The House of Commons has voted against a Conservative motion asking the government for a concrete plan to end lockdowns in Canada.
On Wednesday, the House of Commons voted 212-122 against the motion which would have given the Trudeau government 20 days to deliver a “plan to support safely, gradually and permanently lifting COVID-19 restrictions.”
The motion was opposed by the Liberals, NDP and Bloc, while the Conservatives and independent MPs Derek Sloan and Ramesh Sangha supported it.
Canadians have faced a year of lockdowns with little information on when society will return to normal and what data will drive the decision to reopen.The motion notes the government of the United States and United Kingdom have both released public plans for economic reopening.
In a recent column, MP Michelle Rempel Garner, who sponsored the motion, said Canada now has the knowledge and technology to intelligently begin reopening society.
“A year into the pandemic, we have tools like rapid tests, therapeutics, vaccines and data on how COVID-19 is transmitted. Lockdown measures were put in place to buy time to get these tools,” she wrote.
“Now that these are available worldwide, the federal government needs to tell Canadians how they’re going to be deployed, under what timelines, and, most importantly, how they’re going to be used to lift widespread restrictions permanently.”
In recent weeks, many U.S. states have announced plans to gradually lift restrictions. Other countries like Israel and Iceland have practically returned to normal as vaccination rates increase.
