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.