Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to our motion.
A plan is basically very simple. When you have a plan, you give guidance and you know where you are headed. This situation is not an easy one. It is an extremely complex situation to manage. This has been the case around the world from the outset.
However, when someone is in a position of leadership and managing a government, they must be able to develop a series of plans and provide clear guidance. The problem we have had from the start of the pandemic in Canada is that, when it first hit us, we were all waiting. First, we were waiting to see how the government would react to a crisis that was rapidly coming into focus around the world.
We called for the creation of an emergency health committee, which met to start asking questions. I attended the January 31, 2020, meeting and I asked some very simple, basic questions. I asked the officials there about their plan and about what they were working on at that time. I asked them what measures they were taking under the Quarantine Act. They told us that they were getting set up and starting to look into it. I found that baffling. We could see how quickly things were moving around the world, yet in Canada, officials were telling us that they were starting to look into it.
We kept asking questions here, in the House, and in committee, but we never got any answers. We figured that maybe the officials were not quite sure where to go, but that at least we had a government, a Prime Minister, a few ministers and people in place to lead us. As a former member of the armed forces and business owner, I found myself thinking about what I would do in a global situation like this. I would create a council of war or emergency council that would meet 24-7 to make urgent decisions. During world wars and all emergencies, we expect the government to sit down and make quick decisions, and this situation is no different.
When we knew that the virus was coming, the first thing we expected from the government was a decision on the borders, a plan. In response, we were told that everything was fine, that there was no risk, no problem. We saw that the virus was starting to enter. Since the virus came from China, we were initially concerned about the flights coming from there. Then there was Italy and the flights from Europe. Every time we asked a question about public safety, we were told that there was no problem, that our officers were providing information.
That is okay, but we saw that other countries were taking draconian measures by closing their borders and putting control systems in place. Asking for a plan is nothing new. We have been asking for one all along. I want to mention that we knew that the situation was not easy to assess, we knew full well that it was an unknown virus with varying effects.
As the weeks went by, we saw countries get organized and react. Watching the news we saw that countries were moving teams on the ground and things were happening. In the meantime, in Canada, we were told that there was no problem. Looking back at our initial concerns, our questions were legitimate. In an emergency situation, we usually want a plan. We did not have one, we simply got inane answers.
Obviously, the virus got into the country. It spread, particularly in long-term care homes in Quebec at the start. The virus obviously attacked vulnerable people and, today, over 20,000 Canadians have died because of it.
The government says that it is easy for the opposition parties because all they do is complain and ask questions. It is true that it is easy to do that. However, when we have been asking the right questions from the start and not getting any answers, we have the right to be concerned and to think that there is starting to be a major problem. That has always been the case.
Then the financial measures were addressed. We had to help businesses and go into lockdown. The Conservatives agreed. We knew that it would cost a lot of money, but we wanted to do our job. We had to step back and help businesses and Canadians. However, we wanted guidelines to be put in place to prevent abuse and so that the money would actually go to businesses that had to shut down and to people who lost their jobs.
The government's response was that Conservatives were trying to block the process and did not want to help Canadians. I find that kind of response to legitimate governance concerns so insulting. We just wanted to ensure good governance in the midst of that very complex situation. We were not against helping people. We just wanted rules that would prevent problems cropping up later. We wanted to work as a team. The Leader of the Opposition even asked the Prime Minister to sit down and work as a team, but that did not work out.
Once again, that is how it has been for the past year every step of the way. Every time we asked for a plan, there was no plan. Financial support measures now amount to $400 billion, and there are some incredible questions being asked about how things were done that could have been avoided.
We are not looking to nitpick and identify minor problems. We are dealing with facts and situations that are blowing up in our face. Let us consider vaccine development. When these efforts began, we learned in oral question period that the federal government had conducted negotiations with CanSino, a company controlled by the Chinese Communist regime. Clearly, the Chinese government decided to thwart us and stopped the samples at the airport by prohibiting their export to Canada. We lost three months because it was not until three months later that we learned about the Chinese manoeuvre. We then had to renegotiate with other companies. We do not know the details of these agreements and we do not know what was negotiated. The only thing we are told is that Canada has the largest number of vaccine doses in the world, even though we know that the Canadian vaccination rollout is lagging behind that of other countries.
That is why we are asking questions about the planning process and about plans. When we see the decisions that were made, it seems to us that there were other ways things could have been done. If there is a problem, why does the government not sit down with the opposition leaders in private and ask them to make arrangements to figure out a solution together? Everyone would have been happy to do that because this was not a situation in which we were trying to score political points. It was not a situation in which we woke up in the morning and said to ourselves that we were going to ask the government questions to cause trouble for it. We were not there for that. We were all in the same situation. We all had to stay home and attend too many Zoom meetings. We are tired of Zoom meetings. We all want to be done with them. Business owners, residents, everyone in our ridings is fed up.
As a result, when we say today that we want a plan, we just want something to assess. The government needs to stop saying that the provinces bear all the responsibility, because we already know that they are responsible for administering the vaccines and screening people. All the Prime Minister needs to do is tell people when every Canadian will be vaccinated.
While the government says that we will all be vaccinated once by July 1, there is one small problem. One dose of vaccine is not enough, and a second dose is needed to be considered fully vaccinated. What happens then? If plan A is that everyone receives one dose of vaccine by July 1, this still raises the same concerns, the same uncertainty around the administration of the second dose of vaccine. If that is the plan, clarification is needed; otherwise, everyone will think they are free and clear and they can party beginning July 1, when that will not be the case. The government seems to be waiting to tell us, because it knows very well that this is problematic.
Political calculations are being made right now. However, the real calculations to be made should be about the mood of Canadians, their mental health and the disillusionment of businesses that have had to close. That is what is most important. When we ask for a plan, we simply want to be given the real story and told where we are headed. We will appreciate our government for doing that, but as long as it keeps this a secret, everyone has doubts, and that is where things go wrong.