The testimony we heard from witnesses today was deeply impactful for me, to the point where I was—as, I'm sure, some of my colleagues on the meeting today were—almost brought to tears. The impact of the pandemic is felt across all political stripes and demographics in this country.
I'm sitting here trying to manage news that the Moderna shipment of vaccines has been deeply cut today. We have more restrictions on Canadian civil liberties, with no end in sight. The EU is looking at trade restrictions on vaccines. I'm trying to manage all this news, and what I don't want to have happen with an interim report is for the government to use that as a way to stall witnesses on vaccine delivery or the ministers in front of committee next week on vaccines.
I don't mind if the analysts want to start writing an interim report, but if this is what this committee is going to do, then they can expect us to be providing recommendations as a committee on vaccine delivery.
We're in a national crisis. On a Friday afternoon, with no makeup on, I'm trying to absorb the fact that our country is not in a position to be receiving vaccines any time soon. In the middle of what is essentially a wartime effort, when we don't have vaccines, I don't want our health committee—the federal Standing Committee on Health—to be wasting meetings deliberating things like punctuation on a report that's not material to getting the tools to end this pandemic.
If that's the intention of the Liberals on this committee, it is a no go for me and it's a no go for the Conservative party. I don't mind if the analysts want to start writing stuff up, because I think reporting on the mental health impact of the pandemic is fine.
I'm going to look to colleagues, particularly from the NDP and from the Bloc, for agreement that if we are going to support an interim report on mental health, the deliberations on the report happen outside of the meetings that are scheduled on vaccines for the next couple of weeks, or over the break. If we want to deliberate an interim report on mental health, I would suggest that this committee do that over the parliamentary recess and not during the regularly scheduled meetings that are coming up on vaccines.
This committee needs to work across political stripes to encourage the government and come up with bold moon-shot positions to get our country vaccines.
As I'm sitting here, my phone has just been blowing up today with people asking, “When are we getting vaccines?” and me going, “I don't know. The government won't say. They say September, but it's not looking great.”
Put bluntly, that's my concern. I don't think we should be passive-aggressive on this. If the Liberals want us to be taking meetings away from a vaccine study, I do not support that. There will be no improvement in the mental health of Canadians unless we get vaccines, rapid tests, therapeutics and variant-testing capacity to every Canadian.
I'm not sure if any of the rest of my colleagues are of this opinion; I would like to hear it. However, I do not want to take committee business or meetings away to be looking at punctuation on a report, when we need to be getting vaccines to Canadians.