For a Thursday in the Chamber, we had two Liberals present among the otherwise empty benches — Mark Gerretsen, and Francis Drouin. Erin O’Toole led off, scripts on mini-lectern, and he lamented the third wave and compared our vaccination rate to the US, asking why the government failed on vaccines. Anita Anand replied with a list of vaccine deliveries. O’Toole switched to French to repeat his preamble, but at the last minute, switched the question to the border, but Anand simply repeated her response. Still in French, O’Toole raised the question of what date Canada would achieve 75 percent first doses and 20 percent second doses. Patty Hajdu replied that Canada’s vaccination story was a good one as we are number two in the G20 for vaccines administered. O’Toole returned to English to raise some hyperbolic concerns over the Broadcast Act amendments, for which Stephen Guilbeault read back quotes from Conservatives who claimed the bill initially was not strong enough. O’Toole quoted Michael Geist’s criticisms of the the bill, for which Guilbeault quoted several other organisations who said these concerns were dangerously misleading.
Alain Therrien led for the Bloc, and he complained that people in hotel quarantine were getting EI, to which Carla Qualtrough insisted that this wasn’t possible under the rules. Therrien said that TVA reporting disputed this, and Pablo Rodriguez stated that this was a question written before they got the answer, and people who took a vacation could not get government assistance.
Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and in French, demanded that the most vulnerable get vaccinated first — which is provincial jurisdiction. Patty Hajdu listed assistance that were given to provinces, but did not point out that basic jurisdictional issue. Singh then dismissed jurisdictional concerns around paid sick leave and demanded a magical fix to the federal sickness benefit. Qualtrough responded that they have made programmes available to those who need it— but gave no correction around jurisdiction.
Singh calls issues if jurisdiction “jibber-jabber,” and demands the federal sickness benefit be magically “fixed,” as though back-end IT infrastructure merely needs more willpower applied. #QP #GreenLanternTheory pic.twitter.com/2bO4Xyh1QW
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) April 29, 2021