Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to follow up on Canada's support for certain countries since the pandemic began.
Everyone knows that we have been adamant from the start that Haiti, Taiwan and Palestine should receive special consideration. It appears, however, that the government did not heed our call, even though Taiwan helped us out in the early months of the pandemic, when we were in desperate need of medical equipment—masks and gowns, in particular. We received more than a million masks from Taiwan at the beginning of the pandemic, at a time when it was facing its own supply challenges because of the People's Republic of China. I argued that Canada should move quickly to provide Taiwan with vaccine doses.
Nevertheless, Canada has so far not delivered a single dose to Taiwan, whether directly or through COVAX. Conversely, Japan, the U.S., Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic all have. It's the same story with Palestine. If I'm not mistaken, Canada offered to give Palestine doses that were about to expire, doses that it refused—I imagine because of delivery and administration issues.
How do you explain the fact that Canada paid so little attention to those countries' needs? After all, they were in unique situations and certainly could have used swift help from Canada through bilateral arrangements.