Mr. Speaker, it is a bit ironic that in the midst of a speech about declining respect for Parliament we would have such flagrant disregard for the authority of the Chair from NDP members.
As I was saying, we are also in a different position today from where we were a year and a half ago. Large public events are taking place now. People are travelling. Most workplaces are up and running. A year and a half ago, we did not fully understand the kinds of strategies that could be deployed to protect people from this virus.
However, today we have the knowledge and the tools to deploy multiple strategies at once for maximum assurance. Members can get vaccinated, wear masks and socially distance, while also taking periodic rapid tests. For greater certainty, I would be very supportive of a system that asked MPs to take regular rapid antigen tests, regardless of vaccine status.
The government should also start recommending vitamin D as another tool for combatting this virus. People generally get vitamin D through sunlight exposure, and many recent studies suggest that those with higher levels of vitamin D exposure have reduced severe outcomes from COVID-19. Increasing the awareness about this is especially important as we head into winter, when Canadians are ordinarily less likely to spend time outside.
Increasing vitamin D is not an alternative to other methods of responding to the virus but the benefits of higher vitamin D levels are increasingly evident in the scientific literature and are well established in general, regardless of the particulars of the impact on COVID-19.
No single method for managing this issue is the magic bullet on its own, but if members are deploying a broad range of strategies simultaneously, then we are certainly in a much different position than we were a year and a half ago. If this was really about the safety of a small number of immunocompromised parliamentarians, the government House leader would have proposed special accommodations, mechanisms for distancing or new testing requirements.
Ironically, we have not even heard the word “testing” from the government during this debate. It is like the government has forgotten it exists as one of the important strategies for managing our response to this virus. It is sad to see the government trying to shut down in-person Parliament when it is not even deploying all of the tools available to make it safe.
Based on the inaction of the government on many fronts, we can see clearly that this motion is not, and never was, about making Parliament safe. This motion is about making Parliament weak. It is about allowing the vast majority of ministers, who probably are not immunocompromised, to continue to read their talking points while sitting in their parliamentary offices. It is about the Prime Minister's desire to replace Parliament with a Zoom call.
I began this speech talking about Winston Churchill. Why was it important for Churchill to meaningfully engage Parliament during a national crisis? It was because he understood the role of Parliament as the deliberate assembly of the entire nation. If a nation is going to go to war together, then Parliament must be fully engaged so as to ensure that the approach taken reflects the best judgment of the nation, and so as to ensure that the nation as a whole can confront the challenge together.
When the Prime Minister speaks, he speaks for one-third of Canadians, but when Parliament speaks, we speak for all Canadians. A parliamentary response to a national crisis is more likely to be effective, and a parliamentary response to a national crisis builds national unity. Winston Churchill understood this. He was able to unite and lead a national response to a national crisis because he came to Parliament.
Canadians want us to respond to the challenges they face: COVID-19, inflation, threats to our freedom. We can only respond effectively to these challenges if Parliament is working. It is not from arbitrary attachment or nostalgia that Conservatives defend tradition, rather we defend tradition because tradition is the means by which we draw on the wisdom of history to solve the practical problems of everyday people.
We defend Parliament, parliamentary democracy and parliamentary traditions not because we are concerned about our own privileges but because we understand that a great nation must have a great Parliament. No nation can succeed in the long run unless it has an effective national deliberative assembly which asks the right questions, analyzes critical issues from all angles, and which holds the powerful to account.
Canadians can count on Conservatives to stand up for Parliament at every opportunity.