Madam Speaker, I want to thank the Chair for allowing this debate, because it reflects the national urgency of this issue. I also thank the hon. member for St. Paul's for her remarkable work on these issues.
This debate is not simply about an epidemic; it is a debate about the proper role and function of government. The role of government is to prepare citizens, to lead citizens and to inform them. In all three dimensions, the government has failed in its duties. I will begin with the government's failure to prepare.
The H1N1 flu first appeared on April 23, in Mexico. On April 27, I asked the first question in the House, namely: where was the government's plan to meet this challenge? But there has not been any plan since then.
The Conservatives waited before ordering vaccines. The United States ordered vaccines on May 25. France did so on July 16. But the Conservative government waited until August 6. That delay is critical. It shows a lack of leadership and a blatant lack of preparation. Thirty-five countries ordered their vaccines before Canada did.
The Conservatives began vaccination later than other countries. China, Australia, the United States, Sweden, Japan, the United Kingdom, all began vaccinations before our country did. Canada did not begin vaccinations until October 26. The U.S. began administering the vaccine on October 5, before Canadian trials had even begun.
Two weeks ago, the Minister of Health said the vaccine would be available to all Canadians in early November, and now she says it will not be available until Christmas. We have discovered that there is not an adequate supply for next week.
The Conservatives did not order non-adjuvanted vaccine for pregnant women until it was too late, and they provided extremely confusing advice at all times.
This failure to properly inform the public has become a source of enormous anxiety to Canadian families. They do not know what public information to believe. This is producing anguish in families that is the direct responsibility of the government.
Earlier, I referred to a lack of preparation, but there was also a lack of leadership. The provinces and territories asked the federal government for additional resources. Four hundred million dollars were allocated in the 2006 budget—which amounts to $80 million annually—to help the provinces and municipalities face this challenge. So far, there has been no reply and no cooperation on the part of the government.
Finally, I want to mention a simple reality: epidemics do not care about jurisdictions, about territories. The municipal, provincial and federal levels of government must work in a spirit of consultation and consensus building, and it is the federal government's responsibility to develop a national plan so that all stakeholders can be interconnected. This is what is lacking in the government's approach.
Instead of taking responsibility, the government blames everybody else. The government blames the drug company because there is not enough supply for next week. The government blames the provinces and territories. “We do not deliver health care,” the government says. We understand that, but the role of a national government is to provide the planning framework in which everybody does his or her job, because as I said, epidemics do not care about jurisdictions. What the national government is there to do is to bring people together. The government has failed to do that consistently since the beginning of the crisis.
The question now is when will the government own up and take responsibility? When will the Prime Minister begin to exercise the leadership that is his responsibility here? Why does he refuse to lead? Why does the entire government shift responsibility to the drug companies, to the provinces, to the municipalities, anybody it can instead of standing up and doing what the Government of Canada ought to be doing?
Finally, there is the failure to inform, the failure to prepare, the failure to lead. This is a government that has spent something like 10 times more on its own publicity, publicizing its own highly partisan infrastructure program than it has spent on public health information. This is the most astonishing failure of all of the government's failures. Clean, clear public information that everybody can understand is the right of every Canadian citizen. We could have avoided the anguish in all the Canadian households had the government done its job. It failed to do so.
Ultimately, this is not just about an epidemic; this is about the proper role of government in our society, the proper role of a federal government. The government has failed to do its job, which is why we are having this debate tonight.