Okay. Very good.
I just want to say that I had the occasion.... I don't know Frank well. I didn't know him before he was a member of Parliament. I have not had the occasion to meet with him since then. I remember getting the notice, during the last Parliament, about the death of his mother and about when the funeral would be taking place. That was at a time when, of course, we could go to funerals. I was very pleased that I was able to go. It was there that I heard that the Baylis Medical company was her company. She founded that company. How she founded that company is really a Canadian and Quebec success story.
Mr. Baylis and his family immigrated from Barbados when he was young. It was Gloria Baylis, his mother, whom I believe was a nurse, who started the company as an import business to help bring much-needed medical devices to Canada, which were not previously available. She was an entrepreneur and a proud Quebecker. She built this company from the ground up. From what Frank told us, his father was nominally involved but it was really his mother, at a time when there were very few black women, I can just imagine, starting companies in Quebec and Canada.
Frank eventually did join her, and together they built the company into a force in the medical device industry in Canada. It's that selfsame company that Mr. Jamieson, in the article I read out before, was delighted to find and to work with to develop his ventilator, to subcontract with him for his ventilator. Baylis is the type of business we should all be promoting. When Frank got the call from Mr. Jamieson, he stepped up.
Instead, because he happened to be a former Liberal MP, something that was not.... I don't know if he was ever a parliamentary secretary, but he certainly was never a minister. He was just an ordinary member of Parliament, like so many of us here. Because of that, he and his company were demonized.
I just don't understand. I think members were made aware very quickly that the contract for ventilators was in fact a subcontract to Baylis, that it was another company that had the contract. That didn't stop the muckraking and smears that were going on.
This is why I say that we must be careful. Yes, there could be questions about how a contract is awarded. Yes, there could be questions, as the article pointed out, about whether indeed the numbers were correct. Were the volumes adequately gauged and put forward? At the end of the day, it is the Canadian taxpayer who pays the bill.
However, to just smear a company, a company owner, a businessman or partners who are working together just because of what their background is, I would take objection to our paying special attention to that when we study this in this committee. There are no open investigations, to my knowledge, in regard to the Ethics Commissioner, or the Privacy Commissioner or the Commissioner of Lobbying in this matter. The contract to the primary contractor is public and was disclosed transparently.
I could go on, Chair, to talk about businesses that happen to be Conservative donors or affiliated with the Conservative Party. I imagine there are a few businesses that are affiliated with the NDP, or the Bloc or the Green Party. I mean, business is not something that is reserved for just one political stripe.
We celebrate the work and creativity and ingenuity of business owners. It's a sad day when members of this Parliament would disparage the work of business owners and their goodwill in stepping up to fight the pandemic.
Chair, as I say, I could go on, but I am mindful of the time. I will leave you with just the final point that we are still in the middle of a second wave of COVID-19. We've had some good news, but who knows? Will it hold true? Let us be hopeful. However, as of today, most of Quebec is in the red zone. Ontario is in a modified stage two. We need to get all hands on deck fighting this pandemic. That's the work we need to be doing.
Thank you very much, Chair, for your patience.