Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to wrap up our day of debate on the Conservative Party motion. I am taking this opportunity to broadcast my remarks on Facebook Live. This may be one of the last times I will be able to do so because there is now a bill that seeks to control what we can say online.
Getting back to today's motion, we asked the government to give all Canadians access to at least one dose of the vaccine by the end of May. Since the beginning of the day, the Liberals have been telling us that our request does not make any sense. The Bloc Québécois and the NDP have been telling us the same thing.
I think that people read over what we are asking for too quickly. We are not asking for the moon. We know that nine million Canadians have already received one dose and that we are expecting 11 million more doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines by the end of May. That means we are short only 18 million doses to give every Canadian access to at least one dose.
Plus, even though our motion calls for access to vaccines by the end of May, we do not expect that everyone will have been vaccinated. We want Canadians to at least be able to get an appointment. I myself made an appointment two weeks ago, and I will get my jab two weeks from now. That is what we are asking for.
The reason we are asking for this is that we have clearly seen how, for the past year, the Liberal government and the Prime Minister have been unable to do their job for Canadians. Our economy is at a standstill. Over 24,000 Canadians have died. The provinces are burdened with managing the situation. Premiers, especially those of Quebec and Ontario, which have larger populations, are under enormous pressure. Canada's major cities are also locked down.
The government's management was a mess. First, there was the infamous agreement with the communist Chinese government and CanSino, as my colleagues have pointed out today. We never understood why the government's first move was to talk to the Chinese, sign an agreement with them and send them intellectual property and knowledge from Canada and Dalhousie University on vaccine development. The government sent them all of that information and, a week after the agreement was announced, was told that it would not work out. We did not find out right away, because the government was ashamed, and rightly so. It took three months before we learned that we had been swindled.
In the meantime, all of the G7 and G20 countries were negotiating with the big pharmaceutical companies in order to reach an agreement and draft clear contracts with clearly defined timelines. We can see the contracts that other countries signed, but cannot see our own.
Our allies were preparing. New York City will reopen at 100% on July 1. Everyone is vaccinated and will be able to get back to their lives. The city will be open. We can see the United States reopening on a large scale, and the same is true for other countries.
We, the Conservatives, are being blamed today for asking for 18 million doses by the end of May. I cannot understand how the members and ministers on the other side of the House can rise and insult the Conservative Party by calling it crazy for making its request.
As I stated at the beginning of my speech, we are not asking for the moon. We are asking for a bare minimum so we can tell Canadians that we are going to emerge from this pandemic. We are calling on the government to give all Canadians one dose in the next few weeks, that there be a second dose and that we can get this done.
We have figures and medical experts have explained how to do this. We know that before we can talk about reopening, at least 20% of the population must receive two doses and 75% must receive one. We are asking that everyone receive one dose by the end of next month, which represents 18 million doses. We know that some vaccines are on the way and that nine million people have already been vaccinated. It is not as though we were asking for the moon.
Today has been very insulting. I spent my day in the House listening to everyone rant on about us and treat us like we are crazy, when all we have been doing for the past year is simply asking this government to get things moving and sign clear agreements. Instead, the government has been hiding information from us. We have moved motions to ask to see the contracts or even just parts of them. The answer is no.
I can see the contracts signed by the United States, Israel and countries in the European Union. Parts of those contracts are redacted, of course. We have access to most of the information, the information that is needed to know where we are going, from other countries but not our own. That is unacceptable.
We will not allow ourselves to be treated like this by the Prime Minister who always stands up in front of Canadians and says that his government is making such a big effort, that his government is the best and that Canada has the strongest border control measures when variants are getting in. If we had the best border management system, variants would have never gotten in. There are all sorts of things that do not make any sense.
I do not have much time, so I will close by saying that we know where we can get 18 million vaccine doses. They are just across the border.
Right now, 50 million AstraZeneca doses are waiting in U.S. warehouses. They do not want them. They do not need them. They have already loaned us 1.5 million doses. The Prime Minister needs to ask his buddy, President Joe Biden, to send him 18 million doses so he can comply with the Conservative Party motion to ensure at least one dose will be available to each Canadian by the end of May. It is simple. He just has to ask the U.S. president to send him 18 million doses, which he will pay back in time. That is how it works.
