Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Beauport—Limoilou.
We did not need to cite many reasons, Mr. Speaker, to convince you of the urgency of this debate, and rightly so. There is a total lack of transparency with respect to the vaccination schedule and the contracts.
The key words in my speech this evening are “the urgent need for action” and “transparency”. To date, the virus has resulted in 19,238 deaths in Canada and infected more than 753,000 people. In Quebec, 256,000 have been infected and 9,577 have died. I want to stress these numbers because we should never see them as mere statistics and downplay these deaths and human suffering.
We have all been directly or indirectly affected by the death of a parent, friend or acquaintance, or we all know someone who has lost a loved one. Not to mention all the patients not suffering from COVID-19 who are awaiting treatment. It will be too late for some of them. There is also the exhaustion and desperation of front-line workers, those who were direct or indirect victims of the virus. This evening I am thinking with compassion of the family of the young doctor who recently took her life.
People have lost their jobs, they have declared or are on the verge of bankruptcy, or they are living in a state of perpetual stress. Many Quebeckers and Canadians of all ages are experiencing mental health issues. This virus is pernicious and insidious. It demands that each and every one of us adopt an impeccable hygiene routine and ironclad perseverance. A single misstep can have unfortunate consequences for ourselves and for others.
Managing a health crisis of this scale involves making decisions. This virus is always two weeks ahead of us, which is why we need to be proactive. I will come back to this point later. One thing is certain: We must never waver or hesitate. These decisions are urgent.
To date, Quebec has vaccinated 225,000 people. It is two weeks ahead of schedule, but supplies have run out. There are no more vaccines this week. The Prime Minister should apologize for claiming that the vaccines would end up sitting in refrigerators.
A year ago today, we were taking stock of the enemy at our gates. We knew then that the only way out was vaccination and that, in the meantime, we had to manage time and space. We had to manage time to develop a vaccine, we had to take the time to wash our hands regularly for at least 20 seconds, we had to take the time to put on a mask. We had to manage the space between ourselves, from a total lack of contact in lockdown to two metres of physical distancing, to avoid contaminating one another.
If we were not ready for the first wave, we had to be ready for the second wave, and we had to be ready for the solution to get out of the crisis, namely vaccination. There have been several decision-making steps since the beginning of the management of this pandemic. These included border closures, quarantine requirements for foreign workers, the wage subsidy and amendments to the subsidy to prevent political parties from taking money away from the companies, employers and employees who really needed it. They also included changes to the CERB to incentivize work and the necessary changes to the commercial rent relief program.
More recently, there was talk of banning discretionary travel, including travel to sunny destinations and other vacation spots during school breaks. There has also been discussion of starting to monitor travellers in quarantine for greater control and to better protect Canada from the threat of virulent new variants.
There is also the matter we are considering this evening, namely vaccine procurement.
The Liberal government is dragging its feet. Unfortunately, this has become a pattern in how the Liberals are managing this historic pandemic. From the very beginning of the pandemic, we have known that vaccination would be the light at the end of the tunnel, a chance for survival for a patient who might otherwise have been seriously ill, and a chance to finally get out of this enormously difficult situation and our restricted economy.
How did we get here?
The Prime Minister boasts about the size and diversity of the vaccine portfolio, but it is important that those vaccines arrive on time and that the provinces and Quebec can plan for the deliveries. A predictable vaccine supply is critical for Quebec, the provinces and territories. Transparency is crucial when it comes to the delivery schedule. Currently, we know the amount, but we do not know either the costs, the contractual agreements or the delivery times. I suppose the government negotiated in good faith, but it is as though it did nothing to ensure delivery. However, when it comes to any procurement deal, the basic equation is amount, cost and delivery. In this case, only the amount is known.
On November 27, 2020, the Public Health Agency of Canada told us that the entire population would be vaccinated by 2021 but did not specify if it would be vaccination or immunization. Dr. Njoo said that three million Canadians would be vaccinated during the first quarter of 2021. To be honest, I am not sure how anyone could think that, especially now with the Pfizer delivery delays. Earlier, the Minister of Public Services and Procurement talked about six million doses, but we have to divide that in two, so does six million doses really mean three million immunizations?
One thing is certain: The government should share scenarios ranging from the best to worst case. That would give us a sense of the numbers and the hypotheticals underpinning its vaccination time frame, assuming there is a vaccination plan, which I doubt this evening. Even so, there is still time to do things properly. Better late than never.
How can the government claim that everyone who wants the vaccine will get it by this fall? Personally, with the data I have in hand and considering how little the government is telling us about its hypothetical vaccination plan, I cannot guarantee that. That is the least we can tell people who are currently on lockdown and under curfew in Quebec.
The government must not make the same mistakes. It did not properly invest in our self-sufficiency in terms of vaccine production. The government needs to quickly reduce our dependence on vaccines produced abroad.
The government needs to take the necessary measures to increase local production because there are going to be other pandemics. We cannot continue to depend on others. I imagine that the agreements the government negotiated are ironclad because it divested itself of the means that it had. It had the legal means to ensure a minimum of local production.
I would like answers to all of these questions. Fortunately, this evening's debate gives us an opportunity to ask those questions.