Mr. Speaker, we are here today to debate a very important and interesting motion. However, this debate should not even be necessary. It should not be necessary to debate today's topic because it should have been part of a plan from the beginning. Unfortunately, Canada did not have a plan for dealing with the pandemic, despite the fact that epidemiologists had been telling us for 20 years that a pandemic was coming.
That is why we are debating a motion asking the government to table a reopening plan. I will talk briefly about the current situation, and I will try to answer two questions: Why is it important to have a plan, and what should be in that plan?
Earlier this week, I was saying that it is important to know where we are so that we can know where we want to go. The current situation is not great. No one is going to be surprised by what I am going to say in the next few minutes.
People are discouraged. They do not know which way to turn, who to believe, what to do or why certain things were or were not done. Some 35,000 families in Canada have lost one or more loved ones. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs, sometimes more than once, particularly in the hotel, restaurant, transportation, tourism, and arts industries, all of which have been hit especially hard.
It is understandable that people would feel discouraged about the current situation and would rather not feel discouraged about the future. Discouragement is totally understandable. The elastic is stretched to the breaking point. All the elastics, actually.
Let us start with the elastic that represents people's resilience. Throughout the pandemic, Quebeckers and Canadians have been very resilient and very understanding, as we can see from vaccination rates. People believed things would go back to normal once they were vaccinated. That is the message that went out from coast to coast to coast, as English-speaking members are fond of saying.
Despite laudable vaccination rates, the situation has not gone back to normal, and we can see why people would be upset about that. Nobody can make heads or tails of all the measures. Everything is so contradictory, and it is so hard to understand everything on the news from one day to the next. The authorities say one thing one day, and the opposite the next, it seems. How are people supposed to figure it all out?
There is also the condition of the economy, which is not much better. People have had to make temporary or permanent career changes. Entire sectors of the economy are still in tatters. I referred to them earlier: transportation, arts, culture, tourism, hospitality and restaurants. These days, people tend to choose jobs they enjoy. When someone loses their job, it feels like something dies inside, and people have been dying inside for the past two years. It is not easy, and their anger, sorrow and distress are understandable.
Lastly, let us take a look at health. The current situation is complex, and the reasons behind some decisions being made right now revolve around the ability of Canada’s health care systems to withstand the additional burden of the pandemic. Even if Canadians are vaccinated, the health systems are not doing well. Workers are exhausted, if not sick. The health care systems need predictable and recurring investments.
The party in power keeps telling us that it has injected billions of dollars into the health care systems of Quebec and the provinces since the beginning of the pandemic. That is true, we have never denied it. However, it is the constitutional role of the federal government, in times of crisis, to increase its support to Quebec and the provinces. The crux of the problem is that, for the past 30 years, the federal government has made cuts to health care funding, while costs have increased year after year because of inflation and the ageing population. That has made health systems very fragile.
However, let it not be said that the federal government has not held up its end of the bargain; it is far better to stigmatize people and say that health care systems are vulnerable and failing because people are not vaccinated. I am being sarcastic, of course. Although I do encourage people to get vaccinated, it is a personal choice.
It is certainly not by stigmatizing people that our health care problems will be solved; the systems are fragile because the federal government has been underfunding them for 30 years.
In short, taking stock of the situation involves seeing with clarity and understanding what state our society as a whole is in, as well as admitting our mistakes. In the past, I was told to never admit my mistakes, because that was a sign of weakness. No. It is not a sign of weakness, it is a sign of clarity. It means that we are prepared to work to improve a situation caused, in whole or in part, by our mistakes. That is what we must do, and that is what must be in a plan to lift restrictions.
When it comes to health transfers, mistakes were made not only by the party currently in power, but also by all parties that have been in power for the past 30 years. It is by clearly seeing our mistakes that we will be able to fix the situation.
Now, why make a plan? It all comes down to one word: predictability. We all need predictability. It is nice to look ahead, past the tip of our noses, even if some have longer ones than others. It lets us start planning for the future again, because it clearly outlines the steps needed to get through an unwanted and undesirable situation. It is so simple and makes so much sense, that it is surprising we have to ask for a plan and explain why it is needed. It is just common sense.
Is the motion calling for a full lifting of restrictions on February 28? No, because fully lifting all restrictions and mandates with no projections, no planning, is not a plan, it is a recipe for disaster. We need a plan with clearly defined steps. This leads me to talk about what a plan should contain, and that is a lot of things.
First, it should take stock of the current situation, including what works and what mistakes need to be corrected. Second, it should set identifiable and quantifiable goals and ask questions about the present and the future that need to be answered. Then, it must include milestones and concrete, verifiable measures for achieving those milestones, and there must be identifiable and quantifiable conditions for moving from one milestone to the next. Individuals responsible for carrying out and validating these actions must be appointed. In addition, this plan requires some form of responsibility and accountability to the public, as well as effective communication, evaluation and validation tools. Lastly, it must address possible obstacles and provide solutions for dealing with them.
In this particular case, we need to assess the measures currently in place, their rationale and effectiveness, and then determine when they should end. We also need to think about the conditions for ending the pandemic, which involves having Canada play an international role, not only as a supplier of goods and services, but also of education and intelligence. This role must be included in the plan to lift restrictions.
In conclusion, having a plan to lift restrictions will help determine what needs to be done for us to get back to some normalcy and what steps are needed in order to get there. Some steps will happen quickly and others will happen less quickly, but they need to happen. It is important. We are all fed up.
