Debates of May 5th, 2021

COVID-19 in Alberta

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, there is a problem with the interpretation. We are hearing some very loud static. I am not sure if it is coming from the interpreter's microphone, but we can only hear it on the French channel, not the English one. It is nearly impossible to listen in French right now.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

I think it may be the member's microphone arm.

I just want to ask the hon. member to maybe displace her microphone, on the arm, just up or down. There is a little popping sound.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think the issue is coming from the member. I think it is an issue on the interpretation side. The sound is very good on the English channel, but there is static on the French channel, and I am not sure where it is coming from.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

It sounds like it might be a problem in the interpretation booth with the microphone.

Has it been resolved?

I will let the hon. member for Calgary Nose Hill continue. I apologize for the interruption.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it really sort of stinks to be interrupted in the middle of that, because that is the key message here: My community cannot afford lockdown. Everybody wants to do their part, everybody wants to stop the spread of COVID, everybody understands how serious it is, but we need a durable solution, which has not been delivered to us, and the federal government has a major role in that.

What does the federal government need to do from a solutions perspective?

First, the government needs a stable supply of vaccines. The provincial government, every provincial government in the country, has seen supplies, like Lucy and the football from the Charlie Brown cartoon series, where vaccines are coming, but then they are not. We have not had a single dose of AstraZeneca delivered from the actual contract with the manufacturer. It has only been raided from COVAX, or charity from the Americans, or from the Serum Institute of India. We need to provide more details to the provinces about the future of vaccine rollouts. There needs to be stability. Again, every week, the numbers seem to change, and that is not going to provide a durable solution.

Having the public be able to look at the details of contracts so that Parliament can understand whether or not the government is doing its job in holding manufacturers to account on recourse could have been part of it as well. However, the federal government has not been transparent on that, and Parliament has not been able to do its job because of it.

I implore the health minister, and I know she may not like me, but she needs to talk to Health Canada, PHAC and NACI and get their act together on the confusing messaging that is coming out on vaccine efficacy and safety. It is her job. She needs to pull those people in together, knock their heads together a little bit and say, “What happened this week can never happen again.” It has happened numerous times now, and she needs to take a leadership role so that Canadians can have trust in public health institutions, and so that the debacle that happened this week does not happen again.

The government also needs to come up with some better use or national strategy for rapid testing. I think the federal government has really kind of wiped its hands of that. It could be providing advice and support for advice on that, but that has not happened. Even things like using rapid tests in airports for domestic travel are something that the government has not looked into. There could be more approval of over-the-counter rapid tests or home-purchased rapid tests. We have not seen that happen. Again, I understand that the regulator has to do due diligence on that, but certainly we can have diligence and a good review process to give more tools to people to stop the spread.

We could remove the hotel quarantine policy. It has been such an unmitigated disaster. We are hearing reports of COVID spreading in these facilities. I mean, I could litigate all the failures around the border, but how do we move forward from this, given the failures? There will be a time for inquiry, but moving forward the government could immediately cut down on the list of those who are exempted from quarantine until more vaccines can be deployed. It could limit those who are exempted to a very small number of critical workers, like truck drivers, and prioritize access to vaccines for those persons. It could put in place measures to ensure that every person entering Canada is required to be tested upon arrival, including at land and sea borders, with exemptions only for critical workers who are fully vaccinated.

The government could develop a clear set of parameters for identifying risks presented by emerging variants and present this to the public in an easy-to-understand format. I do not understand why we do not have a Defcon level ranking system for when variants are emerging, and why that is not being communicated to the public in terms of travel or even around essential travel. It is like, “The risk is low, but it is not.” The confusing messaging that the Auditor General rightly criticized the Public Health Agency of Canada for issuing at the front end of the pandemic could be fixed.

Also, we could provide a data-driven plan to provinces and Canadians on how and when lockdown measures will be lifted. The federal government still has not provided any benchmarking for what fully vaccinated persons could do. If we start telling the public what fully vaccinated persons can do, there will be more uptake of vaccines. For those who are having mental health challenges, there will be some hope in knowing that, “Okay, when I get both of my doses, I can do this.”

However, we know that is not coming forward, I would surmise, because the federal government does not have a line of sight on when everybody will be fully vaccinated, because of the shortage and because of concerns about what the dosing delay is going to mean for long-term efficacy. That needs to be solved.

I cannot stress enough how critical this is for the people in my community in Alberta, who have long-sufferingly provided support to the rest of the country through hundreds of billions of dollars in payments to the federal government and have not received a lot in return. We get forgotten by the federal government all the time. In these instances, at these times, casting aspersions or finger pointing or playing politics between the NDP and the provincial government is not going to cut it. What we need is a plan.

I wish I had three hours to talk about all the things that we could be doing right now that the federal government and the provincial government are not, but I do not. Suffice it to say, there are things that could be done that we are not doing, and I implore the federal government, I implore the health minister to put these things aside and start understanding that everything is not fine. It is not okay. We are not in a position of success federally in this country, and more must be done. That is why I needle the government every day. That is why I prep for committee, and that is why I hold the government to account, because we can and must do better.

Instead of casting aspersions that somehow Alberta is to blame, that the spread that is happening is the fault of the people of my province, legislators and leaders in this country need to start standing up and doing their job: being stricter on the border, doing better on vaccines, having better data, supporting people more effectively and giving them hope for when this is going to be over. I cannot say enough how hard it is to be in one of the hardest-hit communities in the country right now. It breaks my heart. It is the place from which I get up in the House of Commons every day and ask questions and demand better.

I implore the federal government to do this on behalf of every single Albertan who is listening to this tonight. We need more vaccines. We need a clear line of sight. We need clear communications, and we need the federal government to stop patronizing us in its response. When we are holding it to account and demanding better, that is its job, and hopefully there will be a solution for Albertans because of the work of everybody in Parliament who is doing their job here tonight.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry I had to interrupt my colleague's tirade earlier because of interpretation issues. I would like to come back to what she was saying at that exact moment. She said that her community could not afford the luxury of a lockdown.

That concerned me a bit. What public health is telling us is that social distancing is essential, and I think that we really need to listen to science during a pandemic.

I would like my colleague to clarify what she meant by that. Is she against the lockdown? That is what she seemed to be saying.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, lockdown is a blunt tool used to stop the spread of the virus. By now, there are better tools, more durable solutions, that should have been deployed across this country. Lockdowns are a very bourgeois concept for a lot of legislators. For the frontline grocery store worker or the mom who shares custody and is working three jobs to make ends meet, who cannot do her job sitting at a desk and having Uber Eats deliver to her, lockdown is paternalistic. It is unaffordable, even with CERB or whatever. It is a luxury.

Being able to stay at home and protect themselves from the virus by isolation is a luxury most workers in Canada cannot afford. That is what I am talking about: understanding that this is a year and a half in and we need a more durable solution that keeps people safe, that stops the spread of COVID, but also understands and highlights the inequities of lockdown that have been exacerbated. Lockdown is classist. We need more vaccines. We need more equity in this country, and the only way we are going to do that is to start saying the obvious: that not everybody can afford to sit at home indefinitely.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for mentioning the fact that Alberta had economic hardships facing us before the pandemic hit and that the pandemic has made them so much worse.

We have seen time and again that when we allow the virus to run rampant, it hurts the economy. It is the slow peeling off of the band-aid. It is the very thing that the member is talking about that is hurting our population, and makes it harder for Albertans to get over this virus.

We need to put those supports in place. I called on the federal government to do that: to make sure there were more supports for people so they could stay home and stay safe.

I am wondering this. Why did her party not support sick leave legislation? Why did her party not support pharmacare legislation? It is legislation that Canadians, particularly Albertans, need right now.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I do not understand why the member opposite did not support a motion to provide support and benchmarks for a clear path out of the pandemic and out of lockdown, such as what vaccinated persons can do or deploying more rapid tests. This is what we need.

I fully and deeply support ensuring that front-line workers have the resources they need to ensure that they can isolate. Often they do not have that right now, but we are a year and a half into this and we are talking about more programs to keep people at home. We should be talking about how we are getting them back to work safely through vaccination.

I am worried at this point. I think one of the cabinet ministers was talking about what would happen if there was a fourth wave. What? People need hope. They need to know when we are getting out of this. They need to understand what the path forward is and when they are getting those tools. That is what we need the federal government to be working on right now collaboratively with our provincial partners.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I find it ironic that I was standing in the House only a couple of weeks ago in another emergency debate on the COVID-19 pandemic. I believe I started off my speech that night saying that I had been here in February in an emergency debate on COVID-19. I certainly hoped that I would not have to be here for a third emergency debate on COVID-19. I was hoping that the government would get its act together and start getting vaccines to provinces for them to distribute, to get Canadians vaccinated and get immunity.

However, here I am, less than two weeks later and we are in a third emergency debate on the COVID-19 pandemic. This has been a very difficult two weeks, certainly this past week, when we are seeing once again very mixed messages from the Liberal government in terms of efficacy and immunity when it comes to certain vaccines.

Today's debate is specifically about Alberta. I want to take this opportunity to talk about what could have been. We had opportunities to have made-in-Alberta solutions to address the COVID pandemic. I want to start with the Alberta pilot project at the airports and land borders. Almost a full year ago, Alberta took it upon itself to initiate a pilot program where travellers would be given a rapid test before they started their travels, either on flights at the Calgary International Airport or at the Sweetgrass Coutts Border Crossing, and were given a rapid test again when they returned.

I want to give some numbers for non-exempt travel participants, or non-essential travellers. During the pilot project timeline in Alberta, 50,929 travellers were tested using the Alberta pilot program rapid test. Of those test results, on the first test at the point of entry, 1.37% of travellers tested positive for COVID. On their second test, 0.7% of travellers tested positive.

The total travellers who tested positive was just over 1%. Of the almost 51,000 travellers tested via the Alberta pilot program rapid test, 1% were positive. Let us put that in perspective. That program was extremely successful at identifying the small number of travellers who had COVID. They were forced to do a 14-day quarantine at home while the rest were able to go about their daily lives. Instead of taking that program, which was successful, and moving it to every other international airport in the country, the Liberal response was to shut that program down.

We had a successful program that was identifying positive COVID results of travellers arriving in Calgary and in Alberta through the land crossing, and the Liberals cancelled it. Instead of taking that program and using that template in other international airports across Canada, the Liberals invoked the hotel quarantine program at a cost of $250 million, not to mention the stress and anxiety that it put on travellers coming back into Canada.

I want to be really clear that these were not just snowbirds coming home or people coming back from sunny locales. These were people who were travelling internationally for funerals, medical appointments and cancer treatments. I have had many of these conversations with my own constituents who were in tears trying to figure out how they could get home, and spending hours on hold trying to book a quarantine hotel with little success.

The Liberals took a program that was working, which put minimal stress and anxiety on travellers and certainly did not cost $250 million, and they scrapped it in favour of a disastrous hotel quarantine program. We know it is even worse now. We are seeing outbreaks in hotel quarantine sites. Sexual assaults have happened in these hotel quarantine sites. It has been a complete and utter disaster.

Instead of scrapping that program and going back to the pilot program, which we knew worked, the results were almost exactly the same. This is the most frustrating thing. The hotel quarantine identified about 1% of the travellers. It is not like it was identifying an exorbitantly different number. It did not work. It does not work. Alberta had a made-in-Alberta solution that could have been copied across Canada.

I also want to talk about an opportunity to address the vaccines. I have spoken about this in the House a couple of times. Providence Therapeutics in Calgary started approaching the government a year ago with the same innovation and technology that other mRNA vaccines were using, such as Moderna and Pfizer, and it could have been produced here in Canada. Now we have the CEO of Providence saying that he is sick and tired of banging his head against the wall trying to get support from the Liberal government. He is now looking to go abroad, either to the United States or the European Union.

I asked this in question period the other day. The minister said there was a $100 million program, and Providence got $10 million from it. Let us put that in perspective in comparison to Moderna in the United States. Through Operation Warp Speed, Moderna has been given $2.4 billion by the United States government. In comparison, when we had the possibility with Providence Therapeutics of a made-in-Alberta, but more importantly a made-in-Canada vaccine solution, which could have been developed and manufactured here in Canada and for which we would not have to rely on unreliable global supply chains, the company was given $10 million by the Liberal government. That is 0.4% of what was given to a comparable company in the United States.

To compare that again, the Liberals were willing to spend $250 million on a hotel quarantine program that does not even work, but they could have supported a Canadian innovator, a Canadian company, to manufacture and develop vaccines right here in Canada. Instead, Providence has been invited by other countries to go to the United States or the EU to develop and manufacture that program.

That is not the first time. Solstar Pharma was in a very similar position. It is based out of Laval, Quebec, but has investors in Calgary. It has been funded by Operation Warp Speed in the United States and its product is being developed in San Diego. That is another one that could have been done here in Canada.

Is the Prime Minister so focused on ignoring Alberta that the Liberals would ignore a made-in-Canada solution just because Providence Therapeutics is based there? I would hope that is not the case. Certainly, that is how those of us who are members of Parliament from Alberta feel. We feel that Alberta has done its part when it comes to trying to address or offer solutions to the pandemic, and we are being ignored. I can certainly understand. I hope members would see how frustrating it is, not only for the elected officials representing Alberta ridings but certainly for our constituents.

Probably the biggest frustration that we have as Canadians, and certainly as Albertans as well, is the mixed messages we are getting from the federal government. The other day, my colleague for Calgary Nose Hill asked the health minister about Canadians who were getting certain vaccines and were not sure about their second ones. I want to add a personal perspective to this. My wife has had her first AstraZeneca vaccine dose. Now she has no idea when she is going to get her second, because AstraZeneca vaccines have been delayed. She wants to know how long her immunity is going to last or if she is going to have to take one or two doses of a Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccine because she is not going to get her second AstraZeneca dose. The minister did not feel it was worth answering real questions from real Canadians who have real concerns. My wife wants an answer to the question of whether she will have to take the AstraZeneca or have to take two doses of another vaccine.

That is the frustration that Canadians are feeling from these mixed messages and the inability to access vaccines. Fewer than 3% of Canadians have had their second dose of a vaccine. I am getting calls, as I know almost all of my colleagues here are, from frustrated, depressed, stressed business owners, moms, dads and grandparents. We want an end to this. We want Canadian businesses back open. We want Canadians back to work. I want to be able to hug my loved ones, whom I have not seen in more than a year. We need a clear path to how this is going to be resolved, and we need to see that sooner, not later.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs and to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I suspect that if members were to be honest, they would recognize that virtually from the beginning there has been a plan that ultimately has seen Canada do relatively well. Has it been perfect? No, and I do not believe any country has been perfect.

Alberta just recently made some announcements in terms of further restrictions and the speaker before him commented that Alberta cannot afford to have a lockdown. She gave the impression that she does not support a lockdown.

Does the federal Conservative Party have a position on lockdowns in situations of this nature or any other nature?

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the focus of my presentation and certainly my colleague from Calgary Nose Hill is these lockdowns would not be necessary if the Liberal government had been focused and had been able to procure and distribute vaccines. The Liberals spent all of last year focused on a partnership with CanSino, a company that is affiliated with the Communist regime in China, rather than supporting Canadian innovators, manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies that could have been manufacturing and developing vaccines right here at home.

To be honest, I am not worried if that company is from Alberta, Quebec, B.C., Saskatchewan, Newfoundland. I would rather see us have a dependable supply of vaccines. These lockdowns would not be necessary if the federal Liberal government had its act together.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am here in B.C. and I live in the Vancouver Island Health Authority, which has been broken into sections and we are not supposed to leave those sections unless it is an absolute emergency because we care about public health.

When I look at the reality across this country, where we see public gatherings, we see things happening that we do not want to see. Misinformation about lockdowns and restrictions has caused a great deal of confusion.

I am wondering if the member could be clear. Does he believe a full lockdown needs to be implemented to keep people safe during this time and that the resources that they need to do that should be there?

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I know the New Democratic Party is pushing very hard for the Prime Minister to enact the Emergencies Act so that the Prime Minister can have full control over the pandemic issues across the country. I do not support that because the Prime Minister has failed miserably at how he has handled certain parts of the pandemic that he should be able to control: procuring and distributing PPE and vaccines.

If he cannot even handle that part of his job, which I would argue is the most important part of his job, I certainly do not want him in charge of health care in each and every province and territory. If he cannot do job one, I certainly do not want him in charge of the entire country.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am distressed to understand now that the Conservative Party does not seem to believe that lockdowns work. We have evidence from the U.K. In fact, the countries that had a strategy of going to full elimination of the virus did much better than countries that tried to bend the curve.

However, even the U.K., which made the mistake initially and had such bad rates, instituted lockdowns and mandatory hotel quarantines far stricter than Canada's. It has a mandatory hotel quarantine of two weeks in which a traveller must pay for their own accommodation in a hotel.

I ask the hon. member if he does not think we should look at the evidence?

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am enthusiastic about the questions I am getting from the NDP and the Greens because they are asking questions as if I am in government. Obviously they feel that the trend is going in the right direction.

What we have seen is countries around the world like the United States, which is a very similar democratic system as we have here, and the United Kingdom, start to lift restrictions and lift lockdowns because they have access to vaccines, rapid testing, home-based testing, things that we have not had access to here in Canada.

I never said anything about lockdowns. What I am saying is these lockdowns would not have been needed had we had access to those important tools like vaccines.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to inform you that I will be sharing my time with the charming member for Saanich—Gulf Islands. It is a pleasure for me to do so.

First, I would like to say that I completely understand the heartfelt concern of the member for Edmonton Strathcona. I was listening to her earlier, and I understand her concerns because we experienced something similar in Quebec during the first wave, when the situation in our long-term care facilities was very troubling, very worrisome. Today, we see that there are 23,600 active cases in Alberta compared to 8,800 cases in Quebec. Demographically speaking, we see that the situation is very worrisome.

As legislators, what should we do in a growing pandemic? This situation is not good.

I would say that the first thing to do is not to give in to the instinct we have as politicians. It is unfortunate, but often as politicians, our instinct is to look for a scapegoat. I am saying that because we often get into the habit of pointing the finger rather than looking for solutions.

I would like to say that I have a great deal of sympathy for Albertans and for what they are going through. I may have a little less for Jason Kenney. Perhaps his handling of the crisis was not totally perfect, but that is not for us to say. It is not the House of Commons' job to judge Jason Kenney; that is the Legislative Assembly of Alberta's job. It is the opposition parties' job to do that and to show that there were perhaps some serious flaws in the way he managed the crisis. To sum up, it is not our job to put Jason Kenney on trial.

Although I say that, I am also aware that the preferred attitude during a crisis is, in my opinion, a responsible one. I think that responsibility dictates that we listen to science. We have an obligation to listen to science, especially in a pandemic. Perhaps that is not what Mr. Kenney did. He will have to answer to his fellow Albertans. However, science tells us that lockdowns can be useful.

Earlier, I heard my colleague from Calgary Nose Hill say that the lockdown was an issue in her riding, that it was unfair, that not everyone was being treated the same during lockdowns.

I do not know if this is the case in Alberta, but I can say that during the lockdown in Quebec, grocery stores and essential services remained open. We debated that at length in the House of Commons. There were benefits for people losing their jobs. There is a social safety net that lets us keep a roof over our heads and food on the table during a pandemic.

I find it most unfortunate to let our constituents believe that there is a magic solution that does not require lockdowns. What science is telling us and what public health is telling us is that this dreaded lockdown is necessary. In Quebec, it is very well managed by public health authorities.

At this time, we know that the situation is alarming. There is one thing that will surely make an appearance again and that is the Emergencies Act. Ontario invoked the Emergencies Act to get help from the federal government. Quebec did the same thing for its long-term care facilities and the army came to give us a hand.

Personally, I can see how this would be a useful tool, but it up to the provinces to use it. It is not up to the federal government, which does not have jurisdiction or expertise in health matters, to tell the provinces how to manage the pandemic. If the Emergencies Act were to be invoked, it would have to be in response to a formal request from the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. The federal government has no business taking that power away from the legitimately elected members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. I think that, if the government wants to do something useful in terms of pandemic response, the best thing it can do is make sure we have a more robust health care system going forward.

In Quebec, I think most health care providers realized that there were weaknesses in our health care system. Where do those weaknesses come from?

I have to say that for the past 20 years there has been a systemic problem in the Canadian federation, and that is the fiscal imbalance. It is not normal that the level of government with the greatest financial capacity provides just slightly more than 20% of every dollar invested in the health sector and that the provinces are forced—at least that is the case in Quebec—year after year to deal with difficult budget situations because the government's contribution to health care funding is inadequate. In the next few years we may have to face a similar crisis. If we do not have a more robust health care system at that point, then we will not have learned from our mistakes.

If the government wants to be helpful, the best thing it can do is listen to the provinces, like Quebec and Alberta, which have been calling for health transfers of 35% for far too long. That way the pressure and problems that Alberta is currently experiencing with intensive care might be problems that could be dealt with much more easily.

What Alberta is currently going through is similar to the problems experienced in long-term care centres and seniors homes in Quebec. Part of the problem was the burnout being felt by health care staff, who have been overwhelmed for years now. Fewer employees are being hired and more work is being done in mandatory overtime to reduce the financial strain on the system. In the end, it became quite clear that our system is very ill-equipped.

In my view, the best response the federal government could give today would be to better fund the provincial health care systems.

I ask all my colleagues not to give in to the political instinct we all have, as I said earlier, to want to score points by finding a scapegoat for the current crisis. Instead, we must try to respect each other's jurisdictions and ensure that rational political action is taken.

I will close by saying that I encourage everyone to listen to science-based recommendations. We need to follow public health rules and know that this imposes certain limitations on us both in terms of vaccination and lockdown. If every politician would follow the rules and encourage their constituents to do the same, I think that would be a very good start.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure my hon. colleague will not be surprised that we do not necessarily agree on all the facets and debate on jurisdiction. However, I know we all believe that no matter what, when lives are at stake, working together and doing whatever we can is key.

I wonder if he could comment on the need for the federal government, at the very least, to ensure that people in Alberta and across Canada have all the access they could possibly need to the vaccines.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I could not agree more with my colleague about the access to vaccines. Procurement was not the responsibility of the provincial governments. That responsibility fell to the federal government. As for the way vaccines are distributed once they are received, that is a public health issue, which is a provincial jurisdiction.

My colleague said that I would disagree with her. I would simply say that to be efficient and effective, we must respect the different jurisdictions. I cannot imagine a municipality poking its nose into the vaccination process. That would clearly fly in the face of common sense. I would therefore expect the federal government not to interfere in provincial jurisdictions, just as the provinces do not interfere in municipal jurisdictions.

There you go. It is as simple as that.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there has been a lot of discussion, and I know this member touched on certain members, primarily the NDP in this House, as calling on the government to use the emergency measures act. At the end of the day, this government has demonstrated that it wants to work with provinces and has pretty much given provinces everything that they want in terms of making sure that they have access to supplies as soon as they can get it, PPE and rapid tests.

I realize this member is not from Alberta, and neither am I, but at least within his province, would he not see the federal government using the emergency measures act almost as an act of bad faith in that relationship that has been used over the last year in order to combat this virus together on a collective front?

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure I understand my colleague's question.

The Emergencies Act was invoked to send the army to Quebec to help out in the long-term care facilities when the situation got out of control.

My colleague said that the federal government had made some efforts. I am prepared to agree, but it did not make the effort that it should have to ensure that the health care system is adequately funded. It is totally unacceptable that barely 20% of every dollar invested in health, one of the most important budget items, comes from the federal government. In Quebec, if I recall correctly, more than 48% of the government's entire budget goes to health care.

In the next few years, if the federal government does not understand that, I think the provinces will have a very painful time getting out of this crisis.

[Paul Manly, Green, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, when the member is talking about the health transfers, I agree that the federal government should increase the health transfers. We started with a 6% escalator and that was cut back to 3% escalator during the Harper government years.

I think that we should be looking at demographics rather than just per capita in terms of how much money is transferred to the provinces, because some provinces have a much older population, like here in British Columbia. Would he agree with that idea?

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we have to bear in mind the provinces' total spending on health care, not just the per capita amount. It has been shown, not by me, as I am a sovereignist, but by the Parliamentary Budget Officer, that if nothing is done by the end of this decade, the provinces will be posting annual deficits as a result of federal underfunding.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my thanks to my hon. colleague from Jonquière for splitting his time with me.

We are in a terrible place now. When we were first getting used to the idea that we were in a pandemic and needed to adjourn Parliament on March 13, 2020, some of us stood in this place to say that by unanimous consent we were going to adjourn until April 20, 2020. It seems absurd now. I clearly remember saying that the Greens had given their unanimous consent, while wondering if we really needed to stay out as long as April 20. It seemed maybe a little extreme, but we would see.

We have learned a lot. We started talking about flattening the curve. We thought that would be adequate, because we were told it would be, but we have learned more. This has been a very steep learning curve. We could have learned faster, gone faster, and followed the models of countries like New Zealand, Australia and South Korea, the countries that decided to go hard and fast, using the kind of advice that the World Health Organization, Dr. Michael Ryan, recommended back then of, “Go hard, go fast. Don't wait to be perfect. Speed trumps perfection.” I thought we were going fast and I certainly am not at the level of someone who wants to start casting blame.

I find this debate tonight difficult because, as much as there is blame to be cast, does it help? I do not want the people of Alberta to feel that the federal Parliament has decided to lay into them with clubs. It is pretty clear that their premier miscalculated badly and cost people's lives.

I want to reflect a bit on something that I do not think gets said enough in this place. I think there is a perception in Alberta that people like me, who want to see the fossil fuel industry shut down, phased out over time and take care of the workers that that somehow means we do not love Alberta. I really love Alberta and I love Albertans.

I have so much respect for the grit of Alberta in facing major disasters. I remember very clearly, of course, the 2013 floods in Calgary. I went. I pulled rotted debris from people's basements in High River because I found myself in the days after the 2013 flood in Calgary for the stampede and just thought I could be more useful if I got a friend and we went up to High River to see if we could help. I have the t-shirt that says, “Come Hell or High Water”. Mayor Nenshi decided that even though it looked impossible to have the stampede, they were going to have it. I admire that spirit.

Soon thereafter, during the 2016 fires at Fort McMurray, there was incredible community spirit with no one left behind. There was a very strong image of a patient, orderly evacuation with fires on all sides, and the residents of Fort McMurray moving out along the single road. If somebody's car ran out of gas, they got into somebody else's car. It was inspiring.

For Alberta to be the site of the highest COVID rates in North America is devastatingly frightening, because we know more about this pandemic now. We know about this virus. We know the longer the virus lives among us, the more likely we are in a human petri dish to have more dangerous variants. We do not know yet if it is all about getting vaccines in case a variant overcomes a vaccine. We are in a very dangerous place during this third wave.

Today we are marking Red Dress Day, to think about and to pledge solidarity with all of the families of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. It was early June, two years ago, that the government had delivered unto it the report of the inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls and two-spirited peoples. One of the inquiry's key recommendations was to shut down the “man camps”. At that point, the threat to human life was from what were called the “man camps” in the inquiry. Many Canadians may not know the term, but it meant that large construction sites represent a threat to the vulnerable, to the marginalized who have to hitchhike.

I know there was a very strong reaction from people in Alberta, and of course most of the workers are the dads, the grandads, the brothers, the sons and thoroughly decent people, but there is no question but that the evidence shows that missing and murdered indigenous women and girls are at more risk when there are transient camps of workers.

In COVID, I just want to ask why it is that we, public health officials and governments, decided that when others things had to close down, like mom-and-pop shops and various places where people might have been able to be better off than in a concentrated place like a work camp, the work camps were so essential that we could not shut them down. The highest rates of COVID in Alberta right now are in the region of the oil sands. They have very high rates.

In British Columbia the NDP Government of British Columbia has decided Site C is so important to continue, that we would not possibly think of shutting it down when it has outbreaks. We have outbreaks right now at the Site C dam site, the Kitimat LNG facilities that are being built, along the Trans Mountain pipeline construction link, the Coastal GasLink. All the man camps turn out to also be places where COVID flourishes.

One of the key things about the oil sands is that the workers commute by airplane. Members can think of poor Newfoundland and Labrador, where they were in the Atlantic bubble and felt that the rates were low enough to meet the requirement under Newfoundland and Labrador law that new Premier Andrew Furey had to call an election within a few months. Suddenly, they had an outbreak of COVID from the oil sands workers, and they are having them now. If we search this we will find it everywhere that academics and scientists are saying they have a problem with these fly-in, fly-out camps. One expert said that COVID did not just walk in there by itself, it showed up on an airplane.

While we worry about international borders and why we are not being tighter with our borders, how is it that we are so addicted to oil that we turn a blind eye to the impact of these man camps that we should have been shutting down, or at least ensuring that the work force there was not commuting across many provincial borders? There were ways, perhaps, to keep people in the construction industry working when many other industries were shut down, but we have turned a blind eye to the fact of these squashed, busy workplaces like slaughterhouses. We have shut down parts of our economy, but turned a blind eye to the places that seem to me, in reviewing the evidence, to be the places where COVID flourishes.

We have seen the mayor of Lethbridge, Chris Spearman, say, “We have done the least of the provinces. We’ve tolerated protests against masks and at the hospital and rapid vaccination clinic.” We need to do more. One of the Albertans I admire the most, because he is brilliant, is journalist, Andrew Nikiforuk, who wrote a piece just a few days ago in The Tyee entitled “A Coronavirus Hell of Kenney’s Own Making”. I only mention the title so members can look it up.

He said the “numbers reflect, first and foremost, Premier Jason Kenney’s callous and persistent disregard for scientific findings and mathematical reality.” One of those mathematical realities is exponential growth. Alberta is in a dangerous place right now, and it is certainly not the fault of Albertans. We had a government in Alberta that, over Christmas, had a fairly significant portion of its elected provincial leadership decide it was okay to go on a vacation. As I dug into it, I found one of the ministers excused herself by saying she wanted to make sure she was helping the airlines in this economic crisis. I thought it was a facetious comment that would not land well, but then I read further and found that the premier had thought it was a good way to help WestJet and that there would be a kind of safety on an Alberta-to-Hawaii corridor that could somehow live outside the reality of COVID.

There were problems in leadership. There were problems of not leading by example. There were problems in not wanting to address the science of COVID by allowing the policies to be ideological. None of us can let this be ideological. We have to set aside whatever partisanship we bring to this and end up where Andrew Nikiforuk's article ended, which was, “It's time to pray for Alberta,” and I will also note that faith by itself does not do the work.

We need to do the work to help Alberta and Albertans in any way we can.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance and to the Minister of Middle Class Prosperity and Associate Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to add my voice to those who are thinking of Alberta during the most recent outbreaks. I spent five years of my life there, and in 2013, when I was personally evacuated, I saw first-hand what a good neighbour looks like. There was hardly a person I knew who was not picking up scrap from their neighbour's yard and making sure they had groceries and were taken care of.

However, during this debate, I sit here stunned. Living in Nova Scotia, I sometimes hear people say, “Where you stand depends on where you sit.” We have had the benefit of a thoughtful pandemic response from a public health point of view. We are in a lockdown now, after seeing our cases go into double digits and now triple digits for a few days. The collective response has been one of acceptance.

We know that the option is not between a lockdown and not a lockdown. The option is between having a short and serious lockdown or a lengthy and drawn out lock down. Those who have studied pandemic responses around the world, as seen during COVID-19, have found that the jurisdictions that have embraced a strict and swift lockdown have seen a lesser impact on their economy and their public's health, and fewer restrictions on their civil liberties.

I am curious if the member could offer commentary on the importance of following the epidemiological research and science to understand that we need to be neighbourly once again and need to support Albertans with financial supports, federally and provincially, to ensure that they can afford to do the right thing and stay home.