Mr. Speaker, for over a year now Canadians have been doing everything they can to stay safe and keep Canada moving and working.
My riding of Tobique—Mactaquac takes in a majority of the New Brunswick-U.S. border. COVID restrictions have been particularly hard on our border communities across the country. Many Canadians are required to cross regularly for essential work and services. Some work in health care on the other side of the border, others truck and haul our goods and others work in our agriculture and food supply chains, while others must cross for medical and other essential appointments.
For some this means crossing the international border multiple times a day. Everyone wants to be safe and take the necessary precautions, but when our essential workers are crossing multiple times a day, the process for crossing should be as simple and straightforward as possible.
Instead of insisting that these essential workers fill out arriveCan submissions multiple times a day in places that often have poor to no cell coverage, the government should be doing everything it can to streamline the process and ensure our essential workers are supported with a process that makes sense and eliminates redundancies.