Mr. Speaker, the fact of the matter is that we have given the government the opportunity with this motion last week for a dramatic out, a way to reduce the pressure in this country around the two years that this country has been under moving goalposts and shooting first and then drawing a bullseye on the target after the fact. Here we are today asking the government for a target before we get to the plate.
Today, the bill before us is very straightforward. It talks about getting rapid tests. We have been asking for rapid tests for over two years. We were asking for rapid tests before there was a decent vaccine on the market, before we had approvals for the vaccine. Why? There were cutting-edge Canadian companies that were showing up in this place and telling us they had a rapid test that we could use if only they could get Health Canada's approval.
I remember writing a letter asking the health minister to expedite the testing of these rapid tests so that we could use them. Why? It was so that we could maintain our border. One of the first things that we learned in a pandemic was to shut the borders and try to keep the pandemic out. What did the government do? It called shutting the border racist. Had we had rapid tests at the border, we could have tested people and significantly reduced the effects of people coming from overseas and bringing COVID-19 here. We would have been able to quarantine the sick rather than quarantining everybody. Quarantining is for the sick. It is not for the healthy.
That was one of the major frustrations that we saw, these ham-fisted practices that went on, putting people in these “rape hotels” across the country after they came in to ensure that they were not spreading COVID to other people, in worse conditions than many of the prisons in this country, worse food for sure. Forgive me when I am not willing to grant the Liberals a lot of leeway on this bill around rapid tests when we have been calling for them for a very long time.