Madam Speaker, let me start where my hon. colleague left off regarding the approval process and our regulators at Health Canada.
The member spoke about Canadians needing to trust, understand and feel hope. While I have a lot of respect for the member opposite as a parliamentarian and I know he has a role to play, I think the diatribe he just went through is quite detrimental to helping Canadians feel safe and secure about our institutions, and in particular about the independent regulators of Health Canada.
If his constituents mistrust the media, again, he has a very important role to play in providing them with resources based on science and fact. There are a lot of conspiracy theories out there. Frankly, there are a lot of conspiracy theories rampant within the Conservative Party and among members in the House. In fact, one of them was removed from the Conservative Party because he seemed to have gone too far. However, there are others in the party who seem to be okay with conspiracy theories.
It is incredibly important that as parliamentarians we demonstrate to Canadians the safety and effectiveness of vaccines and that we have trust in our health regulators. Health Canada is world-renown.
The member opposite spoke about the timing of the approvals of vaccines. That was not without significant investments into Health Canada and human resources. Health Canada officials worked around the clock to ensure that as vaccines were being developed, they were prepared to receive information and review it, given the global pandemic we are facing. In fact, all of the approved drugs in Canada went through a regular review process. We simply put in place measures to speed up that process given the pandemic.
If we look at hours to hours when it comes to the regulatory review process, they were comparable. Thank God we have the dedicated public servants we do. They put in the incredible work so that as soon as the pharmaceutical companies were ready with vaccines, they could come forward to our world-renown regulator and get the process going.
When it comes to Trikafta, we were waiting for the company to put forward an application, which it has now done. We are very happy for that. I know that many Canadians are looking forward to that process. Frankly, there are a number of things that the pandemic has demonstrated regarding how we can take some of the lessons learned moving forward to put in place even better systems.
When it comes to misinformation or disinformation from the Conservative Party, I hope the member opposite will convey to his constituents how safe and effective the vaccines are. They are going to be a major contributor to getting ourselves out of the pandemic so that Canadians can be safe and healthy again.