Madam Speaker, I just want to take a moment, as my colleague from Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry just did, to thank my friend and colleague, the member for Calgary Nose Hill for drafting this motion.
In just a very short time, she shone a giant spotlight on how ill-prepared the Liberal government originally was to deal with the pandemic. Now, the member for Calgary Nose Hill confirms what many of us have suspected all along, that the Minister of Health had no plan for the second wave.
Right now there are thousands of Canadians waiting in lines to get a COVID-19 test. In fact, I and my Manitoba colleagues wrote a letter to the health minister to let her know how disappointed we were that even though the government had authorized rapid tests, Manitoba could not access them, because of her government.
In some cases, people have been standing in line for hours, hoping they will get tested. Some might get their results tomorrow, while many will have to wait days to find out the results. Right now, we have an entire airline industry on the ropes, and the livelihoods of its employees are threatened as well. Just yesterday many of them were outside of Parliament, protesting this very Liberal government.
While the Liberals tell us that they have a plan, they should try telling that to these airline employees who do not know if they are going to have a job to return to, or they should try telling that to those who have not seen their loved ones in months because the Liberals have yet to find a way to reunite them while keeping Canadians safe.
I want those watching this right now to know why we are debating this motion. As a member of the health committee, I have now sat through two meetings, approximately four hours, of the Liberal MPs filibustering and talking out the clock. Why are these Liberal MPs filibustering? To begin with, those pesky opposition MPs just want access to information and documents that Canadians are asking for.
The motion we are debating here today is almost identical to the motion we have been trying to vote on at the health committee, but because the Liberal MPs refuse to have a vote in our committee, we are using an opposition day to advance this cause.
What documents do we want that the health minister and the Liberal MPs do not want us to see? Let us start with the record of communications between the government and the World Health Organization. What did the government know, and when did it know it? Many Canadians might be interested to know that we, as opposition MPs, have no idea what internal information was shared by the World Health Organization with the Government of Canada.
Given the serious concerns that are being raised by China's influence over the World Health Organization, Canadians deserve to know if the minister had concerns or doubted the early information she was getting. We have no idea what the World Health Organization was telling the Minister of Health. We have no idea if the Minister of Health questioned that information. We have no idea if the Minister of Health took decisive action to check on Canada's supply of PPE or other necessary equipment.
What we do know is that even after outbreaks in China and multiple other countries, the Minister of Health kept telling the House that the risk was low. I want to know what information she had at that time that led her to that conclusion.
In preparation for this debate, I reviewed the February 3 health committee meeting minutes, specifically on Canada's preparation for COVID-19. The president of the Health Agency of Canada said:
Canada's public health system is well-equipped to contain cases coming from abroad and their potential for spreading within Canada.
We now know that that was not true. We did not have enough PPE. We had people coming into the country without any extra level of screening, other than being asked if they had visited Hubei province.
The president of the Health Agency of Canada went on to say:
The system is working as it should to protect Canadians against this novel coronavirus, and the overall risk to Canadians in Canada remains low.
I wish that was true. I wish that our system had been ready for what descended upon us. At the time of this February 3 committee meeting, COVID-19 was already in 27 other countries. Thousands and thousands had already contracted the virus, and many had died.
I want to remind the House what action the Liberal government took at the time. As of February 3, only three airports in Canada had the CBSA agents asking passengers if they had visited Hubei province.
In seven other airports, passengers could self-report at an electronic kiosk if they visited Hubei province. I want to thank my Liberal colleague from Thunder Bay—Rainy River who was at that committee meeting and asked a great question about the screening process. He wanted to know if the CBSA was asking passengers if they had visited other provinces in China, other than Hubei, in order to be properly screened. He was told, no, the CBSA was only asking passengers if they had visited Hubei. That response boggles the mind.
It even bothered my colleague from Thunder Bay—Rainy River and he pushed back, saying, “My understanding is that there are two other provinces with almost 900 cases. There are a number of other provinces with over 500 cases. That's gone up pretty dramatically over the last couple of days, from when it was almost half that number.”
The next question he asked was this: “My understanding is that the United States is asking all people returning from China to voluntarily self-isolate for two weeks.... Has Canada contemplated doing the same thing, asking all people returning from China to self-isolate for two weeks?” Remember, that was February 3. What a great question. Sadly the answer he received was that the government was only recommending people limit their contact with others if they had visited Hubei province.
I am starting to wonder whether, if the member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River was our health minister, we could have been far better prepared.
The other issue in our motion that I want to speak to is our efforts to get more information and how the government responded and is continuing to respond to the issue of purchasing COVID-19 test products.
As many have heard, we still do not have widespread access to rapid test kits. Just yesterday, the government announced it had gotten its first shipment, but we still do not have any idea where they are going. Now we have heard some conflicting words from the Minister of Health on rapid tests. For a government that just purchased 100,000 of them, why did the minister say, just a couple of weeks ago, “many jurisdictions that have used rapid tests in that way have seen a worsening of their outbreaks”? She went on to say that “around the world there are very high-profile examples of how rapid tests have actually added confusion and increased the risk of infection.”
These are not words from a pundit. They come from the one person in the country who is supposed to be in charge of the federal government's COVID-19 response. While the minister may think Canadians are not paying attention to what is said in this place, I can assure her they are. It is very disconcerting that, while the government is seemingly getting around to approving and purchasing rapid test kits after much pressure, the minister is sewing doubt about whether they can be trusted. That in itself is very troubling. I question whether the minister said those words because she did not like the questions posed to her from the member for Calgary Nose Hill, or if her officials told her to say that. Who knows? However, I want to get to the bottom of it.
In closing, I implore my colleagues to vote in favour of the motion. Let us review what steps have to be taken so that we can provide the best recommendations to the government moving forward, and the sooner the better. Canadians are counting on us.