Government Operations Committee on April 14th, 2021

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

I have been very willing to come to this committee. I believe that, out of respect, I would ask the members, if they're prepared to ask me questions and I am fully prepared to answer them, that they would do the courtesy of allowing me to respond.

May I now respond?

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Minister, you have just wasted 15 seconds of your answer. Please answer.

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

I don't think it's a waste to—

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Please answer, Minister.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Please go ahead, Minister. Please go ahead.

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

I am not bragging; I'm am simply indicating that we have a procurement strategy. We are executing that strategy, and that strategy is delivering. The decisions relating to the second dose are not made by the federal government. They are made by provinces. That is a fact.

When you refer—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Minister, we do not have the second dose because your government has failed to deliver it. Stop misleading Canadians. You cannot punt this onto the provinces.

You blame the provinces for not administering it fast enough when General Fortin himself said that's not the truth. Now you're blaming the provinces for people not getting their second dose. Your government has failed to deliver to the provinces, which is why, for the needed second dose, we're at 50th. We're behind third world countries. That's the fact.

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Twelve million doses have been delivered to the provinces as of today. There have been 8.8 million doses administered. They have enough supply for two weeks, based on current rates of inoculation. There are 26.8% of doses that have not been administered.

I rest my case.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Let me quote from General Fortin—

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. McCauley.

We'll now go to Mr. Jowhari for five minutes.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister. I'm sure I'm speaking on behalf of all Canadians when I say thank you very much for the hard work that you and your department are doing to make sure that we are getting the vaccine that's needed during this difficult time.

Madam Minister, in your opening remarks, you talked about a six-million-dose plan for end of Q1, with 9.6 million procured, and to date about 12 million procured, with about 8.8 million administered. There is a spread of about 3.2 million.

Before I ask you the question, as I'm the last questioner before you leave, I'd like to give you the opportunity to respond to my colleague Mr. Green and some of the comments he made that you didn't have an opportunity to respond to.

Please go ahead, Minister.

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Thank you.

In my response to Mr. Green I tried to do two things.

The first thing I tried to do was explain how COVAX works, because I believe that the representation of COVAX and the way the question was framed made it appear as though we are taking doses that were not originally permitted under the COVAX facility.

I'm trying to set out that the COVAX facility has two arms. One is for developed countries, which Canada is utilizing, and one is for developing countries, which Canada is supporting with over $300 million of support. We are not alone in that effort. For example, South Korea and New Zealand have also utilized that aspect of COVAX for developed countries. We will continue to support COVAX and multilateralism in pooled procurement mechanisms. That was the first point I tried to make.

I wasn't able to make the second point because of reasons of time. The point is about the TRIPS. Canada has not blocked the TRIPS waiver. In fact, Canada has reached out to proponents of the waiver and all WTO members to better understand their concerns, and is working towards consensus-based solutions.

TRIPS governs IP matters, but currently vaccine accessibility issues do not pertain to patents and IP rights. Rather, they pertain to production, distribution and supply chain concerns.

In addition to our $1.6-billion commitment to the global COVID response, at the WTO we are still advocating accelerating the production and distribution of affordable, safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines and medical supplies. We'll continue to work with all countries on concrete solutions and ensure that responses to COVID-19 do not create barriers to equitable access to vaccines.

I know my colleague, Minister Mary Ng, is very concerned to ensure that this occurs, and I look forward to working with her as this process unfolds.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Minister.

With a couple of minutes left, I would like to focus on Q2. Can you tell us what the target was back in February for Q2 for procurement of the vaccines?

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

The targets for Q2 were continuing to be negotiated. We are now going to make sure we have more than enough vaccine to allow at least every Canadian to have one shot. That number, hopefully, will continue to rise in Q2 because, as I told you, my work every day is to press suppliers for additional vaccines.

What will we see at the very least? We'll see 17.8 million doses of Pfizer in Q2, 12.3 million doses of Moderna in Q2, and AstraZeneca doses coming from the Serum Institute and under our bilateral APA.

It is very important to remember that we will continue to press both suppliers and also jurisdictions. Our discussions with the United States, for example, are ongoing, and we hope we will be able to pull additional doses from that source as well.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

I'm just going back to my record. Looking at it, I found out that we had targeted 13.6 million by the end of Q2. Based on the few numbers you just shared—17.8 million and 12.3 million—we're in the 30 millions. When I compare 13.6 million to 30 million, now we are over about 220%, in the same way that we were over 160%. How did you manage to do that?

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

The work I do every day is to ensure that we are able to accelerate doses. I would like to take my hat off to the very hard-working public servants, Deputy Minister Matthews and his team.

As I said, we've already accelerated 22 million doses to arrive earlier in Canada. That is not bragging. That is merely stating a fact.

We will continue to accelerate doses and work collaboratively with suppliers and with all Canadians to ensure that we get doses here as soon as possible and that we get them out to the provinces and territories as soon as possible.

We all have the same goal, and that is to make sure that Canadians have access to vaccines as rapidly as possible. I will not stop until that is done.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Jowhari. I appreciate that.

Thank you, Minister, for being here with us today. We know that in our last meeting you stayed the extra two hours, and we appreciate that. My understanding is that unfortunately your time commitment is very busy, and we want to be respectful of it. That's why the committee wants to stay on time on our questioning to make certain everything is cohesive and that we respect your time and your efforts to come to us.

We also recognize that we will be seeing you again soon, hopefully, with the main estimates.

Thank you, again, Minister, for attending today.

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Thank you so much. I really appreciate the opportunity. Take care.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you. We appreciate that, Minister.

We will now go into our next round of questions with the officials who are here.

We will start with six minutes, beginning with Mr. McCauley.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Matthews, I want to follow up on the minister's comment about resting her case and blaming the provinces for not getting the vaccines rolled out fast enough.

General Fortin says that the provinces are doing their best. He shoots down the suggestion that provinces aren't moving doses out of freezers and into arms fast enough. Do you agree with that?

[Bill Matthews]

There are a couple of points.

Number one, I don't think it's fair to paint all the provinces with the same brush.

Number two, I think it's a matter of their finding the sweet spot, if there is a buffer in the freezers, in case there's a delay or two, versus actually stockpiling.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Do you think they're stockpiling?

[Bill Matthews]

I don't have the recent statistics province by province, but it's probably a question better posed to health folks.

You can't be operating such that there's nothing in the freezer, in case there's a delay or two. You do want to keep enough in reserve for a buffer, but not a big buffer.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Let me ask you this. We were chatting early in the meeting. There was talk about the low dead-volume syringes. It basically went from five shots to six shots per vial of the Pfizer. When we signed our contract to purchase x number of doses from Pfizer, was that based on five shots per vial, and when we adjusted to six shots per vial, did we go back and pay Pfizer for that extra dose we're able to get out of the vial?

[Bill Matthews]

The contract is for a number of doses, so number of vials doesn't actually count. The number of doses is based on the label that goes with the product, so effectively—