"As pressure increases to open the border with the US, the Canadian government needs to be clear with their US counterparts that the number one priority must be the health and safety of Canadians.
Parliamentary Secretary to the Canadian Minister of Justice and Attorney General, Arif Virani; Conservative MP Michael Barrett; and NDP MP Don Davies join Robin Gill for a panel discussion on the WE Charity controversy engulfing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and members of his family.
“Public health measures shouldn’t be optional,” federal NDP health critic and Vancouver Kingsway MP Don Davies said Friday. “It would seem the effective lobbying and economic interests of the airline industry are holding sway over the competing interests of public safety.”
On Friday, Don Davies, member of parliament for Vancouver-Kingsway and NDP health critic, called on Transport Canada to immediately impose physical distancing requirements on all passenger aircraft in Canada.
"One must question why airlines are being treated differently than every other business and industry in Canada," said Davies, accusing the federal government of putting commercial interests above the health and safety of travellers.
"We must not jeopardize the progress that Canadians have worked so hard to make in their fight against COVID-19 by allowing these airlines to fly into known hotspots like California, Nevada and Florida without any physical distancing requirements," he said.
The warning comes as federal NDP health critic and Vancouver-Kingsway MP Don Davies demands Transport Canada immediately impose mandatory physical distancing rules on all passenger flights.
“It’s been voluntary up until now. The airlines have indicated they’re not going to follow the voluntary guidelines. When you’re seeing policy by government violate what our public health officers are saying, that’s a pretty good indication that the federal government is wrong and we’ve got to get on this right away and change it before people get sick,” he said.
Place names mean something: they signify belonging (or exclusion). And when it comes to schools, names can impact how children, families and educators feel about the spaces where they learn. As MP Don Davies recently noted in urging a new name for Gladstone Secondary, now is the time to start looking at the community we want to live in.
The deaths represent an “inappropriate use of force in mental health situations,” he said, and are a “tragic result” and product of decades of lack of investment.
Training for officers needs to be “overhauled,” said Mr. Davies, his party’s health critic, who said he wants police removed from the front lines when it comes to wellness checks that could be done by someone else.
“A number of the issues that we’re asking police to intervene in are more properly identified and handled as health care or even social issues as opposed to criminal ones,” he said, calling for upstream investment.
Earlier today, NDP Health Critic, Don Davies, issued the following statement:
"The number of Canadian lives being lost to opioid overdoses during the COVID-19 outbreak is staggering, alarming, and growing. Today, I am calling on the federal government to declare the overdose epidemic a national public health emergency, and for national action and leadership.
Mr. Champagne dismissed suggestions that he made the decision because of concerns that the optics were “problematic,” responding to a question from NDP MP Don Davies (Vancouver Kingsway, B.C.).
“I took out a mortgage many years ago with a bank in London, that’s what I’ve disclosed,” he said to Mr. Davies. “I feel very transparent, because as a lawyer, I take my ethical responsibility very carefully. I read the letter of the law at all times. This is a bank in London, with branches in London.”
Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam has called the 14-day quarantine for arrivals from abroad a “cornerstone” of pandemic policy, New Democrat health critic Don Davies noted.
“When we start to relax our standards, we may be actually just be walking into a second phase,” he said, citing flare-ups in Australia, New Zealand and multiple U.S. states following looser restrictions.