Thank you.
I have to say a number of things on this.
First, the contracts are coming. That is the will of the House of Commons. We had this debate, and the motion was duly moved and passed in the House of Commons ordering the government to disclose all of the documents. That includes the vaccine contracts. Really, it's academic at this point to argue about whether the documents should or should not come; they are coming. If we're all democrats here, the majority in the House of Commons voted in favour of that, so I think we need to respect that. The only question really is when those contracts will come.
What I appreciate about this motion is that it posits the thesis that we should have those vaccine contracts sooner rather than later. I support that.
The basic issue, of course, that is underlying this is whether someone believes the contract should or should not be disclosed. I have a ton of respect for Dr. Powlowski, my good friend. I don't want to put words in his mouth, but he seems to be suggesting that it's his opinion that the contracts should not be disclosed, and he gave some reasons why. Again, that ship has sailed. Those arguments were made, and the majority of parliamentarians decided that we did want to see them.
On the issue of redaction, I will repeat that everybody agrees. I think we all understand that there is sensitive information in the contracts that are properly redacted. The motion that was introduced by Michelle Rempel Garner acknowledged that and it allows the law clerk to redact for those purposes, so that issue is already taken care of.
I want to point out again—and I know the Liberals don't seem to like this or they tend to minimize this point—that other countries have released contracts. The United States has released the Moderna and Pfizer contracts. The EU has released the AstraZeneca contract. Brazil has released the AstraZeneca contract, and there are varying degrees of redaction.
In the U.S. it's true that the two contracts that were released were significantly redacted, but they were still released and there was still some information disclosed to the public in the U.S. Brazil's contract was not so heavily redacted. There was a lot of information that the Brazilian government allowed its public to see. The EU, as we know from the minister, last week confirmed that the EU and AstraZeneca had negotiated the release of the document.
To Dr. Powlowski's point that this will anger the pharmaceutical companies, that is contradicted by Minister Anand's own revelation that one of the pharmaceutical companies did agree to release part of the document.
I would hasten to point out that this is not a contract between two private individuals in a commercial transaction. This is a contract signed by the Government of Canada on behalf of the Canadian citizens and it should follow normal procurement rules. No one negotiating a contract with the Government of Canada, which is doing so on behalf of taxpayers, has any expectation that their agreement is totally secret.
I would also point out—I still can't get an answer, and I tried to push Minister Anand last week on this—that, surely, the delivery schedules are in the contracts. Surely the number of doses that have been contracted for are in the contracts. If the Liberal government has revealed those details, how is it not in violation of the confidentiality clause in the agreement? Do you know what that tells me? It tells me that the government is selectively revealing information about the contracts, information that it wants Canadians to know that might make the government look good, but it doesn't want to reveal and is not revealing any information that might reveal the converse.
On that, by the way, I understand why Pfizer and Moderna may not want the prices to be revealed. I understand why they may not want any technical information that might reveal their production, although I highly doubt that's in the contracts to begin with.
But why would Pfizer and Moderna have any objection to Canadians knowing what the delivery schedule is or the number of doses we're going to get and when? Why would they have any objection to our understanding what the consequential provisions of the agreement in terms of breach of contract say or don't say? Why would that be a matter of secrecy to them? It doesn't make any sense at all.
By the way, I asked Minister Anand last week if she would disclose the confidentiality clauses themselves. Let's see those, because she claims that the confidentiality clauses prohibit the release of any and all information in the contracts. Now, I'm a lawyer, and I was a contract lawyer for 16 years, and I'll tell you that it's not usual that a confidentiality clause imposes a blanket confidentiality restriction on everything in the agreement. Usually, there are sensitive parts that are not...but I may be wrong on this. Let's see the confidentiality clauses. Surely we can see that.
I think Mr. Barlow made an excellent point. The government can't speak out of both sides of its mouth. It can't say “We have secured these doses to the point where we will get six million doses by the end of March and every Canadian who wants one will be vaccinated by September”, and then say “If we reveal any parts of these contracts, the pharmaceutical companies may cut off the supply.” We either have a contract that secures our obligations or we don't.
I'll tell you what I suspect, but before I get there, I'll just say this. It came out today that Canada is now 47th in the world on the administration of first doses of vaccines. The source of that is Oxford, so I think we can all agree that it's probably a fairly reputable source. I remember that when we were 16th, the Liberals were saying that's not so bad, and then when we were 24th and then when we were 35th.... Now we're 47th, and even as we're slipping to 47th, I still hear people say, “Just wait, it's coming.”
The facts are that we have gone from the Prime Minister saying that we have the best portfolio in the world to not being able to get these vaccines into Canadians' arms. I hope that changes. I suspect it will change. I suspect we will get millions of doses. We're not going to be 47th forever, but let's face it, this is not where Canadians expected us to be. This is not where the Prime Minister represented we would be in the middle of February.
I want to say what my suspicion is. I'm curious, because the Prime Minister and this government said repeatedly in 2015 that it would be “transparent by default”. They went to great lengths to distinguish his government from the previous Harper government: that they would be science-focused, that they would unleash the scientists and that they would be “transparent by default”. But you know what? They're not being transparent here.
With great respect to Ms. Sidhu, Mr. Chair, and her comments when she said the government has been very transparent.... Really? We're sitting here having a fight over revealing even a single word in a single contract that we've signed, and we all know that there are things in those contracts that can safely be revealed. That's not being transparent. That's being the opposite of transparent.
Here's my suspicion. I think there's a reason the government doesn't want to release these contracts and is fighting so darn hard not to do so. It's because of this. Prime Minister Trudeau has given his word on a number of occasions that we will have six million doses by the end of March: four million from Pfizer and two million from Moderna. He repeatedly says that. He has also said, as I said earlier, that every Canadian who wants a vaccine dose will have one by September. By the way, it's not “in September”, but “by September”. Incidentally, he's been a little slippery on that. First it was that all Canadians will be vaccinated, then it was all Canadians who want to be vaccinated, and now I've even heard him say that all Canadians will get a shot. It's a bit of a muddy target, but in any event, what has been absolutely firmly stated is that we will have doses by September for Canadians who want one.
My suspicion is that if we were to see these contracts, we would see that these contracts contain provisions that are much shakier than that. I think we're going to see provisions that say that these companies will provide doses of vaccines to Canadians, subject to production, subject to availability, subject to all sorts of things, and I think that is understandable and reasonable. The political problem the Prime Minister has gotten into is that that's not what he told Canadians. He didn't say that subject to a number of things, we expect to have six million doses by March. He has not said that subject to a number of exigencies we expect and hope that people will be vaccinated by September. So he's made his bed, and now he's stuck in it, because he can't make a bold claim about the firm receipt of doses and then at the same time refuse to produce the documents that would back that up. I think they will show that his very firm commitments are simply overstatements.
That's my suspicion as to why the Liberals are so reluctant to release what taxpayers have every right to see.
The other thing I want to mention is that there are a few other issues that make me curious about why the government is being so reluctant. This government has repeatedly said that we will have enough vaccines secured from Pfizer and Moderna alone to vaccinate every Canadian by September, but then a week and a half ago, as we all know, it tapped into the COVAX fund—the main function of which, let's be honest, is to provide vaccines for poor and middle-income countries in the world—for 1.9 million doses, which we will receive in June.
Remember that COVAX is over and above the seven contracts. That is the eighth source of vaccine that Canada has secured. The seven sources we have include 20 million doses from AstraZeneca, and the 1.9 million doses through COVAX are also from AstraZeneca, so I scratch my head and wonder why that is. If we have enough doses from just Moderna and Pfizer alone, and then we have another five vaccine manufacturers, including AstraZeneca, from which we have secured 20 million doses, why would we need to tap into 1.9 million from COVAX on top of that?
All these facts together come and spell one thing for me—that the political commitment that's being made by Prime Minister Trudeau is not backed up by the behaviour and the actions of this government. If he came clean and said that maybe he overstated things, that he can't be sure we are going to get those vaccine doses by March, or by September, that would be honest, but it would also show that the commitments he has repeatedly made, up to now, have not been entirely truthful.
For all of these reasons, we, as health committee members, are asking the law clerk to receive the contracts, to redact them according to the criteria that have been given, and to send them to the health committee here so that we can see that whatever is unredacted is absolutely responsible.
Frankly, I don't understand why anyone would argue against that. Certainly I've seen no evidence that any of the vaccine manufacturers have withdrawn supplies from the EU or from the U.S. or from Brazil because they have released redacted contracts, so that academic fear that's been expressed is actually completely belied by the evidence we have seen.
With great respect to all of my colleagues, there are many reasons why we should be in support of this motion and see these contracts in redacted form, and there are, in my view, very few reasons that would properly ground opposition to this motion. It's quite clear to me that the government doesn't want to pass this motion.
At the end of the day, I think we come to the fundamental question of whether or not Canadians have a right to see any part of these contracts. What I'm hearing is that Liberals are taking the position that Canadians don't have a right to see a single word of these contracts. The opposition, for our part, is saying that this is not a tenable position. I am happy to take that discussion to the public and get their views on that.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.