Foreign Affairs Committee on April 29th, 2021

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

It's very disrespectful of the committee, disrespectful of Parliament, disrespectful of the minister. This member should actually go back and learn how to be a respectful member.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Chair, let's move on.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

The member needs some education.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Mr. Fonseca, thank you. I'd really like to keep the discussion focused on the point of order, which was the relevance to COVAX.

I'm going to give the floor to Mr. Sidhu and Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe for quick interventions, and then we'll go back to the discussion.

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I like what my colleague said. We need to be mindful and respectful of the witnesses and the departmental officials who are here. We have people watching. They know what the agenda is. We want to discuss COVAX, and we have a lot of witnesses here who want to speak on that.

Out of respect for time, I'd like to stick to the topic.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you, Mr. Sidhu.

Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe, you have the floor.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Right now, it is really not easy for the interpreters. I would just like to say that they are doing an exceptional job.

This is the first time I have participated in a meeting of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development. I'm putting myself in the shoes of our constituents who are watching the committee meeting and I think they must be wondering what justifies our salary.

I would ask everyone to calm down a little. Both the opposition and government members have their faults and their share of bad faith. Let's calm down and get back to what we were doing, which is talking about the COVAX initiative, of course.

As a newcomer to the committee, I just want to say to members that the way they are behaving does them no credit. I would ask everyone to calm down. We can continue, but members have to stop yelling. I'm thinking of the fine interpreters who work for us. I really feel sorry for them, and even more sorry for the people watching at home.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much, my dear colleague.

Thank you, everybody, for your interventions.

I think the committee's will is to continue the discussion, to make sure that Mr. Genuis is focused on COVAX and makes it relevant to the issue that the committee agreed is the issue of discussion for the second hour, and also not to repeat points that were already made and are on the record.

Mr. Genuis, with that, I give you back the floor. You have three and half minutes left in your allocation of five minutes.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Chair, I do not have three and a half minutes left. I believe I'm supposed to have six minutes, because it's a new hour.

For you to allow every member of the Liberal caucus to offer their view on this point of order is, frankly, a disgrace. However, I am limited by the tools I have in front of me, so let me just say briefly to the minister that I encourage her, I implore her, to read the February IMPACT report that discusses how, in the context of COVID-19, study materials were produced by UNRWA with hateful content.

That's it. Now let me proceed to COVAX.

Minister, it seems to me that the issue of COVAX comes down to our own vaccination supply. If we were doing better in accessing vaccinations and supplying them to Canadians, we would be in a much stronger position to provide surplus supply to other countries in need.

It has been much remarked on that Canada is the only country within the G7 to draw on COVAX for its own use. Of course, Canada has contributed to COVAX, but many other countries have, yet we're the only G7 country to draw on COVAX. This seems to me to suggest and to underline again that the government has failed to secure in sufficient time the vaccination supply that was required.

Is the government content with the vaccination rollout thus far, including with the use of COVAX? Is everything proceeding as planned, or does the government acknowledge that there have been failures along the way?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Genuis, thank you very much for your question.

With regard to UNRWA, please know that I am very committed to ensuring that it is promoting UN values. That is something that Canada does take very seriously.

With regard to COVAX, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, Canada has been both a purchaser of vaccines through COVAX and a donor through COVAX, and COVAX was set up with these two windows in mind.

As I mentioned, part of Canada being a purchaser through the self-financing facility also enables COVAX to purchase and secure doses for the developing world, so from September, COVAX was always part of our procurement strategy in Canada.

COVAX also has a range of different vaccines in its portfolio, much like Canada does for our domestic portfolio as well. As different vaccines become available, they are offered to COVAX members, both self-financing and AMC countries.

At the time the AstraZeneca vaccine was offered to Canada, that vaccine would not have been available through our bilateral program agreement until later in this year. Therefore, Canada made the determination, so that we could have the diverse portfolio available to Canadians, to access that allocation of AstraZeneca.

There are other G7 countries that are accessing other vaccines that they might not have within their own portfolio.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you, Minister, and at the risk of getting “point of ordered” again for repeating a question, it is a question that wasn't answered.

I asked you quite simply whether the government is happy with the direction of the vaccine rollout. So do you think things are by and large going as planned, or will you acknowledge the fact that we are not in a position to share vaccines with other countries? In fact we're drawing vaccinations from COVAX. Is that indicative of some failures in terms of the government's procurement of vaccinations?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

No, as I said, COVAX was always part of our procurement strategy from the beginning, and in fact, if you go back to the delivery schedule that was made public in December last year, you'll see that we are receiving vaccines pretty much on track with the information we provided publicly to Canadians at the end of the last calendar year. I will note that as of next week, we'll be receiving two million doses of Pfizer each week, going up—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

So just to clarify, Minister, your view is that everything is fine.

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

My view is that what we committed to doing back in December with regard to vaccines is precisely what we are doing, and with regard to COVAX, it was important for Canada to be both a self-financing country and a donor country, to support the mechanism, provide competence for it and support developing countries at the same time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much, Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Genuis.

The next round goes to Mr. Fonseca.

Go ahead, please, for six minutes.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister, and I say thank you for being a compassionate, calm and very respectful person. I think you are the perfect person to be in your role for what you need to do, so thank you for that.

Following somewhat in the vein of what Mr. Genuis was talking about, can you give us a comparison with other G20 countries in terms of COVAX ? How much funding does Canada provide? Having heard you, I believe this is something we should be very proud of. We've taken a leadership role in COVAX, right from the get-go. I know other countries have come on board now, but can you tell us a little bit about the genesis of that, and can you tell us how we compare with others in the G20 in terms of how much we are contributing to COVAX?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Certainly. I am actually very proud and excited that COVAX exists in the first place, because this is the first time there's been a global mechanism to confront a global health crisis of this nature. It's actually the largest multilateral initiative since the Paris climate accord and it really is about the world coming together to try to provide equitable access to vaccines around the world. Canada is one of the largest contributors to COVAX. We provided $325 million. We were the second-largest contributor until the U.S. joined, and of course we welcome the U.S. contribution of $2 billion. That's a good thing, because it's going to help us procure even more doses for lower-income countries right around the world.

But Canada was instrumental in getting COVAX set up. We worked with Gavi and the WHO back in June already, and actually Josh Tabah, who's on the line with us, and his team were instrumental in getting COVAX set up. Canada provided the first $25 million from what was left over from our Gavi pneumococcal vaccine contribution, to establish COVAX. We were one of the first G7 countries to say that we were going to make a commitment to COVAX and to say that this was a mechanism worth investing in, and because of that, I am also the COVAX AMC—advance market commitment—co-chair, working with Indonesia and Ethiopia, to ensure that we have a successful rollout for low- and middle-income countries around the world.

I can turn it over to Josh, if you're interested, for a comparison with the donations from other G20 countries.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Yes, sure. That really puts it in perspective, in terms of the scope and what we've done on COVAX, but I'd like to hear from the official, yes.

[Joshua Tabah, Director General, Health and Nutrition, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development]

Thank you, Minister.

Thanks to the member.

I can go into more detail in writing, of course, afterwards, but some of the other leading donors right now include Germany, with a substantial commitment, alongside the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. Those are sort of your top four. Other than that, we have Italy at a much more modest level. I'm just taking a look here. For Korea, it's still quite modest.

I guess, by way of an answer, I would say that the minister in the last segment spoke about the importance of all countries starting to carry their fair share of this burden, and we're actively engaged, through our mission network around the world, in ensuring that we're communicating to other countries what Canada is doing and that we need everyone to roll up their sleeves and get engaged, because this is a collective effort and we need everyone to pitch in.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Tabah.

On April 23, 2021, France announced that it would be the first country to donate doses from its national stockpile of COVAX AMC. The country has committed to donating 500,000 doses by June 2021 in accordance with COVAX principles for sharing doses. President Macron encouraged other countries to follow France's lead.

Now, according to COVAX, Canada has already indicated a willingness to donate these vaccines.

Does the Government of Canada intend to donate doses of the COVAX AMC? If so, when would we do this, and how many would it be? Can you just give us some insight into that?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Sure. Already back in December the Prime Minister announced that Canada would donate any excess doses that we have here in Canada, and most likely through COVAX. In fact, in December I announced $5 million to COVAX specifically to set up a dose-sharing mechanism. I am very pleased and I welcome France's announcement of 500,000 doses to be shared.

It is because of the work that Canada put in, including Josh and his team, with Gavi to establish that dose-sharing mechanism that France is able to do this. Once Canada gets to into a place where we have excess doses—and we're not there yet—we will absolutely be sharing them through COVAX and donating them to AMC-eligible countries.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Chair, how is my the time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

You have just over 30 seconds, Mr. Fonseca.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Okay. I just want to thank the minister and officials. I do think we should be very proud of how Canada is standing on COVAX and what it has done to help the most impoverished countries. I understand that we will be helping 92 countries around the world through the COVAX program, so thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much, Mr. Fonseca.

Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe, you have the floor for six minutes.