Thank you, Chair.
First, as vice-chair, I'd like to clarify some information that the chair provided.
The meeting we are currently undertaking as the Standing Committee on Health is happening during the middle of a pandemic that has caused many deaths in Canada and great economic burden on millions of Canadians. The meeting we're having is happening under the auspices of Standing Order 106(4). This is a procedural provision that allows members of the committee to call a meeting in order to consider business that might be of pressing urgency for the committee.
The notice that was provided to the committee, which precipitated this meeting, was done because of a very urgent situation that the country is facing right now. The fact is that many other countries around the world are receiving doses of what could arguably be described as the hottest commodity on the planet, the life-saving Pfizer vaccine. However, Canada is not, even though the government provided assurances to Canadians that this would be happening. This is something the government should have anticipated, given that it was briefed by the pharmaceutical company throughout the fall, and that production scale-ups happen when there's a new product.
The reason for this meeting is to hopefully move a motion to determine why Canada is not receiving these vaccines right now. Regardless of political stripe, I hope we can put aside our differences and agree that this is something that, at this present moment, the Standing Committee on Health should be investigating.
Why did we use Standing Order 106(4)? The chair asserts that there's nothing remarkable about this situation, that 45 days passed and that is the standard period of time that committees don't sit over the holidays, but this is exactly why 106(4) exists. I would argue that something remarkable has happened, and that is that dozens of people are dying in our country every day from a virus that could be prevented if people were administered the vaccine.
That characterization of bureaucracy and pedantry is standing in the way of the work of a parliamentary committee tasked with the mandate of health, during a pandemic. That it should somehow be unremarkable that it is not meeting is slightly problematic.
The second thing is that Parliament resumed on Monday. For those who are watching, and this might be inside baseball for people, our committee typically meets on Mondays and Fridays. There was no meeting called by the chair for this Monday. When I saw that last week, I was concerned. It meant that the committee would not have met for business today, which meant we wouldn't meet until Friday. We would have had a meeting called by the Liberals, and we probably wouldn't have had an opportunity to call the Minister of Health or the Minister of Procurement to talk about a vaccine shortage that is literally killing people and will be for some time to come in the future.
Canadians deserve better than that, and that's why we put this request forward. We need to put aside bureaucratic arguments about why the committee isn't meeting, and start meeting the needs of our constituents. That's what this committee is for, to actually hold the government to account on its decisions.
The chair has put forward a bunch of reasons why we should be editing this motion, and why it could fit under this motion or that motion. The reality is that the committee has the ability to change its mandate and its tasks as it sees fit, as the government often reminds us when we ask questions about committees in the House when the government manages to put things through that it finds beneficial.
In this situation, it's important to remind the chair that we are facing a monumental challenge in this country. We need answers on why we have a vaccine shortage and, more importantly, what the government is going to do to fix it. That's the only hope we can offer Canadians right now, and it's of the greatest significance. What we're discussing is probably the greatest thing that Parliament is doing right now. That's the gravity of this, and we need to do this.
I would be very uncomfortable going back to my constituents and reading a lot of wordy procedure as to why we couldn't invite the health minister or the Minister of Procurement, who is responsible for getting Canada the vaccine, to the health committee today.
I actually don't accept any of the rationale the chair tried to put forward with regard to how I should edit my motion. The motion I'm about to put forward is in the best interest of all Canadians. It still allows the Liberals to proceed with the meetings they've put forward. It gives the Liberals, actually, the opportunity to decide whether or not they want to proceed with a meeting that was agreed to in an entirely different context six weeks ago, before we were in a vaccine shortage that other countries aren't in right now. That's really going to be up to the Liberals. I'm going to work that into the wording of the motion.
Given the shortage, and given that we need answers for Canadians, I think it's important that we consider the motion as I put it forward in the letter. Canadians need to know when exactly they're going to be able to get a vaccine, and the provinces need to know when vaccines are going to arrive so that they can plan to deliver them.
Chair, should you rule it out of order, my instinct would be to challenge your ruling for all of the reasons I just gave you. We have to do this, and you know it. Every Canadian is depending on this committee to do this type of review. We have doctors on this committee. We need to get to the bottom of this, and we need a path forward.
With that, Chair, I move:
That the committee invite the Minister of Health, the Minister of Procurement and their officials to appear before the committee for no less than two hours each regarding all matters related to Canada’s COVID-19 vaccination strategy, and that this meeting occur no later than February 5, 2021;
That in accordance with a motion previously passed by the committee, the clerk of the committee be instructed to schedule the final agreed-upon fourth meeting regarding the Liberal-selected mental health theme of the COVID-19 study during the committee’s regularly scheduled meeting on February 1, 2021, unless the Liberal members of the committee elect to forgo this meeting in favour of beginning meetings on the next theme of the committee’s COVID-19 study;
That the committee select its next theme of the COVID-19 study in the agreed-upon manner set out in the original motion, with the next theme being selected by the Conservative members of the committee, with the Conservative members selecting the theme of all matters related to Canada’s COVID-19 vaccination strategy, and that the first meeting of this theme commence at the next regularly scheduled meeting of the committee after February 1, 2021, which is February 5, 2021, unless the Liberal members of the committee elect to forgo the last meeting in the prior theme per the option outlined above, and that parties shall submit witnesses to the clerk for these four meetings pertaining to vaccines no later than January 28, 2021 at 4 p.m. Eastern.
Again, to colleagues who are considering how to vote on this motion, every one of you has communities that are under lockdown right now. For those of you who are in Quebec, your community is under a curfew. Many of you have long-term care facilities in your riding. I know I have colleagues who have emailed me that they've had a variant go through their long-term care facility, and 40-plus people have died in recent days. Front-line health care workers are calling in tears, asking, “When am I getting my vaccine?” In some cases, some people have received one dose of the vaccine and are not sure when they're going to get the second. If it's delayed for a certain period of time, what does that mean for their health? Is it going to work? Provincial governments are telling the federal government that they can't deliver what they don't have.
There are times when we will fight on this committee. There are times when we are going to disagree on policy, but this motion is very reasonably laid out. It gives the Liberals the option of proceeding on Friday per the schedule we had before Christmas, before all of this happened. That's really up to the Liberal Party. I didn't want to fight you guys on that. It's up to you.
We give you the choice, but there is no situation in which the Liberals can argue that the Minister of Health and the Minister of Procurement should not be coming before the federal Standing Committee on Health within the next couple of weeks to answer these questions. Every day that we go without having them, without getting these details and just hearing more platitudes, is another day that people are getting infected, that health care workers have stress and anxiety and that we're under curfew or lockdown.
We have the foreign affairs minister floating the idea of the Emergencies Act. Our country needs to get this together. For those of you who haven't had a situation like this—or perhaps it's your first term in Parliament—this is real, and this is why this committee exists. It exists to get these types of answers. Should this motion pass, what it's saying is that we're going to start the next theme of the study either next week or on Friday, depending on what the Liberal Party wants to do.
It's up to you. Mental health is important. Vaccines are important. It's over to you guys.
Also, to get some answers, we're inviting to committee the ministers who are responsible for getting Canada's vaccines. How are we getting through this? I'll be very honest with you guys. I just had a devastatingly terrible panel on CTV National News with one of our Liberal colleagues, who was trying to suggest that Canada wouldn't make the target unless we were approving vaccine candidates that no other country has approved. He then had to walk that statement back. I'd like to have the ministers here to get to the bottom of that.
With deep respect and humbleness, I submit the motion as put forward in this Standing Order 106 notice. Chair, if you rule it out of order, I will be challenging you on that ruling, because I believe that you would be ruling it out of order based on pedantry, not on the Canadian public interest. I would encourage all of my colleagues to ensure that your ruling is overturned.
We need to have the ministers here and we need to get some answers from the pharmaceutical companies on vaccine supply, because we need a path forward. I would not feel comfortable as a vice-chair for the Standing Committee on Health, as a member of Parliament or as a Canadian if we were doing anything less. This is what we need to do over the next month as a committee: put differences aside and get to the bottom of this.
For those of you who are Liberal Party members, I have had moments where I have had to think about what is in the best interests of my constituents and not necessarily in the best interests of my political party. I would really encourage you to think about that in this moment.
There is no reason, no logical reason, why the Minister of Health and the Minister of Procurement should not be coming before the federal Standing Committee on Health at this moment in time. I'm hoping that we can dispense with this motion, we can support it, we can schedule things out and we can move forward with getting some answers and some hope for Canadians.
Thank you.