44th Parl. 1st Sess.

February 21, 2022 07:00AM

Mr. Dave Epp (Chatham-Kent—Leamington, CPC)

Feb/21/22 8:06:52 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I join this debate with great sadness and disappointment in my heart this morning. Please make no mistake: It is always an honour to be the voice of the residents and citizens of Chatham-Kent—Leamington in this chamber, but I am sad because of the toll that the current situation continues to have on Canadians and the fact that so much of this is unnecessary and avoidable. The fundamental question that the government has put before us today is this: Do we believe that the public emergency act is the right tool for right now? Has the rightfully high threshold for a public order emergency been met? If the question is how we remove the protest, the blockade, the occupation that was encamped outside these doors, then should the question not be to ask what enforcement tools current legislation lacks to address the illegal activities outside this House? Let me be clear: Illegally parking a semi, excessively blowing horns and harassment all contravene bylaws, but these violations are subject to fines, towing, injunctions and existing remedies under existing laws, provincially and municipally, and under existing law enforcement. They can be reinforced with help from federal police forces without invoking this act. After all, is that not what cleared the illegal blockades in Surrey, Windsor, Emerson and Coutts? I am very thankful for law enforcement intercepting truly dangerous elements caught with illegal guns and ammunition near Coutts. Therefore, I thank our “un-defunded” police forces. Does a basic interpretation of the Emergencies Act determine that its threshold for invocation has been met, or are we more concerned that we are being asked to give the Prime Minister great powers, given his history of deception and his disrespect for the law? The Prime Minister asks us to trust him, to give him unlimited authority to implement “other temporary measures authorized under section 19 of the Emergencies Act that are not yet known.” He is the only Prime Minister convicted for ethics violations, not once but twice, and he avoided a third conviction due to lack of evidence, not lack of intent. He is the only Prime Minister ever to sue, Madam Speaker, your office, to keep from this very House documents ordered released by Parliament with respect to the Winnipeg virology lab. He now asks that we trust him with power never before invoked or confirmed by this House under this act. It seems that when faced with difficult situations, the Prime Minister's go-to response is to grab as much power as he can. Let us just think back to immediately after the declaration of the pandemic in March 2020. The Prime Minister responded by attempting to give the government unlimited, unfettered taxing and spending powers without parliamentary oversight. His instinct was not to come to this House and enter into dialogue to determine the path forward. Yes, Her Majesty's loyal opposition sits on this side of the chamber and might not have immediately agreed to every point put forward, but he was forced into dialogue and debate with us and we demonstrated through our subsequent actions that we would support emergency measures when properly engaged. Similarly, the Prime Minister did not engage in dialogue with Canadians involved with this protest. He does not have to agree with them but he does, or he should, have to listen. This very process of listening and engaging de-escalates any situation. It is the hallmark characteristic of leadership. Name-calling, dividing, stigmatizing, traumatizing and grabbing for power escalate any situation. They are hallmark characteristics of what? Members can fill in the blank. If the question is how the Prime Minister tries to cover up his record of governing mistakes and whether this attempt to redirect public attention will work, clearly the answer is no. Inflation will not be reduced. Our debt will not be addressed. Interest rate rises will not be blunted. Immigration backlogs will not be addressed. Labour shortages will not be alleviated. Housing prices will not drop, and budgets will not balance themselves. If the question is how invoking this Emergencies Act fits into the government's overall plan to get us from a pandemic to an endemic situation, again, for this question, there is a very clear answer. No, it does not do that, because there continues to be no plan. History will show that we got into this crisis, this situation in our nation’s capital, because the government did not have a plan to transition from a pandemic to an endemic situation. The government’s lack of a plan by which businesses in Chatham—Kent—Leamington or anywhere in the country could more predictably manage their staff, their business and their investment decisions continues to cause unnecessary hardship and failure. The failures are not theirs; it is the government’s problem, the government's failure to plan and its lunging from problem to problem with no coherent plan that could better multiply our effectiveness through our collective capacity. Farmers, greenhouse operators and small businesses in my riding and across Canada continue to live with the uncertainty of labour supply, border access and supply chains. They want to see a plan. Our health care system wants to see a plan for surge capacity. It is not the bricks and mortar that are missing; it is the human resources and the people for whom the government did not plan to resource. The government’s lack of a plan is evident in the fact that we are so late in acquiring sufficient rapid tests; we are so late in developing domestic vaccine manufacturing capacity, and we are so late in coordinating coherent, integrated, science-based messaging, from our health care leaders to our political leaders. It has been more than two years since the pandemic came to Canada, and we still have no plan for living in an endemic state. Canadians did what was asked of them. They got vaccinated, they stayed home, they safely distanced and they agreed to forgo family gatherings, travel and basic but essential human contact, all to do their part. What has been the reward for the constituents of Chatham—Kent—Leamington, or for any Canadians, for what they did? It is more divisiveness, greater stress, more lost jobs, out of control inflation, economic uncertainty and still no plan. Like all of us here, I have friends on both sides of the challenge before us. Something has happened in our country that may never be replaced. The capacity for kindness that Canadians are known for has been strained by our nation’s leader, who has used the politics of division rather than co-operation and understanding. There is a sadness that comes when Canadians are pitted against Canadians. There is more than enough blame to go around. Was the City of Ottawa woefully unprepared and did it make serious mistakes at the beginning of this situation, despite the many days of notice that the convoy was coming? Many people would say, “Yes.” Was the province slow to table resources? Again, many people would say, “Yes,” but here, in the centrepiece of our nation's capital, the question before us today is twofold. The first question is, where is the plan forward? Even when the crisis outside these walls is resolved, we will simply return to this question and the need for an endemic plan to return to normalcy. The second question is the legislation before us today. Simple common sense tells us that if we take the total of what the Prime Minister expects the Emergencies Act to bring and subtract from it what is already covered under existing laws and resources, then I respectfully submit that the difference we are left with pales in comparison to the constitutional precedent we are asking the House to confirm. I must vote against these measures. The Emergencies Act is not a substitute for leadership, but rather a consequence of the lack of it. The Prime Minister loves telling Canadians he has our backs. He uses the approach of trying to hide behind us while pointing at those he believes are to blame. Leading cannot be done from behind. Leading means engaging in conversation, even with those with whom one disagrees. The only good thing that may come from enacting this act is that there will be an inquiry, an accountability review, which will no doubt expose and document for history that when Canada was at one of its greatest challenges, the response from the government was a grab for power through the tactics of division and the lack of any plan forward. Let us get on with responsible endemic living. Canadians have done their job; now let us do ours.

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