Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2021-05-11 10:20 [p.7021]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join in the debate today. It is our second day of looking at the budget implementation act, Bill C-30. Given that the budget was over 700 pages long and the budget implementation act is over 300 pages, I will start at a higher level of extraction by examining the nature of this legislation and refamiliarizing some of us with the controversial issue of omnibus bills.

This is clearly an omnibus bill, but I want to set out why it is not offensive. At over 300 pages long, the budget implementation act contains well over 20 acts. It affects the Canada Labour Code, the Federal Courts Act, the Trust and Loan Companies Act, two different varieties of student loans and student financial assistance. I will not read them all, but a large number of pieces of legislation are affected.

The issue of illegitimate omnibus budget bills takes us back to the era of the Harper administration in a minority. They were the best way to push through offensive legislation when parties that formed the majority of the members of Parliament, but were not the administration, would have objected. With the use of offensive omnibus budget bills, the Conservative government quite shrewdly discerned that it could put through things that would not otherwise get public support or MP support, given that they are confidence votes. It put through things such as the Budget Implementation Act 2008 and Budget Implementation Act 2009, which weakened environmental assessment leading up to the majority actions of that government. It continued to put lots of things in budget implementation acts that were omnibus bills.

An omnibus bill merely means that many pieces of legislation are being passed all at once. This is not offensive is if it is all to one purpose. Everything in Bill C-30 is mentioned in the budget. As far as I can see, there are no sneaky surprises, as we discovered in a recent budget in which there were deferred prosecution agreements for corporations. As I go through this bill, it is not like the omnibus budget bill of spring 2012 that destroyed our environmental assessment process, which has still not been repaired. It gutted the Fisheries Act and eliminated the national round table, among other things. This is an omnibus bill, but it is appropriate in that everything I can find in Bill C-30 is consistent with the budget itself and has to do with legislative changes to make it possible to enact the budget, which this Parliament has now passed.

There are items of concern. When the bill gets to committee, maybe improvements could be made on some of these, but certainly it is of concern to see withdrawal of supports for important things within our economy during COVID. We are clearly not looking at a post-pandemic budget. After not having had a budget for two years, this budget continues to face times of deep uncertainty. I have had my first vaccine shot. I will wait four months and then get a second shot. With vaccines, we see there is light at the end of the tunnel, but with variants, spikes and economies in various provinces opening up a bit and then closing rapidly, there are a lot of reasons why businesses and individual Canadians will continue to need support.

The notion that we would lower the Canada recovery benefit from the current $500 a week to $300 a week by July should be looked at. That is soon, and we may not be ready for that. The wage subsidy is ending by September. A lot of businesses in my riding know for sure that they will need that wage subsidy well beyond September. There are deep concerns particularly in the tourism sector, so I will focus on tourism for a minute.

The tourism sector has received $500 million in the budget, and that is not nearly enough. We underestimate it, as Canadians and even as parliamentarians. All of us have tourism in our ridings, and collectively across the country tourism’s contribution to GDP is roughly the same as the oil sands. It employs far more people, thousands and thousands of them, across Canada in every region, and $500 million is not adequate to meet the needs of the tourism sector.

Big businesses in my riding, attractions such as Butchart Gardens, would normally have upwards of 700 to 800 employees seasonally. Butchart Gardens did not have anything like that number last summer because it was not open, but the wage subsidy allowed it to keep specialists employed: the hundreds of people who were recruited from around the world as horticulturalists. It simply will not be able to keep that workforce if we do not have a wage subsidy. If it loses that workforce and these specialists, horticulturalists and experts are not able to be employed here, they will go to other countries. Their skills are in demand.

We have a very big concern about the $500 million provided for tourism and the $1 billion for promotion. Some of the businesses in my riding feel rather hollowed out by the notion that we will have a billion dollars going to advertising attractions in Canada that cannot stay open.

It is also peculiar that we have a decision by the Department of Transportation that cruise ships on our coasts will not open until February 28, 2022. I have yet to see any justification for that arbitrary date. This is a big concern, because if we are letting people get on airplanes, are saying there are vaccination passports and that people are okay to travel, certainly we should be informed of why there is this arbitrary date. It would continue to damage tourism.

This budget is also very short on support for ground transport. The bus lines of this country, whether Wilson Bus Lines or Maritime Bus, need more connectivity between cities and towns. The support for Via Rail is welcome, at $491 million, but it is all in the Windsor-Quebec corridor. What about Vancouver to Toronto and Montreal to Halifax? In the absence of Greyhound, the Irving Bus Line and others that run between communities, those routes need daily trains and an expanded economy service.

What is missing again is what we are going to do to improve our financial prospects going forward. If we are not going to be looking at cuts, we need more revenue. There are some new taxes in this budget and some ways to save money. I particularly applaud the idea that the Government of Canada is going to stop spending as much on travel by civil servants: That is a $1-billion savings over five years. Most of that travel, as we know, was by air. We have learned during COVID that we can find other ways to meet that avoid greenhouse gases and avoid so much travel.
Long-term we need to look at more revenue. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has pointed out that our debt-to-GDP ratio is going to level out at about 51%. It was about 30.6% before the pandemic, and it will be 2055 before we get to pre-pandemic debt-to-GDP ratios. In 1995-96, we were at 66%, but we do not want to go through that deep austerity program ever again. We have to protect our health system. We have to expand it with pharmacare, which should have been in this budget and was not.

We need to look at where we can get more revenue and be consistent. For heaven’s sake, it is time to stop subsidizing fossil fuels. It is time to cancel the Trans Mountain pipeline, which is going to cost another $10 billion to $12 billion. We are looking at excess profits from our banks. We should be going after those. We should be looking at a wealth tax. We certainly do not do enough in this budget. It suggests consultations on what to do about credit card interest rates and horrific payday loans. Those things need more attention.

We need to look at improving the revenue line so that we can afford universal pharmacare, which we must, and so that we can make sure the day care program takes place across the country for all Canadians. As well, we need to bring in support initially for low-income dental and get rid of the interest on Canadian student loans. All those need revenue in their appropriate place. With that, I am thankful for the time to speak to Bill C-30.

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Speaker: Ms. May
Time: 06/05/2021 10:40:03
Context: Questions and Comments

Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP): Mr. Speaker, I would like the hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby, if he can, to clarify the NDP position on the study into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, which recommended the shutting down of man camps. In last night’s late debate, we noted that the spread of COVID through Alberta is a crisis. The hot spot is the oil sands region. The continuation of construction at places like Site C and TMX I know the hon. member opposes, but I am not sure about the leader of his party.

Can the hon. member clarify what the hon. member for Burnaby South meant when he ducked the question last night and did not directly answer the member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith? Would the member shut down the man camps?

Peter Julian (New Westminster—Burnaby)
2021-05-06 10:45

Mr. Speaker, there is a lot there for a 30-second question.
No, I did not get a question last night, so the member is unfortunately mistaken. She is also mistaken about TMX. I visited the TMX site. The member for Burnaby South and the NDP caucus have pushed hard on this, as the member knows. That is why we got the initial PBO study, and the revision of the initial study, on TMX and the escalating costs.
The reality is that TMX is not in the national interest. The Liberal government wants to pour more than $18.5 billion into Trans Mountain. We need to invest that money in clean energy and in the just transition. We need to do that as country if we are to really combat climate change.

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Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2021-05-05 19:47 [p.6721]

Mr. Speaker, I want to shift the focus slightly because the minister made the very critical point that we are not out of the woods until everyone is safe and vaccinated. This is a global concern.

Earlier today, in a historic turnaround for the United States, the Biden administration changed its position and now supports giving an exemption through the World Trade Organization on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights, or TRIPS, so that patent protection would be removed and developing countries could manufacture vaccines and get them to the people who need them.

Is Canada prepared to step up and at long last go toward removing patent protection for big pharma?

Hon. Patty Hajdu (Thunder Bay—Superior North)
2021-05-05 19:47 [p.6721]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for the acknowledgement that this is, indeed, a global pandemic and we need to take care of each other at a global level, as well as a community level. The Minister of International Trade and I did exchange some texts when that happened, and my understanding is that Canada is moving forward to support that. I think the question would be better posed to her for the specifics, as it is her file.

My understanding is that we have, as a government, a full recognition of the importance of ensuring that everyone around the world gets access to vaccination as quickly as possible. It is likely going to be an all-hands-on-deck endeavour because it will be a challenge, but the pandemic has taught us that until we are all protected from COVID-19, none of us are. It is a very important consideration.

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Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2021-05-05 20:37 [p.6728]

Mr. Speaker, my thanks to my hon. colleague from Jonquière for splitting his time with me.

We are in a terrible place now. When we were first getting used to the idea that we were in a pandemic and needed to adjourn Parliament on March 13, 2020, some of us stood in this place to say that by unanimous consent we were going to adjourn until April 20, 2020. It seems absurd now. I clearly remember saying that the Greens had given their unanimous consent, while wondering if we really needed to stay out as long as April 20. It seemed maybe a little extreme, but we would see.

We have learned a lot. We started talking about flattening the curve. We thought that would be adequate, because we were told it would be, but we have learned more. This has been a very steep learning curve. We could have learned faster, gone faster, and followed the models of countries like New Zealand, Australia and South Korea, the countries that decided to go hard and fast, using the kind of advice that the World Health Organization, Dr. Michael Ryan, recommended back then of, “Go hard, go fast. Don’t wait to be perfect. Speed trumps perfection.” I thought we were going fast and I certainly am not at the level of someone who wants to start casting blame.

I find this debate tonight difficult because, as much as there is blame to be cast, does it help? I do not want the people of Alberta to feel that the federal Parliament has decided to lay into them with clubs. It is pretty clear that their premier miscalculated badly and cost people’s lives.

I want to reflect a bit on something that I do not think gets said enough in this place. I think there is a perception in Alberta that people like me, who want to see the fossil fuel industry shut down, phased out over time and take care of the workers that that somehow means we do not love Alberta. I really love Alberta and I love Albertans.

I have so much respect for the grit of Alberta in facing major disasters. I remember very clearly, of course, the 2013 floods in Calgary. I went. I pulled rotted debris from people’s basements in High River because I found myself in the days after the 2013 flood in Calgary for the stampede and just thought I could be more useful if I got a friend and we went up to High River to see if we could help. I have the t-shirt that says, “Come Hell or High Water”. Mayor Nenshi decided that even though it looked impossible to have the stampede, they were going to have it. I admire that spirit.

Soon thereafter, during the 2016 fires at Fort McMurray, there was incredible community spirit with no one left behind. There was a very strong image of a patient, orderly evacuation with fires on all sides, and the residents of Fort McMurray moving out along the single road. If somebody’s car ran out of gas, they got into somebody else’s car. It was inspiring.

For Alberta to be the site of the highest COVID rates in North America is devastatingly frightening, because we know more about this pandemic now. We know about this virus. We know the longer the virus lives among us, the more likely we are in a human petri dish to have more dangerous variants. We do not know yet if it is all about getting vaccines in case a variant overcomes a vaccine. We are in a very dangerous place during this third wave.

Today we are marking Red Dress Day, to think about and to pledge solidarity with all of the families of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. It was early June, two years ago, that the government had delivered unto it the report of the inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls and two-spirited peoples. One of the inquiry’s key recommendations was to shut down the “man camps”. At that point, the threat to human life was from what were called the “man camps” in the inquiry. Many Canadians may not know the term, but it meant that large construction sites represent a threat to the vulnerable, to the marginalized who have to hitchhike.

I know there was a very strong reaction from people in Alberta, and of course most of the workers are the dads, the grandads, the brothers, the sons and thoroughly decent people, but there is no question but that the evidence shows that missing and murdered indigenous women and girls are at more risk when there are transient camps of workers.

In COVID, I just want to ask why it is that we, public health officials and governments, decided that when others things had to close down, like mom-and-pop shops and various places where people might have been able to be better off than in a concentrated place like a work camp, the work camps were so essential that we could not shut them down. The highest rates of COVID in Alberta right now are in the region of the oil sands. They have very high rates.

In British Columbia the NDP Government of British Columbia has decided Site C is so important to continue, that we would not possibly think of shutting it down when it has outbreaks. We have outbreaks right now at the Site C dam site, the Kitimat LNG facilities that are being built, along the Trans Mountain pipeline construction link, the Coastal GasLink. All the man camps turn out to also be places where COVID flourishes.

One of the key things about the oil sands is that the workers commute by airplane. Members can think of poor Newfoundland and Labrador, where they were in the Atlantic bubble and felt that the rates were low enough to meet the requirement under Newfoundland and Labrador law that new Premier Andrew Furey had to call an election within a few months. Suddenly, they had an outbreak of COVID from the oil sands workers, and they are having them now. If we search this we will find it everywhere that academics and scientists are saying they have a problem with these fly-in, fly-out camps. One expert said that COVID did not just walk in there by itself, it showed up on an airplane.

While we worry about international borders and why we are not being tighter with our borders, how is it that we are so addicted to oil that we turn a blind eye to the impact of these man camps that we should have been shutting down, or at least ensuring that the work force there was not commuting across many provincial borders? There were ways, perhaps, to keep people in the construction industry working when many other industries were shut down, but we have turned a blind eye to the fact of these squashed, busy workplaces like slaughterhouses. We have shut down parts of our economy, but turned a blind eye to the places that seem to me, in reviewing the evidence, to be the places where COVID flourishes.

We have seen the mayor of Lethbridge, Chris Spearman, say, “We have done the least of the provinces. We’ve tolerated protests against masks and at the hospital and rapid vaccination clinic.” We need to do more. One of the Albertans I admire the most, because he is brilliant, is journalist, Andrew Nikiforuk, who wrote a piece just a few days ago in The Tyee entitled “A Coronavirus Hell of Kenney’s Own Making”. I only mention the title so members can look it up.

He said the “numbers reflect, first and foremost, Premier Jason Kenney’s callous and persistent disregard for scientific findings and mathematical reality.” One of those mathematical realities is exponential growth. Alberta is in a dangerous place right now, and it is certainly not the fault of Albertans. We had a government in Alberta that, over Christmas, had a fairly significant portion of its elected provincial leadership decide it was okay to go on a vacation. As I dug into it, I found one of the ministers excused herself by saying she wanted to make sure she was helping the airlines in this economic crisis. I thought it was a facetious comment that would not land well, but then I read further and found that the premier had thought it was a good way to help WestJet and that there would be a kind of safety on an Alberta-to-Hawaii corridor that could somehow live outside the reality of COVID.

There were problems in leadership. There were problems of not leading by example. There were problems in not wanting to address the science of COVID by allowing the policies to be ideological. None of us can let this be ideological. We have to set aside whatever partisanship we bring to this and end up where Andrew Nikiforuk’s article ended, which was, “It’s time to pray for Alberta,” and I will also note that faith by itself does not do the work.

We need to do the work to help Alberta and Albertans in any way we can.

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Next Monday, Elizabeth will deliver the official Green response to the 2021 Budget, as parliamentary leader. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, none of the Green MPs could attend the budget presentation in person. However, staff from Paul Manly’s team were in the budget lockup and provided the initial brief for the caucus. With a 700+ page budget, the analysis continues.

Initial reactions to the budget

Petitions

e-3206 Include long-term care in the Canada Health Act (closes April 25)

e-3301 Stop logging old-growth ecosystems (closes April 25)

e-3218 Reduce violent crime (closes May 2)

e-3014 Modernize the complaints review panel of the Canadian Judicial Council (closes May 7)

e-3221 Reduce emissions to meet the Paris target (closes May 11)

e-3256 Protect the Kavango basin region (closes May 11)

e-3075 Halt all transfer of Canadian made weapons to Saudi Arabia (closes May 27)

e-3138 Make Election Day a paid holiday when it falls on a weekday (closes May 29)

e-3307 Review the Victims Bill of Rights (closes May 30)

e-3159 Ban new strip mines in the Rocky Mountains (closes June 5)

e-3164 Implement a national living wage (closes June 29)

Further Reading

The Government of Canada’s Nuclear Policies are profoundly misguided, say Greens

Greens, NDP call for stronger national response as COVID-19 variants surge

Budget 2021 can plug the holes in our COVID-19 response and lay the foundation for a better future

Elizabeth May: Good Sunday Morning (April 18)

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Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2021-04-21 15:27 [p.5928]

Mr. Speaker, I note that you seem to put some emphasis on the word “brief”. I will do my best, but it is an emergency. I think I will find sympathy with many members of the House to the request I bring to the House, but it is only your sympathy that I seek to have an emergency debate this evening on the rising problem of variants of concern.
The fact is that Canada remains at this point and is, as a number of members have just mentioned in question period, in a third wave. An emergency debate should not be a place where we blame each other, but where we take hold of this and ask what we must do better, because we must do better.

I first raised the request for an emergency debate on COVID-19 as it began to change in the second wave in November. My colleague, the member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith, asked again in February as the variants appeared to be threatening a third wave. We are now in that third wave.

There are many aspects of this to discuss, but the central question is whether we all, collectively, at different orders of government, need to shift from bending the curve to going to zero COVID to actually working to eliminate COVID from Canada by learning from what the Atlantic provinces are doing and what other provinces did. Can we have an emergency debate on that this evening? It clearly is an emergency.

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We are now in a pandemic that has lasted more than a year.

At the same time, we are in a climate emergency.

There are a number of commonalities in facing both of these emergencies – COVID and the climate crisis. Both require that governments base policies on evidence. Both require that we respect science. Both require decisive government action.

Obstacles to success share other traits – and they are not good.

Our willingness to learn from success and failure – whether on environmental policy or COVID – seems halting and inadequate.

On environmental policy, we had tremendous success in the 1980’s fighting acid rain and protecting the ozone layer. Canada’s tried and true approach from that era has never been applied when it comes to climate. In the 1980s, the federal government and the provinces made binding agreements, one province at a time. On climate, we have negotiated with all the governments at once – moving to lowest common denominator decisions. Federal-provincial jurisdictional, petty squabbles have undermined action. The federal government for the last thirty years has been unwilling to set climate policy that would anger any premier.

On COVID, we see the same thing. At the beginning of the pandemic, the federal Public Health Agency could not answer even the most basic questions about the R0 (R-naught) values of COVID. We did not know how many people would contract COVID-19 from one person who is infected. The reason the Public Health Agency did not know is that provinces kept data in different formats. As well, provinces sent the information to Ottawa in an inconsistent way – some by fax. Some provinces exercised their “right” not to share information if it was embarrassing. Each province acted on its own approach – some deciding to go hard and fast (Atlantic provinces), while others decided to try a lock-down and then a bit of opening and then back to (ineffective) lock-downs. In Mary Carney’s new book, Values(s), he describes these two approaches as the Hammer versus the Dance. I wish we had learned from the Atlantic provinces, as well as New Zealand, Taiwan, Australia, among others. They chose the Hammer and now have opened up. We are still in Dance mode. Instead of setting a goal of Zero COVID, we opted for “bending the curve” to keep COVID at a low level until we could all be vaccinated.

In Parliament, when Paul Manly, Green MP for Nanaimo-Ladysmith, asked if it was not time to move to Zero COVID and use the Emergency Act to get there, the reply was that we did not want a Constitutional crisis.

We are a federation. In some ways, so is the European Union. While not a nation state, the EU negotiated as a bloc in the 1997 Kyoto climate conference. When the deal was done, in short order, the nations of the EU negotiated a fair apportionment of the target. Wealthy industrialized members, with strong green mandates took on relatively bigger burdens of GHG reductions, to keep more recalcitrant nations on board.

Canada with 14 governments (10 provinces, three territories and a federal government) – all part of the same country after all – never even attempted Europe’s approach. The EU is now nearly 44% below its 1990 GHG emissions, while we are 21 % above.

The same lack of effective cooperation typified our COVID response. Australia is a good choice for comparison as, like Canada, it is a federated state (six states, two territories and the federal government). Those governments decided at the beginning of COVID to cooperate. Two committees were formed – one a committee of top health officials from each government; the other, the elected leaders of each government. The results of coordination– in deaths per 100K of population: Canada 62 versus Australia 3.59.

We are a great country – and yes, we work. But we could work better. We have interprovincial barriers to trade, to movement of labour, to a national securities regulator. These barriers are clunky and inefficient for our economy, but in terms of our health in a pandemic and our chances of survival in the climate crisis, we must find ways to make Canada work.

Canadians should not be dying to avoid a potential Constitutional crisis. Our global responsibility to act on climate should not be hostage to provincial sabre-rattling. We need to get our act together.

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Earth Day (April 18, 2021)

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Banning Glyphosate in Canada

Thursday was a historic day for Jenica as she presented her first ever Private Members Bill to ban the use of Glyphosate, a toxic herbicide used in forestry and agriculture. In the context of Laval’s decision to ban glyphosate in city limits this week, Jenica called on the government to join the growing global consensus recognizing that Glyphosate has been deemed a probable carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).The press release announcing Jenica’s PMB and the text of the bill can both be found online.

Question Period

Pursuing fairness in Question Period

Interventions

Questions and Statements

Jenica Atwin tables first PMB, to ban Glyphosate in Canada

Paul Manly: The government should borrow from the Bank of Canada for public infrastructure funding

Jenica Atwin: Will the upcoming budget be a pathway to a fair and more prosperous Canada?

Elizabeth May: PM must update Canada’s climate target at Biden’s Earth Summit next week

Key moments

Jenica Atwin: We should examine all tools for addressing systemic racism in Canada

Paul Manly: The government should have invoked Emergencies Act to coordinate pandemic response

Elizabeth May: The budget must be more informative and more transparent

Paul Manly seeks Unanimous Consent to allow members from non-recognized parties to ask more questions

Paul Manly: Would the Member support a national Indigenous Urban Housing Strategy?

Paul Manly: Decriminalizing the use and simple possession of drugs?

Elizabeth May rises on a Point of Order to request more questions be allocated to Greens during QP

Elizabeth May: Laurentian University is the canary in educational coal mine. We will fight for it.

Elizabeth May presents a petition on COVID-19 ‘long haulers’

Elizabeth May’s statement on the occasion of the passing of Prince Philip

Elizabeth May supports “right to repair” bill

Debate on Bill C-15

Jenica Atwin on federal UNDRIP bill: Can I believe in Canada this time?

Jenica Atwin: Resource extraction does more harm than good to First Nations

Jenica Atwin: Why is Canada’s UNDRIP bill hesitant to use the word “racism”?

Jenica Atwin: We should speak of reparations rather than reconciliation

Elizabeth May: Government claims to support free, prior and informed consent, but bought TMX without it

Paul Manly: UNDRIP legislation has not stopped the silencing of First Nations

Petitions

e-3206 Include long-term care in the Canada Health Act (closes April 25)

e-3301 Stop logging old-growth ecosystems (closes April 25)

e-3218 Reduce violent crime (closes May 2)

e-3014 Modernize the complaints review panel of the Canadian Judicial Council (closes May 7)

e-3221 Reduce emissions to meet the Paris target (closes May 11)

e-3256 Protect the Kavango basin region (closes May 11)

e-3075 Halt all transfer of Canadian made weapons to Saudi Arabia (closes May 27)

e-3138 Make Election Day a paid holiday when it falls on a weekday (closes May 29)

e-3307 Review the Victims Bill of Rights (closes May 30)

e-3159 Ban new strip mines in the Rocky Mountains (closes June 5)

e-3164 Implement a national living wage (closes June 29)

Further reading

Parliament’s “rising star” tables her first Private Members Bill to protect health and wellness of Canadians

Private Member’s Bill C-285, An Act to amend the Pest Control Products Act (glyphosate)

Lone wolf MPs break down what it‘s like to be a region‘s solitary party voice (Hill Times)

MLA calls Higgs ‘racist’ after First Nations tax move (Telegraph Journal)

MP Jenica Atwin tables private members‘ bill to ban the use of glyphosate in Canada (NB Media Co-op

Elizabeth May: Good Sunday Morning (April 11)

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Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
2021-04-13 10:19 [p.5473]

Mr. Speaker, I present a petition started by a number of my constituents, but with wide support across Canada.

It deals with the critical ongoing health issue of thousands of Canadians who experienced COVID-19 and are now considered not infectious, but they certainly are not recovered. They are sometimes referred to as long haulers. Sometimes people refer to the illnesses they suffer as long COVID. The petitioners urge the House to consider the many ways in which they are not able to access help or benefits. One of the problems, of course, is referring to someone who no longer has active COVID as recovered. It is completely inaccurate.

The petitioners ask, in brief, for the following things. They ask that the Government of Canada recognize this is a health condition with serious implications, and that it be labelled as such so that people who are suffering have somewhere to go to identify their problem; they ask that there be a registry so that Canadians from coast to coast to coast can be accurately counted, and so we know the extent of the problem; they ask for research into how they can be treated and helped; and they ask for clinics for people who are suffering, because the health effects range from mental confusion and significant damage to organs to being unable to work for months. In fact, some people have been unable to work for more than a year at this point.

The petitioners ask the Government of Canada to move, to help and to provide much-needed medical assistance and financial support to people suffering from COVID many months after they are no longer infectious.

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