moved:
That this House do now adjourn.
Mr. Speaker, I will be dividing my time with the shadow minister for health, the MP for Calgary Nose Hill.
This is an emergency debate so that Parliament can be seized with the lack of vaccines and the lack of an effective and consistent rollout of vaccines in a pandemic.
Today, the Prime Minister described the situation as things being in “good shape”, which is his quote, for vaccine deliveries in Canada. He thinks we are in good shape while COVID cases are setting record numbers in a week that Canada is receiving zero vaccines. He thinks we are in good shape when Canadians will only receive 8% of the vaccines his government promised Canadians just last month, 8%.
If this is what the Prime Minister considers “good shape”, what does he consider terrible shape, 3%? Canadians need a prime minister who understands that things are not okay, that Canadians are not okay.
Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of the first presumptive COVID-19 case in Canada, and since then, almost 20,000 Canadian families have had to face the loss of a loved one due to COVID-19
Today the Prime Minister is telling us that everything is fine, but I refuse to bury my head in the sand like him. We have to be honest with Canadians: Everything is not fine.
Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of Canada's first presumed case of COVID-19. Since then, 10% of our fellow citizens have lost their jobs, and thousands of businesses have closed their doors.
We must secure vaccines; we must secure jobs and we must act now to secure our future.
What has the Liberal government done to improve its slow and confused approach? We want to see the government succeed in securing vaccines for Canada because vaccines let us turn the corner on COVID-19, but in reality, time and time again the government lets Canadians down.
Last spring, we saw countries hoarding PPE when faced with a global crisis. Planes full of supplies were diverted or never arrived. We saw countries stop the export of PPE from their countries. The Deputy Prime Minister called trying to secure medical supplies during the first wave the “wild west”, so are we really surprised to see the same thing happening with vaccines? It seems that time and time again the Prime Minister and the Liberal government never learned a single lesson from the first wave of this pandemic.
There is no plan B because there was never an effective plan A for the distribution and securing of vaccines for Canadians. Now we are learning the European Union is stopping vaccines before they leave its borders. All of our present vaccine supply comes from Europe, so where does that leave Canadians?
This week, in the midst of a raging pandemic, we are receiving zero vaccines. Is that an indication of where we are going in the next few weeks? The health and prosperity of Canadians is at stake. The bottom line is we need vaccines to secure our future, rebuild our economy and get Canadians back to work.
While Canada's Conservatives are committed to protecting jobs, the Liberals appear to be holding meetings to save their own. With the return of the House, our team will relentlessly focus on the COVID-19 recovery, jobs, rising wages and getting Canada's economy and finances back on track.
The Liberals, by contrast, view this pandemic as an opportunity to experiment on risky, ideologically driven and unproven schemes involving the Canadian economy. They want to reimagine the economy, which means they will decide which Canadians get jobs and what sectors they target for recovery.
This Liberal "Ottawa knows best" approach is a distraction from getting vaccines into the arms of Canadians and getting Canadians back to work in every sector and in every region of this country.
At the beginning of the pandemic, the Liberals decided to send some of our medical equipment to China. We ended up having to buy that same equipment at exorbitant prices.
Now the Prime Minister wants to play with our economy instead of finding a stable solution for vaccines. This is not the time to experiment with our economy. This is not the time to push an ideology. The only goal should be acquiring vaccines so we can get our economy up and running again. The government needs to work with the opposition parties to improve distribution.
Canadians are also feeling a range of pandemic side effects. We are all seeing this in our ridings. Some two-fifths of Canadian workers are worried about the mental health and wellness of one of their colleagues. Hundreds of thousands of surgeries across this country have been delayed. Millions of people have lost their jobs. Millions of people have not been able to see their family members, in some cases for months.
The pandemic is having numerous side effects. Mental health problems are growing every day. Families are being left to educate their children at home.
The ability to get our country to rebuild the economy and get Canadians back to work in every sector, in every part of the country, so that we can pull together and bounce back from COVID, hinges on a smooth and stable rollout of vaccines. As I have said several times this week, the opposition Conservatives want the government to succeed. We want to see these vaccines. Our nation literally depends upon it for turning the corner in this pandemic.
In October, the opposition passed a sweeping motion to direct the health committee to study the COVID-19 pandemic. That included information about the government's vaccine rollout and key related documents. It became clear then, with each week and with more documents, that the government had no real plan to speak of. It was late to the game on vaccine procurement.
The Liberals then took a victory lap when they announced deals with Pfizer and a few other companies. They boasted about their portfolio of vaccines over the next several years. However, Canadians do not have several years to wait. They need vaccines now, just as other countries are getting. At the very least, Canadians need the knowledge of when they can anticipate receiving a vaccine and life starting to return to normal.
Even the government's own MPs are confused. Last night the member for Hull—Aylmer said the government was counting on vaccines yet to be approved to reach its own numbers. If Liberal MPs do not know what the plan is, how are Canadians supposed to know what the plan is?
The key to getting our country back on track is vaccines. We need a reliable government. The truth is that there is now a shortage of vaccines. The Prime Minister talks a good game, but the reality is that we will not receive any Pfizer vaccines this week.
Premiers report they are running out of vaccines. This week Canadians know we are receiving zero vaccines. Next week, according to a revised schedule, Canada will receive less than a third of what the government said we would have just a month ago. The following week, the schedule uses the term “unknown”. Unknown is proof there is no plan.
Between now and the middle of February, Canada was supposed to receive a million vaccines. Instead, we will be getting 8% of that. Perhaps the Prime Minister thinks that 8% is acceptable. The Conservatives do not.
We need to secure our future. We need better from a slow and always confused government, and a Prime Minister who chose to partner with a Chinese firm to develop a vaccine. It was a reckless partnership that broke down and resulted in us being months behind our peer countries.
The Liberals did not move quickly. They partnered with the wrong country. They lost the chance to manufacture the vaccine here at home. Again, the Liberals learned nothing from the first wave of the pandemic. The Prime Minister and his deputy rode us back into the Wild West, where vaccines can be withheld and Canada is falling behind. We need to do better.
We want our government to succeed, but the Prime Minister is letting us down.
We need to work together.
It is imperative we work together to get the vaccines we need to get this country moving and get people working to secure our future. Canadians deserve leadership. They deserve a plan tonight. We will work together to push for just that.