Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Vancouver Kingsway.
I want to begin by talking about the situation that we find ourselves in right now.
These are obviously difficult times. Many people are worried, and we understand why. The Liberal government has totally failed in its responsibility to create a plan for this pandemic. Generally speaking, the fear we are seeing is related to the fact that successive Liberal and Conservative governments have always forced families to bear the burden by cutting the services they needed. That is the history of those two parties.
The other problem is that the Liberal and Conservative parties are too close to big business. In this case, it is clear that the Liberal government is too close to the pharmaceutical companies. The Prime Minister and the Liberals gave $1 billion in contracts to big pharmaceutical companies and did not ensure that the vaccines needed to protect people against COVID-19 could be produced here in Canada. Canadians are having to wait even longer to get the vaccine because of the Liberals. As a result, more people are going to become ill and potentially die from COVID-19.
In the United States and the United Kingdom, vaccines will be available this week. However, in Canada, the only thing we know for sure is that we are receiving six million doses in March, which is enough for three million people. The problem is, that is not even enough to vaccinate everyone over 70. There are 4.5 million seniors in Canada over the age of 70, not to mention high-risk individuals such as health professionals, essential workers and indigenous peoples. The government must ensure that we have the capacity to make our own vaccines and essential medications for Canadians.
This pandemic has shown that we must not rely on production from other countries during emergencies. As a result of the Liberal government's lack of preparation, Canadians will have to wait even longer to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
Past Conservative governments privatized labs and vaccine manufacturers, effectively preventing Canadians from having access to a vaccine and essential medications. Despite being in power for decades, Liberal governments have not restored this capacity to produce vaccines and medications here in Canada.
The fact is that the Liberal government has completely failed to lay out a plan. It does not have a plan to address the major question of the pandemic, which is about rolling out the vaccine. The Liberals are going to talk about the fact that they have the best access to vaccines and have some of the best plans, but they have not published their plan.
Australia, a country very similar to Canada in resources and size, has the entire plan for its vaccine rollout on its website. The Liberals might say that they do not know which vaccine will be successful. Australia factored that in. It has included all potential scenarios. If one vaccine is successful, it has a plan; if another is successful, it has a plan. It talks about who will get it and when they will get it. That is what a government should do.
The Liberal government has completely failed to lay out a clear plan. There is no question about that. What is even worse is that the most we know about the plan the Liberal government is proposing is that the first round of vaccines, coming possibly in March, will only be enough to cover three million Canadians.
We know, based on Canada's census, there are over four and a half million Canadian seniors over the age of 70. There is certainly not enough medication to cover all of the vulnerable seniors, let alone all of the front-line workers and the indigenous communities at high risk. What is the plan? This is a simple request that the government has failed to answer.
It has failed to roll out a clear plan of when everyone will be vaccinated and who will be vaccinated. People want to know the answers to these questions. This will give hope to Canadians who are worried, who are wondering what is going to happen and what the future looks like. The fact that the government could not lay out a clear plan with clear details is a failure in leadership.
Another problem that we saw at the beginning of this pandemic was that we could not produce some of the most important essential equipment that we needed. It came to light that the protective equipment we needed to provide to our front-line workers was in short supply. We relied on a supply chain that was broken, and Canadians were not able to access protective equipment.
People were outraged that the 10th largest economy in the world did not have the ability to produce masks, gowns and sanitizers. I am very proud of the fact that Canadian companies mobilized and were able to turn that around and start producing these locally, but it is a clear failure in policy if a country is not able to produce the medical equipment it needs.
What has become even more troubling is that we do not have the capacity, as the 10th largest economy in the world, to produce our own medications or vaccines. Here is where we have to be very clear about who is to blame. There is absolutely no question that Conservative governments in the past privatized our public companies, the companies owned by us that produced vaccines in Canada. Their policies effectively eliminated all the production capacity to make vaccines in Canada. That is their responsibility. By the same token, the Liberals were in power for decades and failed to restore our capacity to manufacture and produce vaccines and medications.
Let me give a really clear example, one that should startle people. One of the prides of Canada is the fact that Connaught, owned by Canadians, was where insulin was made. The medical breakthrough on insulin was made in Canada and we owned it. We created it and owned the ability to produce it, and we produced it at an affordable rate. As an example, which is not a public or private example but strictly Canada versus the U.S., one vial of insulin, the homologue version, costs $32 in Canada and $300 in the U.S.: 10 times the cost. People from the States come to Canada to get medications because they are so much more affordable here. We not only discovered but made insulin in Canada, and the Conservatives privatized Connaught.
Connaught was also the key player in many vaccines that were discovered. In fact, the reason why Connaught was developed in the first place, and I am sure the irony will not be lost on members, is because a diphtheria outbreak meant that people needed a vaccine. Canada found that it was far too expensive to buy: private companies were charging too much, so it was decided to make it here in Canada. History has a habit of repeating itself. We are now faced with a pandemic, and we do not have the capacity to make the vaccine in our own country. We need to make it in our own country.
We need to be able to restore our capacity to make this here at home. We need to be able to make vaccines in Canada, so New Democrats are proposing the creation of a public Crown corporation: a company owned by us. Just as we own electricity and roads in many jurisdictions, we should own the ability to make vaccines and medications in our country. It is a question of sovereignty and the ability to protect our citizens. We are the 10th largest economy in the world and should absolutely be able to make critical, vital medications and vaccines in our own country. That is our proposition. To undo the wrongs of the Conservatives and the Liberals, we need to move forward and restore our ability to manufacture medications here in our own country.