Justin Trudeau

[Official Languages, November 25th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, we will always continue to protect and promote our official languages.

That is why we amended the long-form census to enumerate all rights holders. That is why we supported Ontario's French-language university and developed a historic $1.7-billion plan to support our communities. That is why we have only appointed bilingual judges to the Supreme Court, something that the Conservatives refuse to do. As we said in the throne speech, we are committed to protecting French in both Quebec and the rest of Canada, and we will continue to work on modernizing the Official Languages Act.

[Official Languages, November 25th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, this government has an excellent Minister of Official Languages who has been working hard for the past several years to protect French across the country and especially in Quebec.

In the latest throne speech, we mentioned how important this is, so I can assure members that we will be moving forward with the long-awaited modernization of the Official Languages Act.

[Health, November 25th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, as I said, Canada has the best portfolio of vaccines purchased in the world, including two domestic vaccine candidates, VIDO-InterVac and Medicago, but the member opposite was asking what happened to domestic manufacturing in Canada. The Conservative government happened to domestic manufacturing.

In 2007, AstraZeneca and Bristol Myers closed their Canadian manufacturing operations. In 2010, Johnson & Johnson and Merck's Montreal research centres closed their facilities. In 2011, Teva closed one of its Canadian manufacturing operations. In 2012, AstraZeneca, GSK and Sanofi announced closings and layoffs.

That is what happened to manufacturing—

[Health, November 25th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, allow me to reassure anyone who actually might have listened to, or might tend to believe, anything the member just said. We will get those vaccines well in advance of the dates she is offering up, which I will not even repeat.

We have signed and secured vaccine-delivery contracts for 2021 with tens of millions of doses. We know how important it is to deliver them quickly. In signing the contracts, yes, we looked at different ways of ensuring domestic production as much as we were able to, but that, unfortunately, is not something we can move forward on.

[Health, November 25th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, around the world, various parliaments and governments are having to explain to their citizens and to their oppositions why Canada has done so much better than them on getting a better portfolio of vaccines and more doses per capita than their countries were able to.

Canada has negotiated, through working with experts and scientists and relying on their recommendations, an excellent portfolio of vaccines with tens of millions of doses for Canadians. Those scientists and researchers are working very quickly to get those vaccines as soon as possible to Canadians.

[Health, November 25th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased that the member opposite actually read the press release from last summer. He just did not read the whole thing. It is an investment and a commission to build a vaccine-manufacturing facility at the Royalmount National Research Council facility in Montreal, but we are still in construction of that facility.

We have made investments to stand up more biomanufacturing capacity in Canada after 10 long years of a Conservative government that saw most of our vaccine manufacturers cut their production and, indeed, leave Canada. We will continue to invest in science. We will deliver vaccines to Canadians.

[Health, November 25th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, I was indeed very proud to announce an investment in the National Research Council of Canada in August in order to ensure that it is able to produce vaccines in emergency situations. That will be implemented for next summer or fall.

In the meantime, we have been working with partners around the world to ensure that Canada will have access to tens of millions of doses of the vaccine when they become available.

[Health, November 25th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, every expert and scientist in the country is working on COVID-19.

Vaccination experts provided us with recommendations that helped us establish the best portfolio of potential vaccines anywhere in the world. We will continue to work with them and with our partners in Canada.

I made an announcement last summer about investments in Montreal that will ensure that we have vaccine manufacturing capacity. The Conservative government under-invested in science, development and research, but we will continue to invest and to be there to meet Canadians' expectations.

[Health, November 25th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, from day one, we have been working with experts across the country to meet Canadians' expectations.

That is how we ended up securing more doses of vaccine per capita than any other country in the world. That is how we ended up with a solid plan to work with the provinces and territories and our partners to deliver these vaccines as soon as they are available.

We will work with the experts who established these plans, because, on this side of the House, we trust experts and scientists from across the country.

[Official Languages, November 25th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, as a proud Quebecker, I have always known that the best way to ensure a bilingual Canada is to ensure that Quebec is first and foremost a francophone Quebec. Our government has been working on this for quite some time.

I will not wait for the Conservatives to lecture us on protecting the French language. They refuse to appoint exclusively bilingual judges to the Supreme Court. They have no problem appointing unilingual anglophone judges to the Supreme Court. We have taken a different approach.

We will protect the French language in Quebec and across Canada.