Madam Speaker, I want to share some good news with the House. The Seattle Mariners will host 9,000 fans. They just got approval from Washington State, a very progressive and woke state south of the border, whose ideological inclinations are very similar to the government's. They have signed off on a safe plan, according to that state, to allow 9,000 fans to participate at a major sporting event in Seattle.
Simultaneously we got the news that our Toronto Blue Jays are not going to be able to do anything similar. In fact, they put out a statement in which they said, “we had hoped to see improvements in the public health outlook as we neared the baseball season. With the ongoing Canada-U.S. border closure, we have made the difficult decision to play the first two homestands of the 2021 regular season...at TD Ballpark in [Florida]”. The Floridian businesses will get all of the benefit of that major sporting event.
It is not just sporting events that are reopening around the world. Australians and New Zealanders are finalizing plans for quarantine-free travel across the border between their two countries. Then there is Taiwan, which has pretty much the lowest COVID mortality rate on planet earth, even though it is right next door to the country from whence COVID originated.
The Brookings Institution, a progressive U.S. think tank, stated:
Taiwan has managed the spread of COVID-19 far better than most: It suffered only seven deaths among its 23.5 million people in 2020. Except for a few short weeks of lockdown in March last year, life in Taiwan has been normal. Schools, offices, and restaurants have been open as usual, although with temperature screening, hand sanitizing, and social distancing. Live concerts by Yo-Yo Ma and performances of “Phantom of the Opera” have attracted thousands of people into indoor arenas.
All of this is happening with seven deaths. It is not seven deaths per 100,000 or seven deaths per million. It is seven total deaths since COVID started in the country right next door. In fact, Canada now has 601 deaths per million; Taiwan has 0.42; Singapore has 5.13; and Australia has 35.6. In other words, even if we just compare Canada to Australia in that group, we have a factor of 20 times higher deaths per capita than they do, and we have among the most severe restrictions on our lives.
It is easy to wave one's hand and ask who cares about baseball or artistic conferences or travel between countries, as none of those things are core to human existence, so we ought not worry about the fact that they are still largely eliminated and restricted. However, the reality is they are but symbols of the massive human sacrifice that our people are being forced to make. Not only do we have a ranking of roughly 45 vaccinations per capita, we are ranked 11 out of 15 in the misery index. That is the overall combined misery that we have suffered during the COVID pandemic, according to the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
This is not just numbers and statistics. It is human lives. Calls to one suicide prevention line have risen 200% over the last year, reports CBC. That has prompted a Conservative MP from British Columbia to put forward a motion for a single suicide hotline. It is a good idea, but one that we wish we did not have to pursue. We wish there was no need for suicide hotlines, but the University of Calgary has found that for every one percentage point increase in unemployment, there is a two percentage point increase in suicides across Canada. That is the human cost.
Let us go not just to suicides, but also to drug overdoses, which have also spiked during the pandemic. They were up 50% in both Alberta and Ontario during the times Canadians were forced to lock themselves down. These statistics reflect what has happened right across the country.
Even the chief public health officer, Theresa Tam, wrote, “Statistics Canada found lower life satisfaction among unemployed Canadians and noted that this relationship is about more than just money”. She is pointing out in that statement what Canadians who are suffering lockdown in their homes or are restricted from their jobs have known all along.
This is not just a massive $100-billion economic crisis, though it definitely is that. This is not just about a $400-billion deficit, which is by far the biggest in Canadian history. This is about people's human and very real suffering, which has led to higher mortality rates in countless other areas. I think not only of the drug and opioid overdoses, but also of the suffering of seniors, many of whom, in the tragic stories we have all heard, have had to die alone, separated from the loved ones they have known all of their lives.
In a message I received recently from a senior, she told me she does not know what she has to live for. She has not seen her grandchild for a year and has not seen some of her children for an equally long time. Many of the activities that she enjoyed doing are now banned, and because she is over 80, she does not know how much time she has left. For someone in that age bracket, time is a precious and shrinking commodity, a reality the government, through its incompetence in managing the COVID situation, has exacerbated day by day. This is the very real human suffering that has resulted from the government's failure to safely protect our country from this pandemic and allow us to go forward and reopen our economy while protecting human lives.
For example, I think of our friends in Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was on the phone at 3 a.m. with the companies responsible for delivering the vaccines. As a result, he was able to deliver more than 100 vaccines for every 100 Israelis, whereas we are now at around five. Tiny Israel, a small country with endless security and economic challenges, surrounded by hostile states, many of which are controlled by terrorists and tyrants, is managing to outperform Canada.
Then we can look at the other countries of the world, such as Singapore, a tiny island with no resources, and Taiwan, which is right next door to the origin of the disease. I know the Liberals across the way are thinking that Israel, Taiwan and Singapore are ahead of Canada because they are such advanced countries with which we cannot expect to compete.
There was a time when Canada had an advanced economy and was among the best places on earth to do business and deliver the necessities of human life. Sadly, those days are slipping away. I fear that we are accepting slowly, as the frog in the heating water, the “loserdom” the government is bringing us into. We have the highest deficit as a share of GDP in the G20, the worst vaccination rates in the G7 and the highest unemployment rate in the G7. These are the results for Canada.
There is almost a quiet acceptance that Canada, a country that used to be the best, can be behind the rest of the world. It used to be that the United Nations would say we were the best place on planet earth to live. We do not hear people talking like that anymore. They now talk about Ireland, which has a GDP per capita that is 70% higher than Canada. That is a country with a fraction of the resources and land of Canada, and nowhere near the geographic advantage we enjoy here.
We have to say enough is enough, that we are not going to accept “loserdom” anymore. We as a country should be the best, not just at procuring vaccines and protecting our population, but also at everything else. We have been blessed with more natural advantages than any country on earth and maybe any country in the history of the world.
It is time for us to hold ourselves and our government to a higher standard, so we can live up to the expectations we as Canadians had for so long. We need to pass on to the next generation a country that is second to none.