Hon. Claude Carignan: Honourable senators, I rise today to share my thoughts on the government motion to extend the hybrid sittings of the Senate.

On March 13, 2022, we entered the third year of a devastating and deadly pandemic. Societies all around the world were plunged into turmoil and ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Canada was no exception, and our health care system was hit extremely hard as the virus spread like wildfire. I want to take a moment to acknowledge the women and men who, day after day, took in and then cared for thousands of Canadians who needed urgent and essential care. Our health care system cracked but did not collapse thanks to the dedication of these health care workers. I have the utmost respect for them.

Unfortunately, esteemed colleagues, another system was compromised during this pandemic. I am talking about our democratic system.

[English]

Since the beginning of the pandemic, our Parliament has been reduced to its simplest expression, and that was done at the expense of democracy, unfortunately. To be totally honest, I believe that the slowing down of the primary function of Parliament has served Prime Minister Trudeau well. Mr. Trudeau likes to govern by decree.

[Translation]

People often say that a picture is worth a thousand words. Every year, the Economist Intelligence Unit, a research and strategic analysis firm, publishes a document that ranks nearly all of the world’s countries in terms of health and democracy. The democracy index is based on 60 indicators grouped into five categories: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation and political culture. Ratings on a scale of 1 to 10 correspond to the average score across all five categories. Countries are then classified as one of four types of regime based on their average score: full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes and authoritarian regimes.

Canada has always placed high in the rankings, usually around 7th, 6th or even 5th place, which is enviable and an accurate reflection of the fact that our democratic traditions are well established. In 2021, however, Canada fell from 5th to 12th. It appears this drastic drop is due to the Trudeau government’s many authoritarian and anti-democratic approaches.

This fall from grace is worrisome according to Andrew Potter, Associate Professor at McGill University’s Max Bell School of Public Policy. How does Mr. Potter explain this slide? I’ll quote him:

What has happened over the last two years is that the Prime Minister has basically shut down Parliament for a long time and has been keen to limit the opposition as much as he can . . . . The House sat for a record low number of days . . . .

Mr. Potter went on to say, and I quote:

When people who disagree with the government’s decisions can no longer express themselves in the appropriate forum, they will look for other ways to be heard, on the streets if necessary. By deciding to silence the voice of the opposition within the institutions, Mr. Trudeau is directly responsible for what is happening . . . . His attitude towards Parliament has been contemptuous and dismissive . . . . What is happening on the streets of Ottawa is, to a large extent, a direct result of this. When people feel that their opinions are being ignored or disregarded, it is likely to lead to anger.

He concluded by saying the following:

If you were deliberately trying to make Canada less democratic, it would be difficult to do worse than what the Prime Minister has done over the past two years.

During the occupation of Parliament Hill in January and February, the government used the Emergencies Act to seize the bank accounts of protesters and force them to leave, in direct contravention of section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which protects citizens from unreasonable seizure. The Deputy Prime Minister acknowledged this a few days after the Emergencies Act was lifted. This is outrageous and antithetical to a democracy that respects itself and, above all, that respects its citizens. I will give you another example of the government’s contempt for democracy.

In the midst of the pandemic, Mr. Trudeau called an election that no one wanted, in his words to deal with the pandemic emergency. After wasting $612 million on the election, which yielded almost the same result as last time, Mr. Trudeau waited two months before convening the new Parliament. Finding himself once again at the head of a minority government, Mr. Trudeau ignored the popular will, pulled out his cheque book and sealed an alliance with the NDP in order to run the country as though he had a majority government. Only a very clever person will be able to tell us how many billions of dollars this political and undemocratic alliance will cost the public treasury.

The government will continue spending billions of dollars, either for the Prime Minister’s enjoyment or, most importantly, to keep him in control for the next three years. In doing so, it will be outrageously and irresponsibly inflating Canada’s debt, which has already hit astronomical heights.

Now for the government’s legislative agenda, which is disjointed and hard to predict. The government is sending bills marked “very urgent” to the Senate at the last minute because it apparently cannot or will not give us enough time. On more than one occasion, senators in all groups have felt rushed and disrespected by the government’s approach. It is often very difficult for committees to study bills in hybrid sittings because the technology sometimes fails and senators have quite limited interactions with each other. We need to abandon this approach as soon as possible in order to breathe life back into our democracy, which is so important to our society.

Honourable senators, while the Prime Minister is gallivanting around the world, preaching love and peace, he has let his country’s democracy fall further and further into disarray, which I find incredibly sad and appalling.

Canada deserves much better.

Thank you for your attention, honourable senators.

[English]

Hon. Kim Pate: Honourable senators, a substantial amount of the spending in Bill C-15 and the Supplementary Estimates (C) concerns Canada’s ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet again, we must reckon with the significantly worse health outcomes faced by low-income Canadians both prior to and during the pandemic.

Data from the Public Health Agency of Canada underscores that those with the least have been twice as likely as those most well off to die of COVID-19. The Public Health Agency links this horrific disparity to social and economic inequalities faced by people below the poverty line — from greater risk of underlying and disabling health conditions and lack of safe housing, to unsafe working conditions and not being able to afford to stay home from front-line gig work or minimum wage jobs.

In human, social and health terms, these unequal health outcomes are unconscionable. They also carry significant financial consequences. As the Parliamentary Budget Officer reminded the National Finance Committee during his testimony on the Supplementary Estimates (C), the financial burden includes:

. . . first, the costs on the individuals themselves by being prevented from working due to poorer health outcomes. . . . it reduces income and employment gains, and it also reduces attachment to the workforce. . . . individuals with poorer health outcomes tend to have weaker social networks, which can lead to further isolation . . . They often have to incur additional expenses: medication, drugs, supports, at-home supports and others.

There are also costs that have to be borne by society. . . . If people with poorer health outcomes have to withdraw from the labour force, that imposes costs on each and every one of us when jobs go unfilled.

There are also the costs of treating people. Those costs would be lower if they had better health outcomes in the first place. It is much more expensive to treat diseases and illnesses than it is to prevent them, generally speaking.

The most significant spending measure in Bill C-15 arises from the need to treat the results of health inequalities that we have neglectfully failed to prevent. Thirty per cent of the spending proposed by the bill — $4 billion — earmarked for procurement and distribution of additional COVID-19 rapid tests is linked specifically to trying to address COVID-19 risk among so-called vulnerable groups.

At the National Finance Committee, the Public Health Agency of Canada identified these populations as including groups such as Indigenous peoples, those of African descent, other racialized populations, those with disabilities, front-line service providers and essential workers. The committee had the opportunity to ask government officials whether these latest proposed measures are projected to close the gap in COVID-19 mortality for Canadians who have the least. Particularly, we asked how they would compare to income support measures that might have addressed underlying inequalities and allowed people to afford measures, from PPE to physical distancing, necessary to better protect themselves, their families and communities during the pandemic.

We also asked about the portion of pandemic spending, from the cost of PPE to vaccinations to mental health supports and so many other measures, related to the need to respond to emergency health situations created by social and economic inequalities that predated and were exacerbated by COVID-19.

In response, the Public Health Agency acknowledged its own previous research revealed “robust associations between income and health in Canada” and that “the direct economic burden of health inequities on health care costs is substantial.”

In 2016 alone, socio-economic inequalities cost at least $6.2 billion annually, or over 14% of total expenditures on acute care in-patient hospitalizations, prescription medication and physician consultations.

The Public Health Agency also indicated, however, that it had not conducted health policy modelling studies to determine the effects on pandemic spending and health outcomes if measures such as robust income supports had been in place to try and redress pre-existing inequalities for those most at risk of COVID.

We could find no department that has conducted such analyses. The failure of the government to provide this type of assessment results in a massive gap and wholly inadequate ability to plan, much less prepare for, future challenges. It thus significantly erodes confidence in the foundation upon which the Canadian health, social and economic policy decisions are being made. When policy is debated in Canada, whether here in Parliament, around kitchen tables, in the metaverse or on the streets, many are acutely aware of the consequences of the continued reaction to emergencies.

Too often, though, the real cost of failing to take proactive, preventative action is not in the balance when we weigh the challenges of decades of inaction. Instead, focus is zeroed in on the initial costs of bold measures to address poverty and inequality — from guaranteed livable basic income to housing strategies, disability benefits, universal mental health care, pharmacare, dental care, child care and education.

Too rarely do we consider the costs of failing to act, the costs we are repeatedly being asked to approve in order to patch some but not all of the wounds and not for everyone.

Poverty and related inequalities cost Canadian taxpayers tens of billions of dollars every year, particularly in emergency health care measures, the criminal legal system and responses like shelters or food banks that dangle the hope of survival while reminding people that they are constantly on the brink of crisis.

These are the hidden costs of policies characterized as pursuing fiscal prudence but which do not reach everyone in need or fail to provide enough support and further stretch social and health systems that already leave too many people behind. Much worse than financial cost, as we have seen during the pandemic, failure to redress these inequalities also costs lives.

I want to urge therefore that we recognize many of the measures in this bill as not only vital to COVID-19 responses but also the costs that Canadians continue to pay as a result of our country’s failure to shore up health and social safety nets, to redress social, health and economic inequality and, particularly, to work to support people in finding pathways out of poverty.

The costs of our inaction need to factor into how we analyze and evaluate government spending. They must also push us to consider how resources can be invested differently to bring about healthier, more just and equal communities for all of us. Meegwetch, thank you.