Thank you, Chair.
We are now speaking to Ms. Sahota's amendments, so I will stick to Ms. Sahota's amendments. However, in my instance, the whole motion is a misinterpretation of things that I would have liked to discuss. I'll discuss that when we discuss the amended motion.
Now, to the amendments, from what I know, the issue of vaccines is this: Normally, a vaccine takes 10 to 24 years to develop. When it is developed it goes through the in vitro trials and it goes into clinical trials, and it takes a heck of a long time to get accepted by countries to be used. We saw how long it took when Salk brought in the polio vaccine. This is an extraordinary feat, for vaccines to be available and having to undergo clinical trials in only six months.
One of the things it also created was this need for everybody to jump on it and say, “Oh my gosh, let's all agree with these vaccines; let's all get moving on them”, only to find the global demand did not allow the vaccine manufacturers and producers to be able to produce the amount of vaccines to meet that demand. They had to pause and expand their facilities and their capability to be able to churn out the billions of vaccines they needed. That is not any one government's fault; that is a reality. That's a fact. This is the truth. They can't do it.
We're seeing that everybody is moving forward and working quickly. In terms of global circumstances, we should talk of not one government's fault, but instead about the fact that global circumstances and global capacity for vaccines have led to this issue. We now also see that it is not a government's fault that some countries are not using these vaccines because they do not act against the variants that we see coming up. Even South Africa is turning down the use of certain vaccines because they not able to protect against variants.
Again, clinical trials do not happen in two days. You don't suddenly find out how people react to something and what the downsides of it are. This is medicine. This is about people's needs and the ability to be effective and to be safe. Those are two important things in vaccines.
This is a real thing. We have a pandemic. This is not about Canada being the only country that doesn't have supply, so I want to speak to that. I want to speak also to the second part of the amendment, which is that the committee report this motion to the House.
If we are going to begin on standing committees to report to the House every single motion that should be debated by the committee and agreed on or disagreed on by the committee, we will begin a procedure or a set of procedures that will not allow Parliament to even be able to function. Therefore, I think we have to ask ourselves why we want to do this, unless it's just something that we feel would score political points or be partisan.
I also want to remind everyone of one thing: Canadians and people around the world are scared. We have seen a first wave. We have seen a second wave. We are now talking about a third wave. People are frightened, and if we feel that it is responsible of us to increase that anxiety and fear amongst our own citizens by discussing where governments have risen and governments have failed, without actually speaking to the facts of the issue, we are actually doing a disservice Canadians. I think it's mischievous, but I don't believe it's meant to mischievous. I think it's in good faith that this is brought up. However, let us remember that we need to look at reality; we need to look at facts; we need to look at this as more than just a government. We need to assure Canadians that we, all of us, every single political party in the House of Commons, have their backs and are prepared to do whatever we need to do to be able, within practical circumstances, to deliver for them in the way we do.
Later on, if we come back to the actual motion, I would like to speak to certain elements of the motion that I also think are not based in fact.
Thank you.