Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Edmonton Centre.
Canadians can be forgiven for thinking that this government has been developing a way of protecting Canadians from the virus from scratch. We are constantly being told that this is an unprecedented situation, a one-of-a-kind happening and no one could have planned for this. We are being told how hard this government has worked night and day to keep us safe during this never-before-seen viral contagion sweeping the globe.
Our Minister of Health has regularly changed recommendations and restrictions, causing confusion and frustration for Canadians everywhere. She said that it could not be helped, and that we learn something new every day. In actual fact, quoting King Solomon from the Book of Ecclesiastes, “there is nothing new under the sun.”
I contest that farmers have been tackling the challenge of deadly viruses in their crops and herds for millennia. I myself have dealt with viral outbreaks on the farm. As a matter of fact, one of the very first big challenges we faced in business was a viral infection in flowers. As with COVID-19, there was no cure, and we were forced to cull the crop and start over. This early tragedy informed my understanding and, quite frankly, the understanding of industry and government on how to best tackle and control viral outbreaks.
Let me give a concrete example, which has been happening in every province across our great country for years in response to what science has told us about viral outbreaks.
Every greenhouse vegetable grower has protocols in place to ensure that viruses are not transported into their facility. They know the danger they face once a virus gets inside. There are devastating economic consequences, so when one enters the facility, one is first asked to simply sign in, just like we are doing now in restaurants. It is an easy but effective way to quickly track a source of infection when it happens. One is then given a gown to wear over one's clothes so that a pathogen is not brought in that way. At every door, there are foot baths to ensure that a pathogen is not brought in on one's shoes. Hand sanitizer stations are everywhere.
After that, years ago, the federal government mandated floral growers to install complicated tracking and tracing systems for all plant cuttings. These cuttings originate from places around the globe and arrive in Canada on airplanes by the millions daily. The system enables a farmer to pinpoint where in the greenhouse a cutting came from, where it is at any given time during production and even tracks which customer it is eventually sold to.
Every step of the way is tracked so that, should a virus outbreak occur, farmers and government can go back and find the source, and work to isolate and eradicate the problem. These are tried, tested and effective methods that farmers have been using for years to ensure the safety of their own crops and those of neighbouring farmers.
This is the science that our government is well aware of. In fact, it has regulated farmers for many decades to ensure that they maintain a robust monitoring system that protects the crops of Canadian farmers day after day and year after year. However, with this enormous body of scientific knowledge at our fingertips, and systems and processes that have been functioning very well in the agriculture sector for years, we find ourselves watching our economy being burned to the ground because this government chose to politicize the entire pandemic response procedure rather than follow the science.
Where a farmer will lock his doors to uninvited visitors during an outbreak, our health officials said that it would be racist to restrict entry into the country. Where a farmer keeps gallons of hand sanitizer in stock at all times, our national emergency stockpile cupboards were bare. Where a farmer tracks and traces millions upon millions of plants arriving per year, our health officials have no live health data tracking system in place. Where a farmer tests water, tissue and soil samples on the spot, our finance minister declared rapid tests no better than snake oil.
It is clear that the real science was ignored and politics took priority when it came to our COVID response, which has cost regular, hard-working Canadians their jobs, their mental health, their businesses, their retirement savings and their lives.
Here we are today to debate the new measures for more COVID support. These measures were only necessary because this government dawdled on rapid tests and vaccines. Because of its failures, Canadians will be among the last on the globe to be able to return to normal. My question is this: Is it reasonable for us to believe that these new measures will do what they say they will?
We keep hearing that we are all in this together, which is clearly not the case. As a matter of fact, there are a lot of jobs that were not affected, such as those in the public sector, which represents a whopping 35% of Canadians.
Elite politicians are the ones who are least impacted financially, yet they continue to fail those who are most impacted. The bulk of the damage is being shouldered by small business entrepreneurs and those with the least amount of wealth in the community. This bill still does not begin to recognize that fact. These new spending authorities request $700 billion in additional borrowing limits, as well as a $100-billion slush fund. As opposed to helping those most impacted, these dollars appear to be earmarked for special pet projects of the ideologically obsessed Liberal government.
Thousands of women in the travel sales industry have been without an income since March. The highly affected sector support program, which the Liberals announced with great fanfare many months ago, is nowhere to be seen. Single mothers, many primary breadwinners for the family, cannot buy groceries to put on the dinner table. They cannot wait any longer. Where is that support?
I am seeing small business owners in my riding hanging on by a thread. They did not qualify for the first disastrous rent relief program because, let us face it, it was fixed to help a Liberal insider get in on the action.
I am going to hazard a guess that the elite politicians who are crafting these policies have never started a small business. They have never had to borrow from family to make payroll. They have never worked a second job so they could afford the plexiglass dividers they need to be able to open or reopen their restaurant during a pandemic.
The Prime Minister and the finance minister are lessons in Canadian political elitism. They constantly assure us that transparency, and science-based and best-practice approaches are the only way they do business. Do they think we do not see that there has been no budget tabled and that they have cancelled audits for themselves, but are pushing hard for auditing the books of small businesses? What sort of due diligence was done in hiring the governor general? Did no one even make a call to check her references?
In this bill, the Liberals are proposing COVID supports that will give them further opportunity to spend without oversight, because they say that during a pandemic they need to have the ability to act fast and save our citizens. However, there is nothing in this bill to suggest they will do anything differently than they have done up to now.
Canadians are ready to be the solution. Many households have been saving up throughout this pandemic. They are excited to get back to travelling, working and doing business without government handouts.
Canada has been the best place in the world to live. It has always been a land of opportunity like no other. We will need to leverage our assets to the maximum and make sure our economy is firing on all cylinders if we are going to weather this storm. The government should have had all the tools and expertise it needed right from the beginning. What went wrong when, rather than those of flowers or animals, it was human lives at stake? The Liberal government is so ideologically possessed that science and common sense took and continue to take a back seat.
We have been plagued by this pandemic for a year. Clearly, what we are doing is not working. Our economy has ground to a halt and cases continue to rise. The government has failed to provide the provinces with viable alternatives to lockdowns. It has failed to create an effective national tracking and tracing program. It has failed to procure enough rapid tests to allow businesses to open confidently. It has gone all in on playing the waiting game until everyone is vaccinated, and it could not even get that right.
Now the government is using this opportunity to force its ideology down Canada's throat, requesting that Parliament allow it to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars to experiment with a reimagined economy. Canadians are tired of this credit card economy. They want a paycheque and the dignity that comes with providing for their own family. Canadians need leadership that is focused on Canadian resources, productivity and ingenuity, not a brave new world.
