Business of Supply  Madam Chair, what I would say is that as soon as we found out about the obligations, we stopped shipments. No more shipments were received. The contract was terminated subsequent to that.

Business of Supply  Madam Chair, it was in January 2021. That was when we ended shipments.

Business of Supply  Madam Chair, Sinopharm provided a declaration to PSPC in April 2021. All deliveries were completed in December 2021.

Business of Supply  Madam Chair, in 2018, we implemented the policy on ethical procurement of apparel. The contract security program provides security screening for personnel and organizations to safeguard protected classified information. PSPC, when contracting, includes—

Business of Supply  Madam Chair, what I will confirm is that as soon as allegations are made clear to us, we respond to those and we take those allegations very seriously.

Business of Supply  Madam Chair, again, I will reiterate: when we hear of allegations, we take those allegations very seriously. We have terms in the contract that allow us to terminate the contracts. We act on allegations that we hear.

Business of Supply  Madam Chair, what I would say is that we have implemented a number of measures in this regard to eradicate forced labour. Four ministers have mandate commitments in their mandate letters to move forward with the eradication of forced labour. For me, in PSPC, I am going to do everything I can to prevent forced labour in the supply chains.

Business of Supply  Madam Chair, I would like to assure Canadians that I am fully committed to ensuring the diversity of the Government of Canada's procurement process. This is an extremely important initiative for me. As part of our efforts to diversify, we have issued RFIs to gather input from Canadian Black businesses, businesses owned and operated by persons with disabilities, and businesses owned or led by members of the LGBTQ2+ community.

Business of Supply  Madam Chair, I am very pleased to say this is another tool. Vaccines, of course, are the most important, but to date, we have procured 1.7 million therapeutic treatments that we are giving to the provinces and territories. We received 155,722 treatment courses of Paxlovid. We are going to continue to receive these treatment courses and support provinces and territories.

Business of Supply  Madam Chair, the web services are the big-ticket item. The smaller items are items like pencils and things like that.

Business of Supply  Madam Chair, actually, we are absolutely supporting small and medium-sized businesses. As I have said, 42% of COVID spending with respect to procurement was for Canadian domestic businesses. We have entered into major contracts. Millions of masks are being produced locally here and we are going to continue to do that.

Business of Supply  Madam Chair, I would like to add, with respect to the support for small businesses, that we have Procurement Assistance Canada. It helps small businesses, as I spoke about earlier this evening, to navigate in order to procure goods. We are going to continue to support them.

Business of Supply  Madam Chair, we have provisions in our contracts now that do not permit forced labour to be used, and if it is used we can terminate the contract.

Business of Supply  Madam Chair, we will continue to work to enforce the terms of our contracts to ensure that there is no forced labour and that the obligations of the contract are fulfilled.

Business of Supply  Madam Chair, I am pleased to talk about the progress we have made with forced labour. PSPC has now put in a code of conduct that has to be signed. There are provisions in the contracts that say if there is forced labour, we have the opportunity to terminate the contract. We are going to continue to move forward in this regard because we are absolutely against forced labour and—