Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Scarborough Centre.
Today's debate touches on an issue that is extremely important to all Canadians. We truly understand the difficulties that the pandemic has caused so many Canadians, which have been made worse by the uncertainty of how long the crisis will last. However, we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. We are no longer so far away.
Contrary to what some opposition members are saying, we know that our scientists are working very hard to develop a safe and effective vaccine. It is the only way that we will be able to begin overcoming the challenges that the pandemic has caused over the past months.
This has obviously been a very difficult time for Canadians. It is the challenge of a generation that we are facing, and yes, it is a marathon. It is a marathon that is not over yet. We are still in the second wave of the pandemic and now is not the time to let our guard down.
I know we have already given up so much time with our loved ones and our family. Some have lost their job, and others, their health. However, I am here today to reassure Canadians that there is light at the end of the tunnel. We are nearing the end of this marathon. There is a way out of the hard times we are currently in, and it is coming with the distribution of a vaccine. We have just a little further to go.
Let me be clear: All Canadians will have the opportunity to be vaccinated for free, but we must ensure that there is no political interference in the scientific process that is being undertaken by Health Canada researchers right now. We must ensure that all Canadians have the utmost faith in the vaccine that will ultimately become available.
That is why I very much take issue with the approach of opposition members, who are essentially demanding that politicians in this chamber decide on dates for the rollout of a vaccine. Perhaps the opposition is suggesting that we pressure Health Canada to move more quickly than it can in order to conduct its review, but I do not know. What I do know for sure is that for Canadians to have full confidence in the results, we need our independent scientists to do their work.
I could go on for hours about my deep respect for researchers and scientists. My father is a medical researcher at the University of Montreal. He has spent the last 45 years trying to find a cure for cancer and diabetes. I can tell the House that he would want politicians as far away from researchers as possible in order to allow the results of their work to be as sure as possible so we can be as confident as we can in the results of their research and work.
For the remainder of my time, I would like to describe the robust and very clear plan that our government has put in place to date so that Canadians can once again find hope in the coming months. Let me begin by discussing our approach to the acquisition of the vaccine.
We knew that the quickest way for Canadians to get access to a vaccine was for Canada to buy internationally from vaccine companies and secure quantities of those vaccines before other countries. That is exactly what we did. Our government has secured the best portfolio of vaccine candidates possible.
We have been hard at work developing a comprehensive vaccination plan, and we are working with seven different companies to make that happen. Here are the facts. Canada has agreements in place with seven of the world's leading vaccine candidates: Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi, Medicago, Novavax, Oxford and AstraZeneca. Those are the seven we have currently in our contract portfolio. This represents access to approximately 10 doses of the vaccine for each and every Canadian if all of these contract options are exercised. This is more than any other government around the world.
Our Health Canada scientists are currently evaluating four different vaccine candidates. Our Canadian Armed Forces are working right now and stand at the ready to distribute the vaccine as soon as one is approved.
None other than Major-General Dany Fortin, of the Canadian Armed Forces, a Quebecker who has the confidence of the entire country, was appointed to be in charge of the vaccine distribution effort, together with the Public Health Agency of Canada and, of course, provincial and territorial public health authorities. We have already purchased an enormous amount of the supplies we will need. For example, we have purchased 34 freezers, which brings the federal government's capacity to 33.5 million doses of ultra-frozen and frozen vaccines. That is on top of several tens of millions of syringes, needles, compresses and other supplies.
Now that I have gone through those facts and numbers, I will point out that the co-founder and chairman of Moderna recently stated that Canada is one of the very first countries to pre-order its vaccine, which has shown so much promise. We are guaranteed to receive a portion of the company's initial batch of vaccine doses, pending, of course, approvals by Health Canada.
The goal here is obviously to have as many options at hand as possible so that as soon as vaccines become available and are approved, Canadians will get safe, effective doses that will help us end this pandemic. We know, however, that biomanufacturing capacity has declined in Canada over the last number of years. That is why we have been rebuilding our capacity and our capability to produce new types of vaccines in the future right here at home.
This requires significant investments today. We have announced hundreds of millions of dollars in investments in, for example, the Quebec company Medicago, which has a potential Canadian vaccine candidate, and in the National Research Council's facilities in Montreal. This investment will ensure that we have a much more robust domestic biomanufacturing capacity in the future than exists at the moment.
When it comes to Canada's COVID-19 vaccine plan, we are ready with a diversified portfolio of vaccine candidates, which are undergoing regulatory review and approval processes as we speak. We have secured access to tens of millions of vaccine doses that, as we said earlier in this chamber and I will repeat again, should be arriving in early 2021. We are working with our partners in the provinces and territories and with our partners in first nations in order to ensure that those vaccines can be delivered to everybody in this country as quickly as possible.
The bottom line is that Canadians want a safe and reliable vaccine, and that is what the Government of Canada will secure. For this to work, we need to come together across party lines and all across our country to ensure that all Canadians have the utmost confidence to take the vaccine once it is ready. It is unity, not division, that we need now more than ever, as we enter the next critical phase of this exhausting marathon that is and has been the COVID-19 pandemic.