QUESTION PERIOD — Health
COVID-19 Pandemic--Vaccine Mandate
May 10, 2022
Senator Gold, last week the Trudeau government ended several federal COVID-19 aid programs with Deputy Prime Minister Freeland saying, “. . . the time for extraordinary COVID support is now over.”
I can tell you some other extraordinary measures that are no longer needed, Senator Gold, like taking someone’s job and benefits away because they can’t or won’t get a vaccination, or preventing a Canadian citizen from being able to board an airplane or train and move freely inside the borders of their own country. Senator Gold, I have asked you twice before when Prime Minister Trudeau would lift his federal vaccine mandates. You didn’t have an answer so I will ask you again, hoping that the third time is the charm. If the Trudeau government now admits that extraordinary measures are no longer needed to assist Canadians with COVID, when will you also end the extraordinary and punitive federal vaccine mandates?
Thank you for your question. Not to disappoint you, Senator Batters, but you may not be pleased with my answer.
There is a difference between recognizing that the enormous amount of financial support to individuals and businesses that were necessary to get Canadians through the pandemic may no longer be necessary and that focus must now properly turn to strengthening the economy going forward and ensuring that we address the important issues with which we are confronted like affordability, inflation and the like. There is a difference between that decision and the decision to take a prudent and cautious approach for public health considerations. At such time as the government decides, as it has on regular occasions in the past months, that certain rules are no longer needed, those announcements will be made public.
Senator Gold, you would think that having a job would help with affordability.
Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, stated that Canada is experiencing “decreasing transmission in many areas.” She says waste water levels are “showing signs of a potential plateau.”
The provinces have dropped their mandates. Our allies around the world have done the same. The Trudeau government has ended assistance programs for COVID-19, and yet you refuse to even create a plan to lift these unnecessary federal vaccine mandates. Why?
The government continues to assess the needs for these mandates and what adjustments need to be made, and as I said, we’ll continue to be guided by not only public health considerations but what is in the best interests of Canadians.
