Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River.
It is a pleasure to follow my friend in the debate on the motion. I find it somewhat surprising, as the member for Kingston and the Islands has pointed out, the issue of some relevancy to it. The member wants to be focused on the deficit and concerns related to the deficit and therein lies a significant difference between the Government of Canada and the official opposition.
We have argued from day one that we were going to have the pandemic as the number one issue and that we would have the backs of Canadians in every way humanly possible throughout this process. There are members of the Conservative Party who are wishy-washy. Some days they are sympathetic to the pandemic, other days they are concerned about the deficit. Some say we spend too much, others are saying we are not spending enough in certain areas.
The motion brought forward by the Conservative Party today is lacking any sort of inspiration. We could have done so much better in terms of an opposition day. If they wanted to talk about the vaccination, we could have focused the debate more on what we could be doing to encourage people to get their vaccination. That is a huge issue. All levels of government are looking at that, even school divisions are looking at that. Different stakeholders are all concerned about how we can ensure that we get the maximum number of people to take the shot. We need that as a nation. It is in our collective best interests to bring that up. I would have enjoyed having that debate. During that debate, members still could have pointed out other aspects. As we have seen, members talked about a wide variety of issues already today. However, that would have been far more productive.
Another idea we could have talked about might have been the whole issue of our environment because the Conservatives are flip-flopping all over the place on that issue. Do they believe in real climate change? It depends on who we ask. Sometimes the leader of the Conservative Party says yes and the party membership says no. Many Conservative MPs for years and years have been saying no to a price on pollution. The current leader seems to have adopted what the Liberal Party and the rest of the world have been saying, that yes, a price on pollution is a good thing.
There are all sorts of things we could have been debating. On the issue of the motion itself, the Conservatives are completely out of touch with reality. I always enjoy speeches by the member for Calgary Nose Hill. The Conservatives would have had 40 million or 50 million vaccines in September of last year. Domestic production would have been ramped up and going in July of last year.
It does not work that way. The reality is that there has been a process of consultation, working with stakeholders, ensuring Canada as a nation was doing as much as possible in order to minimize the negative impacts of the coronavirus. We have been doing that and working with stakeholders and Canadians from coast to coast to coast from the beginning.
We have seen some very encouraging things in the last number of months. I remember toward the end of last year when we finally started to have hope that the vaccines were going to be coming out. Contrary to what Conservatives might like to tell people, it was only at the end of last year that they were starting to be approved. Canada was one of the first countries in the world to start receiving vaccines.
It has not been perfect. Companies like Pfizer wanted to ramp up services in January and February in order to have larger numbers, which not only benefited Canada but countries around the world. That did cause some disruption and concern, but late last year we set a target of six million doses by the end of March, the first quarter of the year. We more than exceeded that.
Not that long ago I did Facebook Live and talked about how Canada as a country will now have somewhere between 45 million and 50 million doses of vaccine. Our population is 37.5 million and we are going to have 45 million to 50 million doses of vaccine before the end of June. We are a federation, meaning we have to work with provinces, and that is what we have done. Our primary responsibility was to ensure the vaccines were safe and to get them to communities, and that is what the federal government has done.
The Conservatives twist the numbers. They will say that fewer than 2% of Canadians have had the double dose. They should listen to what health care experts are saying. Why would they use 2%? The number they should be using is the number of people who have been vaccinated. It is not a political decision in terms of when people should get the second dose, at least not at the national level. We are consistently following the advice of health experts. Science matters with this government. Obviously the Conservatives do not give a damn about science, health experts or what they are saying because their comments do not reflect it. I say shame on the Conservative Party of Canada. The misleading information that comes from the Conservative Party can be found in speeches that its leader gave today in the House on the issue, and even the health critic.
The facts are there and speak for themselves. Is Canada number one of all of the countries? No. We have had some limitations that other countries have not had, i.e., domestic production. That is no fault of this government over the last four years. On that issue, we have invested tens of millions of dollars to ramp up so we do not find ourselves in this situation in the future, especially if booster shots are required and things of that nature. We are investing to ensure that we will have domestic capability in the future. It is not this government's fault that many years ago domestic manufacturing started to disappear. We have been very successful in acquiring vaccine doses.
Conservatives talk about percentages and like to play with statistics to put fear in Canadians, but we know what the facts really are. Close to 15 million Canadians have already received a vaccine, not in terms of doses in arms but Canada as a country. We will have almost 50 million doses before the end of June. Almost 13 million have been administered by provinces and territories, and that is an important point. Conservatives do not seem to want to recognize that we are in a federation, that the federal government needs to work with provinces and territories. The provinces have a lot of the controls for which we are being criticized and—