SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 244

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 1, 2023 02:00PM
Context: House Hansard - 244 - Nov/1/23
Mr. Richard Cannings
  • Nov/1/23 7:24:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as I was saying, the international trade committee exists to study issues about international trade, and when we studied the ArriveCAN app, thanks to the member for Niagara Falls, who put forward this motion to study this topic, it fit within the mandate of that committee because the motion was talking about the travel back and forth across the Canadian border and how that had been restricted in many ways by the mandatory imposition of the app. What the amendment to the motion asks of us is to dive into a deep mess of scandal surrounding the creation of the app, and that is much more something that government operations, public accounts or ethics should study. That is where this should occur, and it is occurring. If it were not occurring there, we would be asking that those committees study it, but we do not have to, because they are already studying it. I asked one member of the government operations committee how long he would be studying it, and he said there is a lot there and it would probably be until the next election. We think it is important that it be studied. It is being studied, so we do not need to study it at international trade. That would be outside the mandate of that committee.
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Context: House Hansard - 244 - Nov/1/23
Mr. Tony Baldinelli
  • Nov/1/23 7:35:04 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, being in a border community, I can relay some of the examples we have from the four bridge crossings into my community and about our visitor base in terms of tourism in Niagara, which would be about 30% American. Those American visitors represented 50% of the spend. On the ArriveCAN app and the terrible image it portrayed because of wait times and the glitches it caused, there were, for example, 10,000 Canadians who were told they had to quarantine, because of a glitch. It was incorrect. Those types of things halted any attempt at tourism recovery in 2022. Why did it take the government until October to end the ArriveCAN app? People knew it was not working; it had never worked, from day one. On top of that, the government then spent, from January to August, $400 million on rapid testing capabilities when we knew infectious disease experts were saying that it was not needed. Again, the government was wasting money and denying us and the people in the tourism community the ability to recover, which they so badly wanted to do.
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