Mr. Speaker, I have two questions I would like to ask the hon. parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Health.
In April, the Ebola epidemic began to show that it was the beginning of an epidemic. In June, the honorary consul for Sierra Leone got a letter from Washington asking for protective equipment. However, since he sent that message to the ministry, the minister of the Public Health Agency of Canada auctioned off 1.3 million masks and more than 209,000 gloves for the price of $50.
Can the hon. parliamentary secretary tell me why the government did not send that instead, on request, to West Africa? Why was it just auctioned off?
Secondly, I would like to know what took the generous 800 to 1,000 vaccines so long to get there? It only got there yesterday. Why did it take so long, since April and June, to get these things done?