Mr. Speaker, everyone has a story, and I have been hearing a lot of sad stories lately. The story I hear most often from Canadians is that people think they are losing control of their lives.
It is not just the pandemic. This story is also about 30-year-olds living in their parents' basement because they cannot afford the $800,000 price tag on a typical house in Canada today. They have done the math, and they know they may never be able to buy a house.
Their story is even sadder when they see big investment firms and the very wealthy raking in money the government printed and buying houses and real estate in their communities, then renting those houses to renters who may never be able to own their own home.
I talked to a young woman. She started a business in the winter of 2020. Again and again, governments shut her business down. Her entrepreneurial dream was killed by government policies.
I have talked to immigrants who come here with degrees in medicine or engineering but cannot work in their profession because of bureaucracy at the local level.
I have talked to indigenous people who want to use their natural resources to create jobs and lift their young people out of poverty, but who have been prevented from doing so by governments.
I have also talked to indigenous people who want to be able to own their own home, but who cannot because of rules imposed by Ottawa, by a system that prevents this from happening.
Finally, I have heard stories from Canadians who were targeted for their personal choice. I myself am vaccinated, and I encourage others to do the same, but I understand that other Canadians have made a different choice.
Before we insult them, maybe we should listen to their side of the story. Maybe they had a bad experience with medication, or a doctor gave them the wrong medication. Maybe they have an unrecognized medical condition. Maybe they had experiences in other countries where governments lied to the public for nefarious reasons, and now they are suspicious every time a government tells them to do something for their own good.
The thing to do would have been to listen to the stories of Canadians who have hesitations, to have the humility to say that we understand that they are scared and we are here to answer their questions, and to try to change their mind because they are still part of our Canadian family.
Instead, our government took the insulting position of attacking those very people. Despite his own record of racism, the Prime Minister wanted to insult others, people he does not even know. He tried to get truckers fired, people who work in a truck all alone for 22 hours a day. These people are being targeted by a vaccine mandate even though they might be the least likely to come into contact with others. That is why the protests happened here on Parliament Hill.
However, there is something positive. Freedom is on the march. We see it across the country. In Alberta, at midnight, the vaccine passport was lifted. We saw—