Thank you, Madam Chair.
Hello, everyone.
How is everyone doing today? It's great to be here with you.
I want to thank you for inviting me to be here with you this morning. Before we start, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge that I'm meeting you from the territory of many first nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinabek, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples.
I would also like to thank everyone who continues to work hard behind the scenes to make these virtual meetings possible. Thanks especially to our interpreters and our translators for playing such an outstanding role in the ability of Canadians to understand and process this information.
Joining me today is my deputy minister, Bill Matthews. Thank you, Bill, for being here.
I want to speak first about the PSPC response to the pandemic. In the face of intense pandemic fatigue and strain, Canadians have pulled together to curb the spread of the virus. I know I speak for all parliamentarians, particularly those of us in this room today, when I say that we wish to thank the doctors, the nurses and the health care providers who are working tirelessly on the front lines. Their work is crucial. That is why, since the start of this pandemic, my department at PSPC has worked non-stop to procure vital PPE and other medical supplies for front-line workers.
In terms of domestic production, we should recognize and thank all Canadian suppliers who have stepped up to fight COVID-19 with us. Many Canadian companies increased their levels of production to provide vast quantities of the items we so urgently need. Protecting our front-line medical professionals was, and continues to be, a top priority.
Early on, for example, we finalized a long-term contract with Medicom out of Montreal to produce tens of millions of N95 respirators and surgical masks annually. We have already taken delivery of more than 18 million made-in-Canada surgical masks and more than 5.7 million made-in-Canada N95s from Medicom.
Throughout the pandemic, more and frequent testing has been critical in order to prevent isolated cases of COVID-19 from becoming renewed outbreaks. LuminUltra, a leading biotech company based in New Brunswick, stepped up to produce large amounts of reagent to support COVID-19 tests right through to March of this year.
While many businesses ramped up existing production capacity, some companies completely retooled their production lines to meet the country's needs. For example, Bauer in Quebec switched from making hockey equipment to making face shields for front-line workers. Toronto Stamp pivoted from making signage to kick-starting a project involving more than a dozen Toronto businesses to manufacture face shields. A Calgary-based chemical processing and manufacturing firm, Fluid Energy, stepped up to produce millions of litres of hand sanitizers to ship across Canada. The list goes on, Madam Chair. For example, Stanfields in New Brunswick has provided us with 100,000 medical gowns per week. Irving Oil, based in New Brunswick, retooled their lines to produce hand sanitizer.
These companies are just a handful of the many innovative and dedicated firms across our country that have stepped up and worked to make sure our front-line health care workers are protected.
I'll move now to vaccine procurement. We know that the quickest way to get to the other side of this pandemic is to follow public health advice alongside a successful vaccine rollout. While our government is investing in the future of domestic vaccine production, my department continues to fight the pandemic today with a strategy that is getting authorized vaccines into the country as soon as possible.
Madam Chair, from the start our government's objective has been to secure safe, effective and necessary vaccines for Canadians as rapidly as possible. Our work was guided by the vaccine task force, the creation of which was a key element for our country's vaccine strategy. In all, our government managed to gain access to nearly 400 million doses of potential vaccines from seven different candidates, resulting in one of the most robust and diverse portfolios of COVID-19 vaccines in the entire world.
Through the establishment of these agreements, we negotiated the quickest delivery options possible. Following the Health Canada approval of Pfizer and Moderna, we have received and distributed more than 1.1 million COVID-19 vaccines to provinces and territories. Between Moderna and Pfizer alone, we remain on track to have enough vaccines to immunize everyone in Canada who wishes to be immunized prior to the end of September.
In addition, through the COVAX initiative, Canada will receive at least 1.9 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is close to receiving Health Canada authorization. Should the vaccine be authorized, deliveries could begin arriving before the end of March. We also continue to work closely with the five remaining manufacturers with whom we have bilateral agreements: Sanofi-GSK, Medicago, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and Novavax.
Our goal is to get more Health Canada-approved vaccines into Canada as quickly as we can.
While vaccines are critically important, so are the supplies needed to administer them. For example, we have secured more than 170 million syringes of varying sizes from a range of suppliers. This includes 64 million of the low dead volume syringes, which are in extremely limited supply around the world. Approximately one million of those specialized syringes are arriving in Canada this week.
In closing, Madam Chair, throughout the pandemic, every single time we have asked Canadian companies for help, they have stepped up and delivered. In addition, we have made sure that we have critical made-in-Canada PPE and medical supplies to meet our country's needs.
Keeping our loved ones safe is our top priority.
Thank you for your time. I'm happy to take your questions.