Madam Speaker, I am always happy to be in the House to speak on behalf of my constituents, as I am a very proud member of Parliament from Alberta who was born and raised in Calgary Midnapore.
It certainly has been a very difficult 15 months, which goes without saying. It is the reason that we are here this evening. The pain that I have seen around me has been absolutely extraordinary. I have watched businesses, families and individuals attempt to cope with the realities of the pandemic and what it has meant for everybody, and have seen the sacrifices people have made across Canada, and particularly in Alberta.
I have seen businesses shut their doors, some after many years. That is incredibly regretful. It is the reason I decided to put forth the Calgary Midnapore Economic Recovery Task Force in an effort for us to try to come up with solutions as a community.
I have seen parents struggle with children being out of school as a result of the necessity to make changes to our educational system. Of course this is happening again. Tomorrow will be my son's last day in school until after the long weekend. Today, when I was at the car dealership picking up my car after servicing, I overheard a set of parents talking about it. They do not know how they are going to deal with it this time.
Of course, there is also the terrible toll that mental health problems have taken on Canadians and Albertans during this time. I am very happy that as part of our plan to secure the future, our leader has chosen to make mental health one of the key pieces of the platform.
Like many other Canadians and like many other Albertans, I have a question on my mind: How did we get to this place? That is what this debate is really about.
I think back to January and February 2020 when we were in the House and still had many new members finding their feet. We had a strong team that tried to call on the government to take stronger action. I recall the member for Edmonton Riverbend screaming at the top of his lungs in an effort to get the Minister of Health to take action regarding our borders. Of course, we all know about the the Prime Minister's terrible judgment in sending an extensive amount of personal protective equipment overseas to China, only to leave health care workers here without it. Those on the front lines were still defenceless weeks later. It was a very bad start to this situation.
Of course, we called for the government to use the tools that were available, but it refused to use them. Our team, across the board, including our current shadow minister for health, the member for Calgary Nose Hill, was relentless in asking the government to use the tools available, specifically therapeutics and rapid tests. However, this fell upon the deaf ears of the government. Again, I ask the question: How did we get to this place?
As shadow minister for transport, I can say that the industry did everything it possibly could in an effort to maintain operations and resume and maintain normalcy for Canadians so they could continue about their lives and their business. We have all been away from our family members and our loved ones for so long and have not had the opportunities to visit places and see people.
It was actually the industry that led the way on rapid testing. There was the project at YVR set up by WestJet. WestJet is an Alberta company that has suffered terribly as a result of the mismanagement of the pandemic by the federal government.
We have the McMaster project, which led to incredible data finds, and could have been used in a constructive manner going forward, but it was not. Most importantly, and what I am most proud of, was the YYC pilot project, which was set up here with much success and would have allowed for a shorter quarantine time across the nation.
Instead, we saw the government ignore the industry of those individuals who put themselves forward on the part of the data collection. Instead, we ended up with a terrible knee-jerk reaction from the government several times over, where both Canadians and industry had to respond with the 72-hour PCR test brought in at the worst time possible for travellers over the holidays, leaving industry without any time to respond at all.
I must take a moment and compliment what good corporate players and societal players the airline sector has been over and over by repatriating Canadians, and I have done a lot of that in my time as a consular officer previously for the Government of Canada; bringing in personal protective equipment; and really bringing in precious cargo. They are really doing their part, but again their requests and the work they put in were ignored by the government, leading to the 72-hour PCR test.
Like anything, when we do not take action earlier on, the problem compounds. It just creates a larger and larger problem. This happens with anything in life. Certainly, we have even seen it within the government with debt, for example. The next step in that, regarding the transport file, was the resulting hotel quarantine. Again, this was something very severe and draconian that could have been avoided, had the government taken the proper steps earlier on in the pandemic, but it did not. Again, I, like so many other Canadians, find myself asking how we got to this place.
Finally, the point that has been brought up by my colleagues previously, and which I will mention again, is that of vaccines. Everyone has always said the ticket out of this pandemic is the vaccines, but the government absolutely failed at its procurement strategy from day one. The result is that we have been left months behind other nations. We see they are beginning to live life again and beginning to return to normal not only within the travel sector, but in life as we used to know it.
There have been numerous delays as a result of the government's terrible execution of procurement, overpayment for vaccines and us ending up last in line. It has not been transparent in regard to the schedules of these vaccines, leaving Canadians to wonder, as recently as this week, when they will get a second dose and not knowing when life will resume again as normal. There really is just no plan at all forward and no light at the end of the tunnel.
Again, I ask myself how we got to this place. Canadians are asking how we got to this place. The reason we are having this debate here tonight regarding Alberta is how we got to this place, and the answer is obvious. It is the Prime Minister who brought us to this place. It is the Prime Minister and his incompetent cabinet and government that brought us to this place.
I will finish with the very member, the member for Edmonton Strathcona, who proposed the debate this evening. She has been complicit in holding them in this place.