Mr. Speaker, I am glad that my colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands requested this emergency debate today, but I recall being in this House in January having a similar emergency debate on the inability of the Liberal government to access and distribute vaccines, their putting of the impetus on the provinces and the potential of a third wave. I definitely do not want to be back here in May, June or July having a third emergency debate on the Liberal government's inability to procure and distribute vaccines to the provinces to ensure that every Canadian is vaccinated.
I am going to go in a different direction than other speakers have this evening because of a phone conversation I had yesterday afternoon. One of my constituents, a 19-year-old girl, called me to have a discussion about her brother. Unfortunately, her brother committed suicide. Her brother committed suicide because of isolation, losing jobs, and the inability to see his friends and family. That is just one of many stories that I know all of us in this House have heard from constituents.
This was a 20-year-old young man who had his whole life in front of him, but after a year of lockdowns, quarantines and restrictions, the mental health impacts on his life were just too much for him to bear. We cannot have those stories any longer. This cannot be the new normal. Canadians need hope that there will be an end to this crisis.
The mental health implications of the COVID pandemic are frightening. We saw the report from the Canadian Mental Health Association in December, which said that almost 50% of Canadians had reported that their mental health has deteriorated. That was six months ago. I am sure that number is much higher.
We have seen an incredible increase in domestic abuse, suicides and opioid overdose deaths. My province of Alberta saw skyrocketing numbers in terms of the opioid crisis, and suicide numbers tripled over a two-quarter period late last year. Canadians have had enough, but what is most frustrating about the impact this has had on Canadians' mental health is that this could have been prevented.
A year ago, we were asking the Liberal government to ensure that it had agreements and contracts in place to procure vaccines that Canadians would need. In November and December, the Prime Minister stood at the podium and said there would be millions of vaccines for Canadians, but through January, February and March, Canadians were not being vaccinated anywhere near the rate of our G7 counterparts and countries around the world. As a result of the federal government's inability to meet the most basic needs and ensure the safety of its constituents, Canadians are dying not only of COVID-19, but also because a mental health crisis.
I know the government says that we cannot go back to the past, but the past often dictates where we are going in the future. It is very clear that the Liberal government's inability to access and procure vaccines is rooted in the mistakes it made a year ago when it was putting its faith in an agreement with the Chinese Communist Party and CanSino, which, to the shock of no one, fell through last summer. The Prime Minister and his procurement minister were scrambling, going with hat in hand to pharmaceutical companies, asking for whatever they could get.
As a result of that, we see where we are right now. We see other countries, such as the United Kingdom and the United States, have been vaccinating their citizens at a much quicker pace, but they also had very strict guidelines in the contracts they signed with pharmaceutical companies. They ensured that if those pharmaceutical companies did not meet their delivery commitments, there were consequences. In most cases these were financial, but certainly the monthly reports had to be transparent.
We do not know here in Canada if we have similar contracts signed with Moderna, AstraZeneca or Pfizer because the Liberal government has refused to share those contracts with the Canadian public. The Canadian public deserves to know exactly where we stand.
Other countries have shared those contracts with their citizens. In fact, the United States has one of the contracts that we signed. It knows what is in that contract, and has made it public, but Canadians here at home are not allowed to see those contracts because the Liberal government is blocking that information.
We had a motion here in the House in October, which was passed unanimously by the House, to ensure that all documents and information regarding the COVID pandemic and the response to the pandemic were provided to parliamentarians. Those documents have been trickling out, but we still have not had an opportunity to see those contracts. I put a motion in front of the health committee more than a month ago asking specifically if the law clerk had those contracts and, if not, that he prioritize accessing those contracts from the government. It has been almost six weeks, and we still have not seen those contracts at the health committee.
Now, I am not naive. I know that there will be information redacted, which is why we asked that it go to the law clerk before it is redacted by the government. There may definitely be some information in there that is sensitive that the government and those pharmaceutical companies do not want to share. However, I think it behooves the government to show Canadians the contracts it signed, because we are in this Liberal-government third wave that could have been prevented had it been able to procure and distribute vaccines months before.
This was brought up in question period today, and I am sure in the debate tonight we will hear some more about this disagreement in facts, but the facts are that only 2% of Canadians have had two doses of the vaccine. In the United States the rate is close to 30%, and some states are already going to a third shot as a booster. It is incredible to see the difference in this country when we compare it to others. Not to mention, I heard yesterday from a pundit on the news that we are spending like a first-world country but getting third-world results, and I could not think of a better description of what we are seeing.
Thanks to some research from my staff member Mark Choi, I was able to find out what we were paying for an AstraZeneca vaccine. In Canada, we are spending $8.00 for an AstraZeneca vaccine. I know that many Canadians say that they do not care what it takes, and they want that to happen. I agree, but in the United States it is $4.00. In the EU, it is $2.00.
We are spending, in many cases, triple or double what other countries are paying, yet we are not getting those vaccines. If I am paying a premium, I expect premium services, and we are not getting that. Now we are seeing the provinces having to struggle and try to find ways to vaccinate their citizenry.
Also, we are one of the only countries in the world that has gone off label in telling our constituents that they will not get that second dose until four months down the road. We have asked Pfizer if that meets its requirements and if that would still be acceptable, but it will not answer that question because it does not know. It does not want to make that commitment. So, we are continuing to roll this out when only 2% of Canadians have had both their vaccines and now we are waiting four months for that second dose. It is unacceptable. That is poor leadership and poor action, or inaction, by the government, and it has to apologize to Canadians.
We cannot keep this up. As I said, this cannot be the new normal. Our mental health and financial health just cannot take this much longer. We have been on this roller-coaster ride, or, as I like to say, hamster wheel, for a year. I commend Canadians, and I certainly commend my constituents, for how they have handled what has been a very difficult time.
However, we have asked Canadians to do a lot, and there is a breaking point. As I have said, we have seen many Canadians getting to that breaking point as our mental health continues to deteriorate.
Last year, we approached many Canadian pharmaceutical companies with vaccines that were ready to be produced and tested here in Canada, but the Liberal government ignored them. It still fails to support homegrown opportunities. Mr. Sorenson, the CEO of Providence Therapeutics yesterday said, “We're getting contacted by probably two or three countries per week asking if we could supply them with vaccine booster doses in 2022.... We're trying to get those things moving...to convey [that] urgency, but we're just not getting...reciprocated from [our own Canadian] government.”
Again, the failures are piling up and, unfortunately, Canadians are the ones paying the price.