Mr. Speaker, Canadians are waiting for a COVID-19 vaccine to help control the spread of the virus and protect our most vulnerable citizens. The vaccine needs to be free for Canadians, it needs to be effective and it needs to be safe.
In my question to the government, I asked if it was time to return to the model of publicly owned laboratories to develop low-cost medicines and vaccines to serve the greater good. In his response, the minister put forward a list of corporations that have received government funding for vaccine initiatives. That did not answer my question.
The government has reserved 414 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines with six private sector contracts. We still do not know how much this will cost taxpayers, but we do know that none of the vaccines will be produced here and that Canadians will have to wait for our supply. I ask members to imagine how different our situation would be if the vaccines were being produced here at a government-owned lab, where public health is the motive instead of profit.
For 70 years, government-owned Connaught Medical Research Laboratories developed low-cost vaccines and other medicines for Canadians. It was established in Toronto in 1914 by Dr. John FitzGerald to produce the diphtheria vaccine. FitzGerald struck a deal with the University of Toronto to house the lab. As a non-commercial entity, all proceeds were dedicated to the improvement of public health and education.
Before the establishment of Connaught Labs, Canadians were reliant on expensive vaccines and medicines produced in the United States, a situation that echoes where we are today. After the discovery of insulin at the University of Toronto, Connaught Labs expanded to manufacture and distribute, at cost, in Canada and overseas. Connaught produced typhus vaccines, polio vaccines and penicillin. It created mass-production techniques that played a crucial role in reducing diseases around the world. Its work saved millions of lives.
Connaught was a proud Canadian success story, but in 1972 it was sold to the federally owned Canada Development Corporation by the Liberal government. A for-profit model was imposed, prices were increased and manufacturing standards were lowered. In 1986, after years of lobbying from the private sector, the Conservative government sold Connaught to a private corporation, ending the era of non-profit government-supported medical development for the public interest.
It is all about the free market and corporate profits now. We still have publicly funded universities doing research, but the breakthroughs and developments achieved in these labs are exploited for profit, not public health. Where is the return on that public investment?
Canada needs a universal pharmacare program, and the government has promised to introduce it. We are the only country with universal medicare that does not have a universal pharmacare program as well. The cost of visiting a doctor is covered but the treatment they prescribe is not.
As the cost of medication grows increasingly more expensive, many people are forced to choose between filling their prescriptions and paying their rent or putting food on the table. When people cannot afford their prescriptions, they often end up in the hospital, which is far more costly for all of us. This is not acceptable in a country as wealthy as Canada.
Re-establishing publicly funded labs based on the Connaught model would ensure that universal pharmacare is affordable for Canadians, not a cash cow for the pharmaceutical industry. Let us work together toward this sensible solution.
