How Trudeau’s going to take meat off your plate by Cheryl Gallant, M.P.

Recently Private Member’s Bill, C-293, An Act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness, sponsored by Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, the Liberal MP for Beaches-East York, a downtown Toronto riding was debated in the House of Commons.

The intention of the bill is to hold the current government, and all future governments accountable to Parliament for pandemic preparedness. The bill requires the government to conduct a review of the pandemic by requiring the Health Minister to appoint a panel of advisors. It requires the government to present an updated pandemic plan to Parliament every three years. The bill also requires that pandemic plan to list the measures the government is taking to reduce the risk of a pandemic happening in the first place.

If all this bill was proposing was to have Health Minister appoint some advisors and draw up a plan, it would already be moot. The Minister already has the authority to appoint advisors and has already done so, in secret. The Government already has the authority to draw up a pandemic preparedness plan. If the government already has all the powers it needs, what is this bill really about?

It focuses on regulating agriculture and putting limits on land use to prevent urbanization. It reinforces the racist “wet-market” theory. Despite the fact that the Wuhan Virology Institute was conducting research on coronavirus carried by bats, which scientists had collected and brough back to Wuhan, many still believe the virus crossed multiple species at a live animal market. For too many it was easier to believe that people who reside in China live, and work, and shop for food in unsanitary conditions.

These outdated stereotypes risk blinding us to the growing threat of bio-terror and bio-warfare. For all of human history, the viruses which sought to kill us have been the kind which cross species, but we don’t live in that world anymore. We live in a world of low-cost gene editing. The rapid development of mRNA shots illustrates just how powerful biotechnology has become. Yet this bill is entirely silent on the most likely source of the next deadly pandemic – a laboratory.

Instead, this bill seeks to use pandemic preparation as a pretext to advance the progressive ideological agenda, a communist manifesto. This bill calls for new regulations on farming. It grants the Minister of Health the power to shut down any type of animal farming deemed high risk. Say good-bye to the chicken and pork industry in Canada.

In Bill C-293, Section 2 (L) (ii) calls for the regulation of commercial activities to reduce pandemic risk, including industrial animal farming. Section 2 (L)(iv) says that any farming involving high-risk species is to be phased out. Nowhere does the bill define what a high-risk species is, but a reasonable person could assume that any species which has previously been the source of a deadly virus would be a high risk. There is a big difference between regulating risk and phasing out risk.

If the bill’s sponsor was truly concerned about the pandemic risk of productive farming practices, he could have brought together farmers and scientists to come up with legislation to reduce risk. But that is not the goal of the Liberal vegan base. They want to phase out livestock farming all together.

Using people’s fears of another pandemic to push that agenda is diabolical. But that’s the difference between a Conservative vegan and a Liberal one. The Conservative vegans just want affordable fruits and vegetables for themselves, while the Liberal ones seek to impose their vegetables on everybody else.

For the record, not all far-left radical socialists are vegan. That is why this bill also calls for measures to promote alternative proteins. Alternative protein is just a far-left dog whistle that means crickets.

What is it with the far-left and their desire to have us all eat bugs? First the claimed we’d have to eat bugs because of overpopulation. When that didn’t pan out, they seized on climate change and claimed that crickets produce fewer greenhouse gases per pound of protein, all the while portraying cows as climate criminals. Now they are using the threat of future pandemics to phase out pork and poultry, while pushing their favourite alternative protein.

Canadians aren’t biting. They see through this pretense. What Canadians don’t see is any real accountability from this government for the decisions taken during the pandemic.

It may have been the intention of the Member to use the bill to prepare Canada for the next pandemic, but the effect of this bill is to advance a far-left agenda while blinding us to the growing threat of bio-terror.

This bill is not worth the cost to Canadians.