QUESTION PERIOD — Ministry of Health
Health Care Plan
February 9, 2022
Minister Duclos, the pandemic revealed a number of failures in emergency planning for infectious disease outbreaks. These included closing down three of the national emergency stockpile warehouses, throwing out and not replenishing millions of PPE that hospitals could have used, closing down Canada’s infectious diseases early warning system prior to the initial outbreak and also taking vaccines destined for Third World countries under the World Health Organization’s COVAX program. There are more, but these make the point.
Minister, we’ve learned from experience that infectious disease pandemics are costly in lives and money. Your government has a climate change plan that looks to 2050, and that’s important, but you don’t have a long-term or even a short-term plan to address Canada’s obviously vulnerable health care system. Why not? Will a plan be brought forward and will it be informed by the lessons learned from the lack of preparedness in our current situation? When I say “current,” I mean what has been happening in the last two years.
Thank you. We can be extremely proud of what Canadians themselves and businesses have done over the last 22 months. Let’s just look at a few examples. In December 2020, we were the first country in the world to start administering the Moderna vaccine, and the second in the world to start administering the Pfizer vaccine. We were among the top four countries in the world to start administering the Paxlovid antiviral treatment, which we are glad to see being used across Canada.
We have seen enormous success in the contribution of businesses, small and large, in procuring and delivering personal protective equipment right from the start of COVID-19. We can be so proud of what we have done together as Canadians. It is all right if we also do so in this particular context. Let’s be fully aware of our immense fortune to have been living in Canada over the last 22 months with all of these outstanding achievements.
