Madam Speaker, before I begin, I would like to let the House know I will be splitting my time with my colleague, the member for Souris—Moose Mountain.
Today I rise in this place to speak on a topic of great importance, not only to my constituents but in fact to all Canadians, as we seek to navigate a way forward as we combat and eventually tackle COVID-19 and its impacts in Canada.
We are nearing eight months now of this enduring pandemic, with no immediate end in sight. As we enter what some are calling a second wave, Canadians should be rightfully expecting the Liberal government to have been better prepared this time around. Sadly, if the Liberals' actions at the Standing Committee on Health are any indication, the government is simply not prepared to present and defend a plan that will give Canadians the tools to quickly detect and prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Canadians need these tools now to ensure a second full-scale shutdown of our economy does not occur. Too many have made great personal sacrifices to get to where we are today, yet still thousands of lives have been lost, thousands more fall ill by the day and millions find themselves out of work and are losing hope the jobs they once had will still be there whenever this pandemic is finally conquered.
I come from a tourism community, where 40,000 people work in the sector. There are over 16,000 hotel rooms in my riding alone that traditionally accommodate 14 million visitors to our community. Prior to this pandemic, these visitors would generate $2.4 billion in receipts per year. That is quite a significant economic impact.
COVID-19 hit the travel and tourism sector hard. It hit us first, it hit us hardest and we will take the longest to recover. Niagara is a microcosm of the Canadian travel and tourism sector. Overall, this segment of our national economy employs almost one in 10 Canadians, generating over $102 billion. Sadly, we still wait not only for an economic plan but a proper response in terms of our health planning so we can begin to move forward to help achieve the economic recovery that is badly needed in this country.
When dealing with this pandemic, vigilance in providing for the health and safety of Canadians must always be our top priority. However, where is the vision and way forward to lead us out of this pandemic and back to a somewhat normal lifestyle? Where is that vision? Where is that plan?
The recent Speech from the Throne was 32 pages in length, contained almost 7,000 words and yet only mentioned the word “tourism” once. How many more sacrifices can Canadians be told to make by the Liberal government as it continues forward without any plans for a recovery? Canadians are suffering and the government needs to do more. Doing more does not always mean giving out more money or adding more blanket restrictions or limiting more freedoms and civil liberties of Canadians. Sometimes doing more means finding the best innovative solutions quickly to fix some of the root causes of the issue. That issue is COVID-19.
Again, the health and safety of Canadians will always be paramount, but moving forward to address the economic pain brought about by this pandemic need not be mutually exclusively concepts. As we moved to immediately address COVID-19, the Liberal government implemented policies that, while needed at the time, brought about tremendous pain to the Canadian economy and the millions of Canadians it employs. These were measures such as the Canada-U.S. border closure, travel bans prohibiting foreign nationals from entering Canada, 14-day mandatory quarantine restrictions and federal government advisories warning Canadians to avoid all air travel, even within Canada.
Under these restrictions, our travel and tourism industry has been devastated. Nearly eight months into this pandemic, the consequences of these restrictions are starting to be exposed. Last week's announcement from WestJet to cancel many key routes to eastern Canada may just be the beginning of more painful changes coming to the travel and tourism industry in our country, but it does not have to be this way.
Other advanced countries like the United Kingdom and those of the European Union are moving forward using science-based approaches and implementing viable alternatives to blanket prohibitions and quarantines without compromising safety. We are not seeing this here in Canada from our federal government. We have not seen a sector-specific tourism recovery plan from the Liberal government, something our Conservation opposition has been asking for from the start.
There is no reason Canada cannot be a leader in the COVID-19 response and recovery, just as these countries have. The longer this pandemic drags on, the more we are seeing the Liberal government in policy paralysis.
Although the policy environment is quickly changing and extremely dynamic, the Trudeau Liberals fail to keep up, consult, adapt and change, and only do so when pressed by the opposition. This is even more frustrating to see when we know businesses and industries are desperately trying to forge ahead with their own solutions in the interests of their own survival.
For example, a number of aviation and academic stakeholders have been spearheading a rapid-testing pilot project at Pearson International Airport in Toronto since early September. After about 23,000 COVID-19 test samples from incoming travellers, 99% returned negative. Their success rate is truly encouraging and an initiative like this offers a beacon of hope for the survival and future return of travel and tourism in a dark time. Unfortunately, Health Canada and the minister had to be brought into that process begrudgingly to learn more about the encouraging results coming from industry-led research on rapid testing. We absolutely need to know why.
As the member of Parliament for Niagara Falls and as a special adviser to the leader on tourism recovery, I hear many stakeholders in the travel and tourism industries pushing for more support from the federal government in the areas of advancing vaccine development and rapid testing.
Earlier today, news broke that the federal government is going to allow a rapid-testing pilot project in Alberta as a means to replace the mandatory 14-day quarantine measures currently in place. Despite this encouraging lead, no timelines have been announced yet.
Travel and tourism stakeholders have been pushing for rapid testing advancement for months with a strong sense of urgency, a sense that is reflective of the opportunity costs and the real cost being incurred every day by businesses both large and small. Many small business owners have been forced to close, either temporarily or permanently. Larger businesses are inching toward being forced to make difficult decisions, such as restructuring, taking on more debt, slashing services or deferring capital improvements. The speed at which government acts on these files can literally determine whether a business keeps its doors open or closes them forever.
Considering all this, it is only appropriate that my colleague from Calgary Nose Hill, who serves as our Conservative shadow minister for health, has introduced this comprehensive opposition day motion. Her motion will compel the Standing Committee on Health to undertake a study on the emergency situation facing Canadians in light of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study is needed and her motion has my full support.
I find it astonishing that it takes the official opposition to propose such an obvious study. One would think the government would have been eager to launch such a study itself far earlier in the pandemic, unless, of course, they are concerned such a study could expose and highlight their abject failures of mismanaging Canada's pandemic response. The longer we are in an emergency crisis, the more urgent and important it is to undertake this study so we can ensure the federal government is developing science-based policies that are helpful and adaptive to our ever-changing circumstances.
Speaking of which, many stakeholders from the travel and tourism industry are extremely supportive of rapid testing. They hold high hopes that a proven method will soon reduce the days needed to quarantine or possibly eliminate quarantine all together some day in the future. Would it not be nice if our federal government could demonstrate confidence in a science-based approach for implementing viable alternatives to blanket prohibitions and quarantines without compromising safety?
Throughout this pandemic, the Liberal government has advocated for a science-based approach to tackling the health issues brought about by COVID-19. Then when industry takes leadership to launch its own initiative, the federal government has to be brought along all while maintaining restrictions that are devastating to travel and tourism. When science can benefit industry and support the health and safety of Canadians, the Trudeau Liberals choose to ignore it. We need to know why and this study will help us understand.