Mr. Speaker, I began by saying that I think I speak for all parliamentarians when I say how surprised perhaps we were at having to deal with this completely unique situation, which has faced not only our country but also our globe. I think that none of us envisioned that we would be dealing in 2021 with the colossal dislocation in our communities, our economy, our families and our health care systems that we have been confronted with. I think I also speak for all parliamentarians when I say that the hope we all have to restore ourselves to some sense of normal, hopefully a better normal, is that we all get access to a quickly administered and broadly effective vaccine or treatment.
The proximate cause of this very important debate tonight is Canadians' concern about the impact that delayed shipments of the Pfizer vaccine will have on our country's vaccination schedule. Of course, this was generated by news last week from Major-General Dany Fortin, our military commander overseeing vaccine logistics for the federal government, who confirmed that Canada will receive only one-third of expected deliveries between January 18 and February 7.
This was the third time in two weeks that the federal government's delivery schedule was revised downward. Canada will not receive any COVID-19 vaccine doses this week at all, and will only receive 79,000 doses in the first week of February. That is one-fifth of what was once expected. Major-General Fortin has yet to confirm how many doses will arrive during the second week of February.
Despite previous assurances from the Liberal government that countries will be impacted equally by supply reductions, the European Union will in fact have a much shorter interruption in deliveries than Canada. However, even before this delay, Canada's vaccine rollout had fallen far behind that of our closest allies and trading partners. For example, last week the United States administered an average of 1.16 million doses per day, but as of today Canada has only administered a total of 863,000 doses overall. Now we hear that the Biden administration is aiming to provide vaccines to 1.5 million Americans per day. The Government of Canada, by contrast, has not even established a daily target.
The government claims that the current supply interruption is a temporary and isolated incident, due to a factory expansion at Pfizer's Belgium plant, but unfortunately other factors could further disrupt Canada's delivery schedule. Just today the European Commission announced a new plan to require companies to register any exports of COVID-19 vaccines out of the European Union.
The EU is also poised to impose export controls to preserve supply on that continent. That proposal would require drug companies to seek approval before shipping vaccines to countries outside the trading bloc. Given that Canada is entirely dependent on importing COVID-19 vaccines, we could very well find ourselves squeezed by this growing vaccine nationalism.
That is the specific context for the debate, but there is a broader context. The broader context is that the Prime Minister's talking points really amount to this: We have secured the biggest portfolio of vaccines in the world, and not to worry. The truth is that Canadians are not interested in how many vaccines we could get. They are interested in how many vaccines we will get.
Moreover, the federal government's response on the entire COVID file, in my view, has been slow, weak and inconsistent. It has been marked by a shocking lack of transparency, and that is now borne out in performance. Canada is now 16th in the world in terms of vaccinations per capita, and we still have no clear plan for vaccinations in this country.
That is why New Democrats are calling on the federal government to do a number of things to rectify the situation and fulfill the dreams and hopes Canadians have for returning their economy and health to a more normal state of affairs. First, we are calling on the federal government to establish a public drug manufacturer, so that Canada is never again dependent on foreign drug companies for vaccines and critical medications during a pandemic.
It is a well-known fact by now that the government failed to negotiate with a single one of the seven drug manufacturers the right to manufacture a COVID vaccine in Canada. Many other countries did, including Australia, India, China, Malaysia, Japan, etc., and yet we still cannot receive a single explanation from the government why it failed to do so in this country. Today we are seeing the results of that as we wait, receiving no doses of vaccines while we see vaccines produced in other countries by other companies.
In the immediate term, the federal government has an obligation to outline a detailed plan in case Canada's vaccine supply is further curtailed. This morning the Prime Minister claimed that he is very confident that Canada is going to receive all promised doses by the end of March 2021 and that our vaccine supply is in “good shape”. However, he provided no explanation for this confidence, and confidence is not a plan. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister's glib response typifies the federal government's opaque, confusing and often contradictory approach to communicating Canada's vaccine plan.
As I said, for months the federal government has been totally secretive about the terms of the deals it signed with drug manufacturers. It has failed to release a single word from a single contract of the seven contracts it has signed on behalf of Canadians. This is not only unfair to the taxpayers who are paying for these doses, but also, transparency is essential for maintaining the public's trust and confidence in Canada's vaccine strategy. Taxpayers also have a right to know how their money is being spent and the provinces and territories need clarity from the federal government to adjust their vaccination programs in response to supply shortages.
New Democrats are also calling on the federal government to reveal how many vaccine doses have actually been secured for each month until September 2021; confirm if Canada is actually guaranteed delivery of four million doses of the Pfizer vaccine by the end of March and what recourse is available to us if this deadline is missed; and provide full transparency on the terms and conditions of all vaccine supply agreements between the Government of Canada and drug manufacturers. Furthermore, the Prime Minister insists that Canadians do not need to worry about the current vaccine shortage because the government's goal of securing enough COVID-19 vaccine doses to immunize all Canadians by September remains feasible. However, this talking point obscures the grim reality that Canada's current supply disruption will have severe consequences for our most vulnerable citizens.
Indeed, Canada's vaccine shortages will further delay inoculation of the highest-risk populations, namely, seniors, long-term care residents, indigenous communities, teachers, first responders and front-line health care workers, at a time when COVID-19 cases are surging and highly contagious COVID-19 variants have reached our communities. Every day that the COVID-19 vaccine rollout is delayed will result in avoidable infections and deaths across Canada. That is not positive news.
The Public Health Agency of Canada's latest modelling projects that Canada is on track to hit 10,000 new daily cases by February. We remain on a rapid growth trajectory with widespread community transmission and increased outbreaks in long-term care facilities. Public health experts are also issuing dire warnings that dangerous COVID-19 mutations could undermine Canada's COVID-19 efforts.
Yesterday, epidemiologists from Simon Fraser University warned that a massive spike in COVID-19 cases could be coming to Canada if the U.K. variant becomes further established here. The researchers looked at the exponential growth of COVID-19 cases linked to new variants of concern and concluded that failure to prevent or contain these strains now will spell disaster for Canada as early as March. The authors do not expect to see much impact for about six weeks. However, if and when the spike comes, they expect it will come steeply, with a doubling time of one to two weeks in case numbers. This would represent a sharp increase from the doubling times of 30 to 40 days recently recorded in provinces like Ontario.
The U.K. variant is believed to have a substantial transmission advantage of a 40% to 80% increase in the reproduction number. A transmission rate increase of this magnitude is worse than a higher severity or mortality rate because so many more people can get infected.
In most of Canada, we have been able to control previous variants of COVID-19 with strong physical-distancing measures. However, we are being warned that a variant with a 40% or more increase in transmission rate would likely not be contained with the measures we have in place today. Therefore, instead of relying on the Prime Minister's ambiguous assurances and unfounded confidence, we must be willing to act decisively to curtail the spread of COVID-19 in Canada now.
The federal government must take immediate steps to prevent the introduction of new variants into Canada through stricter border controls, a ban on non-essential international travel, mandatory hotel quarantine like Australia and New Zealand have introduced, and improved detection.
The federal government must also take immediate steps to prevent the spread of COVID-19 within Canada through additional essential public health measures such as paid sick days, national standards for long-term care, frequent rapid—