Madam Speaker, I wish to inform you that I will be sharing my time with the member for Vaughan—Woodbridge.
It is about 10:35 p.m. as I rise to speak in this important debate. During the pandemic, we have lost many Canadians to COVID-19. Some people lost a loved one and were unable to visit them in the hospital as they would have liked.
This evening, I would like to talk about someone who served in the House for 22 years, the Hon. Don Boudria. He lost his mother yesterday, and I would like to offer him my deepest condolences. Ms. Loiselle was a constituent of mine and a wonderful woman. I know that her family is mourning her. She had a good life, and she raised a very good boy who went on to serve his community.
In March and April 2020, every member of the House experienced the same thing. We all brought thousands of Canadians home from abroad. We all worked with the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was very busy bringing home Canadians on flights as some airports completely shut down.
Members were getting calls at all hours of the day and night about repatriating all these Canadians. That is how the pandemic started for MPs. We did everything we could to bring these Canadians home. On March 13, 2020, we instructed Canadians not to travel anymore, as it was no longer safe to leave Canada.
That was a very difficult time for many MPs. It was like being hit by a tsunami that no one saw coming. The entire world went through this. Today, I want to thank all those who were involved in this operation, all those officials who worked to repatriate all the Canadians. It is already a distant memory now, in April 2021, but that is how the pandemic started for the majority of Canadians.
Today, I also want to thank all front-line workers and first responders. In my riding, the Eastern Ontario Health Unit did an excellent job of deploying rapid testing. People could be tested at a drive-through assessment centre in Casselman.
I really want to thank Dr. Paul Roumeliotis, the chief executive officer of the Eastern Ontario Health Unit. He has done an outstanding job, but it is not over yet. I know he has not slept in a year, like most of us here today.
Once people returned to Canada, the provinces implemented quarantine measures. That is when business owners and people who had lost their jobs overnight started coming to us, because they had to go into quarantine. At that point we had little information about the COVID-19 virus.
I want to thank all members for their work, but I also want to thank all of the business owners who contacted me during this period to say they needed help because they had lost their jobs and had no income. They were not eligible for employment insurance and wanted to know if there would be another program. The Canada emergency response benefit was created.
My aunt, who passed away on Saturday, was a hairdresser. Unfortunately, the vast majority of hairdressers were not eligible for employment insurance. The Canada emergency response benefit was helpful to them during the shutdown, as it provided some assistance to cover personal expenses. If they had to pay rent, they could apply for the emergency subsidy to get support.
Our government delivered for Canadians because we listen. None of this would have been possible without our Prime Minister, who did everything he could to help Canadians.
That mission did not change for our Prime Minister in 2021. It is still very real. In my opinion, it also did not change for the members who sit in the House either in person or virtually.
We are now in the midst of the third wave, and I would like to thank my colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands for requesting this emergency debate.
We are still getting requests for help every day. Business owners in my riding were telling me recently that they did not know how they would survive if the Canada emergency wage subsidy was to end in June. They asked me to extend that measure.
The budget that our Minister of Finance presented on Monday confirmed that this measure will be extended until September, and I know that will help many business owners in my riding. The extension of the Canada emergency rent subsidy will also help many businesses to survive.
Our strategy for the pandemic is to build a bridge to help businesses survive and to participate in the economic recovery.
On Monday, the finance minister announced that she wanted to create a million jobs by the end of the year. That is a commendable goal because we know that, during the last recession, it took nearly 10 years, from 2008 to 2018, to create and bring back all of the jobs that were lost.
Everyone in the House has acknowledged that women have paid the price for this pandemic. I cannot repeat what my wife said when I told her that we plan to bring in $10-a-day child care. Her words were unparliamentary, but I can assure my colleagues that the message was very positive. My wife works with women entrepreneurs, first at Startup Canada Entrepreneurship Empowers Everyone and now at Global Entrepreneurship Network, where she keeps hearing every day about how child care is a hurdle for women business owners or those who want to start a business.
Earlier, I heard my colleagues ask us what we were going to do to help new businesses. I can assure them that helping families get access to $10-a-day child care alone will open a whole range of jobs in our communities in Canada.
In English we call that a game-changer. It will be a game-changer for society. I cannot say how many female entrepreneurs I have met in my riding who have told me they need some help with child care. It is a true story in rural Canada, particularly in rural Ontario, and it is also a true story in urban communities.
The other issue is rural Internet access. I know that many children who are trying to learn from home simply do not have access to good broadband. Access to a reliable Internet service should be a right in Canada. We answered that question in budget 2019, but in budget 2021, we added another billion dollars to speed up the timeline to connect every Canadian who wants a reliable, speedy connection. That means access to offered services and access to schooling, and it means being able to talk to the family members we all miss so much.
I want to finish with the procurement strategy. I have full confidence in the Minister of Public Services and Procurement. She has done a great job. We started off with an objective of six million doses by Q1, and we ended up with 9.5 million. We are going to get almost 50 million doses, with current timelines, by the end of June. That is a lot more doses to vaccinate every Canadian who chooses to have a vaccine and includes the second dose for those who choose to have one.
We are on track, we have done a good job and we will continue working with the provinces.