I tweeted that in terms of the number of doses administered per 100 persons, Canada is now one of the leaders, along with Germany, the United States and Great Britain. The situation has changed considerably. We were in a very good position with respect to access to vaccines as soon as they were approved by Health Canada. After only a few months, 35% of Canadians had received their initial vaccine, and this percentage is increasing daily.

I will now return to the 2020 fall economic statement.

As you can see, we have turned the corner. The statement was about what had happened in the spring and how we had got to where we were in the fall. It mentions the deployment of the Canadian Armed Forces in Ontario and Quebec to protect the health and lives of our seniors. It also discussed contributions from the Red Cross and the ongoing efforts of the Canadian Armed Forces.

During the first wave of the pandemic, public policy and economic action evolved.

When we look at the different measures that were put in place, from the Canada emergency response benefit to the Canada emergency wage subsidy to the Canada emergency business account, there was an evolution with the collaboration of opposition members. There was an evolution of emergency policies all designed to bend the curve to protect our frontline health care workers and to help people to stay at home and stay healthy while continuing to pay their employees, pay their rent, pay their mortgages, stay on top of their bills and put food on the table.

By the end of summer 2020, we were in a different place. I think we can all reflect back. MP Shanahan will recall—

Sorry to disturb you out of your stupor. I know sometimes I can drone on. MP Long is looking at me as though he's paying great attention. That's well appreciated, MP Long.

MP Shanahan will recall how we had planned a Quebec caucus trip to les Îles de la Madeleine. We were looking forward to working hard together to discuss what could be done as we emerged out of the first phase and pivoted, knowing that there was a second phase to come. History being what it was, we weren't able to meet, which was too bad. We are all looking at Quebec caucus members to go back to les Îles de la Madeleine and to be greeted by MP and Minister Diane Lebouthillier to consider next steps for now. I recall at that moment we were looking at going there just so that we could take stock, step back and assess what had just transpired and then look to the future.

At the time we weren't even 10 months into a mandate. The government was in exactly the same position. The government, along with governments across our country in our provinces and territories and municipalities, had confronted the urgent necessities of this pandemic and had put in place the bricks and mortar programs that could sustain families, businesses and workers. It was the moment to look forward to what would be next. What did we need to do to improve the supports? How did we need to invest more? What did we need to do to address revenue issues and expenditure issues? That's what the Speech from the Throne enabled.

Canadians in my riding of Pontiac demanded to know where we were going, and rightfully so.

As I see the fall economic statement, I think about the importance of enabling the presence of our Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland before this committee to discuss that continuum of how we were going to be pivoting from the first phase of the pandemic into the second phase. I think it would be entirely appropriate for her to bring us through that moment, if this committee sees fit to continue to look in the rear-view mirror and to continue to examine the past.

I would argue that my constituents would rather we focus on the future, but that's a separate matter. I will focus on the amendment at hand. You'll pardon my underscoring of the fact that my constituents would much rather we focus on the what's next of parliamentary procedure, as opposed to what was in our past.

I am looking now at, and would refer my esteemed colleagues to, the second and third charts of the fall economic statement, focusing on the one hand on real GDP and employment rate respectively. Note the distinct difference between real GDP without direct support measures on the one hand and with direct support measures on the other hand. It makes very clear, literally, in black and white, in a bar graph, what the measures implemented by our government enabled in terms of GDP preservation and employment preservation. The third chart indicates that without the direct support measures, unemployment would have reached nearly 20%. Those kinds of numbers are inconceivable for most Canadians.

Due to the direct support measures implemented during that spike in the spring of 2020, the unemployment rate was kept somewhere around 13% at its peak, as opposed to 19%. The Statistics Canada information is clear, but it's not just the Statistics Canada information. This is from the Department of Finance survey results from private sector economists. It is the norm with all Department of Finance efforts in the context of the economic statements and budgets to seek that external data input to ground-truth what is being published.

That's a significant indication to the Canadian public, being provided in a transparent way, of the importance of the support measures that have been implemented. They've prevented us from falling into a situation of nearly 20% unemployment and, rather, keeping us between 10% and 15% and then that unemployment rate to declined significantly. I might add, it was much faster than the vast majority of our OECD partners and our G7 partners. We were able to make sure that the employment rate was maintained.

That's important in a future-oriented perspective, because what was happening, particularly through the wage subsidy, was the maintenance of a connection between the employer and the employee. The effort was to incentivize the maintaining of employment to keep the employer-employee units strong so that there would be fewer pieces to pick up.

Of course, our finance minister is far more eloquent than I am. Who you have here before you is a mere member of Parliament from Pontiac stumbling through the fall economic statement as best I can. I know that our finance minister would do far greater justice to the plan for protection of jobs and protection of Canadians' employment and then the pivot into a plan for growth once the virus is under control and the economy is prepared to absorb it. The plan, as articulated in that full economic statement, is to deploy a three-year stimulus package to jump-start the economy.

That's exactly what has just happened this past spring. I'm just pointing out a thread that everyone knows and sees as being entirely obvious. Everything seems obvious in hindsight, and of course we're engaged here in an exercise in hindsight. The finance minister indicated abundantly clearly that this is where where we were heading. We are heading towards consistent supports on rent subsidies with wage subsidies to our municipalities and to our provinces, procuring billions and billions of dollars of vaccines at federal expense to distribute to the provinces so they can manage their own prioritization processes of vaccinating so many millions of Canadians, which is turning into the great success of 2021.

That generation of Canadians will look back on the achievement and say, “Wow, I was there. I remember that moment. I remember how it felt so dark at Christmas at how frustrating it was to be separated from family. I remember being challenged in my mental health through the winter of 2021; it was dark.” It wasn't as cold as some of the winters; it was still cold, but not as cold. It was a tough start to 2021, and then all of a sudden the vaccines, which had been procured so carefully by Minister Anand and her Department of Public Works, started coming online as planned. There were variations week by week here and there, but month after month the numbers came in, far greater quantities, far larger amounts, because the contracts were well negotiated and because the portfolio was diversified. We didn't pick just one winner; we bet on all of the horses. Now those horses are racing into the stables, and we are able to work with our provincial partners to accelerate the pace.

I think what we're going to see in years to come is that we're going to say that was the moment we remember being able to say, “Kids, you can go to a movie.” We're just looking forward to that moment. We're going to be able to have that backyard barbecue. We're going to go and enjoy a spaghetti dinner with our community. We're going to visit the seniors residence. These are all the things that are going to be made possible through the massive injection of so many doses of vaccines to Canadians.

All of it relates right back to that important and necessary decision to prorogue, to reconvene Parliament under the banner of a Speech from the Throne that could clearly indicate to Canadians that this is the path; here is where we're going, and to bring forward a fall economic statement that put the fiscal meat on the bones of that plan.

I'd like to end by thanking my colleagues for being willing once again to consider assessing the relevance of a discussion about prorogation. We could even discuss the relevance of prorogation, given that we all want to focus our efforts on things that really matter.

I hope that the right decisions will be made, because that would enable the committee to have useful discussions.

I'm very grateful for this opportunity to discuss things with you today.

I will conclude with that. I greatly appreciate the time that I've been afforded by my esteemed colleagues.