Then they especially do not.
Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier, I have walked through the crowds out on Wellington Street almost every morning on my way to work since the convoy arrived, and I lived to tell about it. There is no al Qaeda. There is no Taliban. There are no North Korean special forces looking to take over the government. This is a matter for local law enforcement officials, and it is wrong for the government to try to make it out to be anything more than that.
If the protestors out on Wellington Street are best left to local law enforcement, then that raises the following questions: What should the federal government be doing? How can the federal government best respond to this whole situation in a positive and constructive manner? I think the federal government needs to get to the root cause of the frustrations we have all been feeling over the last two years. Of course, I am talking about the pandemic restrictions that have been disrupting the lives of Canadians.
The government would do well to come up with a science-based and evidence-based plan to safely and responsibly wind down pandemic restrictions at the federal level. This is exactly what the Conservative opposition has been calling on the government to do for some time. In fact, every provincial government has already presented a science-based, evidence-based plan to gradually wind down most, if not all pandemic restrictions, in a measurable, quantifiable manner based on metrics, benchmarks and milestones.
It is time for the federal government to do the same. If the government would focus its efforts on coming up with a science-based and evidence-based plan to responsibly wind down pandemic restrictions, that would be infinitely more beneficial to the quality of life of Canadians than invoking the emergency measures act to deal with noisy truckers and bouncy castles.