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House Hansard - 323

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 3, 2024 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 323 - Jun/3/24
Mr. Chris Bittle (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities, Lib.)
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today with respect to a private member's bill tabled by the member for Beaches—East York, who, in addition to being a very good member of Parliament, is an excellent podcast producer as well. On a serious note, the member has put forward a number of bills in the time we have served together. They have been incredibly thoughtful, ranging from animal welfare when we were first elected back in 2015, which I thought was an excellent bill at the time though many others disagreed, to now a pandemic response bill. Before my speech, I looked up information on the toll of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it is continuing. I know many of us like to think that COVID is over and we have gone back to life as normal. For many of us, we have. However, even last week, 12 Canadians died from COVID-19. In total, 59,382 Canadians died from it. That is more than the number who died in the Second World War. I know that there will be many commemorations of D-Day this week, and rightfully so, and we are still commemorating and remembering it 80 years later. It is important that the member for Beaches—East York has brought this bill forward, because we do not want to forget what has happened in the last few years, including the lessons that were learned, how provinces, territories, municipalities and society at large were caught flat-footed. We need to do better as a society. The member for New Westminster—Burnaby raised an excellent point in his speech about the environmental impact of the pandemic response. I believe the statistic is that 75% of diseases are animal-borne. As we are deforesting, as we are as a society globally moving closer and closer into wilderness, we are going to see that interaction. As the climate is changing, we are going to see the behaviour of animals, including mosquitoes and disease-carrying animals, change. Diseases that Canada may not expect because of our cold-weather climate may be something that we continue to experience, or will experience, in the future. We need to have a prepared pandemic response. It would be nice to think that this is a once-in-a-hundred-years type of scenario. The Spanish flu post-World War I really tested Canada back in the 20th century. COVID-19, 100 years later, did the same thing. It would be naive to say that it is not something we have to worry about for another 100 years. That is why I like what the member outlined with respect to establishing an expert review of Canada's COVID-19 response. We need to look back at what happened. I know that everyone, including provinces, municipalities, corporations and the federal government, did the best they could at the time under the circumstances. The word that was overused was “unprecedented”, but it truly was. We can take the lessons that we have learned about what can happen and apply them to what may happen in the future to ensure we have the proper supplies and vaccinations on hand. I remember a time when there was unanimity among the parties in the House about the benefits of vaccination. Unfortunately, that unanimity seemingly disappeared. However, I think most of the parties in the House still support that as a core public health message, but we need to ensure that continues, as political opportunists across the country push aside public health and public health expertise when there is a threat to Canadians. Public health and public health officials have spent their careers trying to protect. Maybe we do not like to hear that we should eat better, should run more, should get all of our shots and should do all the things we know we should do, like drink less. We may say that we will just leave it and that we will be fine, but embedded in that is a desire by public health officials to see us live longer. COVID-19 has seen and shown, for the first time, declining life expectancies. The life expectancy in Canada is now slightly lower than it was before the pandemic, and this is something we need to address. All governments and all political parties should want to see this as a goal. I think there is an understanding, and I think there is an agreement that we should have as much as we can in place. Bill C-293 would require us to develop and update a pandemic prevention and preparedness plan and to table that plan at regular intervals. That is fundamental. We have seen the impact of a pandemic. I would like to think that maybe one will not happen ever again, and I hope for my kids that we do not see one in our lifetimes, but the possibility and the probability exist. We should have that plan to ensure that we have proper equipment in storage and that we have plans in place for that “What if there is a next pandemic?”, because it is not unreasonable to see. Before 2020, we thought it was just something that we saw in movies to concern us about this type of threat to the country, but a pandemic is a direct threat to Canadians. As I said, nearly 60,000 Canadians have died because of COVID-19, and I am happy to compare our response to other countries' responses, but even within Canada, many provinces did a much better job than other provinces. I recall the army having to go into privately run nursing homes in Ontario, an army that is not trained for that type of task, because, clearly, no one was ready for this type of pandemic; the result was that many seniors died. This is an important bill to come forward. The third major point that Bill C-293 would require is to appoint a national pandemic prevention and preparedness coordinator to oversee and to implement the plan. We get a lot of plans tabled in the House, and I know that is a surprise to many people here, but it is excellent that there would then be someone in charge to implement it, someone who is keeping an eye on things and ensuring, through a public health lens, that we are ready for the next one, God forbid. Again, we need to be prepared. We need to be ready. I want to commend the hon. member for his work on this and for his work on many other files, but it is important that Canada stays ready. We can compare our response to other countries' responses in a very favourable way in deaths that were prevented, but that number is still almost 60,000, and we need to ensure that should a pandemic hit again, we protect as many Canadians as possible.
1164 words
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