Madam Speaker, I would typically start a speech by saying how happy I am to be speaking to a particular bill or motion, but I am not going to start my speech this way because, quite frankly, I am not happy to be speaking to this motion and would like to tell the House why.
Canada is in the middle of a global pandemic. The Public Health Agency of Canada is at the forefront of this fight against COVID-19 and doing everything in its power to help Canadians stay safe.
Now, I am getting heckled from members of the other side because they clearly perhaps do not think the Public Health Agency is at the forefront. They are entitled to their opinion, through those heckles, but I would like to take the opportunity to explain to them what the Public Health Agency is doing on the front lines.
When it comes to vaccine distribution, to date this includes sending over 33.8 million vaccines to provinces and territories, with millions more arriving in the weeks and months to come. It includes $284 million in strengthening provincial vaccine distributions.
The Public Health Agency is also assisting with respect to hot spots throughout the country. This includes working closely with provinces and territories to support them in the responsibilities to deliver health care. Through the safe restart agreement, $7.5 billion has been invested to help provinces and territories access the PPE they need. We are also investing in contact tracing and testing to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 and increased hospitalizations.
Testing assistance is another thing the Public Health Agency is doing. Canadians have been tested for COVID-19 35,830,746 times, and we continue to have a high rate of testing. We are constantly working with provinces and territories to increase laboratory capacity and the number of tests done per day, and the safe restart agreement has supported provinces to increase their testing capacity.
The Public Health Agency is also supporting direct lab assistance. We have six federal labs that are up and running to support provincial lab capacity by processing an additional 6,000 tests every single day in this country.
On border protection, the Public Health Agency, since March 2020, has deployed its employees to keep our borders secure. More than 180 public health officers are currently present at points of entry across the country. Travellers' quarantine plans are verified upon entry into Canada. We have made up to 4,600 calls every day to verify travellers' compliance with these mandatory requirements, and when needed, cases are referred to law enforcement.
Isolation is another thing the Public Health Agency is assisting with. The safe voluntary isolation sites program is helping more than 15 cities, municipalities and health regions provide safe, accessible places for people who receive a positive COVID-19 diagnosis to self-isolate to keep them and their households safe and prevent community transmission.
While the Public Health Agency is at the forefront of the fight to protect Canadians from COVID-19, the Conservatives want to hold the agency in contempt of Parliament. Why do they want to do this? It is because the Public Health Agency of Canada was not prepared to provide documents that could threaten the national security of Canada without appropriate safeguards.
The Public Health Agency should be spending all of its time and effort right now fighting COVID-19, but instead it has to spend its time fighting self-serving Conservative partisanship. The hypocrisy that comes from the Conservatives is astounding. They claim to be the party of law and order, but they are willing to put the national security of Canada at risk at the first opportunity because they believe it helps their partisan self-interest.
Conservatives want to distract the Public Health Agency of Canada from fighting the pandemic because it is good for the Conservative Party. This is pathetic. This shows the true colours of the Conservative Party under the leadership of this Leader of the Opposition.
We do not deny that the House has the power to order documents. However, just because we can do something, that does not mean we should. It might come across as a cliché, but with that great power that we have here does indeed come great responsibility. Conservatives have chosen power without responsibility, for nothing more than a fishing expedition in search of political gain, all at the expense of those who have been supporting us these past 15 months.
As I indicated in my intervention in response to the question of privilege from the House leader of the official opposition, the opposition day motion from the Conservatives lacked any meaningful mechanism to ensure the confidential information contained in the papers ordered to be provided to the public.
The member is now proposing that the Minister of Health table unredacted documents in the House, which means they would become public. Let that sink in for a moment. Conservatives want documents that could threaten the national security of Canada to immediately be made public. How reckless and irresponsible. This is the modern Conservative Party of Canada.
Now let us talk for a minute about what we as a government propose, so that we could ensure that MPs have access to these sensitive documents, while also ensuring that the national security of Canada is protected.
Before I do that, I would like to point out that one of the highest priorities of any government should be to protect information that could harm the national security interests of Canada. This should be the priority, quite frankly, of any party that purports to position itself to be the government in waiting.
While Conservatives like to give themselves fancy titles like “shadow minister” and pretend as if they are ready to govern, they have failed the most basic test of any party that seeks to form government. They are willing to sacrifice the national security of Canada, simply because they can and because they cannot control their innate instincts to overreact and act recklessly when they think it helps their partisan self-interest. I think this tells Canadians all they need to know about the Conservative Party of Canada under the leadership of this leader. They are simply not ready.
The government took a responsible approach to the documents by referring the matter and providing unredacted documents to the national security committee of parliamentarians, given the expertise of the members of the committee in matters of national security.
I would note that there are two Conservatives who sit on that committee. Why the Conservative Party does not trust them is beyond me, but perhaps it should look at replacing them with people it does trust. This approach is similar to what the Conservative government did in 2010 with the Afghan detainee documents.
Providing the unredacted documents to NSICOP respects the balance of interests between the rights of parliamentarians to have access to information and the obligations of the government to protect information related to national security.
As I have stated in the House previously, NSICOP has a broad mandate to review Canada's “legislative, regulatory, policy, administrative and financial framework for national security and intelligence”. It may also review “any activity carried out by a department that relates to national security or intelligence”.
Committee members come from both Houses of Parliament. It is a body that was created by an act of Parliament, by parliamentarians from both the House and the other place. All members hold top-secret security clearance and are permanently bound to secrecy under the Security of Information Act. The mandate also states, “Members swear an oath or solemn affirmation indicating that they will obey and uphold the laws of Canada, and not communicate or inappropriately use information obtained in confidence as part of their responsibilities on that committee.”
NSICOP was created for exactly these types of situations and is the appropriate place for the review of these documents. By proceeding in this way, the government has ensured that information that may be injurious to Canada's national interest, that could compromise national security or the privacy rights of Canadians, or that may be related to an ongoing criminal investigation can be protected.
This leads me to my next point: Why? Given that the government chose a responsible approach, similar to the process that the Conservatives used in 2010 for the documents that they released, so that they have access to information while protecting national security, why have Conservatives decided to proceed with this question of privilege? The simple answer is obstruction. They do not want the budget implementation act to move forward, despite the fact that it includes key measures for Canadians.
First is the extension of the Canada emergency wage subsidy, the Canada emergency rent subsidy and the lockdown support, all these, until September 25, 2021. These are due to expire this month unless Parliament approves the extension. Second is the extension of important income for Canadians, such as the Canada recovery benefit and the Canada recovery caregiving benefit. Third is establishing a new Canada recovery hiring program, which would help businesses with the costs of hiring new workers during the recovery. Fourth is an increase in old age security for those over 75, to provide seniors with better financial security when their savings may run out.
Enhancing the Canada workers benefit would mean more money for low-income Canadians. It would support about one million Canadians and lift nearly 100,000 people out of poverty. The budget would also enhance employment insurance sickness benefits from 15 to 26 weeks. It would establish a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage. It would extend the waiver of interest on federal student loans and apprentice loans to March 2023. It would provide for emergency top-up of $5 billion for provinces and territories, specifically $4 billion through the Canada health transfers to help—
