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.