Debates of Dec. 7th, 2020

Concurrence in Vote 1—Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development

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

The hon. member for Drummond.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Madam Speaker, thank you for interrupting my colleague so I could ask him a question. I was glad to see that his Internet connection has been working well for the past few minutes, and I was eager to take advantage of that too.

I would like to talk to him about this issue, because we are wondering whether the government has managed the crisis well. We know there are other very important priorities we could be debating.

For example, one of the priorities we all agree is of vital importance is high-speed Internet access, especially in remote regions. It will be crucial to the recovery, and it is essential now during the crisis.

What does my colleague think of the way the government is handling the critical high-speed Internet rollout file? Does he think the funds allocated to the various programs are adequate? Does he think the timelines are fast enough? I would like to hear his thoughts on that.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Drummond for the important question.

At the beginning of my speech, I spoke about how weak our health care system has become, but this pandemic has also highlighted how fragile our telecommunications infrastructure is. It is outrageous.

Every household needs good-quality high-speed Internet access, but that is not happening. This is 2020, and it will soon be 2021. This issue came up in 2000, and it was called unacceptable and outrageous. That was 20 years ago, and what has happened since then? Development is still slow and has been left up to the private sector. It is so slow and so inefficient that I would say if electricity were a federal jurisdiction, we would still be living by candlelight in 2020.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my Bloc Québécois colleague for his speech.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer has said that we have no idea exactly how much this government has spent during the pandemic.

Does the Bloc Québécois member think that this government is doing a good job managing our public finances?

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

Indeed, that is very worrisome. We, the parliamentarians, the lawmakers of the House, need the Parliamentary Budget Officer's analyses. I would like to commend him and his team. They are doing a fantastic job. They have been working crazy hours during the pandemic. It is ridiculous. They are telling us that they are unable to assign a precise dollar figure to everything and that they cannot access everything they need to give us a clear picture.

We make our decisions based on what the Parliamentary Budget Officer tells us. That is unacceptable. The government must be more transparent.

The government is spending astronomical amounts. It is spending like it never has before, at least in peacetime.

Unfortunately, as I was saying in my speech—I am not sure if I was able to make my point before my Internet connection gave out—the least we can do is compensate businesses and individuals for lost income due to health restrictions. For things to get back to normal, what economics from the last century tell us is that we need effective stabilizing mechanisms.

However, the money has to be spent effectively and smartly. What we saw this spring and summer was people who said that they could go work in acceptable health conditions, but that it was more lucrative to not work and stay home. That does not work. It is a disaster from an economic standpoint.

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

Madam Speaker, I am curious as to whether the member has been receiving calls from constituents who have been told that they need to pay back the CERB. I have a lot of self-employed people, single moms and people with disabilities who thought that the gross income counted. Now they are finding out that it was the net income. They used some of their benefit to cover household expenses like their utilities and part of their rent for their self-employment.

I wonder if the hon. member is hearing from his constituents in Joliette that they are being threatened by the CRA to pay back $14,000 in CERB by December 31.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Nanaimo—Ladysmith for his question.

Yes, we often get these calls, and it is really troubling. When we saw the programs that were brought in, we sent a householder to my constituents to let everyone know that it was a gross amount and that tax would not be deducted at source. People were advised that they might have to pay a lot of it back. We know that people live on very tight budgets and that paying it back could be really difficult. We are asking for an agreement to ensure that people can pay this money back later.

The whole issue of self-employed workers is also of great concern. We can talk about it again.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Vancouver East.

I am really pleased this evening to speak to the main estimates. I am going to start with some remarks I imagine perhaps only the member for Edmonton West will get excited about as they have to do with the estimates process. In fact, members may recall from the last Parliament that I was quite involved in some discussions around the estimates process.

We are considering the main estimates far later than would normally be the case under the rules of the House. One of the things that was surprising to me when the main estimates were retabled this fall was that they were in exactly the same form that they were when they were tabled just prior to the pandemic, because obviously the pandemic has had significant consequences for government spending.

The point about the process that I would like to make is on one of the take-aways from the discussion around the estimates process in the last Parliament. There was widespread agreement that ideally, if the budget and the estimates could be presented at the same time, if the government could undertake to change its internal process so that those two documents were presented together and in tandem, we would have a far better and far more transparent financial process in the Parliament of Canada that would give Canadians and parliamentarians a far better understanding of how their money is spent.

One of the major obstacles to that was the government's refusal to allow for a fixed budget date. I and others made the argument at the time that, in the case of a really extraordinary event that prevented the government from being able to deliver a budget according to a fixed timeline, Parliament would very likely be willing to make accommodations for that. We saw this year, despite the fact that there are fixed dates for the estimates process, in extraordinary circumstances Parliament was willing and able to arrange for the government to not meet those deadlines and, nevertheless, be able to flow funds in ways that were needed and to continue, as we are now, to have an examination of the estimates in due course. I submit that the same would be true in the case of a budget.

For those who are interested in this process, they should note that this year's experience shows very well why we can have a fixed budget date in order to be able to sync, so to speak, our estimates and the budget so that we can have a well-functioning financial process that is not kind of ridiculous. Under the normal process we have, in a normal year we would be considering estimates that are already out of date pretty much as they are tabled. I wanted to put that on the record for the benefit of parliamentarians who continue to take an active interest in how the government spends money and the important oversight role that Parliament plays with respect to government spending.

We have heard many references tonight to the massive spending that the government has undertaken and, indeed, the government has spent a lot of money as part of the pandemic response. I do not object in principle to the government having spent a lot of money. It was important that the government be there to support Canadians who were struggling and it is important for members of the House to remember that when the government spends money in Canada, its deficit is somebody else's surplus.

There were some problems this year and Parliament rose to the occasion in terms of holding the government to account. It was a problem when the government's deficit was to be a sole-sourced surplus for the WE Charity. It was a problem when the government's deficit was to be a windfall for former MPs like Frank Baylis, without proper oversight and scrutiny, but let us make no mistake that the overwhelming amount of the government deficit was a surplus for Canadian households.

Until the pandemic, over 50% of households were within $200 every month of insolvency because they did not have enough money to pay the bills. That was a product of a social security net and an economy that already was not working for Canadians and had no allowance for a stress test. The pandemic most definitely stressed the Canadian economy and Canadian households, and it was important, as it will continue to be important, for the government to step up and support Canadians.

I am quite proud of the track record of the NDP in terms of making sure that an important percentage of government spending went directly to Canadian households and Canadian workers who needed that support, instead of, as we saw in 2008, going predominantly to banks and large corporations in the hope that somehow it would trickle down to Canadian households. The NDP played an active role in negotiating an adequate CERB, in getting workers paid sick days and a number of other initiatives that I have put on the record.

One of the things that continue to be a problem when we talk about government spending is the distinct lack of concrete dollars and a concrete plan for child care. We have heard the government announce it recently once again, and not for the first time. Liberal governments in Canada talk a good game when it comes to child care, but the evidence is really in the follow-through and it is about the money they are willing to commit. We have main estimates that we are considering with no real commitment to child care spending, because these are estimates that were tabled prior to the pandemic.

This is indicative of the complete lack of understanding that we had on the government benches, at least in cabinet, about what a crisis Canadian child care was in. The pandemic has really highlighted that. It is another Canadian system, for lack of a better word and I think it is speaking pretty loosely to say we had or have a child care system in Canada, that just had no ability to survive any kind of stress test. We saw that in the pandemic.

I am glad to hear commitments, but it would be much better to see action, to see the federal government convene meetings with the provinces to talk about how we put a proper child care strategy in place across the country, how we fund it, what that looks like and what dollar amounts the federal government is willing to commit to that strategy, not just one time this year because we are in extraordinary circumstances but ongoing year-to-year dependable funding. I do not mean the kind of dependable funding that was promised in the initial years of health care across Canada, where the federal government first came to the plate and then slowly dialed down its commitment to funding health care. That is another problem in terms of the general course of the government, which has been to continue a pattern and a long-term trend of not providing enough leadership on health care funding.

We need it on child care. We need a framework and a strategy, but we also need it when it comes to health care. We have seen now, particularly as a result of the pandemic, just what a strain and how fragile and vulnerable our long-term care system is. However, before that we knew that Canadians were having serious trouble accessing the prescription medications that they needed to be healthy. We know and have known this for a long time. Once again Liberal governments in the past have committed to doing something about this and then did not get the job done. In some cases, they have not really taken meaningful steps. We have seen some steps, at least rhetorically, in the direction of pharmacare by the current government over the last five years, but that says it all. It has been five years, four years in which the government had a majority and no pandemic to contend with.

Many Canadians would have been far better off had the Liberal government in the last Parliament actually done what it often said it was going to do, which was to get a national pharmacare plan in place. That would have meant that the millions of Canadians who lost their jobs during the pandemic, and subsequently also lost their drug coverage, would have at least been able to have some support to continue getting the prescription drug coverage that they so desperately needed. We are proud of our health care system and the fact that access to basic health care does not depend on a person's employment situation, but prescription drugs are basic health care and that continues to be a function of employment for far too many Canadians.

I would be remiss if I did not add that were we to implement a national pharmacare program, this initiative would save money to Canadian taxpayers. What appears as a deficit on the federal leger, appears as a surplus elsewhere. It appears as a surplus in provincial government budgets, which are asking for more money from the federal government that has not held up its end of the bargain when it comes to health funding. It appears as a surplus in the household budgets of Canadians who right now are paying exceptionally high costs for prescription drugs.

Likewise, with child care, we know that child care is one of the best returns on investment spending decisions that a government can make because it helps a lot of workers, particularly women, get into the economy and earn wages on which they then pay taxes.

When it comes to government spending, we have work to do on how the government spends and reports on its spending. We can do that good work as parliamentarians. We have a long way to go to have budgets and spending programs that really reflect the priorities of Canadians and put money back in their pockets without robbing them of the services they need.

[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, on the member's comments in regard to the pharmacare program, virtually since the last federal election, the government has taken significant actions toward it. With the then minister of health, literally hundreds of millions of dollars were saved by the national government getting involved and working toward that bulk buying aspect of it. It also established, through the health standing committee, the goals and objectives of moving toward a pharmacare program. Having we been moving as fast as we would like? Ideally, I would have liked to have seen it faster, but some things take time.

This is where I would ask something of my friend from Elmwood—Transcona. The biggest challenge we have to overcome to have the optimum national pharmacare program is to have provinces and territories onside. We cannot achieve that without them. We emphasized that point in the September throne speech.

On the issue of health care and getting a national pharmacare, could the member provide his thoughts on the importance of getting the full co-operation of provinces and territories.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, of course it is important to have the provinces onboard for a national pharmacare plan. I was proud of the NDP motion in the last Parliament that called on the federal government to call a meeting within a year where it would invite all provinces to the table for the express purpose of talking about how we could institute a national pharmacare plan in Canada. I watched as members of the Liberal party, including that member, vote that motion down. The meeting has not happened.

I do not know how the member thinks the federal government can show leadership and get the provinces onboard if it does not even have the spine to call a meeting to say it wants to do this, that this is a policy objective of the government and gets the provinces onside. That meeting has not happened. I will believe it when I see it.

In the meantime, we will keep working to form a government with a party that means it, instead of taking over 20 years to get it done and having nothing to show for it.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Madam Speaker, my colleague mentioned that he was supportive of the amount of money that was spent directly to Canadians. I agree that most of the pandemic response should have been put directly toward Canadians.

Could the member comment on what percentage of the response to the pandemic should be in that category, as in direct to Canadians? My understanding is it is less than half of the deficit we have incurred to date this year.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I do not think it is so much a question of what the percentage is. It is a question of whether people are getting the support they really need. We know there continue to be people who have fallen through cracks in these programs. I have written to the government on this, and I am waiting for a response.

I am thinking of a lot of parents, particularly mothers, who have been caught in the cracks between employment insurance and the Canada recovery benefit. They are being told that it depends on the arbitrary date of their child's birth, whether before or after September 27. If it is after September 27, they can qualify for the CERB or the minimum payment on employment insurance of $500 a week. If it was just the day before, they do not qualify. If that means their employment insurance benefit is quite low in a context where they have not been able to get the hours they need to get a higher benefit, which was part of their plan some time ago when they chose to start a family or grow their family, then too bad for them. I do not think that makes sense. I do not think it is a good way to support young families through this pandemic.

For as much as there is a fair bit of spending on Canadian households, there continue to be people who fall through the cracks. We are here to advocate for those people.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Elmwood—Transcona for his excellent remarks on how we spend money in Canada in the main estimates process.

He might have read recently, via the CBC, the comments put forward by the University of Ottawa's Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy. Kevin Page, the former parliamentary budget officer, said that reading the government's 223-page economic update gave him something like a hangover. He went on to state, “It's impossible to read. I have done this for years and I can't even follow the money.”

I would like the NDP member to comment. How can we trust the government, when it is not being transparent with us about how much public money is being spent?

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, this is a major issue. Members of Parliament and parties can disagree about how much to spend and how to spend it, but we cannot have a cogent debate about that unless we know what is being spent and where it is being spent. That is why these things that some people maybe do not find interesting around process are very important. They enable us to get to the real heart of the matter when it comes to having those debates, which are the important ones, about how we spend money and where we spend it.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Madam Speaker, the COVID-19 pandemic has wrought unspeakable devastation on the Downtown Eastside community in the heart of my riding.

The Downtown Eastside is one of the oldest neighbourhoods in Vancouver, and the diversity of its community members reflect its rich history. It is a community that has remained strong and deeply resilient despite the many challenges and struggles that come with poverty and a long history of colonization. The stigma against the people who live in the community is so strong, especially for those who are drug users or those who are homeless, that their struggles, their lack of access to basic human needs like housing, that the violence committed against them and even their deaths have been normalized to the extent that people no longer seem to care.

Recently, a disturbing video emerged where women appeared to be sexually assaulted in broad daylight, yet nobody did anything to help. Similar stories of horrific tragedy have emerged from the Downtown Eastside throughout the pandemic. A woman gave birth in a portable toilet and no one had noticed. The baby did not survive. Another woman was held captive and screaming in a tent for 15 hours, and no one intervened. Countless other reports of violence against women emerge from the Downtown Eastside, always tragic and always accompanied by apathy.

Similar apathy seems to exist for people who are struggling with substance misuse. More than 1,000 people have died in B.C. from overdose this year to date. This is an average of five deaths per day.

Street homelessness continues to increase amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Public health officials have made it clear that one of the most effective measures to stop the spread of the COVID-19 virus is to stay home, keep social distance and wash our hands frequently. Needless to say, people without homes or adequate housing cannot self-isolate and cannot maintain the level of hygiene to keep themselves and others safe.

The Downtown Eastside now has one of the highest COVID infection rates in the city and the community members are suffering from violence, homelessness and the devastating impact of the overdose crisis at the same time.

The government says that addressing violence against women is a priority, that addressing homelessness and the opioid crisis are priorities, but its actions echo the apathy that have allowed these horrific deaths and acts of violence to perpetuate in our communities.

As 230,000 Canadians experience homelessness each year, the government continues to repeat the tired lines of 3,000 units of housing under the rapid housing initiative when the homelessness problem is so much bigger. The national housing strategy only aims to build 150,000 units of affordable housing over 10 years, effectively saying that it is acceptable to leave close to 100,000 Canadians without homes.

With this attitude, is it any wonder that homelessness has become accepted and normalized? The government has still not committed to the 50/50 cost-sharing with the Province of B.C. Nor has it committed to the recovery for all policy recommendations to end homelessness in Canada or the CHRA's indigenous caucus call for indigenous by indigenous calls for action. These commitments would truly make a difference in the lives and safety of Canadians.

With the opioid overdose crisis killing more people in B.C. than the COVID-19 pandemic, the government still has not committed to decriminalization as called for by the City of Vancouver. While all advocates of decriminalization, myself included, acknowledge that decriminalization is not a silver bullet, it is an important measure to help stem the tide of overdose deaths. Importantly, decriminalization is an important step to ending the stigma against drug users, a stigma that allows for the deaths and struggles of drug users to be normalized.

Every year, the Megaphone Magazine, sold on the streets by the homeless and low-income vendors, produces a beautiful calendar called “Hope in Shadows”. The photos in the calendar are taken by the magazine vendors and are beautiful images of the community seen through the eyes of community members themselves. The photos in the calendar capture images of children, friends, families and their pets. They live, work and play in the community. Other photos feature images of community activism, art, front-line workers and acts of caring. The calendar showcases the Downtown Eastside, a community that truly, once the stigma is removed, is a community of vibrant people, each with loved ones, hopes and dreams.

It is time for the government to take leadership in treating the community as such and to show, with concrete urgent action, that we care about the community and that our community members are not dispensable.

One urgent order of action is ensuring the availability and priority of COVID-19 vaccines for community members. In a briefing provided to MPs, we were informed that the priority vaccines would be given to individuals of advanced age, health care workers, first responders and indigenous peoples. I am deeply concerned that this list of priorities misses many people who are equally vulnerable and in need, many of whom reside and work in the Downtown Eastside.

The Downtown Eastside has the highest COVID infection rate in the city. Many residents have pre-existing conditions and other health concerns that make them especially vulnerable to the virus. The lack of safe, adequate and affordable housing in the community makes other safety measures, such as self-isolation and frequent handwashing, nearly impossible.

At the same time, I am deeply concerned about the safety of front-line workers in the Downtown Eastside. Front-line workers play just as much of an important role in fighting the pandemic as workers in health care settings, but they work in environments where it is extremely challenging to keep sanitary and safe.

Just today, we learned that there will only be enough vaccines to cover approximately 125,000 people later this month. That is not even enough to cover the 225,000 seniors in long-term care homes. Until there is a vaccine available for everyone, the government needs to do more to keep people safe.

A second urgent priority action for the government is to address violence against women in the Downtown Eastside. Three women's groups in the Downtown Eastside have called for the immediate creation of a task force to end violence against women in the neighbourhood. I call on the government to take immediate action and commit to lead that work. Gendered violence and violence against women are not new. Just yesterday, we commemorated the 14 women killed in the École Polytechnique massacre. With the COVID-19 pandemic, gendered violence and intimate-partner violence have increased exponentially. A women's crisis line in my riding reported early in the pandemic that crisis phone calls increased by 400% in the first months of the pandemic.

Long before the pandemic, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission identified access to safe housing and safe spaces as fundamental to the safety of women and girls and 2SLGBTQ people. The pandemic has further eroded access to the safe housing and safe spaces that were already scarce before the pandemic. The government must meet immediately with these groups, work collaboratively with advocates to establish the task force in the Downtown Eastside, and develop and fund an immediate action plan to end violence against women.

The government must also immediately respond to the City of Vancouver's request for an exemption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act within the city's boundaries. In fact, I would urge the government to go even further and enact a nationwide exemption to jump-start the process of decriminalizing drug use to save lives.

For any of these measures to have lasting impact, people's basic needs must be met. For people to be safe from violence and disease long term, every Canadian must have access to safe housing. The government must act immediately and commit to fifty-fifty cost sharing with B.C. and to the recovery for all policy recommendations to end homelessness in Canada.

The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented health emergency that has deeply impacted the lives of Canadians across the country. At the same time, it has exacerbated crises that existed before the pandemic, including gendered violence, the opioid crisis and the homelessness crisis. None of these crises can be addressed alone. If we truly want to successfully address these crises together, we need a coordinated intersectional response enacted with the urgency of our crisis response to the pandemic and delivered with a firm commitment to the indispensability of every single person living in Canada.

There have been too many deaths and tragedies already. We must leave no one behind. We can do this. It takes political will. It takes courage. It takes all of us to realize the realities and the value of every single person in our community. Humanity is what is needed at this time of crisis, and we need to recognize that no community is dispensable. Everyone is someone's mother, someone's daughter, someone's son, someone's aunt. We all have to—

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

I am sorry. We have to leave time for questions and comments.

Questions and comments, the hon. parliamentary secretary.

[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, the Government of Canada has been working with many communities and investing hundreds of millions of dollars in dealing with homelessness. The pandemic really does reinforce the importance of us continuing to do that work.

My question to the member is related to her comments with respect to the decriminalization of drugs. I wonder if there is any limit regarding drugs that should be left in the Criminal Code, or whether she is advocating that all drugs be decriminalized. Is that the New Democratic Party's position?

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Madam Speaker, on the issue of housing, the member must know that a national housing strategy back-end loads the flow of the money. In the face of this pandemic, the government has only announced 3,000 units for the rapid housing initiative when there are some 230,000 Canadians who experience homelessness every single year. That announcement does not even begin to address the crisis.

With respect to decriminalization, I invite the member to listen to the experts and the medical science. Dr. Bonnie Henry, from my own community here in Vancouver, British Columbia, has called for decriminalization. She just issued a report. I ask the member to read that report and tell his Liberal government to follow her advice.

[Eric Melillo, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Madam Speaker, my colleague from the NDP spoke a lot about issues impacting women. She mentioned missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. Unfortunately, these are issues that are near and dear to many people in my riding. In my riding, we have high rates of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, human trafficking and many social issues impacting people across the region. I find too often the government creates very big programs, spends lots of money and celebrates all the dollars it has spent. I know on this side of the House we do not celebrate dollars spent. We celebrate practical results to help people in need.

I wonder if the member has any comments on that and where the government's programs and services have missed the mark to help those who truly need that support.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Madam Speaker, with respect to the issue of the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, as the member knows, we had a national inquiry. We had the calls to justice. The Liberal government promised that a year from the tabling of the inquiry recommendations it would take action. Of course, it has not fulfilled that recommendation either. In the meantime, we see horrific violence against women taking place in my own community and elsewhere, and indigenous women and girls continue to go missing, so I call on the government to stop talking about it and take the action that is required. We need indigenous communities and women's organizations to lead the action. The government needs to facilitate the process and get on with it.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her assessment of the Liberals' national housing strategy. I wonder if she would take a moment to speak to some of the benefits of getting going with those investments in public housing, in terms of benefits to the people who can be housed, to those who would be employed in building the housing, and to the climate if there is public sector leadership and real standards are put in to ensure that new housing is built in a way that reduces emissions.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Madam Speaker, the member absolutely hit the nail on the head. If we address the homelessness crisis, not only do we house people, treat them, humanize the issue of homelessness and value every single life in our community, we also create jobs at the same time. If the government embarked on the recovery for all initiative, we would create the necessary COVID recovery. At the same time, the government could put in a variety of measures to ensure that, in building and retrofitting housing, we also contribute to the climate emergency measures. It is a win-win-win solution. To my dismay, the Liberal government has slow-walked this and the national housing strategy is a—

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

The time has expired.

The House resumed from December 3 consideration of the motion.

Opposition Motion—Status Update on COVID-19 Vaccines

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

It being 8:30 p.m., pursuant to order made on Friday, December 4, 2020, it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the business of supply.

Call in the members.