Mr. Chair, let me remind Canadians and everyone else who is watching us that two months ago, or almost three months ago now, we were at the beginning of the omicron wave. We had just discovered it and scientists around the world were alerting us to this new variant that is highly transmissible. There was a lot of other information that was still missing about omicron and the impact it would have on public health.
I remember Conservative colleagues in the House of Commons demanding stricter border measures to manage the arrival of omicron to Canada, and what did we do then? We imposed additional strict measures not purely to protect the health and safety of Canadians and to slow down the importation of omicron, but to also advise Canadians about the risk associated with travelling internationally when this new variant was spreading everywhere and carrying a lot of unpredictability with it.