QUESTION PERIOD — Health
COVID-19 Vaccine Contracts
February 8, 2021
Honourable senators, countries around the world have made public their contracts to produce COVID-19 vaccines, but not Canada. Just to give you a few examples, leader, Canadians can go online and read for themselves India’s agreement with Novavax, the deals the United States has reached with Moderna and AstraZeneca, and Brazil’s agreement with AstraZeneca. Yet the Trudeau government claims that its contracts cannot be released to the Canadian public, not even to provincial premiers.
Leader, is it right that Canadian taxpayers can read the deals these companies have reached with other countries and not with their own government? Will the terms of these contracts be released?
The government is committed to transparency, but the fierce global competition for vaccines has led this government to conclude that providing certain information and specific contracts could jeopardize Canada’s supply chains and is not in our national interest.
