Thank you, Mr. Chair.
First of all, I want to say that we are here as Liberal MPs. Today, we are not part of the government; we are here as members of Parliament.
Secondly, we are not here to defend the pharmaceutical companies. I want to say to Ms. Sinclair-Desgagné that I have not heard from any of my constituents in the last few years about these contracts.
As I have said before, it is important for the committee to have access to the documents. I fully agree that this is a member of Parliament's right.
I agree with what Blake said before. Everything we decide to do is because we choose to allow that to happen. We have a right to see whatever it is that we want, so let's start from that premise. Unredacted documents should come to parliamentarians.
As premise number two, I think we all agree that we should look at the documents in a confidential location. The only difference between this amendment to the motion and the motion itself is the location: one is the clerk's office, and one is in a secure location where these types of documents are normally accessed. I don't think that's a big difference. We're just saying that parliamentarians can access it in a location that is close by. I don't think we should fight about that. I think it is a reasonable request, based on what the contract says, to just have it done there.
Then we get to the real issue, which is the issue of the NDAs. I am in agreement that normally members of Parliament should not be asked to sign non-disclosure agreements to access contracts, particularly commercial contracts. I'm in total agreement.
However, these are agreements that exist. They're not agreements that we're about to negotiate. They were already negotiated. These agreements require employees of the Government of Canada who access these documents to sign confidentiality agreements.
Why is that? Why are there many more redactions, as my colleague said, in these documents than in other documents? It's because these documents were signed at the beginning of the pandemic, when everybody was desperate for vaccines. Companies were being told to rush vaccine production and do testing in an unprecedented way, in a way that they don't normally do it.
These companies were exposed to a way higher liability in putting their products on the market than they normally would be, because they didn't do the type of testing that normally means these drugs take years to come to market. They did it all in less than year.
That's why these companies said that if they were going to deliver this product that they hadn't tested in their normal way, they wanted to have different conditions. Also, with countries around the world competing with each other to get these, the countries had less leverage than they normally do. For example, if we were entering into flu vaccine or monkeypox contracts, or other things that are normally available, this would be a different issue.
However, these are already signed. They were signed at a time when the government didn't have that leverage in negotiations. We just wanted to sign as many vaccine contracts with as many producers as possible, because Canadians were desperate for vaccines. In the end, it worked out. We got vaccines, and we were one of the countries that got to vaccinate everybody the fastest.
These are the terms of the contract, that people accessing the information are supposed to sign NDAs. What will happen if we don't? Well, then theoretically there would be a right of action by the pharmaceutical company against the Government of Canada.
Is that worth the potential liability to taxpayers, that parliamentarians see it without an NDA? That's up to everybody on the committee. I personally don't see such a difference. I would be happy to sign an NDA to see the document.
Again, I let everybody decide where their line is crossed, because as Blake said, it's a question of a line. What is the liability that we want to potentially put on Canadian taxpayers to follow the principle of seeing a document without an NDA?
That's why we proposed this amendment. We thought it was reasonable, but I'm happy to hear other views on it.