Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to thank the witnesses here with us today for their availability. Like my colleague, I'd also like to thank them for their hard work, especially at the beginning of the pandemic when no one in the world knew what we were in for.
I recall in my constituency of Châteauguay—Lacolle, we watched on television as the first shipments of vaccine came in. The vaccine clinics were very well organized in our area. We were extremely happy that we could be vaccinated and receive booster shots. I'm not a health expert, but I do understand that vaccination is very important for saving lives. So once again, I'd like to thank our witnesses for their work.
The Auditor General reported on all of these public health and public services activities, including vaccine procurement.
She found that the federal government had responded to the urgency of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and secured COVID-19 vaccine doses so that everyone in Canada who chose to be vaccinated could be. Vaccines were needed quickly to reduce Canadians' risk of serious illness, hospitalization and death from COVID-19.
The Auditor General herself was quoted as saying, “In 2020, Public Services and Procurement Canada established advance purchase agreements with 7 companies that showed potential to develop viable vaccines.” Signing advance purchase agreements increased the chances that the government would obtain enough doses to meet Canada's needs, recognizing that this approach brought the possibility that Canada would have a surplus of doses if all vaccines were eventually approved.
That's what this committee is about. Once a policy or an approach is adopted by the government, it's about looking at how the implementation was carried out and whether the outcomes were achieved. Of course, it's to make sure, at the same time, that the Auditor General has all the tools she needs to do her job.
As the witnesses are aware, we heard further testimony from the Auditor General as well as public health and Public Services and Procurement Canada in February of this year regarding these findings, including issues around surplus vaccines and data sharing between different levels of government. During this meeting, the AG said in response to a question about access to confidential documents, “Yes, we had access to all the contracts, all the information, all the corrections and all the amendments”, confirming to members that access to documents was not a problem in her audit work.
Now, we are all aware that we're here today because we have a request to have access to unredacted vaccine contracts between your companies and our government, because apparently, according to various media reports, elected representatives in other countries have had this access.
I'd like to ask this of each one of you in turn: Can you provide our committee with an update on the level of disclosures that your companies have provided to other countries for their vaccine contracts?
Perhaps I can start with Madam Gauthier.