Madam Chair, I'd like to thank my honourable colleague for her question. She's absolutely correct in her assessment that we need to collect more data, reliable data, data that will help us deal with some of the challenges we're seeing with systemic discrimination, but, more broadly, we want to make sure that we continue to engage with an anti-racism strategy that will allow us to collect that disaggregated data. That is why we allocated $6.2 million to that initiative through Statistics Canada, but we know we must do more and we will do more.
We know that all people are susceptible to catching COVID-19, but health authorities are clear that parts of cities like Montreal and Toronto have been more impacted than others. For black and racialized people living in these cities, this data is a matter of life and death. Will the government collect and share disaggregated data so we can identify and erase systemic racism, yes or no?
Madam Chair, making decisions based on science and evidence is essential for our government. We took that practice from day one. It is exactly the step we will take moving forward and that's why we are making those investments to ensure that data exists. We are working across all departments. My mandate letter is public. I look forward to continuing to work not only with all ministers, departments and agencies, but all allies and all parties to get this work done.
Mr.Blaney, the honourable member for BellechasseLes EtcheminsLvis, has the floor.