44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 14, 2022 11:00AM
- Feb/14/22 3:29:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to present a petition on behalf of my constituents from Avalon and more particularly from the southern shore area.
The petitioners call upon the House of Commons to adopt human rights and environmental due diligence legislation that would hold companies responsible for their impact on the environment and their human rights abuses.
I would like to thank all the people who signed this petition for their hard work and advocacy.
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- Feb/14/22 3:29:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of my constituents who are presenting a petition opposed to the proposed pumped storage project by TC Energy on the 4th Canadian Division Training Centre base in Meaford. They are calling on the government to stop this.
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Mr. Speaker, I have a number of petitions to present today.
The first petition is in support of Bill S-223. This bill seeks to combat forced organ harvesting and trafficking. It would make it a criminal offence for a Canadian to go abroad to receive an organ without the consent of the person giving the organ. Petitioners are hoping that this is the Parliament that finally gets this done. This bill has passed the Senate unanimously three times and has been supported by MPs from multiple parties going back over 13 years. We hope this time we get it done.
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- Feb/14/22 3:33:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the second petition I have today is on the ongoing Beijing Olympics. Canadians want to ensure that parliamentarians remain focused on the Chinese Communist Party's accountability for its human rights record. The case of Peng Shuai reminds us of how the athletes themselves are also vulnerable to acts of oppression and violence by the Communist Party. Polls show that seven out of 10 Canadians are worried about the health and safety of Canadian athletes. The signatories of this petition want to see the Government of Canada take stronger action regarding the Communist Party's human rights abuses, particularly recognizing the treatment of the Uighurs and Falun Gong practitioners.
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Mr. Speaker, the next petition I have speaks directly to Bill C-230, the protection of freedom of conscience act, which is moved by my colleague, the member for Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek.
The petitioners from across Canada are concerned about doctors and health care professionals who might be coerced to engage in support of euthanasia or MAID, as they want conscience rights or second opinions to be protected. The petitioners note that doctors deserve freedom of conscience and note how the Canadian Medical Association confirmed that conscience protections would not limit access to assisted suicide. The petitioners are calling upon Parliament to enshrine in the Criminal Code the protection of conscience rights for physicians and health care workers from coercion or intimidation to provide or refer assisted suicide or euthanasia.
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- Feb/14/22 3:33:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the third petition I am presenting is on behalf of constituents living in the towns of Fox Creek and Swan Hills. These two towns are located in my riding in northern Alberta. The petitioners recognize that there are extended travel times and heating costs. Swan Hills is a town with one of the highest elevations in Canada. Constituents are asking for the arbitrary geographical line that runs across Alberta to be lowered so the residents of Fox Creek and Swan Hills can both access the prescribed intermediate zone tax relief that is available to folks living in northern regions.
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- Feb/14/22 3:33:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the final petition I have today is from people from across Canada who are concerned about the politicization and revocation of charitable status for folks who hold to a pro-life view. They are concerned that this is a politicization of the charitable tax code and want to ensure that the charitable tax code does not become politicized. These people are also concerned about the 300 babies who die every day due to abortion. They want to ensure that Canada remains resolved to bring an end to this practice.
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- Feb/14/22 3:33:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to present a petition from a number of Canadians who want to bring to the attention of this place their concerns about international trafficking in human organs removed from victims without consent. Even though that is an issue, there is not yet a prohibition on Canadians travelling abroad to acquire or receive such organs. It is an important issue that I look forward to the House being able to provide an answer for.
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- Feb/14/22 3:34:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand at this time.
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- Feb/14/22 3:34:37 p.m.
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Is that agreed?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
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- Feb/14/22 3:34:58 p.m.
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The member for Winnipeg North has 10 minutes and 20 seconds left on the clock.
The hon. parliamentary secretary.
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Mr. Speaker, as I said to my colleague, I do value those 20 seconds.
When it comes to legislation, when we listen to members of the opposition and different political parties, they will often talk about the time allocation that allows for debate, and understandably so. I did that when I was on the opposition side as I now today do it from the government side.
There are certain legislative initiatives that are actually processed via time where, for example, the opposition will move a motion on the floor of the House and at the end of the day a vote is requested on it, or they can go into private members' hour where they get a very limited amount of time on private members' business. However, it also happens at times for government business through unanimous consent.
Just recently, back in December, we can recall when conversion therapy legislation came before the House. It was so encouraging when members on all sides of the House said this was an important issue that was important to Canadians. The House, without any debate whatsoever, agreed to pass it through second reading and committee, the whole nine yards, and it was done unanimously when all it took was one member to say no to it.
In respect of other types of priorities in the past number of years, and particularly as a minority government, Canadians want us to and we want to work with opposition parties. Sometimes it has been the Conservatives, sometimes the Bloc, sometimes the New Democrats and at times it is even getting support from the Green Party representatives. It varies, depending on the legislation.
Like the conversation therapy legislation, the issue we are debating today is of the utmost importance. If we reflect on what this bill would enable, every member of the House will vote in favour of the legislation. The issue is when they want to have that vote.
We have critical supports for the coronavirus pandemic that still need to get through the House. This is yet another piece of legislation. Timing does matter. This is going to be a very busy week. We are looking to see if there are other partners with whom we can get the support to recognize the importance of the issue and, ultimately, to get the legislation passed.
Those people who are following the debate might ask why we do not allow for additional debate. Much like in the past, when other parties have recognized the importance of an issue, they will ask for unanimous consent to get that legislation through. Here we have an important piece of legislation that the Government of Canada wants to get through and has recognized as being important. If there were discussions in good faith that said we could get this thing through today because there is no other mechanism to guarantee its passage, I suspect we would have been open to that. However, we have to move this as well as other pieces of legislation. I am talking about the GIS legislation that is quickly coming before the House. We have to get this stuff through. We have identified it as a priority.
I am grateful that the New Democratic Party has also recognized the value of getting this thing passed quickly. At least the Bloc members are kind of halfway. They recognize the importance of rapid testing, but they do not necessarily want to support its going through as quickly as we would like to see it go through. As I said just before question period, I hope that members of the Bloc will rethink that.
Just because the Conservatives banter and cheer and do all sorts of weird things at times does not mean we have to follow their lead. There is an opportunity here to show what many members of the opposition were calling for not that long ago during question period, which is to show some leadership in recognizing just how critically important this legislation is to all Canadians.
From the very beginning of the pandemic, we have asked Canadians to step up. We all have a role to play. We worked with different levels of government to ensure that support programs were in place so that businesses would be in a better position to continue on and the number of job losses would be minimized. We brought in programs to support incomes for those Canadians who were unable to be in the workforce for a wide variety of reasons, as well as a multitude of direct supports to seniors, people with disabilities and non-profit organizations. We all came together to get us through the pandemic. Securing vaccines and vaccinating people has enabled us to be in the position we are today, with a great deal of hope and light.
The rapid tests are a critical part of our recovery, of getting out and beyond. We know that for a fact, because that is what the science and health care professionals are telling us, not only with respect to the federal government and the people we rely on, but also the provinces.
If we flash back to November of last year, there were tens of millions of surplus rapid tests in storage waiting to be used. There was no pent-up demand; there was a pent-up supply ready to be used. Once we experienced the omicron variant of the coronavirus, the numbers started to shoot up rapidly, and those rapid tests became absolutely essential. We stepped up, as we have done for Canadians since the very beginning. Tens of millions of tests that Ottawa was able to acquire were distributed. For the month of January alone, we had well over 100 million additional rapid tests. I would challenge any member of the opposition to tell me of a country in the world that has acquired more in one month, on a per capita basis, than Canada for distribution to its population. I do not believe we would be able to find such a member or country. It is possible I could be wrong, but I say that because I know how much this issue has been on the minds of the Minister of Procurement, cabinet as a whole and many other members inside this House. We saw the benefits. We realized how important these rapid tests are.
This legislation is absolutely critical to moving forward. If we did not bring the closure motion and do not pass this legislation, it would bring into jeopardy all sorts of things, either directly or indirectly, such as the legislation dealing with the GIS, not to mention anything else that might be coming up, including being able to support opposition days, such as I believe the Bloc has coming up on Thursday, or dealing with the short days on Wednesdays and Fridays.
Today is the day for us to have this debate, because this is legislation that is necessary in order for us to continue the fight against the coronavirus. I would like to see the Conservative Party be consistent, recognize the science, support the health care professionals, get behind the legislation, get behind the motion and recognize the importance of passing it here today.
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Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to listen to the member for Winnipeg North and to debate with him.
Again, I totally disagree with what the member has said, especially with the motion today.
First, let me be clear. Do not get me wrong. We do support rapid tests. I know what I am talking about, because for the last year and a half here in the House of Commons, we have been asking to have rapid tests as soon as possible. Why? It is because it is one of the tools to get back to freedom, to get back to having more access to everything and to get back to a more so-called normal life, even if we know we will have to live through that period.
My question is quite clear. This bill could be adopted tonight because of this motion tabled by the government. It might be adopted at 2:00 a.m. tomorrow morning, but what would happen then? We would have to wait a full week before the bill could be tabled in the Senate.
My question is quite simple: What is the emergency today? Why not do it correctly, step by step, with the committee studying this $2.5-billion bill? That is the job we have to do here.
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Mr. Speaker, the issue is on the support for rapid tests from science and health care experts. The member should read what his colleague said earlier today, when he put into question whether we should even be listening to science and health care experts. He should review the comments from the Conservative member. They surprised a lot of us.
I have a deep amount of respect for the colleague who posed the question. He knows and is fully aware that in any given week, it could be a very tight agenda. For example, today is all about the rapid tests. We also have to deal with legislation in regard to the GIS. We also have an opposition day motion. Those are the three big days. Then Wednesday and Friday are short days. If we were to take the approach the Conservatives want us to take, we would be putting into jeopardy the passage of legislation that is needed today. I would encourage my friend to revisit the sense of urgency if in fact they support the need for rapid tests.
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Mr. Speaker, if I am not mistaken, the parliamentary secretary just asked us how we will vote on this motion, referring to the vote that occurred after oral question period when we indicated that the government must present a plan to lift restrictions.
I would just like to point out to my colleague opposite that asking for a plan to lift restrictions does not mean that we are against health measures. On the contrary, we believe that appropriate health measures must be applied, but the government must also tell people where we are headed.
Right now, we are debating Bill C-10. I would like to know how is it that the federal government has the means to provide money for health right now, but every time Quebec has asked for it in the past, the federal level was not there for Quebec.
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Mr. Speaker, the vote that we just had prior to getting under way with this particular motion is something I am more than happy to discuss offline with the member.
What we are talking about today, the motion that I am debating, is a motion that would see closure put in for Bill C-10, which deals with the rapid tests, in the hope that the Bloc party would not only support the need for rapid tests but would support the urgency in getting the legislation passed. That is going to be the vote that we are going to have later today.
Does the Bloc actually support the sense of urgency in getting Bill C-10 passed? I think the people of Quebec and the people of Canada are watching and want to see how the Bloc is going to respond.
I will answer the second part of his question in a follow-up.
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Mr. Speaker, we are debating supports for COVID and the impact COVID has had over the last two years in Canada. I am wondering if the member could comment on the lack of any ability by the government to admit its mistakes with some of those supports and admit that it did not get them right. So many things have fallen through the cracks.
I talked to the tourism people recently. There is a whole tourism package that is unavailable to seasonal tourism companies. How many tourism companies in Canada are not seasonal? Seniors have been stripped of their GIS supports. These are the poorest and most vulnerable of Canadians, and they have stripped of their GIS support because they were told to go on CERB last year. I could go on and on.
I am wondering if the member can explain why the government has been so reticent to admit its mistakes and fix them.
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Mr. Speaker, I have had the opportunity to speak in the House a number of times and often referred to the fact that in the last couple of years during the pandemic, we saw the creation of a multitude of programs and supports. To say they were absolutely perfect would be misleading on my part, so I will not mislead.
Yes, we brought forward a suite of programs, and there has been the need at times to modify them. They were modified because we understood, after listening to Canadians, that we needed to make some adjustments. The Minister of Seniors just referred to one during question period in wanting to co-operate and provide additional funds for issues such as mental health and long-term care facilities. The list goes on in terms of the types of supports and investments we have made in health care over the last couple of years.
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Mr. Speaker, coming into today's debate, I was under the impression that Conservatives thought that rapid tests were effective tools, but I could not help but take note of the comment that was made by the member for Cumberland—Colchester today. He represents the Conservatives on the health committee and is a doctor as well. He said, “we need to have a look at the science”. That is a direct quote.
I am wondering if the parliamentary secretary can comment as to whether or not that sounds like somebody who believes that rapid tests are going to be useful in this pandemic.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to be kind. After all, the member for Cumberland—Colchester is a medical doctor, and we love our health care professionals for the fabulous work they have done throughout the pandemic.
That said, members on the government side or any Canadian cannot blame the Conservatives for giving different positions on the same issue at times. They have not been consistent. The quote that my colleague and friend just referred to highlights one inconsistency on a very important issue.
Science and health care experts are what we have been following and listening to since the beginning. The same cannot be said about the Conservative opposition party. Today some were questioning it. As the member pointed out, one was not only a medical doctor but also someone who sits on the health committee representing the Conservative Party. I do not get that.
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