Hon. Jean-Yves Duclos, P.C., M.P., Minister of Health: Senator Dagenais, I’m so glad you asked me that question, as it allows me to share some statistics that may give you some food for thought. The first thing I want to emphasize is that now is not a good time to travel. Like me, you probably know people who’ve decided to travel anyway. Everyone has the right to leave Canada, regardless of the Canadian government’s advice. However, anyone who did so in the last few weeks may have found themselves in very difficult situations, including being stuck in hotel rooms. Flights have been cancelled. People have fallen ill without having access to proper health care. These are very difficult situations, and there’s not much the Canadian government can do to help after people have left the country. I just want people to be informed about the real risks they run if they decide to travel.

Currently, when people come back into the country, they have to do a pre-entry test. Even so, if you look at the Public Health Agency of Canada numbers available on the website, between 6% and 9% of individuals are found to be COVID-19 positive, even though their pre-entry test was negative. On average, 1 in 12 people arriving in Canada has COVID-19. As people move around in airports, airplanes, taxis and buses, they come into contact with others, and the virus is transmitted through contact. People have to be careful to protect their own health and that of their loved ones. That is why these measures are constantly being reviewed, but the goal remains the same: to protect people’s health.

[English]

Hon. David M. Wells (Acting Deputy Leader of the Opposition): Minister Duclos, the pandemic revealed a number of failures in emergency planning for infectious disease outbreaks. These included closing down three of the national emergency stockpile warehouses, throwing out and not replenishing millions of PPE that hospitals could have used, closing down Canada’s infectious diseases early warning system prior to the initial outbreak and also taking vaccines destined for Third World countries under the World Health Organization’s COVAX program. There are more, but these make the point.

Minister, we’ve learned from experience that infectious disease pandemics are costly in lives and money. Your government has a climate change plan that looks to 2050, and that’s important, but you don’t have a long-term or even a short-term plan to address Canada’s obviously vulnerable health care system. Why not? Will a plan be brought forward and will it be informed by the lessons learned from the lack of preparedness in our current situation? When I say “current,” I mean what has been happening in the last two years.

Hon. Mary Jane McCallum: Tansi, Minister Duclos, and welcome. During the peak of the Omicron wave, First Nations communities enacted states of emergency and protective measures that extended beyond provincial public health orders to keep their members safe. Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, or MKO, represents 30 Northern communities. MKO and other members of the Manitoba First Nations COVID-19 Pandemic Response Coordination Team have reprofiled human resources from each of their partner organizations to meet the challenges arising from the current pandemic, including the deployment of rapid response teams into First Nation communities facing rising positive case counts. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated ongoing First Nation collaboration between governments and service providers.

Will Health Canada provide ongoing funding to support First Nations in addressing systemic change in the health care system, and are you agreeable to meeting with MKO?

Hon. Jean-Yves Duclos, P.C., M.P., Minister of Health: Just to answer the last question, I will always be pleased to meet with those important leaders in support of their communities. I’m also very glad and pleased to hear what you’ve mentioned about the leadership exerted by remote, Northern and Indigenous communities over the last 22 months. They have demonstrated the ability to be leaders and partners, and we knew they had the potential for it. We now know that they were able to exert that leadership over the last 22 months during a crisis that put enormous pressure on their communities — enormous stress, both mental and physical.

We can always do better, and we should always try and want to do better. But I think what we’ve seen over the last 22 months in terms of the collaboration, partnership and leadership of Indigenous, Northern and remote communities are signs of hope for the future.

[Translation]

Hon. Jean-Yves Duclos, P.C., M.P., Minister of Health: Thank you very much for the question.

The answer is yes, and that is what we’ve been doing all along. These measures absolutely need to be reviewed, for two reasons. The first is that Canada’s economic and health situation continues to evolve, and the second is that we keep learning more about the science of the virus and its variants as time goes on. I’d also like to mention another reason, which is that now, in February 2022, we have some exceptional tools that we did not have back in March 2020, at the start of the pandemic.

In other words, February 2022 is not March 2020. We fortunately have PPE, highly effective tests, proven, recognized and comprehensive public health measures, and antiviral treatments. On top of that, we have vaccines. We are unbelievably lucky to have gotten vaccines last year, thanks to science. Without vaccines, the lockdown measures we have now would have been much stricter. Being against vaccination is tantamount to being for lockdowns. The only way to avoid future lockdowns is to continue getting people vaccinated. That’s the only way to protect our health, our economy and our society.

[English]

Hon. Jean-Yves Duclos, P.C., M.P., Minister of Health: Thank you. There are three things here. Yes, I am aware of this recommendation of the Quebec group. Second, we are obviously going to take that into account as we proceed with the necessary and useful revision of the work that needs to be done. Third, I, along with my team, will always be pleased to support the important inter-chamber parliamentary work that needs to be done in that context.

I obviously won’t decide the agenda that parliamentary committees will want to follow, but I will be there to support whatever agenda is decided upon by the appropriate people.

Hon. Jean-Yves Duclos, P.C., M.P., Minister of Health: Thank you. It is a much-appreciated question.

Some estimates suggest there have been 1 million surgeries either delayed or cancelled over the past few months because of the impact of COVID-19. There are approximately 5 million Canadians who don’t have access to primary care through, for instance, a family doctor, and that has been worsened by the pandemic.

That is why we were there, and we needed to be there, during the pandemic with an investment of $63 billion in health, in addition to the Canada Health Transfer, which will increase from $43 billion to $45 billion in a few weeks, then to $49 billion, and then to $51 billion and $53 billion, by the way. So in just about three or four years, it will have increased by 25%. That is in addition to the things we promised we would do during the campaign in support of, as you said, not only repairing the system but also preparing the system for possible and almost certain future waves and variants of the pandemic.

[Translation]

The Hon. the Speaker: Honourable senators, when shall this bill be read the second time?

(On motion of Senator Jaffer, bill placed on the Orders of the Day for second reading two days hence.)