Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to talk about this very important issue. I want to thank the Leader of the Opposition for bringing this motion forward today, as we try to get some answers that Canadians desperately want to know about what is happening in the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine. I thank our shadow minister for health as well, the member for Calgary Nose Hill, for her incredible advocacy on behalf of all Canadians in trying to find out exactly what the government's plan is to make sure that we get vaccines in our arms.
In my speech today, I want to talk about the involvement of the Canadian Armed Forces in all this and why they have been brought in at the very last minute. Really, this is a public health issue that should be handled through the Public Health Agency of Canada, but because of a lack of leadership from the Liberal government, we now have, in the final minutes, a call-in-the-army scenario.
There is no doubt that the Canadian Armed Forces are an amazing organization with some of the best and brightest men and women in the country. They have a motto, which they pretty much live by: Failure is not an option. I can therefore see why we are so attracted to making use of their expertise, logistical capabilities, kit and equipment, and their ability to move personnel, products and all sorts of different material across the country. We know they have the greatest Canadians working for them, so we first and foremost salute them for their incredible service. However, unfortunately, they are being brought in to clean up the Liberal government's mess.
How did we get to this point where the government could not figure out how to get vaccines rolled out across the country?
We need to work with our provincial and territorial partners to ensure vaccines are in place in communities to make sure we get treated and cured so we will not have this virus any longer and can get back to opening up our economy. Instead of having people locked down, we should get back to business and back to our jobs. That is what Canadians are asking for, but they are not seeing any leadership from the Prime Minister and the Liberal government.
We learned in the news this morning that there is a directive from the chief of the defence staff. The operation the military will be doing on behalf of the Public Health Agency of Canada and the Liberal government is called Operation Vector.
The document itself brings to light a lot of the information we have been asking for. It shows there will only be three million doses of vaccines available in the first quarter of 2021, so only three million Canadians are going to be administered the vaccine. We see through the planning that the government does not expect all Canadians to be vaccinated until the end of 2021. It will be 13 months from now before every Canadian is vaccinated.
We know the government is trying to plan out how to deal with the challenges the Canadian Armed Forces have to deal with, but how are they going to be out there deploying troops and equipment and making sure we are moving the vaccines in a timely manner? They are very sensitive and need to be in super freezers and kept under 70°C.
Furthermore, how is the government going to manage the rollout of the vaccine while dealing with Operation Laser? It has the Canadian Armed Forces backfilling in personal care homes and long-term care institutions across the country to care for our loved ones and our seniors.
How is the government going to deal with Operation Lentus? It is a domestic operation by the Canadian Armed Forces that supports emergency measures at the provincial level regarding forest fires, floods and ice storms. We never know if there is going to be an earthquake or a hurricane, but they are called in often to provide a backstop to the provinces when volunteers get tired out on the front lines and when first responders can no longer keep up.
We have a number of international obligations as well: Operation Impact in Iraq; Operation Unifier in Ukraine; the enhanced forward presence initiative in Latvia, a NATO mission; and NATO staffing on missions across the globe, including the maritime task force that ensures we always have at least one or two of our frigates in patrol in the Black Sea, the Mediterranean Sea and the Baltic Sea. There is personnel required to do these roles, yet the government has decided to throw even more work at them to try to cover up its mistakes.
The other good part that came out of the CDS report was that they were going through the hard planning now. This only started on November 27. They will plan to be ready to start handling vaccines by the end of this month, December 31. However, they still have a lot of questions and they need answers from the government, just like opposition members have been asking the government. When are the vaccines going to show up? Who are going to be the suppliers? What are the logistic capabilities? Who is going to procure or contract the private logistics team that is familiar enough and capable enough to deal with vaccines in this type of format?
We are still sitting here. We were expecting the Canadian Armed Forces to come up with a plan, but it cannot finish its plan until the Liberals answer some questions. That is what they keep refusing to do. They have been dithering, delaying and been completely undecided for months now. We have been dealing with this since March, when we were in lockdown. We knew about this virus back in December 2019. Here we are 12 months later and the Liberals still cannot answer the critical questions we need to ensure that vaccines get into the arms of Canadians safely and timely.
We keep hearing the Liberals say that they have been working with the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces for months planning this. We had government officials at both the public accounts committee and the national defence committee only a couple of weeks ago.
On November 19, General Cadieu, the director of staff of the Strategic Joint Staff, was before the committee. I asked him if there was a named operation for rolling out vaccines. He said there was not, that it would be happening under Operation Laser. Two weeks later and we have a name, Operation Vector. He did not know about it because this was made up in the last few days.
We asked if National Defence was procuring super freezers so they could help with the distribution. They were not. Deputy Minister Jody Thomas said that they were looking at some stored capability, but that was for internal Canadian Armed Forces use when we got to the point of vaccinating our own troops. Again, they did not know they would have to buy super freezers until just recently.
General Dany Fortin is now the commanding officer of Operation Vector and is in charge of it on behalf of the whole of government. He has great credentials. In his comments to the national defence committee, he said that the CDS and deputy minister would give directions to the CAF and the Department of National Defence to adopt robust risk mitigation, protect the force and stand ready to conduct operations in support of their nation. They are standing ready, but still no direction. That was on November 20. He said that if the requirement came and the public safety and the Minister of National Defence considered they needed to be prepared, then the chief of the defence staff would give his best advice possible. Again, no advice was given by November 20.
Then we have discovered this morning that the chief of the defence staff's strategic directive on Operation Vector, November 27. This just came out. I want to point out page 3. This is what the Canadian Armed Forces are expecting:
...:the following national-level decisions will be made and communicated by PHAC no later than early-December 2020
(1) Apportionment of Track 1 vaccine doses by province/territory and select Canadian populations living outside Canada;
(2) Advice to provinces/territories on priority populations that should receive the Track 1 vaccines;
(3) Designation of the points of delivery for the Track 1 vaccines;
Public health was asked if it would procure the logistics service provider to get these vaccines delivered where it could and then backfill that using the Canadian Armed Forces heavy lift capabilities.
Again, the Canadian Armed Forces are looking for some leadership. They need some answers if they are going to finish their plan to be ready by the end of December. However, they get nothing but radio silence from the Liberal government.