Still, I'm going to speak to the same thing. Again, we have all day.
There is genuine concern about revealing the details of the contract. Many of you are aware that I believe in the importance of transparency of government. I believe, as much as possible, in revealing unredacted documents.
However, with respect to the vaccine contracts, this is obviously a very difficult area. Certainly, the pharmaceutical companies and the producers of vaccines don't want these documents revealed. Where they have been revealed, and we've heard that there have been instances where other countries.... The EU has revealed details of its contracts, but in fact those were heavily redacted. There is also the concern that if a vaccine producer finds out the details of the contract provisions of another vaccine producer, they're going to want their contract changed and they're going to want better provisions as well.
This is a very sensitive issue, because we're at their mercy. We don't produce vaccines ourselves. We have put down a lot of money and down the road we probably will put more.... I know the Conservatives have supported some initiatives to produce vaccines in Canada, and it was certainly the desire of Canada. We have put over $200 million into various producers—I count at least four or five different vaccine producers in Canada—to try to develop our own vaccine. However, we're not there yet. It was a global race. In fact, a whole bunch of companies won the gold medal, but unfortunately none of them were in Canada.
We are dependent on the vaccine producers. It doesn't seem to me very prudent right now to be doing something that could undermine our position with respect to the vaccine producers. We've heard it repeatedly today, and I certainly agree that this is by far the most important issue facing not only Canada but also the world. We want to get this right. I'm not sure this is a really good idea right now—when we're dependent on other people for a very necessary good that all Canadians want—to be doing something that's going to potentially jeopardize our relationship with them.
We're not going to support this underlying motion.
I said, I would eventually get to the amendment. As to it being in French, sure. Of course. Everything should be in both official languages; that's important. We can debate this, and then we can go on to the other motion and debate that for a long time as well.
For genuine reasons, because this is of concern, I don't really think this is an issue that we ought to be politicizing. I don't think this is a good way of scoring points off our government in fighting this fight, because I don't think it is in the best interests of Canadians right now to have this revealed and to create this controversy.
In the last paragraph of your motion as it is, to require the companies to—