Oral Questions
Mr. Speaker, I apologize if I disrespected my colleague. That was not my intention. I respectfully offer the assistance and support he needs and deserves as a member of Parliament. He has a very important role in the House. I think he is entitled to ask for all of the information whenever he wants if he is to continue doing his job properly, as he is already doing within the Conservative caucus.
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Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to see and hear my colleague speak about science. If he would like to see the studies I mentioned, I can have people from my department brief him. They would be very happy to show him the statistics, methods, data, the various techniques used, the standard deviations, the confidence intervals and everything that goes with this type of study. The 1,600 deaths were pre…
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Mr. Speaker, I mentioned earlier the amount of $4 billion. That is a lot of money, which the federal government and other governments have saved because of high vaccination rates, in part due to vaccination mandates, but most importantly, that is a lot of household income, family income, income to look after children, to care for seniors, to look after those who may not often find it easy to make …
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Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to receive this question because it enables me to add one more piece of information, this time from the United States. One million is the number of deaths that were avoided because of Americans were vaccinated. It was mentioned earlier that they could have avoided many more deaths with more vaccinations, as we did in Canada. When we speak to people who may be either …
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Mr. Speaker, we are going to do exactly as my colleague suggests on April 1. On April 1, pre-entry testing requirements will go away. That will simplify everyone's life and encourage more people to come see my colleagues and me in wonderful Quebec City and the beautiful surrounding area.
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Mr. Speaker, there are two things I assume my hon. colleague already knows. The first is that I am indeed the member for Quebec, which is probably the most beautiful city in the country and I am very proud of it. I represent this area along with other distinguished members of the House. The second thing he probably knows is that on April 1, so in a just a few days, pre-arrival tests will no longer…
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Mr. Speaker, compassion is the key word. We need to have each other's backs. We need to protect each other's health. That is best done by following public health measures, as most of us are doing today, but not all of us. It is also done by being vaccinated, which protects our health and that of those we love. It also protects against long COVID. By the way, long COVID affects all vital organs wit…
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Mr. Speaker, I will speak to something I think is extremely important for us to understand, which is long COVID. Among all those infected by COVID, whether it be severe or mild, the estimate is that between 10% and 30% will suffer from long COVID. This has dramatic impacts on their lives in the short and longer term. Thirty percent of them will need to consult more than 10 times after that. Thirty…
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Mr. Speaker, Conservatives have to choose between vaccination, which is not punishment but protection, and lockdown. We cannot have no vaccination and no lockdown. The fact that the Conservatives do not seem to believe in vaccination, in March 2022, is very serious. If we did not have vaccination, and if we did not keep insisting on vaccination, we would be closing schools, shops, stores and facto…
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Mr. Speaker, we all agree and are all thankful for humanity. Humanity means thinking about others and caring for others. I will mention the fact that, on average, in the last week we have had about 50 to 60 additional deaths. Those are not just numbers: those are people whose families obviously are very much impacted. We have 4,000 people who are hospitalized. That is a large number of people. Hum…
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Mr. Speaker, that question gives me the opportunity to continue speaking about the hardships and stress many Canadians feel, including health care workers and obviously patients. We have seen, over the last two years, a backlog of surgeries approximately equal to 700,000 patients. Their families, friends and communities are affected by that backlog. Today, we still have about 4,000 people hospital…
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Mr. Speaker, hardship is the right word. I was speaking yesterday with the Canadian Pharmacists Association, which represents another group of health care workers who have been at the front line and living very difficult times. Their personal mental stress has been heightened by COVID, as has the stress of their families when they go home after a day at work, the stress of their staff and the stre…
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Mr. Speaker, we would all like to be able to declare the date when COVID‑19 will disappear from the earth. That would be marvellous. I would certainly be the happiest man on earth, and in this Parliament, to be able to tell the House on what day COVID‑19 will disappear. Unfortunately, I do not know.
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Mr. Speaker, we spoke about being responsible and being kind to each other. I will try to make it even more simple. Instead of 135,000, I will use three, which is a simple number. Three times is how many more deaths we would have had in Canada if we had followed the example of the United States when it came to public health measures and vaccination rates. Three times more people dying would be 60,…
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Mr. Speaker, let me try again to make it very simple. I will use one number this time, instead of two, which is 135,000. That is the number of Americans whose deaths were avoidable. If the U.S. had been vaccinated to the extent we have in Canada, in part due to vaccination mandates, they would not have died. Those lives had a value. How much it is in dollars very few people would know I suppose, b…
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Mr. Speaker, this is not about politics. It is about responsibility. When one is in government, one must be responsible. I believe that everyone in the House of Commons, not just the government members, must be responsible. I look around and see that members of the Conservative Party are suddenly declaring that COVID-19 is over and that masks are no longer necessary. COVID-19 is still with us. We …
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Mr. Speaker, I am trying to be non-partisan, but the hon. member was not here before the last election, so she may not know that, roughly 13 months ago, her party said that Canadians would be the last in the world to be vaccinated, that they would not be vaccinated until 2030. Canadians have been vaccinated in large numbers and, in most cases, before other countries. It is a gift that we received …
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Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to the member for his work and for admitting, and I think he knew that already, many weeks ago, that vaccination mandates did work. They not only saved lives. I spoke about the 1,600 Canadians who are currently alive because of those vaccination mandates, having not been infected, sent to a hospital and then dying because of not being vaccinated. Also there is the large …
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Mr. Speaker, let me again thank not only my colleague, whose company and work I enjoy, but also all Canadians. Let me say the vaccination mandates that opposition Conservative MPs opposed during the campaign have saved not only hundreds of lives but thousands of lives. Estimates are about 1,600 people in the last few months have had their lives saved by vaccination mandates. Obviously, had we not …
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Mr. Speaker, I know this might sound a bit complicated, so let me make this very simple. It is 8,000 and 25,000. Eight thousand is the number of people who will be receiving either their first or second dose today, and 25,000 is the number of people who will be receiving their booster dose today. We are very grateful to them, not only for protecting their health but for protecting the health of th…
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Mr. Speaker, I think we heard recently that if we had the same death rate in Canada that we saw in the United States, there would have been 60,000 more people dying in Canada than we saw over the last two years. Despite that, 7,000 Canadians did die over the last few weeks because of omicron. These are obviously individual and community tragedies. The reason we have been able to do much better in …
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Mr. Speaker, through the member for Nunavut, I would like to thank Minister John Main in Nunavut, with whom I have a very good relationship. I have a lot of esteem for him. We have been working on many different things, including providing health care support to the people of Nunavut, including providing rapid tests. We had a brief very recent exchange on that to make sure that the rapid tests and…
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his very good question. First, as my colleague suggests, the Canadian government and Canada will have to continue to work with the other countries to ensure that the distribution of pharmaceutical production capacity, such as for vaccines, is equitable, including in developing countries. Second, Canada committed to delivering 200 million doses of vaccine in 20…
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for his fair and fine question. I will answer only one piece of it, as he spoke about border measures. We have been using a set of measures to monitor the way in which those border measures should be adjusted. One of them has been on the PHAC website for more than a year now. It is the positivity rate for people entering Canada. We have had tests, PCR tests,…
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Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity to rise today in the House to address this very important topic. The COVID-19 pandemic has obviously impacted everyday life across Canada and around the world for two years now. It has also put our health care systems to the test, disrupted our economy, and altered our social and economic interactions. In response to the crisis, the Government of Cana…
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Mr. Speaker, I was going to point to health care workers. Obviously, we are deeply thankful to them, but thankfulness is not enough. We need to think of them and we need to act in a way that protects them if we want them to protect us.
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Mr. Speaker, it is true the mental health of Canadians has been deeply affected the last two years. We estimate that about one Canadian out of two has seen his or her mental health deteriorate over the last few months. For health care workers, it is about three quarters. Now, health care workers have been at the front lines of this crisis—
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Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to answer this question. This gives me the opportunity to remind the House of the $72 billion we invested during the COVID‑19 pandemic to support the health and safety of all Canadians, including, of course, Quebeckers, the $45 billion in Canada health transfers that will begin to flow in just a few days, the $4 billion announced last year to deal with all kinds of d…
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Mr. Speaker, the Bloc is calling for transfers, and we are sending them. In the last budget, we announced $3 billion to support the health and dignity of our seniors in long-term care centres in Quebec, $1 billion to help the provinces and territories implement vaccination programs over the past few months, and another $300 million to help pay for the vaccine passport system that they used quite s…
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to thank the 30 million Canadians who got vaccinated last year, when thousands of health care workers administered 81 million doses to people who made the effort to go out and get vaccinated to protect everyone around them. We should be thanking them every day. We would love to declare that COVID‑19 is over, like some Conservative members are doing today b…
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Mr. Speaker, I give congratulations and thanks to Canadians. Let me point to one more number: 135,000. That is the number of avoidable deaths that we saw in the United States over the last few months. They would have been avoided if Americans had done as well as we did in Canada, which is to vaccinate everywhere. There were 135,000 people who died in the U.S. because of not being vaccinated as we …
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Mr. Speaker, since I like numbers and since I believe the opposition also likes science and numbers, let me quote two more: 1,600 and $4 billion. The fact that we had vaccination mandates at both federal and provincial levels in the last few months made Canadians avoid 1,600 deaths. There are 1,600 people who are now alive, living with their families, enjoying time with their friends, working and …
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Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to answer this question. The member speaks about the date. April 1 is when there will be no need for a pre-entry rapid or antigen test or molecular test when entering Canada. We do thank Canadians for all the hard work that they have done over the last few months, including vaccinating themselves in large numbers, with 87 million vaccines administered over the last year a…
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Mr. Speaker, vaccines have prevented 1,600 deaths in recent months because of federal and provincial vaccine mandates. Those 1,600 people are still with us today thanks to vaccine mandates. Estimates suggest that vaccine mandates have also saved us billions of dollars, probably about $4 billion. That is a lot of money and, more importantly, it is a lot of people who have been kept safe and healthy…
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Mr. Speaker, 135,000 is the number of people in the United States who died because they were insufficiently vaccinated compared to Canadians. It would have been a tragedy if in Canada we had not used that gift that science and scientists gave us a year and a half ago. We are extremely grateful to all the vaccinators and all the Canadians who did the right thing, which is to protect their health an…
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Mr. Speaker, the reason we are able to lift these mandates is that we have, in Canada, one of the highest rates of vaccination in the world. In Canada, about 85% of people have had a first dose, 81% two doses and almost 60% a third dose. That is the reason we are able to lift these restrictions. Four hundred thousand people would have been the number of people dying in Canada over 2021 in the abse…
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Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to answer that question. As the member may know, I come from the wonderful Quebec City. I am very proud of the strong workers, people and partners working for my tourism industry. I understand it is also an important industry for the member. I look forward to further measures, but I would also point out that on Monday, just a few days ago, we announced important measure…
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Mr. Speaker, I am obviously very pleased to hear one more colleague who cares about the industry of tourism. I do as well, as I just said. That is why we are working to protect both the health and safety of workers and travellers, but also to make sure that our tourism industry can thrive. We know how hard it has been for workers and small businesses over the last 23 months, and that is why we loo…
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Mr. Speaker, 1.1 million is the number that a recent Harvard study told us would have been the additional number of people dying in the United States without vaccination. In Canada, it is about 400,000 people who would have died in 2021 if, first, we did not have vaccination, and second, we did not have strong public health measures. Fortunately, we were not there, and fortunately we are elsewhere…
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Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to receive this question from the member from Ontario. I would like to signal that we have been working extremely hard and extremely well with Minister Elliott and the Ontario government over the last few months in order to protect the health and safety of Ontarians. Just to give an example, the vaccination operations that took place in Ontario probably saved thousands …
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Mr. Speaker, the member is entirely right to talk about responsibility, both individual and collective responsibility. Individually speaking, I think most members of the House have been vaccinated and many of them with a booster shot. This is exactly the right thing to do. Collectively, we had, at least on this side of the House and I think we worked collaboratively with opposition parties, the re…
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Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to be able to continue on this topic. The reason I mentioned earlier that we are going through this crisis better and faster than many other countries is that Canadians have made the right choice. We were vaccinated in large numbers. That is why we are seeing large falls in the number of cases and large falls in the number of hospitalizations, and deaths are also decrea…
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Mr. Speaker, a word that comes to my mind is “gratefulness”. I am grateful for our relationship with Minister Merriman and the entire Government of Saskatchewan, who have been there to help the people of Saskatchewan get through this crisis, and I am grateful to the millions of people in Saskatchewan who made the right choice and got vaccinated.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Saint-Laurent for her excellent question and her excellent work. Last Thursday, Medicago's Covifenz vaccine was approved by Health Canada. It is the first Canadian vaccine approved by Health Canada. It is also the first approved vaccine in the world to use plant-based technologies. The work of Medicago's workers and partners is giving Canadians one more too…
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Mr. Speaker, again, I am very grateful for the question, in particular because my region, my city and my riding of Quebec are of exceptional quality. Quebec has attracted thousands, if not millions, of foreigners and tourists over the years. We are very proud of that, and that is why we are so proud that the measures to which the member alludes have been reduced. They were relaxed just a day ago. …
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Mr. Speaker, I am very glad to hear my colleague speak about science. The science has been very clear, over the last year and a half, that what works is vaccination. Vaccination is not a punishment. Vaccination is protection. Almost 90% of adult Canadians have been vaccinated twice. We are very grateful to the scientists of this country and other places. They have provided us with vaccines that wo…
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Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak about Saskatchewan. I want to congratulate my colleague, Health Minister Merriman, for all his hard work and collaboration over the last few months. We worked really well together on rapid testing, on PPE, on the Paxlovid treatment against COVID-19, and on vaccinations. I want to congratulate all the people in Saskatchewan for having been vaccinated in such …
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Madam Speaker, I not only very much like the member for Guelph on a personal level, but also very much value his role and leadership in his community and for his riding as an outstanding member of Parliament. He mentioned a couple of things that he does with his community in part through working with businesses, small businesses in particular, and through chambers of commerce. Chambers of commerce…
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Mr. Speaker, I have so many things that I would like to say about the winning solutions my colleague just mentioned, which are so important. Vaccines were extremely important and have been very successful. There were also the 35 million rapid tests distributed to Quebec alone in January, not to mention all of the others that will be sent. There are treatments like Paxlovid. Canada has already rece…
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Mr. Speaker, that is a great question, and I will answer it in two ways. First, obviously these are large numbers of tests, and we hope the House will support this so we will be able to start delivering them directly to Canadians either through the networks and partnerships I mentioned earlier or through the provinces and territories. These large numbers of tests have been added to the 140 million…
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