Debates of March 23rd, 2021

Opposition Motion— Plan for Reopening the Economy

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

There seems to be a technical problem with the interpretation.

Is the interpretation working now?

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, the interpreter just indicated again that the sound appears to be too distant and they cannot continue until it is resolved.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

There seems to be a problem with the sound.

I would ask the member to lower his microphone or even unplug it and plug it back in.

Now everything is working. The hon. member for Joliette.

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

Madam Speaker, I want the sound quality to be good enough for the interpreters to do their extraordinary work.

I will then resume my speech.

I was talking about the article by journalist Joël‑Denis Bellavance in today's La Presse newspaper. According to the article, there is a document circulating internally among deputy ministers and within the government to remind everyone what a fiscal imbalance is. It also explains just how unsustainable the financial situation facing the provinces is and that a solution absolutely must be found. This confirms what the Conference Board of Canada, the Council of the Federation and the Parliamentary Budget Officer have been saying. Year after year, the PBO publishes a fiscal sustainability report reminding us that the provinces are facing an untenable situation. This is primarily due to the underfunding of health care by the federal government in Ottawa.

The deputy government House leader said that the government has never spent so much on health, as if the problem were resolved, even though the opposite is circulating within his government. He said that Canada-wide standards are needed. That is tantamount to federal encroachment into Quebec and provincial jurisdictions. Not only is the government maintaining its underfunding, but it is also interfering in provincial jurisdictions.

Let me relate that to the motion we are debating today. The motion calls for a reopening plan. Back home, the Government of Quebec is in charge of health measures as well as the lockdown and reopening measures. These measures are debated at the National Assembly of Quebec and supported by Quebec public health. Decisions are based on scientific studies and analyses. That is how to do things. I really do not see how Ottawa has anything to do with that.

The government, the Liberal Party, is interfering by not fulfilling its role to properly fund health. The Conservative party is also interfering. The trend is to constantly interfere in other people's business and take over. The government misinterpreted its role during the pandemic on many fronts.

In the discussions over the previous speech by the Liberal member, an NDP member also said that interference is always used as an excuse for inaction, in other words, it is a good thing that Ottawa is interfering. The NDP always proposes those sorts of measures. Even my esteemed colleague from the Green Party said that although she is against the measure it is not because of interference.

If we exclude the Bloc Québécois, there is a sort of unanimity in the House about Ottawa having to interfere in jurisdictions, especially in the health sector. I find that completely unacceptable. The motion we are debating today is about health. Ottawa's primary role is to properly fund health care.

It is clear from opinion polls and from speaking to people on the street that Canadians are asking that health care be adequately funded. Although Ottawa is many years behind in this regard, that has to change. This is a priority.

Implementing a reopening plan is a decision that must be made by Quebec City, by Toronto, by the Government of Alberta and by every province. We must respect jurisdictions. In the House, we must deal with Ottawa's areas of jurisdiction.

I am certain that my colleague, who will be speaking after me, will talk about how the border and airports were managed. These are areas under federal jurisdiction. It has been a fiasco. The Liberal member spoke about the record number of doses of vaccines per capita that Canada has. I say bravo, that is very good, but can we get them in a reasonable period of time? Canada is truly behind compared to other countries, and that is unacceptable. I am not surprised, but, once again, I am very disappointed to see the approach and the actions of the other parties in the House.

I will come back to the motion to support safely, gradually and permanently lifting COVID-19 restrictions. I am sorry, but, according to public health authorities, we could unfortunately be facing a third wave very soon.

It makes no sense to permanently lift restrictions. We need to be practical and rely on the science. These measures are not taken lightly.

The government and the House can introduce good economic measures to get us through the pandemic. There are two aspects to the Bloc Québécois's approach.

During the pandemic, certain measures are needed to support people, businesses and organizations that are struggling. Since political parties are not struggling, they should not have had access to the wage subsidy. That was not stipulated in the act, and they should return this money immediately. The businesses and people who faced hardship need measures to help them through the economic crisis caused by this pandemic.

It is simple. We are calling for the support measures to be extended for the duration of the crisis, especially for the sectors that will experience long-term impacts from the pandemic. It is very important that the government commit to such support. We hope to see it and we demand to see it in the budget, which is long overdue, I might add. In addition, these measures must reflect reality. They must be targeted. These measures should not be like others we have seen in recent months that encourage people to stay home instead of returning to work once proper safety measures have been implemented.

We must also provide support for industries. I am thinking in particular of the cultural industry, for example, festivals, and of the hotel and restaurant industries, because they have been affected in more lasting ways. We need to support them until the crisis is over. We also need plans for targeted support for certain industries, such as the aerospace industry, which has been hard hit by the public health restrictions.

Why has Canada still not unveiled a targeted plan for these industries? That is very important. We are waiting and we hope that such a plan will be included in the upcoming budget.

I am almost out of time because of technical problems with the interpretation. I will therefore pick up the pace so that, in the minute I have left, I can at least list the subjects that I wanted to address.

The measures were extended during the pandemic, and now we are calling for a recovery plan that will help stimulate the economy and launch the industries of tomorrow that we believe in. Obviously, I am talking about the green economy and strong sectors. I spoke about the aerospace industry, but we also think it is important to have a strong pharmaceutical industry. Let us regain that expertise.

I will end there, Madam Speaker.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I would like the member to know that his speaking time was not cut short by the technical problems, since the clock was stopped.

Mr. Ste-Marie, the technical team will contact you to try to resolve the problem. The solution may be as simple as restarting your computer.

In the meantime we will move on to questions and comments.

The hon. member for Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for his insightful comments during his speech.

I know that so far the debate has been somewhat muddying the waters around jurisdictional questions. I think we all understand that provinces have their own jurisdictions and that the federal government has its jurisdiction, but really what the motion is about is that Canadians, as a whole, including Québécois, want to get their lives back.

Would the member agree that the main thing that provinces and the federal government can do to get life back to normal is to get vaccines into the arms of its citizens?

I just pulled up a list. Canada ranks behind France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, the UAE and, of course, Israel in getting its population vaccinated.

Would the member agree—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I am sorry, but there are only five minutes for questions and comments, and other people do want to ask questions.

The hon. member for Joliette.

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

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his question and reiterate what a great pleasure it was to work with him on the Standing Committee on Finance for a time. We worked well together and got a lot done.

Based on my analysis of the motion, this is yet more encroachment on Quebec and the provinces' areas of jurisdiction. However, the specific point my colleague raised, vaccine supply, is under federal jurisdiction.

The Liberal government says we have the most vaccines per capita, but that is all theoretical. Canada is far behind other countries on vaccine supply. There is still a lot of work to do on this, and I completely agree with what my colleague said about it.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, building on the line of questioning that was just answered, I am wondering if the member would like to comment on the number of vaccines per individual that are actually going into arms right now, because Canada's rate is among the top in the G7 in terms of how many people per 100 million population are actually being vaccinated right now.

Sure, the previous discussion was about the total number of vaccines, but what about the rate at which they are currently being applied?

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

Madam Speaker, what I am criticizing is how long it took to get the first vaccines.

After we were told that vaccination was a month behind schedule, what was the economic and social cost of that? That kind of delay has major repercussions.

I think Canada could have done much better and made things happen a lot faster, but that did not happen. Fortunately, we seem to be catching up.

I want to stress the importance of having domestic pharmaceutical capacity. Quebec had it, but when Ottawa dropped the ball, the industry moved away. That has to change.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Madam Speaker, does my hon. colleague believe that a plan for border opening should be laid out clearly by the federal government? That is what we are asking for in this motion.

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

Madam Speaker, the motion may imply that, but that is not the only thing it implies. It is basically Quebec's and the provinces' job, and their respective public health authorities and legislative assemblies, “to support safely, gradually and permanently lifting COVID‑19 restrictions”.

I hate the fact that the Conservative Party campaigns on respecting jurisdictions and giving the provinces a lot of autonomy and then, when it comes down to it, they show up today with a motion where that is not the case.

When I introduced the bill on a single tax return in Quebec, the Conservatives said they were in favour of it and that they would move a motion in the House. When it came time to vote, they abstained. The Bloc Québécois finds this approach by the Conservatives to be rather disappointing.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise on behalf of the Bloc Québécois and the people of Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia.

I must say that there are a number of worthwhile points in the Conservatives' motion. It is true that the COVID‑19 restrictions have had serious economic and mental health impacts on Canadians and Quebeckers. Governments around the world, in Quebec, in Canada, in the United States and in the United Kingdom had no choice but to implement increasingly severe restrictions to protect people from the spread of COVID‑19. Some of the restrictions were questionable, but the majority of them were necessary. I am absolutely not trying to defend the government; I am simply trying to put things in perspective.

Yes, COVID‑19 has had and continues to have some serious economic and mental health impacts. I read something on Twitter yesterday that really stuck with me. Jean‑Marc Léger, an economist and the founding president of Quebec polling firm Leger, said, “The 1st wave was a health crisis and seniors were hardest hit. The 2nd wave was an economic crisis and companies, businesses and workers were hardest hit. The 3rd wave is a mental health crisis and young people are being hardest hit.”

He was referring to an article in Time about the deterioration of the mental health of youth in the United States. We can say that the situation is similar in Canada. According to one poll, psychological distress among young people 18 to 34 is greater than in other age groups. The social and emotional development of youth and the establishment of romantic relationships results from socialization with their peers. Restrictions that were designed to reduce gatherings, for example, have had a significant impact on youth. Experts say that the mental health of youth was already an issue before the pandemic. Today, 26% of millennials say they have suffered from depression. That is a very high percentage. There is a lot of talk about the economic cost of this pandemic, but, unfortunately, there will also be an extremely high cost in terms of mental health.

This is not the focus of my speech today because, as we know, health is a provincial jurisdiction. Quebec has everything at hand to efficiently manage its health system. All that is missing is the federal government's financial assistance, which it is still waiting for.

Certainly, governments had to respond to COVID‑19 and rapidly institute temporary restrictions. These restrictions are temporary, not permanent, and that is an important distinction. Although some are more drastic than others, these measures are in place for a reason. As the motion states, the temporary measures were put in place primarily to alleviate pressure on health care systems. I think it is premature to lift some of those restrictions before the crisis is under control. The Conservative motion specifically targets restrictions in areas of federal competency, such as air travel and border restrictions. It calls for a clear, data-driven plan to support safely, gradually and permanently lifting these restrictions.

Thinking about lifting these restrictions makes me think of when they were put in place not that long ago. Today I would like to share with the House some particularly interesting tidbits I read in a very relevant book by the journalist Alec Castonguay entitled Le Printemps le plus long: au cœur des batailles politiques contre la COVID‑19, a behind-the-scenes look at the politics of fighting COVID‑19. The author interviewed dozens of key actors, politicians, bureaucrats and scientists who played a role in managing the crisis in Quebec and Canada. I learned a lot of things that are probably already public knowledge, but that I feel it is appropriate to mention here and now.

First of all, I was surprised to learn that the Global Public Health Intelligence Network did not detect any signals of the emergence of the COVID-19 virus in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. GPHIN, which is a unit of the Public Health Agency of Canada, acts like a smoke detector and was created in the late 1990s so that countries would not be taken by surprise by new fatal viruses, particularly following the SARS outbreak in the early 2000s.

I was surprised because, over the years, GPHIN had become the main early warning system for emerging infectious diseases for 85 countries. Normally, the World Health Organization relies on GPHIN for approximately 20% of its reports of new viruses in the world every year. That is quite a lot. However, in the case of COVID-19, GPHIN was apparently unable to sound the alarm earlier, mostly because of a lack of staff and funding. In fact, it seems that GPHIN's role was called into question by Stephen Harper's Conservative government in 2014 and that, since then, the work of its scientists has been valued less highly. Unfortunately, the arrival of a Liberal government in 2015 did nothing to change that. GPHIN scientists stopped issuing alerts in May 2019, seven months before the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in China. Even the Minister of Health said that she did not know that GPHIN had ceased normal operations.

I may be droning on a bit about this, but I do have a point to make.

Scientists have been predicting a pandemic for decades, but we were not ready. The federal government was clearly not ready. The cuts to health care obviously did not help. One of the most overlooked aspects was the procurement of personal protective equipment, but that is a subject for another day.

According to the book, the Liberal cabinet first learned about the existence of the Chinese virus on January 18, 2020.

Let me briefly lay out the timeline of events. The WHO declared an international public health emergency a few days later, on January 30. As Mr. Castonguay put it, the alarm went off, but no one woke up. In late February 2020, Canadians returning from all over the world—not necessarily from China—began bringing the virus home to Canada. While public health experts around the world believed that all suspected travellers should be tested, not just those returning from China, the Public Health Agency of Canada maintained its risk level in Canada at “low”. With the exception of travel to China, Global Affairs Canada was not discouraging Canadians from leaving the country.

On March 11, the WHO officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic. On March 16, a team from the Government of Quebec and Montreal public health went to the Montreal-Trudeau airport to inform travellers, since, strangely enough, the federal government had yet to put strict screening and information measures in place. Let us not forget that the government had been aware of the virus for two months by then.

Between March 1 and March 21, 42,000 foreign travellers and nearly 250,000 Canadians arrived at the Montreal-Trudeau airport from all over the world, including several countries that had major outbreaks.

In addition, 157,000 Quebeckers returned home by land, and nearly 37,000 Americans drove in from especially hard-hit states, including New York and Massachusetts. Travellers brought back nearly 250 different strains of the virus to Quebec alone.

Looking back, it is clear that a travel ban should have been instituted in mid-February in order to have an impact on transmission. Canada had just a few cases at the time, and Quebec did not have any. We know that it would have been hard for the government to justify such a measure.

Could we have done better with the little information available to us? That is a good question.

Border restrictions could certainly have been implemented more quickly. I am convinced that more could have been done, and more quickly, whether it was checking travellers' temperature, requiring rapid tests before boarding, or banning non-essential travel.

There was a delay between the time when GPHIN and the Public Health Agency of Canada started to become increasingly concerned and the time when the Liberal government finally decided to act. Had there not been this delay, things could have been very different.

Delaying traveller screening may possibly have allowed the variants to spread more easily within our borders. This recent experience has shown us that it is never too early to make plans to better prepare for the future. However, as we enter the third wave of the virus, lifting restrictions appears to be premature.

Right now, vaccination is the best way to get out of this pandemic. Until the majority of Canadians and Quebeckers are vaccinated, it would be completely irresponsible to allow people to travel freely again. Vaccinations are finally happening, but there have been delays.

If the Liberal government had been more proactive, it would not have waited until June to create a vaccine task force. Because the government failed to be proactive, no vaccines will be manufactured here until the end of the year and, more importantly, Canada is fully reliant on foreign manufacturers for its vaccine supply.

I appreciate the Conservatives' motion and sincerely believe that the government must present some kind of plan for getting out of this crisis. I honestly do not think the government has had a plan all along. The government is acting blindly and focusing more on its election platform than on getting us out of this crisis.

However, before suggesting that the temporary COVID‑19 restrictions be lifted, both the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party should take the time to look back and admit that measures were too slow to be implemented and that if the government had acted more quickly, we could have saved thousands of lives. This is about lives lost. Just a few days ago, we paid tribute to the more than 22,000 lives lost, including 10,000 in Quebec.

I think that we have a short memory. We know that the financial and mental health consequences are enormous, but we have to remember that these measures are in place to protect our people's health and safety. I think that is what matters most during a pandemic.

There were definitely problems with the mandatory hotel quarantine, but we must remember that, before and during the holidays, the government was unable to make sure that returning travellers were actually quarantining. With variants surfacing around the world, I think self-isolating for 14 days upon arrival is still essential. The same goes for land border restrictions. People who do not have an essential reason to travel should stay home. That is part of the effort we must all make to combat this accursed virus.

The government could certainly be more understanding and more flexible in some situations, such as family reunification or if a person has proof of vaccination. However, given that managing travellers and borders was such a mess from the start, I feel it is all the more urgent that everything be in order before we consider lifting restrictions.

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

Madam Speaker, I wonder if the member could indicate to the House the countries she would refer to as having done a good job at the beginning by invoking travel restrictions that she would have liked to see invoked at one time. In particular, I am thinking of the other G7 countries.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Madam Speaker, that is a good question, but I think that was the point of my speech today.

We are dealing with an unprecedented crisis. We were certainly not prepared. We had to bring in measures quickly, without really knowing if they would work. In my opinion, it is premature for the Conservatives to demand a fixed plan based on solid data within 20 days when we have been flying blind from day one.

I am not saying that there is a country that managed to control the pandemic perfectly within its borders. Could Canada have done better from day one of the crisis? I think the answer is yes. Was it slow to bring in measures at the border? Again, I think the answer is yes.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member. I have a tough question for her.

Today we are voting on the motion moved yesterday by the NDP. I am in favour of the motion, which seeks to protect seniors in long-term care centres. Now is not the time to blame other jurisdictions, but the fact is that Quebec has the worst record when it comes to the number of seniors who died at long-term care centres. It is a tragedy, but it is not the government's fault.

However, I think that at a time of crisis, we must find ways to work together. Maybe we should stop focusing on borders and find a way to collaborate. Does my colleague think that it is possible to vote in favour of that motion while protecting provincial jurisdictions and the rights of Quebec?

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question.

What happened in Quebec's long-term care centres was indeed a tragedy, and that is what Mr. Castonguay says in his book. He says that the long-term care centres were a blind spot for Quebec's health care system and that they were the main victims of the first wave of the pandemic.

However, Quebec has a health care system that has all of the tools it needs to operate properly, and Quebec is trying to keep it operating properly, but federal funding is needed. I understand and share my colleague's interest in collaboration. However, the way the federal government can help Quebec manage long-term care centres is to immediately transfer funding to it, as the premiers of Quebec and the provinces and territories, as well as the Bloc Québécois, have been asking it to do for weeks, if not months. That is how the federal government can really help Quebec's long-term care centres.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Madam Speaker, I would like to ask the same question I asked another Bloc member earlier. I realize there are jurisdictional issues, but it just seems to me that the whole issue of reopening comes down to the rate of vaccination, in which Canada has seriously lagged behind other countries.

Does the member not think that the government needs to take responsibility and admit its failure in this regard?

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Madam Speaker, as I said earlier, I think we need to take the time to look back and learn from our mistakes in order to move forward. Obvious mistakes were made with regard to vaccine procurement. Everything is going relatively smoothly now, but Canada is lagging behind the other G7 countries.

I think it is good that the government is admitting that, but it should continue to give the provinces the means to vaccinate seniors, health care workers and all members of the public. That would ultimately make it possible to ease the restrictions that are in effect. That is how we will get out of this situation. In my opinion, the priority right now is vaccination, as the member so clearly pointed out.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am very honoured to rise on behalf of the people of Timmins—James Bay. I will be sharing my time with the member for Vancouver Kingsway.

There has been incredibly beautiful weather in Ontario this week, and I see people out on the streets wanting to believe this nightmare is over. When I was in the market the other night, I saw many young people doing what young people do, hanging out and talking, believing that with leaving winter behind, so too have we left behind the nightmare of COVID, but that is not the case.

We know there are some very concerning new variants. The B.1.1.7 variant is spreading quickly across Canada. We are seeing multiple new cases and health organizations are telling us that this is putting us at the beginning of a third wave.

The crisis of new virulent variants hitting communities across this country happens as we are struggling to get the vaccine rollout. This is a race against time. The United Kingdom has 44 doses administered per 100 people. The United States has 37 doses per 100 people, and Canada is still down at 10 doses administered per 100 people. This is about the decisions that were made and the decisions that are being made.

My hon. colleagues in the Conservative Party were talking this morning about when the border will be opened. On the weekend, they said they did not believe in climate change. Maybe they do not believe in the new variants and that we should open border. We cannot open the border until we get the issue with the vaccines dealt with.

The issue with the vaccines, of course, comes down to the decision made by the government to trust that the private sector would get them through this. The Americans made the decision to invest heavily in vaccine production and research. We did not do that in Canada, and it has put us in a situation where we are behind. We are behind at a time when we cannot afford it because of these variants.

Reopening the economy is incredibly important because we know it has caused massive damage to small businesses and personal economies across this country, but we need to look at how the lack of rights that exist for many workers has exacerbated the crisis. Right now in Peel, there is a situation where 600 cases of COVID have been found at the Amazon warehouse. That is 600 cases.

This is not a flu we are talking about. It has been proven that COVID can have long-term neurological and health damage to people, yet Amazon allowed 600 of its workers to get sick in that plant. It is a number that I do not think has been as staggering anywhere, except at the Cargill plant in High River, where there was also about 600 cases.

Families are affected in Peel, which is continually in the red zone. We heard Doug Ford make it seem like the people in Peel were out partying and not listening to the rules, when the reason Peel has such high rates is because so many people are precarious workers. They work in warehouses like Amazon where they have no choice but to go to work. If we are going to talk about getting the economy reopened, we have to talk about protecting the workers who have been on the front lines and cannot take a day off if they feel sick. There is evidence of people who cannot even get a vaccine because they cannot afford to take a day off work. That is how precarious their situations are.

In Ontario, 15,000 people have gotten sick with COVID because of workplace exposures. There needs to be coherence in saying that to get the economy back on track, we have to shut down this COVID spread in workplaces. To do that, people have to have basic rights to have safe workplaces, and if they need time off when they are sick, they can take time off so they do not make other people sick.

The issue of Amazon is something to look at because Amazon is the symbol of everything that is wrong in the modern globalized economy. This is a company with 21st century technology and 19th century labour practices. The abuses of workers at Amazon have been documented again and again.

However, I will ask members to remember when all of the Liberals were talking about team Canada, with all hands on deck and that we are all in this together. At that moment, the Prime Minister shocked the country when he said who the partners would be for distributing medical equipment. It was not Canada Post or Purolator, places that have unions and good working conditions.

No, we were going to partner with Jeff Bezos, one of the crummiest human beings on the planet, and make him our partner. What the Prime Minister effectively did was privatize and outsource to Amazon a key element of the pandemic response, and it is not just that Amazon is a crappy company in the way it treats its workers.

While our small businesses were going down in flames across this country, Amazon was literally making out like bandits. Why was that? It is because Amazon does not pay taxes the way small businesses pay taxes. We would have thought the Prime Minister would have seen what a symbol it would have been to stand beside small business owners across the country, compared with standing beside Jeff Bezos, who has a massive tax loophole that has allowed him to become billions of dollars richer.

Two of the worst companies in terms of the profits they made were Amazon and Walmart. They are now $116 billion richer. Amazon and Walmart, by the way, were also two of the companies that gave the least to their employees. There are many big, big corporations whose executives actually said, “Hey, our employees are keeping us profitable. Our employees are going to get a better share.” Costco, certainly a big, big player, gave a fair share, but not Amazon and not Walmart.

Why do I mention that? I mention it because we know that Walmart stayed open through the whole pandemic while all our little, small-town stores and businesses were hanging by a thread, and the owners were begging for loans because their businesses had to be shut. It is about that inequity.

It is also about the choice that this Prime Minister made to tie himself to Amazon, of all companies, with the abuse of its workers and high injury rates, and the fact that we knew it was not going to protect its workers from COVID. We saw Tim Bray, vice-president of Amazon, quit over the firing of workers in the United States. A vice-president of Amazon quit because workers were fired for asking, in a pandemic, to expand sick leave, hazard pay and child care for the warehouse workers who were trying to keep the business afloat.

The issue of child care was huge because, in the first wave when children had to stay home, workers had to continue to go in, as there was no support for them. The Prime Minister decided that Amazon was the symbol of what was going to make the Liberal government look good in the pandemic. It sent a very wrong message.

What do we need to do? We need to work together at this point to get us through this third wave. I encourage people across this country not to let their guard down. This is the most dangerous point. We have come through two waves. In this third wave, we do not want to have ourselves hit again.

We need the government to have a plan for the vaccine rollout. It has been hiding again and again behind provincial jurisdiction. We saw how the United States brought the army in, and how it had a national strategy to get the vaccines out. We have a Prime Minister who is mister laissez-faire.

I mean no offence to the provinces, but Doug Ford failed the people of Ontario time and time again in not spending the money he should have spent. Regarding Jason Kenney, when everyone else in Alberta was doing their part, his MLAs were on the beaches in Mexico and Hawaii. Now he is using his $30-million war room to pick a fight over the historical accuracy of a cartoon about Bigfoot. Jason Kenney thinks the biggest priority now is that a cartoon about Bigfoot is somehow inaccurate. I know there are a lot of Bigfoots that probably do support Jason Kenney.

I am mentioning Jason Kenney and Doug Ford because we cannot simply leave something as big as a pandemic to them, if that is what their priorities are. We need leadership from the federal government, and we are not seeing it. We need a commitment at the federal level, where we have 180,000 employees, to have the Labour Code say that workers will be able to take time off for sick leave. That is a simple change the Liberal government could make now. If the Liberals did that, it would keep people safe. It would get the economy back up and rolling because we know that if people can take time off when they are sick, they are not going to make other people sick, and it will save us in the long term.

Therefore, I am encouraging my Liberal colleagues and my Conservative colleagues to push for this simple change that we can do at the federal level to make sure that the workers who need to take time off, and we have hundreds of thousands of them under the federal jurisdiction, can actually get the time off. This is so they are not spreading COVID or any of its variants.

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Madam Speaker, I enjoyed, as always, the comments from the member for Timmins—James Bay. However, I do have a question about the actual motion, which he seemed to navigate around but not actually talk about.

Section (iv) of the motion says:

The President of the United States and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom have both released public plans for economic reopening, while Canadian officials have not yet given Canadians clarity on when regular economic and social life will be able to resume....

Does my hon. friend believe that statement is true? Should the Prime Minister, once again, attempt to show leadership by telling Canadians when we can expect life to return to normal? The President of the United States has done that. The Prime Minister of the U.K. has done that. When will the Prime Minister actually show leadership and let Canadians know, with a data-driven agenda, when we can return to normal?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Madam Speaker, this is what I was talking about for the last 10 minutes.

The problems we are facing right now are the new variants and the struggles we are still having with the vaccine rollout. Because of these, we cannot reassure Canadians of when we are going to be safe. We need to take a number of steps to get people to be safe, because restarting this economy is crucial. We cannot allow a third wave to happen. People are just so frustrated, so tired and have carried a heavy weight.

Every Canadian has gone above and beyond, time and time again. It is up to us to reassure them that we will get them there. We do need a statement, but we also need to recognize that until we have the vaccines to deal with the variants, we are dealing with a very unsure situation for Canadians.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Madam Speaker, I have a question for my colleague.

We wasted an entire day yesterday debating an NDP motion calling for national standards in residential and long-term care facilities. Today, once again, we are debating a motion that essentially calls for a reopening plan. In other words, we will have spent two days debating matters under provincial jurisdiction.

Jurisdictions are not a purely administrative matter. The provinces administer health care. They run hospitals, hire doctors and work on prevention. The provinces do all that.

On what basis do my friends in the NDP and the Conservative Party think they know better than the provincial premiers how to handle this pandemic?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Madam Speaker, the issue of jurisdiction is very important, but it is clear that the provinces were ill-equipped to protect seniors in long-term care facilities during the first wave, and that was the biggest scandal of the pandemic.

The governments of Quebec and Ontario had to ask for help from the army, the Canadian Forces, to protect seniors. Of course this is a jurisdictional issue. It is essential that Canada protect seniors across the country.

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

Madam Speaker, I have a very specific quick question in regard to the NDP's position on international travel.

Do New Democrats support the current system we have in place, or are there some specific changes they would put in place?