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Conservative Party Leader Erin O’Toole took aim at the federal government’s COVID-19 response Thursday on Gormley, saying the Liberals were slow to act on things that could have mitigated the first wave.
He said the government was two months late on closing the Canada-U.S. border, which he blamed for causing more community spread than there needed to be.
O’Toole also said Canada is the last OECD nation that has not deployed widespread rapid testing.
“We might have had fewer cases. We might have protected the vulnerable and minimized the economic disruption,” he said.
“There was going to be huge economic disruption, but the slow and confused response by the Liberal government has made it far worse than it needed to be.”
When asked for a rating of the government’s response, O’Toole gave it a five or six out of 10.
O’Toole said comparisons are made between the government’s response and the one in the United States when it should be compared to countries like Australia and New Zealand.
“(Those are) other countries very similar, actually closer to China, that had far better responses,” he said. “We shouldn’t be trying to be second-last. We should be trying to be first.”
The party leader also said the Liberals did not have a formal post-mortem — or what he calls a “lessons-learned process” — of the first wave until the Conservatives asked for one.
“It shows the opposition is working, but it also shows the government is making things up as it goes along and that’s putting the health and economic well-being of Canadians at risk,” he said.
During the interview, O’Toole also said western alienation has been worse than ever during the Justin Trudeau era.
“(It’s) just an anti-private sector, anti-energy, anti-resource government under Justin Trudeau, and that has caused upheaval,” O’Toole said.
“I’m proud of what we extract here in Canada. I’m proud of the ideas that are in our heads, anything that’s going to bring food onto the table of a family (or) give jobs for Mom or Dad. That’s what I’m going to be fighting for and I think that’s resonating.”
