NDP health critic Don Davies said in a statement that data collection is “critical” to pandemic policy-making, highlighting its importance “to help inform and plan proper public-health responses.”
“From PHAC to CBSA, there has been a continuing failure to ensure we have fulsome and accurate data,” Mr. Davies said. “The failure of CBSA to collect data on returning Canadians is a glaring example. We must identify and close these gaps.”
What first sounded like a generous set-aside of about a quarter of the total portfolio of roughly 400 million doses that Canada pre-purchased turns out to be a “disingenuous” promise to provide doses Canada does not have in hand, or hasn’t approved, or will decline to take from the global sharing program COVAX that Ottawa never should have dipped into in the first place, said New Democrat MP Don Davies.
NDP health critic Don Davies said he's frustrated that the committee's order for unredacted documents was ignored.
"After months of dogged work the opposition finally got Canada's vaccine contracts," he said on Twitter. "Predictably, Liberals released them late on a Friday with barely a week left in the session. Predictably, they redacted them in violation of the House Order."
“The Trudeau Liberals promised Canadians they’d stop the discriminatory blood donation ban on MSM. Once in office, they claimed they don’t have the power. This is false, and the courts are proving it,” tweeted NDP MP and health critic Don Davies.
“When we entered into our contract with that hotel, they were not in a strike position at that time,” said Mr. Stewart in response to follow-up questions from NDP MP Don Davies (Vancouver Kingsway, B.C.), noting since then, things have “progressed.”
“We used the hotel facility and we also employed hotel staff in the back office elements of the operation. However, the frontline work is done by infectious control specialists which hotels do not have,” he added. Asked by Mr. Davies if he could table the contract with the committee, and by Mr. Barlow if he could share the feds’ gender-based analysis, Mr. Stewart said the agency would “have a look” at the inquiries and respond accordingly. According to local media reports, the site is primarily staffed by members of the Red Cross, which has been tapped throughout the pandemic to provide reinforcements to some sites struggling to contain the spread of the virus—notably long-term care sites in Ontario and Quebec. Still, the Unite Here has been vocal about its fears that the hotel could use the pandemic as a cover to replace laid-off workers with non-unionized employees working for lower pay.
NDP health critic Don Davies has written to Health Minister Patty Hajdu asking her to develop a perinatal mental health strategy that would provide care to women over the period from conception to a year after a child is born.
"Canada does not have a comprehensive national strategy, mandate or directive to guide how health care practitioners should assess, diagnosis, treat or provide follow-up to individuals suffering from perinatal mood and anxiety disorders," Davies said in the letter, being released publicly today.
MP Don Davies plays an important parliamentary role as the NDP Health Critic in the course of the pandemic. On this episode, Don and Nate discuss the importance of working across party lines, recent work together on the TRIPS waiver, and the need to put partisanship aside and deliver evidence-based drug policy reform to save lives.
You can read the letter calling our government to support the TRIPS waiver here, signed by over 80 parliamentarians from all parties.
Don and Nate are also co-chairs of the cannabis caucus together, alongside Conservative MP Scott Reid.