That fine, eloquent speech by Mr. Kelloway was very well said and very succinct and to the point. I really have to credit him for that. It may not have been sufficiently succinct, though, because I'm having trouble remembering what Ms. Rempel Garner's accusations were against me. If I remember them correctly, I was being accused of being too sympathetic to the poor old vaccine industry and was told that Canadians wanted to know the details of this agreement.
As I recall, in our recent meeting about the PMPRB, it was I who accused the poor executive from the pharmaceutical company of holding Canadians hostage to their demands that we withdraw the changes to the PMPRB. I don't think I heard the Conservatives having similar concerns about the motivation of the pharmaceutical industry.
I'm certainly not a blind supporter of everything big pharma does. In my past life, in the work I've done in global health, I have at times been led to the conclusion that big pharmaceuticals are not always.... Sometimes pharmaceuticals are great, but there are some bad actors out there, and there are some pharmaceutical companies that aren't always acting in the best interests of humanity.
Here I'm being accused of being too sympathetic with the pharmaceutical companies that don't want their contractual relationship with our government revealed. Maybe I am, but you know what? When I talked to the ministry of health, they had, it seemed to me, genuine concerns that having to reveal the contractual relationships with the vaccine companies could jeopardize our relationship with the vaccine producers and jeopardize our supply.
Maybe they're lying. Maybe that's not true. I don't know, but you know what? The pharmaceutical and vaccine producers seem pretty worried about revealing these contractual obligations. They haven't made them public anywhere, so maybe the ministry of health isn't in fact lying to us. Maybe there is genuine concern that this is going to harm the interests of Canadians. The Conservatives can stick their chests out and be really macho and say, “Come on. All Canadians want to reveal the terms of this contract.” Being macho—which ends up hurting all Canadians because it's jeopardizing our vaccine supply—is not, in my opinion, a good idea.
I go back to the last paragraph of this motion, where you're requiring vaccine producers to—