Debates of Dec. 1st, 2020

Opposition Motion—Support for Health Care Workers

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Madam Speaker, we agree that the government needs to increase transfers to support health workers. I would like to give a huge shout-out to all people on the front line putting their lives at risk every day, regardless of this crisis. Certainly, throughout this crisis they have been there for each and every one of us.

One thing we have talked a lot about is the need to invest more in long-term care and set national standards, but I want to talk about home care workers. They do not seem to be part of this conversation. I was meeting with home care workers yesterday. Obviously, their goal is to keep people out of long-term care, but they are in the middle of a staffing crisis. They would like to see more money transferred to the provinces, with federal oversight and guidelines.

Does my colleague agree that home care workers need better support, better guidelines and better oversight through a long-term agreement moving forward, and that home care workers play an important role in our health care system?

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Madam Speaker, home care workers are more than essential. They are on the front lines, and they make it possible for seniors to stay in their own homes, as I said in my speech.

Some seniors' groups in Quebec are well aware that having home care workers support them at home depends on transfers to Quebec and the provinces. They do not want standards. As I made clear, standards cannot take care of people at home.

However, a worker who is being paid a decent wage and has the necessary equipment will be able to help seniors who want to live in their own home. That is what seniors want.

[Paul Manly, Green, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Madam Speaker, I want to say I support this motion. I think our health care workers have been doing extraordinary work under stressful situations and it is about time the government got back to providing proper transfers for health care.

I agree with the hon. member that we should be looking at demographics with respect to these health transfers. In my region, we have a large number of seniors. People come to Vancouver Island to retire.

One thing not mentioned is infrastructure. We have aging health care infrastructure in Canada. It is stressful for workers to work in older buildings that do not meet the requirements of modern health care. I wonder if the member agrees the government should be putting money back into infrastructure for our health care system and hospitals. It abandoned funding for health care infrastructure. Should the federal government be putting money into health care infrastructure again?

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Madam Speaker, I have worked with lots of seniors' groups, and I have worked on the issue of elder abuse as well as proper treatment. Proper treatment means getting seniors out of hospitals.

The reason there were so many problems during the COVID-19 crisis is that we clustered seniors in long-term care homes instead of investing in decentralizing hospitals to get them out of there. I do not think we should be investing in concrete. We should be investing in people.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Madam Speaker, my two colleagues claim to be shocked that the Red Cross and the army stepped in to help long-term care facilities, but we Quebeckers pay these people too.

The army carries out missions elsewhere in the world, so I do not see why it should not step in domestically when we are fighting a pandemic that the government was unable to protect us from. It did not take the necessary precautions in order for us to have the equipment we needed to look after our seniors.

Beyond that, does my colleague not believe that we only had to call in the army because, as stated in the army's own report, 25 years of accumulated budget cuts left us with a labour shortage that, in turn, made it necessary for workers and orderlies to work in several different long-term care centres, which only increased cross-contamination?

Instead of being shocked and saying there should be national standards, would she not agree that that was the true source of the problem?

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Disrupting the enemy's supply line is a time-honoured military strategy; that way, when they are on their knees, we can really let them have it.

Personally, I find it insulting to think of seniors in terms of areas of jurisdiction. Nobody in the Quebec National Assembly, the Bloc Québécois or Quebec's seniors groups thinks that way.

[Alain Therrien, Bloc, La Prairie, QC]

Madam Speaker, before I begin, I would like to highlight the extraordinary work of our health care workers.

I have no doubt that everybody here has had the experience of seeing a loved one in the hospital, or of being hospitalized themselves. They must have noticed how hard these people work. I think it is one of the only situations in life where waiting is acceptable.

I have had to wait for a nurse because she was overworked. She was balancing so many things at the same time. It was clear that she was not at fault; she simply had too much on her plate. What is also clear is that these people work hard and they are passionate about what they do; they are not in it for the money, but to heal people. It is not a job for them, it is a calling, and this calling manifests in everyday life as well, as they always seem to want to help and support the people around them.

Unfortunately, this ended up working against them. As the federal government slowly but surely withdrew from health care funding, the pressure on them only grew. If the health network still exists today, even in the middle of a pandemic, it is thanks to these people, who always go above and beyond.

What do they get in return? They get burnout, they suffer workplace accidents and they are forced to work extra shifts. These people are paying an increasingly higher price for the consequences of the underfunding of health care. That is what people need to realize. They deserve a lot of credit.

I say this because I know a thing or two about it. My mother was in a long-term care facility and she often went to the hospital. I looked at those people with admiration. I commend them today, those who are still there, those who are surviving this extra work from the pandemic and are holding their own. Some end up getting sick. Some have even passed away, unfortunately, in the service of their patients.

Let's think about it. It is incredible. We owe them so much. I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the fantastic job they are doing. We are lucky to have them. This pandemic has been going on for eight months and they are still there. They are still on the front lines to help our people. We could never forget them, and it is for them that we, the Bloc Québécois members, are doing this work here today. I hope that the other parties will understand what we need to do to increase the amount of money they are getting for resources. Every time I went to the hospital to talk to these people, I never heard anyone say that the problem is the health standards, or that these workers want the federal government to impose standards or still that they want standards from someone who knows nothing about health. I never heard those things. What workers are telling us is that they need resources, they need help, they are short-staffed. For that, they need money.

The other side is to blame for the mess our health care funding is now in.They are responsible. Since 1867, the Constitution that they defend tooth and nail has clearly stated that health is a provincial and Quebec jurisdiction. It is right there in black and white. The Constitution also states that the federal government could help Quebec fund this sector, since Quebec does not have enough sources of funding. The federal government needs to provide transfers without conditions. That has been in the Constitution they love so much since 1867.

In 1984, 40% of health care was funded by the federal government. In the 1990s, Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin decided to tackle the deficit. What did they do?

People must think that these men were so smart to be able to eliminate the deficit. All they did was offload that deficit onto the provinces. They slashed funding to the provinces. They decided to cut spending and let the provinces figure out how to provide services. That is what happened, and by 2004, the 40% funding we were getting in 1984 had dropped to 18%, a measly 18 cents on the dollar. The government is not even embarrassed about that fact. They even find it amusing. At some point, Paul Martin felt guilty. The poor man wondered if they had maybe gone too far and should increase the transfers to Quebec and the provinces. They instituted a 6% increase in an attempt to raise the 18%.

This lasted until the third Harper government. Stephen Harper and the Conservatives said that 6% was too much. From that time on, it was 3%. The Conservatives were the first to put on the brakes. The mathematics are simple and the numbers say it all. We were at 25% and the increase was starting to be interesting. Then the Conservatives said they would not give 6% but only 3%. What did the Liberals do? They thought it was a good idea, but only because they do not know how to add. They believed it was a good idea because it was going to cost them less. They did not care what impact it might have on the health care system.

Let me give them have a basic mathematics lesson, because I already hear them talking. In 2014, the Thomson report said that to maintain health care services at the same level, a 5.2% increase was necessary because of inflation, technological improvements as well as the aging and growth of the population. The percentage is 5.2%. Even my golden retriever understands that when they give us 3% and the cost increase is 5.2%, they do not pay their share and someone else has to pay. Do members see my point?

That is what is happening right now. We were getting 25%. Then it went down to 22% and it continues to drop. The Liberals think that 3% is a good idea, and it is. It is a great idea. The problem is that the government keeps making cuts to these transfers. The underfunding of health care is getting worse and it is becoming a chronic problem.

We try to explain that to the Liberals, but they do not understand. We are about to get out the puppets and crayons to explain to them how this works. I swear we are about to resort to that.

Suddenly, the pandemic strikes and the Liberals start throwing money around. The Prime Minister says that the government is going to help people. The Liberals move quickly and spend some $300 billion. Because this is a health crisis, we thought that, at some point, the government would provide funding for health care given that people are ending up in the hospital and dying.

Madam Speaker, for every 100 dollars spent during the pandemic, do you know how much was spent on health care? That would be 15 cents. I did not say 15 dollars, which would not have been enough either. I said 15 cents. It does not make sense. We are in a health crisis and the Liberals are spending 15 cents on health care for every 100 dollars. Plus, they think that is good. We have to rise in the House to table a motion and tell them to wake up, because they do not realize what they are doing to the health care system.

They say the Bloc Québécois is looking for a fight. That is not true. The governments of Quebec and the other provinces are saying that the funding is inadequate and that there is an urgent need to increase transfers to the provinces. The Bloc Québécois is not the only one saying this; so are all the Canadian provinces and Quebec. They have even put a figure on their request. They did not ask for 50%, because the Liberals would call Scrooge a spendthrift. They asked for 35%, thinking they could make do with that. Accordingly, they requested $28 billion from this government for health care, which is logical and justifiable.

Quebec spends 50% of its budget caring for people. I did say 50%. Moreover, that figure keeps going up, because the members opposite are not putting in their fair share year after year. That is where we are. We are up against a wall. This government will have to come to grips with it eventually, because we have people to care for, sick to heal and deaths to avoid. That is the Bloc Québécois's work today.

By saluting the medical workers who help us get through this pandemic, we are asking the government to help them to help us. It is the compassionate thing to do. That is all we are asking for. The evidence is clear. It is time for the Liberals to do their part.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, I think it is looking at everyone stepping up and doing their share, there is no doubt about that. When we look at the federal dollars, for example, I suspect we would find for every $10 being spent at least $8 is coming from Ottawa in terms of fighting the pandemic. The best examples of that would be the wage subsidy program and the CERB program. There is a significant suite of programs that were provided from Ottawa.

On top of that, there were also additional hundreds of millions of dollars. The member says 15¢ per Canadian. I do not know the exact dollar, but it is going into additional billions of dollars that went into health care. Does the member believe that the provinces also need to participate more extensively, or does he believe 80:20 is an appropriate level of support?

[Alain Therrien, Bloc, La Prairie, QC]

The Liberals spent $500 million on health care out of $300 billion of total spending. That is 15¢ out of $100.

My colleague says that 80% of the money came from the federal government. Of course it dit; the federal government has the most money. It holds the purse strings. There is a lot of Quebeckers' and Canadians' money in that purse, but the services that the federal government has to offer are more limited compared to the provinces and Quebec.

The provinces and Quebec have also been squeezed by the public debt crisis caused by the federal government in the 1990s which left them with very little financial wiggle room. That is what we call the fiscal imbalance. Yves Séguin, a loyal Liberal federalist, explained that Ottawa had all the money but Quebec had all the responsibilities. Everybody understands that.

Everybody thinks the fiscal imbalance started in 2003, but it dates back to 1867. When the Fathers of Confederation gave birth to the Canadian Constitution, they created the fiscal imbalance. Anyway, a bunch of fathers giving birth to something was hardly going to work.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Speaker, when I was a young dad and my kids were younger, they often asked me for money. I asked them for accountability. In other words, if I gave them $1, I wanted them to tell me what they planned to buy and to bring back the change. They did not come back with much change, but my kids had that responsibility around money, and they bought the candy they wanted because they knew what they liked.

As we saw in yesterday's economic statement, the federal government is behaving a little like a grandpa or a dad. It said, “Funding will be contingent on a detailed spending plan, allocated on an equal per capita basis and conditional...”.

I would like my colleague to tell me if he likes the paternalistic approach toward all Canadians that we saw in the Minister of Finance's economic statement.

[Alain Therrien, Bloc, La Prairie, QC]

Madam Speaker, I cannot tell you that I thank my colleague for his question.

It makes no sense. They know nothing about health care, and that is fine. They are not bad people; it just is not their responsibility. Quebec and the provinces are the ones that understand. Under the Constitution Act, 1867, the provinces are responsible for health care.

The Constitution states that the federal government, which has fewer responsibilities, must give Quebec and the provinces money so they can discharge their responsibilities.

We do not need any lectures from armchair quarterbacks. The Liberals need to take taxpayers' money and give it to those who are providing these health care services. Quebeckers and Canadians contribute this money and they are in need of care.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Madam Speaker, of course, I would like to join all my Bloc colleagues in thanking the health care workers in my riding as well who have done such an amazing job, in particular in the long-term care homes.

I also join them in suggesting that federal transfers should be increased. The NDP has been calling for that for a long time.

I want to stress again that I thank the members of the Canadian Forces for the work they did in Quebec, Ontario and are now doing in Manitoba.

In the defence committee when we were studying the response from the Canadian military, we had an interesting comment from the former Parti Québécois minister of health, Réjean Hébert. He said that he had no problem with national standards being established for long-term care, because those standards would be the same for all Canadians, that provincial boundaries would not really make any difference and that there were not really significant cultural differences there. He thought that establishing national standards, if that would help flow more funds to Quebec, would be a very good idea.

[Alain Therrien, Bloc, La Prairie, QC]

Madam Speaker, after the Canadian Armed Forces finished their work in Quebec, they produced a report.

By the way, I salute the Canadian Armed Forces, and we thank them for the work they did. However, let us not forget that Quebeckers pay their share for the military.

That report revealed that the problem was not with standards but with a lack of resources. The military were able to see that on the ground in no time. The problem is not with the standards. It is simply a lack of resources. I do see why we would still debate that.

I worked with Réjean Hébert from 2012 to 2014. Oddly enough, he did not say the same thing at all when he was Minister of Health. He was fiercely against the federal government. His face would turn bright red, Liberal red, I might call it. He was so furious when he talked about that—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Alexandra Mendes]

Order. It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Mégantic—L'Érable, Agriculture and Agri-Food; the hon. member for Edmonton Strathcona, Official Languages; the hon. member for Bow River, Natural Resources.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Mégantic—L'Érable.

I would like to thank my Bloc Québécois colleagues for moving this motion, which we will be supporting. We are in favour of increasing health transfers.

However, I would like to speak about the other pandemic. Its symptoms include drug overdoses, depression and even suicide. According to our Public Health Agency 's recent report, the grim story is that, in B.C., paramedics saw 2,700 calls, which is a 700-call increase in people asking for help to save the life of someone who was overdosing on opioids. That is 700 more people yelling into the phone at an operator asking for an ambulance to save the life of a dying person. It is not just B.C.; in Alberta and Ontario, there are 50% increases in opioid deaths.

Statistics Canada reports that the number of Canadians reporting good public health dropped from 68% to 48% in just the last two years.

Calls to one suicide prevention line tripled, prompting one Conservative MP to call for all of the hotlines to be merged into one to serve all of the desperate people seeking help during these desperate times. What is behind all of this misery? Part of the answer is worklessness. Through no fault of their own and because of the pandemic lockdown, nine million Canadians were forced out of their work and rightly received CERB benefits. Replacing their incomes, while necessary, does not replace their work.

Allow me to quote the public health officer, who said, “Statistics Canada found lower life satisfaction among unemployed Canadians and noted that this relationship is about more than just money... This is echoed by systematic reviews exploring unemployment and mental health, unemployment and health, and unemployment and mortality risk.”

The National Bureau of Economic Research found that a 1% increase in unemployment leads to a 3.6% increase in opioid deaths. The University of Calgary found that a 1% unemployment increase led to a 2% increase across Canada in suicide rates. In other words, worklessness is literally lethal.

Researchers looked at 310 men laid off from a ball-bearing manufacturing plant in the early 1980s and found that two years after the layoffs, those who still did not have jobs reported higher rates of mental health, hospital visits, medication requirements and other health problems. Two years later, those people were suffering more than their compatriots who had found jobs.

If worklessness had a warning label, it would read like this: “Unemployment raises the chance by about a third that a man will die in the next decade,” to quote the former editor of the British Medical Journal, Dr. Richard Smith. “And for those in middle age — with the biggest commitments — the chance doubles. The men are most likely to die from suicide, cancer, and accidents and violence.”

One study by Dr. Diette in the United States found that those people who remained out of jobs for long periods of time, even when they had no history whatsoever of mental health problems, were 125% more likely to experience mental distress after that unemployment, and it is not just about money. Harvard professor Edward Glaeser found that the mental health impact of worklessness was 10 times higher than the mental health impact of losing $25,000 in annual income. This goes to the core of who we are as human beings: the necessity to work, to put our brains and bodies to use for other people.

To quote the Dalai Lama and Arthur Brooks in an essay titled “Behind Our Anxiety, the Fear of Being Unneeded”, they wrote:

Virtually all the world’s major religions teach that diligent work in the service of others is our highest nature and thus lies at the center of a happy life.

Martin Luther King called it “the dignity of labor”.

I am the captain of my destiny. That is the meaning of work. It is self-agency. It is mastering one's world, rather than having the world master one. That is why I rise today to bring the House's attention to the urgent need to get the 600,000 people who are still out of work since COVID back into jobs. What does that mean? It means ending the war on work.

We have, in this country, a system with clawbacks and taxes that can rob a single mother of up to 80¢ on the next dollar she earns. This system punishes people for putting their hands and their heads to work in a job to earn a bit more and to try to get ahead. We must fix that tax system to make work pay for everyone. We must remove the regulatory and taxation obstacles that make it difficult, and sometimes impossible, for our first nations communities to bring business, develop resources and give their young population the opportunity to make maximum contributions.

We must, once again, unleash the power of our resource sector.

Let us think of the number of people who have lost hope across the formerly bustling rural communities in western Canada, where work is part of not just making a living but making a life, where people always took pride in getting out of bed and producing. How many of them lost hope? How many of them took their own lives since the government decided to try to phase them out of existence? Why not unleash the power of that sector to lift people out of poverty and give them, once again, the dignity of work that they deserve and so desperately want?

Why not make Canada the fastest place in the world to get a permit to build a factory or a warehouse and to open a mine or a shopping centre, so that those places can be filled with workers? Why not make this the easiest place on earth in which to create opportunities for people to get up every day and contribute?

To restore health and happiness, we must not just increase health care funding, though that is necessary. We must also honour work and workers, reform tax and benefits to reward effort, free businesses to pay more wages, let labour keep more of the bread it has earned and unleash the mighty force of 20 million Canadian workers, because a job brings dollars and dignity, a paycheque and a purpose, a burden and a blessing, a good living and a good life.

We have work to do.

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Diversity and Inclusion and Youth and to the Minister of Canadian Heritage (Sport)]

Madam Speaker, I rise today and am jubilant, actually, because I heard my colleague opposite, the member for Carleton, possibly do a full one-eighty on something that I have seen him stand in the House to advocate against.

I recognize that the member's message today was about jobs. However, the premise was focused on the opioid epidemic and this is something that I care deeply about. I also recognize that the previous government, the government in which he served as minister, staunchly opposed any evidence-based measures to support those suffering from opioid addictions.

I have a quote here. It is, “Should Bill C-2 become law, it will be extremely difficult to open a supervised injection site anywhere in Canada”. This was a bill that the member supported and defended. It was the Respect for Communities Act in 2015. An adviser to the previous Harper government, Benjamin Perrin, had a full about-face on this issue just recently, when he began advocating for safe injection sites across the country and a more compassionate way to deal with the opioid epidemic.

My question, while not specifically about jobs, is this. Has the member had a one-eighty, and does he now support safe injection sites in Canada and a more compassionate way of dealing with opioid addiction as a disease and not a crime?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, first of all, the member is absolutely right that opioid addiction is a disease and its victims are victims. They are not criminals, and they should be treated as victims. Our urgent priority should be recovery and lifting those people up.

I have worked with Harvest House here in Ottawa, which brings young men to an abandoned schoolhouse it has renovated into a beautiful in-patient centre, cleans them up, separates them from their troubles, gives them some skills and gets them earning money and back into their lives as good, honest law-abiding and drug-free citizens. There is hope for every single person to recover, and that must be our purpose. In order to have recovery, we have to remember that all the ingredients of human need must be in the mix. That includes work. That was the point of my speech here today. We need to bring back work. We need to end the war on work. We need to honour the dignity of work.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Madam Speaker, earlier in the debate, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons used the five national principles of the Canada Health Act to build his case for opposing this motion.

However, Quebec and the provinces respect the five principles of that act. The only one that does not respect one of those principles is the federal government, considering that, when the legislation was first enacted, 50% of health transfer funding came from Ottawa. Today, it is only 22%.

Does my hon. colleague agree that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons has reached new heights of hypocrisy on this matter?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, I believe so.

However, there is not much room at the top because many Liberal ministers are there already. It will be difficult to add another.

The Liberals always talk about compassion, but they are accumulating so much debt that, in future, our resources and our workers' incomes will have to pay the interest to bankers and to the rich who lent this money. There will not be much left for other priorities, including health.

That is one of the reasons why we are proposing to establish a plan to protect our finances and gradually eliminate the deficit without making the massive cuts that the Liberals made in he 1990s. It requires discipline and we must make plans right now for the good of our social programs and our taxpayers.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am glad to see the Conservatives finally supporting a significant increase in the health transfer investment for the shared costs with the provinces. One thing that really concerned me was when the member claimed CERB was the cause of opioid deaths in our country. In fact, we have heard public health officials, including medical health officers on Vancouver Island and the mayor of Vancouver, calling on the government to name the opioid overdose and fentanyl poisoning taking place a national public health emergency under the Emergencies Act to decriminalize personal possession and create a system to provide safe unadulterated access to substances for people who suffer from opioid addiction.

We agree with treatment, but does the member support those medical health officers to help stop the harm? All the medical professionals are asking for a real plan and—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Alexandra Mendes]

We will have a very brief answer from the hon. member for Carleton.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, of course what the member said is absolutely false. The CERB was necessary. We supported it from the very beginning.

What I would say at the same time is that people need incomes, while governments have shut them out of jobs. However, we need to make it our urgent priority to make it safe again for them to get back to work, because work is part of a healthy life. In the meantime, they will need income supports from the government.

As for the rest of the member's questions, we support recovery. We believe in recovery from addiction. We believe the urgent priority of governments should be to bring about the recovery of the people who are suffering from these addictions so that they can rebuild their lives and go on to a brighter future.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Speaker, first allow me to thank my colleague for his excellent speech and above all his interest in those who are currently experiencing mental health issues.

I thank the member for Cariboo—Prince George for presenting this great initiative to support and help those with mental health issues. I just want to say that I am in full support of it, and I hope that everyone in the House will support this initiative. It is very important for all of us.

To come back to the motion before us today, I want to thank my colleagues for allowing us to discuss the importance of health care workers. The motion is very clear, as follows:

That the House:

(a) acknowledge the extraordinary work of health care workers (including doctors, nurses and orderlies) during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly with seniors but also with the general public;

(b) recognize the courage and sacrifices required from them and their families in order to be on the front lines;

(c) highlight the work of Quebec and the provinces in responding to the health crisis and note the direct impact on their respective budgets; and

(d) call on the government to significantly and sustainably increase Canada health transfers before the end of 2020 in order to support the efforts of the governments of Quebec and the provinces, health care workers and the public.

I thought it was important to re-read it because this speech is going to end up on social media. People need to know what we are voting on, what we are taking a stand on and what we are talking about. I think this is a unique opportunity for all members of the House to acknowledge the work of health care workers. I want to name them because we have a tendency to leave some people out. A few of them are mentioned in the motion, but there are many others, such as paramedics and personal support workers, who people complained were too few in number during the pandemic. There are also the maintenance workers in our health care facilities who have been working and are also under a lot of pressure because of COVID-19. There are also the security guards who had to be posted in various centres, seniors' residences and hospitals. Let us not forget the administrative staff who work in these facilities, the practical nurses, the specialized nurse practitioners, and the doctors and specialists.

In short, I want to acknowledge all those who are directly or indirectly involved in the health care system and are helping to ensure that the victims of this miserable COVID-19 virus get the care they need.

This is important to note because these people, all the people I listed, have had to take additional precautions. They have had to isolate more than others. They have had to avoid contact with their loved ones more than others. They have been in daily contact with COVID-19 victims, which meant they were putting their own lives on the line. Many of them, and I know some personally, got sick because of contact with the people they were treating. They have to work hours on end. All these people working in the health system deserve to have us take the time today to applaud their efforts. They deserve the whole House's recognition via the adoption of this motion. It think it bears saying. This motion is an excellent way to acknowledge, thank and congratulate all of these health workers.

Three of the RCMs in Mégantic—L'Érable have been in the red zone for a long time. People I know have died. People I know are sick. Other people I know were sick.

If I may, I would like to name the facilities most affected in my riding. These individuals obviously deserve to be commended for their hard work in fighting the pandemic. More importantly, those who have departed from these facilities deserve two minutes of our time as we think about them.

Before I do that, I will share a little anecdote. I was making calls to a seniors' residence to speak with the residents there and try to reassure them. As I was making my calls, someone else was making calls to share the news that one of their fellow residents had died of COVID-19. It was happening at the same time. The calls crossed. I can assure you, it was a very difficult time, especially for those who had just learned that one of their own had died from COVID-19. COVID-19 is not a myth. COVID-19 is real, and this is especially true for seniors.

I want to note the fact that seniors are mentioned in this motion and I see that as a positive thing. It makes me even more proud to support the motion before us today.

The following is a list of facilities have had a great deal of difficulty: the Lambton CHSLD, the Lac-Mégantic CHSLD, Maison Paternelle, Village Harmonie, Manoir Salaberry, the Château Marysia de Vassimeuble residence in Stratford, the La Bouée women's shelter, Ressource intermédiaire de l'Amitié, Villa de l'Érable, the Marc-André-Jacques CHSLD, the Denis-Marcotte CHSLD, the Saint-Alexandre CHSLD, L'Oasis residence, l'Hôtellerie Nouvel Âge, Accès Santé Services Plus seniors residence, Le Crystal residence in Thetford Mines, Les Jardins St-Alphonse private residence in Thetford Mines, Ressource intermédiaire Fortier, the Thetford Mines and Lac-Mégantic hospitals, the CLSCs and the points of service.

I named those facilities because people live there, men and women who chose to live there for their final days. They may not have had a choice for the long-term care facilities, but they did for the seniors residences. These people chose to live there to be comfortable, but they have been stung by this terrible virus. Today, unfortunately, they feel somewhat abandoned. The fact that we can acknowledge them today in the House is absolutely essential. I wanted to add my voice to this motion.

Physicians in the Thetford Mines area have sent Facebook messages reminding everyone how important it is to follow public health guidelines to avoid a repeat of what happened in seniors' residences. Dr. Éric Gaudreau says he has children and a family to protect, which is why he is asking people to practise physical distancing. Dr. Édith Lepire, an anaesthetist, points out how insidious the disease can be. Dr. Marc Fréchette says that the test is neither unsafe nor even unpleasant. Dr. Nathalie Boutet states, in a message I felt was of particular importance, that she wants to continue to treat people within acceptable timeframes, and urges people to collaborate and follow the rules.

Indeed, by following the rules, we can protect the workers whose job it is to protect and care for us if we should contract the disease. We need to be wary of COVID-19. Mostly, we need to think of those who have fallen ill and those who have taken care of us in these difficult times. The Conservatives will never stop calling on the government to ensure that health workers have the supplies they need to do their job safely.

The Liberal government needs to support the provinces without trying to manage the way they use health care dollars. Every province has its own approach to health care and long-term care for seniors. The federal government should not apply its “Ottawa knows best” approach to the way the provinces use that money to protect their people.

I want to say that I was particularly disappointed with the part of yesterday's economic update where the government puffed out its chest and said that it was going to invest up to $1 billion to create a safe long-term care fund in support of infection prevention and control. That might seem like a good idea, but the government spoiled it by saying what it said next, and I quote: “Funding will be contingent on a detailed spending plan, allocated on an equal per capita basis and conditional on provinces and territories demonstrating that investments have been made according to those spending plans.”

Who was there in the health care facilities? Who was required to provide services to all citizens? It was people who fall under the responsibility of the Government of Quebec. The Government of Quebec knows where to invest the promised amounts. It is up to the Quebec government to invest them. It is not up to the federal government to tell Quebec how to do that.

The government needs to hand that money over to Quebec. It will know how to spend that money to protect and care for its people. It is no coincidence that this morning, Quebec's finance minister called the government's proposed national standards for long-term care completely unacceptable.

Could we have done better? Absolutely. Could the federal government have done a better job interfering in provincial jurisdictions? Based on its management of vaccine procurement, I am positive that it could not.

I prefer the current approach, which is in touch with what people need, what Quebeckers and Canadians need, as opposed to the “Ottawa knows all” attitude. Ottawa does not even know how to manage a simple vaccine procurement plan.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Mégantic—L'Érable for his speech and for taking the time to congratulate the institutions in his riding.

I also want to applaud the outstanding efforts of workers at the Centre hospitalier de Granby, who worked very hard during the pandemic and are still working hard.

Now for my question. We know that, in the aftermath of a crisis, there is a risk of austerity. I am talking about this because both Liberals and Conservatives have had a tendency in the past to cut health care in the name of getting public finances under control. If there is one sector that should not be cut, it is health, especially as we recover from the pandemic.

I would like my colleague to comment on that.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Speaker, I completely agree with the first part of what my colleague said when she thanked the staff and everyone at the Centre hospitalier de Granby. I am sure those people did excellent work.

However, I do not agree with the connection my colleague made between Conservatives and austerity. Conservatives are for stable, predictable, unconditional health care funding now, tomorrow and after the pandemic. That is what matters.

The Conservatives will therefore support the motion before us. If we wanted to do otherwise, we would not have supported the motion. We are supporting this motion because we know that health care is important during and after the pandemic. The Liberals should have recognized the importance of health care before they dismantled the pandemic preparedness organization, the Global Public Health Intelligence Network.