Madam Speaker, I want to ask my friend a question about the government's response to COVID in terms of the public health aspects of this.
We know from international best practices a few things that work. Closing the border quickly would have worked, and that did not happen. Another is having masking in place. We know that the government actually destroyed a stockpile of masks last year and we were not ready in terms of having sufficient numbers of masks available. We are still behind on testing. In many places, people cannot get a test if they are not showing symptoms. If they do not fit within a certain prescribed window of having been exposed but think they might have been exposed earlier, they might not get a test.
Specifically, could the member comment on the fact that, in my province and in his province, people still cannot enter a diagnosis in the federal tracing app? The government has rolled out a tracing app, but if people are in B.C., Alberta or Quebec they still cannot enter a diagnosis, months later.
What are people in British Columbia saying about the fact that they are excluded from being able to participate in what are supposed to be national measures to respond to COVID-19?