Health  Mr. Speaker, we spoke about being responsible and being kind to each other. I will try to make it even more simple. Instead of 135,000, I will use three, which is a simple number. Three times is how many more deaths we would have had in Canada if we had followed the example of the United States when it came to public health measures and vaccination rates.

Health  Mr. Speaker, I am trying to be non-partisan, but the hon. member was not here before the last election, so she may not know that, roughly 13 months ago, her party said that Canadians would be the last in the world to be vaccinated, that they would not be vaccinated until 2030. Canadians have been vaccinated in large numbers and, in most cases, before other countries.

Health  Mr. Speaker, this is not about politics. It is about responsibility. When one is in government, one must be responsible. I believe that everyone in the House of Commons, not just the government members, must be responsible. I look around and see that members of the Conservative Party are suddenly declaring that COVID-19 is over and that masks are no longer necessary.

Health  Mr. Speaker, I know this might sound a bit complicated, so let me make this very simple. It is 8,000 and 25,000. Eight thousand is the number of people who will be receiving either their first or second dose today, and 25,000 is the number of people who will be receiving their booster dose today.

Health  Mr. Speaker, let me again thank not only my colleague, whose company and work I enjoy, but also all Canadians. Let me say the vaccination mandates that opposition Conservative MPs opposed during the campaign have saved not only hundreds of lives but thousands of lives. Estimates are about 1,600 people in the last few months have had their lives saved by vaccination mandates.

Health  Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to the member for his work and for admitting, and I think he knew that already, many weeks ago, that vaccination mandates did work. They not only saved lives. I spoke about the 1,600 Canadians who are currently alive because of those vaccination mandates, having not been infected, sent to a hospital and then dying because of not being vaccinated.

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, I have these brief reactions. The member is correct in speaking to the impact of COVID-19 on mental health. About half of Canadians report that their mental health has suffered because of COVID-19. Eighty per cent of health care workers also say that their mental health has fallen.

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his very good question. First, as my colleague suggests, the Canadian government and Canada will have to continue to work with the other countries to ensure that the distribution of pharmaceutical production capacity, such as for vaccines, is equitable, including in developing countries.

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, through the member for Nunavut, I would like to thank Minister John Main in Nunavut, with whom I have a very good relationship. I have a lot of esteem for him. We have been working on many different things, including providing health care support to the people of Nunavut, including providing rapid tests.

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, I think we heard recently that if we had the same death rate in Canada that we saw in the United States, there would have been 60,000 more people dying in Canada than we saw over the last two years. Despite that, 7,000 Canadians did die over the last few weeks because of omicron.

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for his fair and fine question. I will answer only one piece of it, as he spoke about border measures. We have been using a set of measures to monitor the way in which those border measures should be adjusted. One of them has been on the PHAC website for more than a year now.

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity to rise today in the House to address this very important topic. The COVID-19 pandemic has obviously impacted everyday life across Canada and around the world for two years now. It has also put our health care systems to the test, disrupted our economy, and altered our social and economic interactions.

Health  Mr. Speaker, since I like numbers and since I believe the opposition also likes science and numbers, let me quote two more: 1,600 and $4 billion. The fact that we had vaccination mandates at both federal and provincial levels in the last few months made Canadians avoid 1,600 deaths.

Health  Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to thank the 30 million Canadians who got vaccinated last year, when thousands of health care workers administered 81 million doses to people who made the effort to go out and get vaccinated to protect everyone around them. We should be thanking them every day.

Health  Mr. Speaker, I give congratulations and thanks to Canadians. Let me point to one more number: 135,000. That is the number of avoidable deaths that we saw in the United States over the last few months. They would have been avoided if Americans had done as well as we did in Canada, which is to vaccinate everywhere.