Madam Speaker, I must say, parenthetically, that I sat on the health committee for the last two years and my hon. colleague, the member for Calgary Nose Hill, a year and a half ago, was hammering at the need for this government to provide rapid tests. Here we have a bill before us, a two-section bill, that would allow this government to provide rapid tests to Canadians, and the Conservatives are saying, “We have to hold this up.” I do not understand their position.
However, my question is about the numbers. In my talks with department officials, they confirmed that this $2.5 billion would purchase about 400 million rapid tests. To put that in context, Dr. David Juncker, the department chair of biomedical engineering at McGill University, estimates that with the highly transmissible omicron variant Canada would require as many as 600 million to 700 million tests per month and then two tests per person every week once the wave subsides.
Considering how important testing and tracing is, because we cannot treat what we do not measure, can the hon. minister tell us if this is anywhere near the number of rapid tests that this country is actually going to need to help get Canadians out of this pandemic?