Thank you, Mr. Chair.
This committee has been trying to get to a better place on this motion. I welcome the fact that we are not asking Mr. Shugart to appear. We respect the fact that he has made a commitment to this committee to provide a report, and we know he will certainly do so in a reasonable time.
It's the other part of this motion that is most concerning. As someone who doesn't tend to get involved in the day-to-day fracas of partisan debate, it has been quite something to watch the Conservatives operating over the past few months, especially how they've been trying to shift the conversation in the political arena. We have certainly seen that in the media, but even the media has gotten tired of this story with all its permutations and variations.
In fact, when I'm watching the news, and when I'm speaking to my constituents, the constituents who are calling my office, the news they want to talk about, the information they want to have, pertains to when they're going to get their vaccine. They want to know, when we are going to see a return to some kind of post-pandemic normal and what our next steps are in relaunching the economy.
Apparently, WE is still on the mind of Mr. Barrett, and we had Mr. Poilievre last week making his appearance here at this committee. That's what they want to talk about. That is what Conservatives want to talk about. They just want to bring up an old story, something that has been gone over many times.
There was a time when the Conservatives were addressing the vaccine issue. Indeed, that is the role of opposition, and we certainly respect that. These were the main topics that were being brought up in question period back in January and February. Then all of a sudden, it stopped. We saw Mr. Poilievre doing his little videos on Twitter. It's funny that the subject of concern would change so dramatically.
When WE Charity was all he wanted to talk about, that's all we saw. Yet, that disappeared in December, January and February, as if....Indeed, that's what many of us felt, that the WE Charity issue had been put to bed, and amply so. From the point of view of the finance committee and this committee, we still had some tail end testimony to take care of. We certainly thought that's where we were going, to deal with the issue before us regarding the pandemic spending, and if there were issues of lobbying and so on.
No, that disappeared. It looked like the Conservatives had moved on to something else. They thought that would be....The fact that there were job losses....There was a pandemic going on, there were definitely job losses. Those job losses were most keenly felt among women in the service sector. It's something that, certainly, our side takes very seriously. We want to be addressing those issues.
However, there was some torquing going on, and a fear campaign that somehow vaccines weren't coming, people were out of jobs, and we were all going to hell in a handbasket.
Lo and behold, vaccines arrived, Chair. They are arriving on a daily basis. Every day we're seeing more and more vaccines arriving and I know—