Madam Speaker, I am pleased to share my time with my colleague, the member for Outremont.
I am pleased to have the opportunity to rise in the House to speak to the motion put forward by my hon. colleague.
As we all know, this pandemic is the worst and most serious public health crisis that Canada has ever faced. We have taken a proactive approach. We have taken a productive approach. We have taken a transparent approach. Most of all, we have taken a co-operative, team Canada approach, one that I humbly submit is not reflected in the motion that we are debating here today. We have consistently informed parliamentarians and Canadians, frequently and regularly, about the work we are doing.
From the start of this crisis, our government has remained focused on one thing: taking care of Canadians. We have their backs. Nothing has been more important to us than making sure Canadians have the support they need to make it through the pandemic while remaining healthy and safe.
A significant part of our government's action to meet the challenges of this crisis has involved procuring the essential supplies that Canadians need to protect themselves against COVID-19. Our government, through the hard work of procurement officials, has worked incredibly hard over these last few months to put in place a solid strategy to get supplies into the hands of those who need them the most. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them and to highlight some of those efforts.
I also commend the people of my riding, Gatineau, who, like people everywhere in the national capital region and across Canada, are working around the clock to help us get through the pandemic.
I will also highlight the extraordinary efforts we have gone to in providing transparency to Canadians with regard to procurement contracts.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, Public Services and Procurement Canada officials have been working around the clock to procure personal protective equipment.
This equipment includes masks, N95 respirators, face shields and hand sanitizer as well as protective gowns and gloves. In total, we have acquired more than 2 billion pieces of personal protective equipment and we continue to receive more every day. We are making every effort to procure the materials needed to administer COVID-19 tests, including test kits, swabs and reagents.
To obtain such huge quantities in such a short period of time, our government has taken a two-pronged approach. At the beginning of the pandemic, we faced a volatile market amid scarce resources and fierce global competition. We had to be aggressive in our procurement efforts, often with new suppliers. We also had to create new supply chains and sort out warehousing and shipping logistics, all while making sure that all products meet Health Canada standards.
Second, as we continued to deal with firms overseas, we also turned to domestic manufacturers and suppliers. We issued a call to action to Canadian businesses, and thousands of them responded. These companies stepped up to contribute to the national effort and retooled their assembly lines to design entirely new products, so that we could establish secure supply chains right here in Canada. This unprecedented mobilization of domestic manufacturing not only helped to save lives but also helped to keep people employed and contributing to our economy when this country needed it the most.
Because of our strategy, more than 40% of the dollar value of our contracts is for made-in-Canada goods, like surgical gowns, non-surgical masks, face shields and hand sanitizer. These domestic suppliers significantly add to the regular shipments of personal protective equipment that we continue to receive from overseas and will do so for months to come.
Buying PPE will not get us through the pandemic. We will not be out of the woods until we have a safe and effective vaccine.
I can assure the House that the government is working hard to get ready for that. Once we have approved vaccines, we can start vaccinating Canadians from coast to coast to coast. We had to be aggressive in sourcing PPE domestically and abroad, and now we have to be aggressive in negotiating access to potential vaccines.
Once again, Canada has to navigate a volatile market. We have to be ready for the unexpected. Even though we do not yet know which vaccines will be successful in clinical trials and get approval, we cannot stand by and wait. That is why we are making vaccine procurement decisions based on the advice and recommendations of the COVID-19 vaccine task force and on the latest scientific evidence.
To date, we have signed agreements with six of the most promising vaccine candidates: Johnson & Johnson, Novavax, Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline. Moreover, the government continues to negotiate additional agreements with both domestic and international supplies to establish a guaranteed supply of a potential vaccine.
We know that with renewed efforts to keep community transmission at a minimum, testing for the virus and tracing where it may have spread is more important than ever. To that end, we are pursuing rapid test solutions to help us meet urgent demands from provinces and territories to reduce wait times for results. This is key to reducing the spread of the virus.
In addition to these bilateral agreements made directly with pharmaceutical companies, we are also collaborating with our global partners to fight the virus. Our government is investing in the Gavi COVAX Facility, a pooled procurement mechanism for purchasing COVID-19 vaccines and allowing them to be distributed equitably around the world. This pandemic cannot be fought at the domestic level alone. We know that in order to come out the other side, we need to do our part to protect other countries as well.
I want to reiterate our government's commitment to procuring supplies to fight against COVID-19 in a transparent and responsible manner by giving hon. members and all Canadians as much information as possible on the efforts we are making. Since there is a global shortage of the supplies we are procuring and we are competing with other governments, it has not always been possible to immediately disclose certain confidential details about the contracts. That remains the case.
In any event, I am pleased to inform the House that we have taken various measures to disclose as much information as possible. For example, Canadians can go to our website and get informed on the procurement and delivery of essential supplies as well as the names of the suppliers and the value of the contracts for COVID-related procurement. In addition, we regularly update Canadians on agreements the Government of Canada reaches for obtaining access to promising vaccines that are being developed around the world. We also update them on agreements that are signed to gain access to the most effective testing solutions possible, because the technology is rapidly evolving. I am proud of the efforts our government is making to keep Canadians informed about how we are acquiring these much-needed supplies.
Overcoming a pandemic requires the work and resolve of every single Canadian. On all fronts, we have made significant progress, but our work is far from done. Now that we are in the middle of the second wave of infection in many parts of the country, we know it is time to return to those actions that allow us to minimize community transmission and successfully flatten the curve early on.
To support these actions, our government will continue to ensure that Canadians have access to PPE, testing solutions and, one day, a safe and effective vaccine. Canadians are counting on the government to do everything in its power to help them get through this pandemic, and we will do so with the help of our procurement activities and strategies.
Since the beginning of this pandemic, the government has sought to co-operate with the private sector, with provinces, with suppliers, and co-operate and challenge Canadians to come up with domestic supply. I do note the auto parts manufacturers saying today that firms from across the country dropped everything to help save lives by making critical medical goods for every government in Canada, every political stripe. We did this together. That is what team Canada is.
What team Canada is not is driving the bus from the rear with a motion that goes from A to Z and starts over again, that seeks to micromanage, that seeks to have the government spend all its time with document retrieval and not in solving and protecting Canadian's public health. The government will keep being transparent and co-operating. The government will keep having the backs of Canadians.