Mr. Speaker, I believe that public health restrictions should be informing our decisions as legislators. At the end of the day, we are charged with making these decisions, as are the ministers, and public health officials cannot make these decisions for us. Their opinions can inform our decisions but not make them for us, right?
As for the second thing, hospitalizations, we are in year three of COVID and we have not figured out how to fundamentally fix what happens when there are an extra 300 people in a hospital in a certain area, rather than continuing with lockdowns. We cannot continue this way. Our health care system needs to be reformed. We cannot expect society to shut down every time we have a surge of health care patients. That is just the reality. We are beyond that. If we do not get this, we are never going to fix Canada's health care system. It is going to be a tough conversation and we do have to de-escalate the rhetoric in it, but I have to say that the restrictions are not going to fix that.
I will close with this: I encourage anybody who has not gotten vaccinated yet to do so, but continued restrictions are not going to change their mind after six months. We have to look at other ways to incent people to get vaccinated, and we have to fix our health care system.