Madam Speaker, words that I am hearing from my riding are: frustration, anger, hopeless, discontent, confusion, despondency, depressed, isolated, weary. The words that we use now are: masks, front-line workers, no masks, family maybe, flu, COVID-19, variants, international travel, no travel, bubble, lockdown, no bubble, restrictions, health care workers, protection, quarantine, border closure, exemptions, hotel quarantine, tickets for being out, businesses open, no funerals, businesses permanently closed, schools open, vaccine passport, mandatory vaccines, shortage, distribution, safety concerns, too few, too many, on and on.
It is at the point that a lot of my constituents no longer trust mainstream media or they are so tired of the negativity that is in it. My constituents are looking for alternate media, looking for alternate things they can find out. They are looking in Google search. They are tired of this and they are weary. Have we lost our social skills because we are lost in Zoom?
Then we have the vaccines recently. I had the first shot, and now we are talking about a four-month delay when we have heard we need to have them in a month. South of the border, they get them in a month.
We talk about the U.S., the U.K., better one day, worse another. We talk about foreign sources. We talk about Canadian sources. We play a crazy numbers game such as we are ranked 42nd, or we are ranked third, or we are ranked fifth. It goes on and on. We talk about science and non-science.
Governments have and are creating the ultimate fear in our society and people are tired of it. They are losing faith in our government, which is charged with providing a safe and secure society. They are desperate for a different leadership to give them hope. This is not about writing and handing out cheques from taxpayer money, which will be paid in the future by our kids and our grandkids. Parliament has been dysfunctional for 13 months. They are looking for a government to provide leadership, a change. They are tired and weary and living in a world of fear. Canadians want positive direction and hope.
That goes along with Trikafta and cystic fibrosis. We have had drugs approved in a short time. This happens by other companies outside, getting drugs developed and all of a sudden they are in Canada and quickly approved. We have a group of people who are so susceptible to germs like COVID-19. There is a drug that has been approved and used in many other countries that is life-changing. However, what happens in Canada? We get stalled in the federal health bureaucracy of approvals. Then there is the step of working with provinces. However, with the vaccines, we seem to get them approved very quickly and for use in the provinces by their health units. Why can we not get this done with Trikafta. It is a life-saving drug and a really good one.