Mr. Speaker, now that rapid tests have been ordered, my colleague from Calgary Nose Hill, the shadow minister for health, has in fact been the de facto minister of health because that should have been done months ago and was not until the opposition started pressuring. I would like to congratulate her on that.
The House of Commons did not sit for six months. The Prime Minister then prorogued Parliament. There has been no budget for almost two years. Liberals are suppressing questions at committee. What are we here to ask for today? The health committee would simply like to examine the biggest health crisis in our nation's history.
How shocking. We have reasonable questions about the health and well-being of Canadians.
They will not even let us speak about the most significant crisis our country has faced. They are saying that is going to involve printing a lot of documents.
My family has had a personal experience with this, and thankfully Rebecca and I have recovered. We received good advice from public health supports here in Ottawa. Our children were fortunate, through distancing, not to become infected. They had several tests and are now back at school.
We also experienced the uncertainty of the direction of the government, which has changed its mind several times on fundamental advice to the public. We were in line for hours, like Canadians across the country have been, because of the failure to follow through on the Prime Minister's statements about rapid testing and tracing in March. The government was slow to close the border, which meant we had more transmission and community-spread cases. We have to learn our lesson.
My family and I waited in line for a long time to get tested. We dealt with the stress of getting contradictory information and we experienced first-hand the health effects of COVID-19. Fortunately, we made a quick recovery. We were lucky.
However, I am thinking of the thousands of Canadians who have lost a loved one, and of all those who would still be with us if we had been better prepared. Those families are what motivates me to hold the government to account, and small business owners who are struggling are what encourages me to find better solutions.
As I have said, Parliament did not sit through the worst of the pandemic, but Parliament is sitting now and has a responsibility to ensure that Canada learns the lessons from the first wave of the pandemic. We are in a second wave in some parts of the province, and it is clear the government has not learned. We are simply asking that the health committee of Parliament, Canadians of all party stripes, be able to examine this to make sure Canada strives to be the best in its response, not a laggard.
As I said, the government seems to take comfort in comparing itself to our friends from the south and comparing to the worst response. We should be comparing to the best. That is what I strive for in my life. It is what I know my colleagues do. The government has been out of touch, late, slow and confused in every single aspect of the response. That is why it does not want to answer questions.
Just like yesterday, when the Liberals did not want to answer questions on sending millions of dollars to insiders and friends of the Prime Minister and an elite few in the Liberal Party, now they do not want to answer questions about the well-being of Canadians. That should concern Canadians. That should concern the health minister, whose duty it is to report to Parliament and be held to account. Only the arrogance of the Liberals would lead them to think they are beyond questioning, and that we could not possibly do anything better because the Liberal Party is in charge. It is that entitlement and arrogance Canadians are tiring of.
During my time in the Canadian Armed Forces, we had something called lessons learned: the after-action report. In the private sector, there is process improvement. There are even systems like Six Sigma and others. Every serious organization in the world learns from experience and makes sure to get it better next time. In the military, it is literally life or death. In a pandemic, it is life or death too.
That is the reason for today's debate. We have to learn from the first wave of this pandemic. That is why we will continue to ask reasonable questions for the health and well-being of Canadians. That is our role.
This will be a good review for the health minister. I am glad she is here. In January, five departments of the federal government were aware of the risks of the pandemic: The Canadian Armed Forces, Foreign Affairs, Public Works, the Privy Council and the Prime Minister's Office were all aware of the risks. They did nothing. We would have been even better prepared if, the year before, the Liberals had not killed the intelligence warning system. The Global Public Health Intelligence Network was a world leader until they stopped it and substituted data from China for data from our experts. We were ill prepared when it hit. When the first warnings came in, the Liberals ignored them. In fact, they were warned, and I know from talking to suppliers that China was hoarding PPE in late January and early February.
What did the government do? It sent PPE to China, which was probably the most boneheaded decision in history of a government during a pandemic.
Then the Liberals were late on the border, as I said this morning in my press conference. Since the Middle Ages, closing the border has been used to stop the spread of pandemics. The minister should read some history. When there is uncertainty about transmission, the government should put the public health of Canadians first instead of tripping along, relying on friends from Beijing. The minister said there was no person-to-person spread, no risk of closing the border and, on some occasions, accused reporters and opposition parliamentarians of being intolerant for even asking those questions. Again, it was the arrogance of the government.
We all remember the flip-flopping on mask usage. Many people were asking about mask usage in Europe. Facebook told them that they should change their minds on mask usage. People were sharing information and best practices that the government was not providing them.
Then, of course, there are the provinces. They were the front lines. Because we were two months late with the border, the community spread in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver largely originated on flights from China, Iran and Italy. The slow movement by the federal government led to more community spread. That same slow movement on rapid tests, until my friend from Calgary Nose Hill started pushing, has our airports less equipped than most of our OECD allies'. Italy has rapid tests in some of its airports. I would like to see the government not striving for the bottom, but striving for the best when it comes to the health and well-being of Canadians. That is what an opposition does: It holds the government to account, asks questions and demands a better response.
This motion will look at the adequacy of the current levels of federal health transfers to the provinces. It is not right that the federal government is not helping the provinces more in the middle of a pandemic.
The committee will also have to look at the COVID Alert app to ensure that the messages are being sent in both official languages. That is what Quebeckers, Canadians and francophone communities expect from coast to coast to coast.
I would like to thank my colleague from Calgary Nose Hill for making the government strive to be better and not be satisfied with bad results in comparison to the worst student in the class. Let us strive to be the best. That is what we all tell our children, and the Liberals do not even want us to ask questions.
Once again, I am asking Canadians. The Prime Minister, who admitted he did not consult Dr. Tam before threatening an election, is willing to be cavalier with the health of Canadians for his own political skin. We, as parliamentarians, are sent to Ottawa by our constituencies to ask questions. The modest proposal we have today is that the health committee analyze our response to the biggest health crisis in our country. Is that so unreasonable?
I am proud of this team, the government in waiting, that is going to push for better. Better is always possible, and we will make sure of that today.