Thank you, Chair.
Like I wanted to support Monsieur Bergeron, I will support his amendment and also Mr. Oliphant, and to hear from Dr. Fry and what she had to say in terms of clarity in terms of public health.... What was very poignant was just how fast this is moving. Every day things change.
It's evolving at such a quick pace that we've seen at one point where we were scrambling a little bit to get the vaccines. Now by the end of this week, over eight million vaccines will have come into Canada. By the end of June, we have 36.5 million vaccines coming into Canada. From COVAX , I believe it's 1.9 million vaccines that we said we would procure, but on COVAX, and as Mr. Oliphant was saying on the leadership role, thinking back to the beginnings of COVAX, from the onset, we as Canada should be very proud that putting in $440 million, by being the leader, being number one in COVAX.... That leadership has brought others forward, and that's what we would like to hear from the minister, from experts and from those who understand COVAX and what it's able to do and to show that, through Canada's leadership, we've been able to get billions of dollars of investments now within COVAX. More and more countries every day are coming online.
Speaking about the same message that our Prime Minister has said, we need the whole world vaccinated. To protect us, we need everybody protected. That's the only way it will work, and to know that we've been able to procure the most vaccines per capita of anywhere else in the world allows us.... As I've said, I spoke to those numbers, how many vaccines we'd have here by June. We will have many. We will be able to share those vaccines with COVAX, with others, to be able to ensure that what we all are looking at is to get everybody, as many people as possible, vaccinated throughout the world as quickly as possible.
I think Canada has taken the right approach. When it comes to the manufacturing of vaccines, we can't go back to the 1980s under the Mulroney times or whoever was in government at that time who decided that we no longer needed to manufacture vaccines, but what we did do, as soon as the pandemic was announced by the WHO, was that, within 12 days, Canada was right there. We invested $200 million-plus, and within 30 days another $600 million. That's showing the leadership that Mr. Oliphant wants to see with this motion that we need to speak to. It's now over $1 billion.
I know that Monsieur Bergeron, all Quebecers and all Canadians will be very happy that the manufacture of vaccines will be, I believe, in the Montreal area. We're all proud of the great knowledge, ability and human resources that we have here to be able to do that in very short order. Watching the news, I'm not sure if all this is correct, but seeing that we're going to be able to start manufacturing our vaccines.... I think it was the CEO or the COO of the plant saying that, by the fall, we will be able to manufacture here. We've learned a lot through this pandemic, and we continue to learn. What this is getting to is the speed of this.
I think that what we see in this motion.... First, I don't agree with much of it, the premise of the motion, but what I say is that it's already past due. It's past its due date. It is no longer whatever was trying to be done here with this motion, but I think it can be amended. We could do something to get us to where we want to be.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.