44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 19, 2022 07:00AM
- Feb/19/22 9:20:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that ability to bring in the tow trucks being asked for by a province and municipality is still provincial jurisdiction, and they do not have the powers to do that. The Emergencies Act gave them the authority to do that.
We should ask ourselves why tow truck drivers are afraid to do this. It is because they are intimidated by their own so-called trucker convoys. They have protected their driver's licences and truck companies because they are scared. They put on masks so nobody would know who they are. Is that the kind of—
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- Feb/19/22 9:20:49 p.m.
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Questions and comments, the hon. member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith.
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- Feb/19/22 9:20:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the use of the Emergencies Act, even consideration of it, is an acknowledgement of a failure of leadership that has allowed things to escalate unchecked since the beginning. I am hearing concerns. I too am worried this emergency measures legislation could later be used against those truly participating in peaceful protests. What we are currently facing is not that.
This is an illegal occupation that has been harassing people for weeks. Does the member agree that action should have been taken earlier to avoid us being here today?
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- Feb/19/22 9:21:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this is interesting. If the Prime Minister had run out and imposed the Emergencies Act at the beginning of this, everyone would have asked him what he was doing and said that he was a bully. They would have asked him why he was not trying other methods of dealing with it.
This is what he did. He talked to provinces and municipalities and tried to work it out with them. He had round tables for quite a few days. Again, we are back to what jurisdictional authority is.
The point to remember is that this act is temporary, geographically targeted to places that need it, and proportionate. If we remember that, then we know it is going to end, and it is going to end with an inquiry, which makes it an accountable thing for the Government of Canada to be able to speak to.
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- Feb/19/22 9:22:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of very concerned constituents in the freedom-loving riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke.
The Prime Minister’s emergency decree has struck terror into the hearts of millions of Canadians. They do not understand why this unprecedented and un-Canadian action is being taken. They are wondering if they are going to have their bank accounts frozen for supporting the wrong political party. They want to know if they are going to lose their children for the simple fact of waving a Canadian flag.
I wish I could tell them it would never happen in Canada, but it is happening. I wish I could tell them this was not the Prime Minister’s plan all along.
Ever since the government announced it was suspending the trucker vaccine mandate, only to reverse course 24 hours later, every action taken by the government and the Prime Minister has been to escalate and inflame. These actions were either calculations or incompetence. Either way, Canadians have lost all confidence in the Prime Minister.
The question is how long it will take for Liberal members to find the confidence to speak truth to power. Here is the truth: The only emergency is the Prime Minister’s plummeting poll numbers. The government is pushing conspiracy theories full of more hot air than the bouncy castles on Wellington Street. To justify its fake emergency, it must ratchet up the rhetoric.
Are Canadians supposed to believe our democracy was under threat from dance parties and hot tubs? The only thing under threat is the credibility of the government. The Prime Minister has become the boy who cried racist insurrectionist. Canadians can see this clearly, and they are judging the Prime Minister harshly. Even Liberals are openly wondering what has become of the Prime Minister.
Two years ago to the day, the Prime Minister said this about a group of Canadians who were blockading critical infrastructure and calling on the Governor General to circumvent the elected government, “Our responsibility is to continue working on a peaceful and lasting solution to this troubling situation.” Two years ago, the Prime Minister pleaded with Canadians for patience. He sent his minister to negotiate with the protesters. Once the political issue had been resolved, the OPP moved in and peacefully removed the blockades.
Canadians have the right to ask why this situation is different. Why is the government treating one group of protesters differently from another group of protesters? The one and only answer is politics. The government and its urban elite supporters despise rural Canadians unless they are indigenous, in which case they patronize them.
Where were the denunciations of the vigilante mob waving a Soviet flag that attacked motorists? There were none, because the mob was made up of six-figure salaried public sector union leaders and university professors, which are also known as the Liberal donor base. When wealthy, privileged Canadians wave flags of genocidal states, the media holds them up as the heroes who survived the “Battle of Billings Bridge”.
When rural, blue-collar workers show up holding signs calling the government Nazis, the media paints them as barbarians at a tiki torch rally. Now the media cheers on the doxing of Canadians, while the justice minister threatens to freeze the bank accounts of people who voted for the wrong presidential candidate.
The minister’s comments to CTV Wednesday demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that the government cannot be trusted with emergency powers. When asked if people who donated to the convoy would have their bank accounts frozen, the justice minister said, “If you are a member of a pro-Trump movement who is donating...to this kind of thing, then you ought to be worried.”
I do hope the minister can come before the House and explain which other so-called unacceptable views will determine if accounts are frozen. Sadly, we do not need the minister to explain. The media and the other radical activists that the government funds are already hard at work coming up with a progressive enemies list.
Wednesday saw the seemingly coordinated effort by the Liberal-funded CBC and the Liberal-funded anti-Canadian hate network to simultaneously publish stories about Christians supporting the convoy. Last week, op-eds in Liberal media explained how the Canadian flag has been tainted because it was waved by the wrong kind of Canadians.
The left-wing media and government-funded activists have certainly painted a clear picture of the type of people they believe hold unacceptable views. Christians, patriotic Canadians, even classic small-l liberals have made the urban socialists’ enemies list. The media like to call this a culture war. We have an urban culture that is very conservative when it comes to lifting pandemic policies. We have a rural culture comprised of people who made the decision to trade the benefits of urban living for the benefits of rural freedoms. The mistake is in thinking that this is a war.
This has always been a rural David versus urban Goliath but with the slingshots banned by orders in council. This used to be a free country. The people in my riding elected a Liberal member of Parliament for most of the last century. That was until the Liberal Party began to turn its backs on rural Canadians with the long-gun registry. Since then, the Liberals have always chosen to support urban interests over rural interests, but it was only when the current Prime Minister and his woke McGuinty minions arrived that the game changed. Rather than just picking sides, they are seeking a total cultural domination.
Tolerance used to mean accepting people, especially when we disagreed with them. The socialists have redefined tolerance to mean the complete submission to radical ideology. This is why the media are trying to recast the word “freedom” as “dog whistle”. That is why they attack the flag. It was a Liberal prime minister who said “freedom is our nationality”. Canada and freedom used to be synonymous, but freedom means dissent is okay. Democracy means not everybody is going to agree and even when 90% of us agree, we must protect the right of the 10% to dissent. When the predecessor party to the NDP voted against the War Measures Act during an actual war fighting actual Nazis, nobody accused them of supporting Hitler. Dissent is the canary in the coal mine of democracy. This emergency decree strikes right at the heart of dissent.
With a stroke of his pen, the Prime Minister outlawed protesting on Parliament Hill for 30 days, to start. We are not talking about the streets of Ottawa. We are talking about the lawn. If Ukrainian Canadians want to demonstrate or rally on Parliament Hill in opposition to Russian aggression, they cannot because it is illegal now. The Prime Minister said the order would respect the charter. The charter is not worth the paper it is printed on if people cannot protest the declaration of an emergency order on Parliament Hill.
The government claims it needs extraordinary power to stop an imminent insurrection that is a threat to democracy. I know the Prime Minister does not like to spend time in the House and was off in his bunker at the start, but Parliament has been meeting, debating and voting the whole time the trucks were here. When people in other countries hear the word “insurrection“, they imagine military coups or communist takeovers. What they do not imagine is a small group of protesters asking the Liberal-appointed Governor General to form a government with the Liberal-appointed Senate amounting to a dangerous insurrection. Their latest plan to overthrow the government is to politely ask the Governor General to replace the Liberal Prime Minister with a different Liberal member. The Governor General has declined this request. If this is an insurrection, it is the most polite, non-violent, typically Canadian insurrection in history.
Protesters in Ottawa politely asked the government to overthrow itself and the government said no, so they threw a weeks-long block party. This bouncy castle insurrection is what the government needed to declare a national emergency for? This would be sad and pathetic were the precedent not so dangerous. It has invoked the Emergencies Act without sufficient grounds. Now it has trapped itself and to justify the power grab, it has to ratchet up the rhetoric further and further. To justify the government’s rhetoric, its media allies encouraged boycotts and vigilante mobs.
Two years ago the Prime Minister called for patience and now he is calling everybody Nazis while he sends in the storm troopers to break up the bouncy castles. This has to stop.
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- Feb/19/22 9:32:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I always enjoy listening to my colleague and friend from across the way.
She talked about bouncy castles, the pools that were established and all of the fun that they had. The member opposite sees this as a wonderful protest. She really does not have too much of a problem with it. She does not see the blockade and the many hardships that were caused, whether it was here in downtown Ottawa or at our international borders.
There is someone who does. Senator Vernon White was appointed by Stephen Harper. His was a Conservative Stephen Harper appointment as senator. He was also a former chief of police in Ottawa.
Does the member not think that he knows what he is talking about when he says that having the Emergencies Act is useful for this protest? In fact, it is a good thing. Would she not agree with such a strong, Conservative senator like that, with his experience?
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- Feb/19/22 9:33:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what is a tragedy and painful are the millions of jobs that were lost as a consequence of the pandemic, the declaration, the restrictions, the lockdowns and keeping us in Canada and requiring many things that had no basis in science. The John Hopkins University study declared that all of the non-medical interventions had no effect on lowering the death or infection rates.
Just as it was an exaggeration to hold people down and make them lose their jobs, so too is it an exaggeration to invoke the Emergencies Act.
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- Feb/19/22 9:34:31 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I see that my colleague is against resorting to the Emergencies Act.
We in the Bloc Québécois are obviously opposed to it, as we have an allergic reaction every time the federal government interferes in Quebec's affairs. Unfortunately, we have seen members of the Conservative Party, including an aspiring leader, film themselves with truckers and encourage this movement.
My question is rather simple: How many Conservative parties are there in the House?
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- Feb/19/22 9:35:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a great disappointment that my colleague agrees on the principle of it being unnecessary to invoke the Emergencies Act. The Conservative Party is more united and stronger than ever. We are growing in unity and numbers, and one day very soon, we are going to form government.
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- Feb/19/22 9:35:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I listened with care to my hon. colleague. She gave a very interesting description of the rural-urban divide in this country. I am not sure that it accurately reflects the full diversity of opinion in this country. I agree with her that there have been many jobs lost in the pandemic, due to the virus itself and some of the policy responses. One of the ironies is that the impact of the blockades in Ottawa caused other people to lose their jobs, small businesses to not be able to open and custodians to not be able to work. People working in sandwich shops and restaurants lost income.
How would the member feel if one of the communities in her riding was blockaded by, say, 500 trucks, so that all of the businesses in one of the towns she represents could not earn an income for three weeks, or even longer? Would that be okay with her residents?
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- Feb/19/22 9:36:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I must tell you about my residents. When the convoy was going through on the Trans-Canada Highway, people waited for four, six and eight hours to cheer on the trucks going from Deux-Rivières all the way through to the end of Arnprior. They were so happy that somebody was going to go to Ottawa and fight for their freedom.
They have the Conservatives in Parliament, people all over the country and now the world who understand that democracy and freedom are under attack in Canada.
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- Feb/19/22 9:37:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, today I stand in the House to oppose the Prime Minister's unjustified, unconstitutional and unlawful imposition of the Emergencies Act. Tonight, I feel completely inadequate to convey the message that I feel burdened to give. In my mix of heartbreak, sorrow, anger and disgust at the Prime Minister's words and actions over the last two years, I struggle for words. It is made that much more difficult because I am starting to feel a contradiction of feelings.
Over the past couple of days, I have started to feel that there is maybe some reason for hope. I believe that faint hope is like a distant light on the horizon and it is going to spread and expand and be as uncontrollable by the Prime Minister as the morning sunrise. I am disgusted and angered by the things I have witnessed over the past months, and the sorrow and disgust almost broke me today as I witnessed what took place on the street just outside this building. Yes, the Prime Minister got his way. He cleared the streets. He pushed the voices of his critics far enough away that he could no longer hear them, and he did it all with pepper spray and force.
Colleagues, what are we doing here? When the Prime Minister enacted the Emergencies Act, he claimed that it was to save the economy, but the border blockades were already cleared and the protesters had started to dissipate. He then changed his story and claimed that it was all about saving our democracy. However, Parliament continued to operate, legislation continued to be debated and votes continued to happen. The Prime Minister then changed his story again and said the act was needed to remove the trucks. However, legal experts disputed that and said that authorities already existed to remove the trucks. Now, the trucks are gone and have been cleared, and he still wants these unprecedented powers.
Why does he need these powers? The borders are open, the trucks are gone and the streets are clear. What is left? It seems the Prime Minister is going to continue to suspend civil liberties and legal protections until he can be sure that he has silenced his opponents permanently and has sent the message to anyone who disagrees with him that he will do the same thing to them. He will seize bank accounts, phone records and whatever else he needs without the requirement for normal legal protections and court orders.
This did not start just a couple of weeks ago. The Prime Minister has been seeking to wedge, stigmatize and divide Canadians for his own political advantage for some time. Even members of his own party are starting to call him out for it. He said “those people”. He called them extremists who do not believe in science. They are misogynists. They are often racists. They are science deniers, a fringe minority holding unacceptable opinions. They are anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, anti-Black, homophobic and transphobic. They are a small group of the population. They are taking up space, he said. He asked whether the country needed to “tolerate these people“. The Prime Minister therefore enacted unjustified rules that were intentionally discriminatory so that those people “taking up space” would not need to be tolerated.
I will not share with the House her name, but a lady asked to meet with me in my constituency office several months ago. She sat across the boardroom table from me and told the story of losing her son to complications from a vaccination decades ago. She sobbed as she expressed her fears of getting the injection. She had fear for herself, fear for her children and fear for her grandchildren. She asked me why the Prime Minister would make her do this. Why would he not understand that she could not do it? She had already had COVID and wanted to know if she could get an exemption to the federal mandate so she could see her elderly mum, who lives a significant distance away. She needed to fly there.
I could not answer this lady's question. She is not a racist. She is not an extremist. She is not a fringe minority.
Norm and his family farmed a few miles away from the farm where I grew up. My entire life I knew he was a strong NDP supporter. I knew he had run for the party in 1988 under Ed Broadbent. Norm and his family were generous neighbours, and although our families may not have agreed when it came to politics, we always knew that if we needed help, we would help each other.
When I became an MP over 16 years ago, Norm maintained his communication with me and was always well read and informed when he would express concerns about multinational corporations or about the Harper government. More recently, he expressed a more urgent concern about the current Prime Minister and the mandates that have been imposed on all Canadians. He called it crushing citizens' rights to peaceful protest.
I want to address my NDP friends. Norm has written to many of them, and although they cannot tell from his emails, his words are sincere. He fears for his grandchildren, children and neighbours. He has begged us not to support the passage of the Emergencies Act. Norm is a good man with a good family. He is not an extremist. He believes in science. He is not a misogynist, nor is he a racist.
Chris is a city councillor for the City of Grand Prairie. Chris cares deeply about our community, especially about the vulnerable who live within our region. Chris has been a leading advocate for bringing meaningful change and reconciliation for indigenous people who live in our communities. He is a good friend of mine.
Last week, Chris was in Ottawa to protest the discriminatory policies and mandates of the federal government. Chris is not an extremist. He is not anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, anti-Black, racist, homophobic or transphobic. One person in the House who knows that as well as I do is the Prime Minister. He knows Chris because they have close mutual friends. As a matter of fact, the Prime Minister called Chris personally to ask him to run for the Liberal Party of Canada. Unfortunately, because of his stand against injustice and division, people across the country have now echoed the Prime Minister's words and accused my friend, our friend, who has two Black sisters, of being a racist and a misogynist. This has to end.
My colleagues and I have a choice. History will judge us for our decision. Will we do the right thing and reject the politics of division and hate and end this attack on freedom, or will we grant the Prime Minister this unlimited power he wants so he can attack his political adversaries?
I said at the beginning of my speech that I had reason for hope, and I do have hope. The reason is that, while 338 of us in the House may or may not do the right thing, I know Canadians have had enough of the divisions, they have had enough of the hate and they have had enough of the political divisions.
I have no faith in the Prime Minister and have no faith that he will change, but I have faith that Canadians have seen all they need to see. They know who the Prime Minister is. They have seen the pain he is willing to inflict on people who do not agree with him. I trust Canadians. I hope my colleagues in this building will do the same and give Canadians their freedoms back.
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- Feb/19/22 9:46:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have three points of clarification. First, today, a blockade exists in Surrey, B.C. Second, the declaration order, notwithstanding the submissions from the member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, is not about entrusting the Prime Minister with emergency powers. It is about empowering police, who operate independently, to enforce the law. Third, lawful protest is permitted pursuant to this order and is always permitted under the charter. It is only protests that breach peace that would be prevented.
I am going to put this to the member very squarely. Members of his party have talked about law and order and have said it is founded on a law and order premise. Can we at least agree on one thing? When it gets to the point after 22 days that members of the public in Ottawa are taking matters into their own hands because they are so frustrated with the lack of enforcement, we have a problem that needs to be addressed with powers, including increased powers such as the ones the interim chief, Steve Bell, has welcomed to empower enforcement.
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- Feb/19/22 9:47:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this is the problem with the Liberal Party: Every day the story changes. Every day the reason it needs these powers changes. We know from legal experts that it does not need these powers to stop blockades. The powers exist. No government, since Pierre Elliott Trudeau was the Prime Minister, has required this. We have had 9/11, the Oka crisis and the G20 in Toronto. Never has a Prime Minister gone this far to punish political opponents.
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- Feb/19/22 9:48:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I like that the member took the time to explain that there were people who supported the protest but in no way fit the descriptions made of them.
I also understand that when we find out that some more extremist factions are funding these groups, some soul-searching is in order.
Does the member think it possible that the fact that people who are fed up with the health measures have been described in ways that do not reflect them might ultimately have led them to support the demonstration, even though they may not have intended to do so at first?
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- Feb/19/22 9:49:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what I have come to understand is that this does not follow along political lines. People across the country are fed up. They are fed up with the Prime Minister. They are fed up with the divisions. They are fed up with the hostilities. They do not understand why the Prime Minister will not do what every other provincial government has done and what countries around the world have done. Our allies around the world have either dropped restrictions or made plans to do so and have informed their citizens as to what the time frames will be for the reduction of those restrictions. Provincial leaders have done that. Why will the Prime Minister not do it? Canadians deserve an answer.
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- Feb/19/22 9:50:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to the remarks by the member from Grande Prairie. I wish I would have caught the whole name of his riding. I am sure I will learn it over time.
I am a bit fascinated with the amount of time the Conservative Party is taking to talk about the NDP. I have heard members in the House talk glowingly about the legacies of Jack Layton and Tommy Douglas, reflecting back on 1970 and the vote on the War Measures Act, a vote in which the Conservative Party supported the use of that legislation, which is much more draconian than what we have in front of us today.
I wonder if my colleague could reflect on that vote. Would he vote the same way today? What does that say about his upcoming vote on the motion before us?
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- Feb/19/22 9:50:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I can assure the member that I was not old enough to sit in the House at that time. However, in all seriousness, the reason members of the House are pleading with the NDP is that it will decide if the Prime Minister will continue to have these powers or if on Monday he will be held accountable by the courts and the provisions and protections we all covet, which the NDP, at least under Tommy Douglas, believed in. I encourage the NDP to consider what legacy it wants to leave as a party when people look back 30 years from now.
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- Feb/19/22 9:51:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, people are frustrated with this pandemic. People in Edmonton Griesbach and every single Canadian, including each of us here, has been impacted by this deadly and once-in-a-lifetime disease, whether because we have lost loved ones, as I have, or whether because of restrictions due to the public health measures enacted upon the advice of medical professionals. I know how hard and truly challenging these divisive times can be and continue to be.
At the beginning of all of this, Canadians showed the world what community looks like. Everyone mobilized to take care of each other and to keep each other safe. Neighbours were helping neighbours, friends were dropping off care packages, and teachers and community organizers were going above and beyond to keep children learning and to keep them safe.
Throughout this pandemic, we have endured much pain. Many have lost loved ones. Many have lost critical time with those important to them, but we are surviving it. I want to thank every single Canadian for their continued resilience. This is what Canada is. This is the story we must tell, because it is true. Let us not forgo the sacrifices of the many for the benefit of the few.
Canada is not perfect. As an indigenous person, I know this really well. However, Canada is a place where forces of good can thrive, so long as we continue to see the liberty of others as the liberty as oneself, do not use our freedom to put our neighbours in harm's way, and certainly do not use it to destroy our democratic institutions by way of force. Other people's freedom ends at the end of my nose.
Today and over the next few days, we will hear from Conservatives about the need to listen, about the sacrifices and the hardship, but let me speak directly to those members about some of the people in my community of Edmonton Griesbach who have truly sacrificed. These are not the individuals who had the opportunity to play in bouncy castles. These are not the individuals who had the opportunity to sit in a hot tub for two weeks. These are not the people who have spent the last three weeks outside on Wellington Street. They are not those who wish to use force to bring about policy change. They are not those seeking to intimidate and harm others.
They are, as a matter of fact, the people who put their masks on every day so that their neighbour who is immunocompromised does not die. These are the nurses, the doctors and the medical personnel in my community who have endured the worst of this medical emergency and continue to do so as we speak. These are the essential workers, including police right now, who have come in day after day to keep our services going and to keep Canadians going. These are the parents who have been struggling at home to do their work but to also teach when children could not go to school. These are the people who have had to choose between rent and food because the costs of groceries, bills, housing and unemployment have gone unaddressed by this failed Liberal government.
Colleagues, this is why we are in this circumstance. It is because of the Liberal government's failure to help people and to assist folks in these unprecedented and uncertain times. While the Conservatives and Liberals bicker amongst themselves, and the Bloc sits idle, protecting its narrow provincial objectives at the cost of Canadians and Quebeckers, it is New Democrats who are forced to be the responsible ones, tasked with fixing this crisis outside because of the government's delay, and holding this lacklustre and—
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- Feb/19/22 9:55:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, on a point of order. I believe my colleague meant to say he is splitting his time with his colleague for Skeena—Bulkley Valley.
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