Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Canadians are very concerned about this. I've heard a lot from people calling my constituency office, and from people I know in the community who are very disturbed about the poor rollout of this program, which I think could be a good one. Conservatives have said all along, since the very beginning of the pandemic, that we need to look at our borders to make sure travellers coming into Canada are not bringing the COVID-19 virus in with them.
I want to relate a story from my riding. My first exposure to the virus—we weren't even calling it COVID-19 at the time—was in January of 2020, six weeks before the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic. There was a scheduled Chinese New Year event here in my riding that I was going to attend. It was cancelled because people from the Chinese community here in my riding of Langley—Aldergrove, which is quite a significant community, said, “There's something going on in China and we want to stop that, so we're going to cancel this meeting because we're just not quite sure what it is.”
This has been with us for 13 months, and the Liberal government has been extremely slow in securing our borders. Canadians want to know that the government is doing whatever it needs to do to keep them safe and healthy. Whereas this program of the hotel quarantines would generally have our support, it has to be done properly, and it's becoming abundantly clear that the developing of the program and rolling it out have been very poor and very inadequate.
Is it a matter of public safety? Well, it's a matter of public safety and health, of course, but what we're talking about now and what this motion is about is responding to two cases of sexual assault. That needs to be looked at. That is the role of this committee. I fully support this committee's looking into these incidents. That's not to look at them specifically, as was suggested by one of the earlier speakers. We're not going to be investigating cases of sexual assault specifically, but the establishment of the program. Were officers properly trained? Were they vetted? What's it going to look like going forward? Can the program be fixed in short order, or does it have to be dismantled and rebuilt?
These are the things we're going to be looking at in accordance with the motion. I think the motion is definitely in order, and it is certainly for this committee to investigate.
Thank you.