Thank you.
At that time, the NDP, the Bloc Québécois, and the Conservatives joined together to demand transparency and accountability from the government in all aspects of the way it handled the COVID-19 issue. That included demanding all documents, including contracts with vaccine manufacturers at that time.
We were successful, actually—partially, I should say. We got a procedure. A motion was passed by this committee that required the government to send all documents to the law clerk of the House of Commons, who would then vet those documents for a couple of key factors, including national security interests and legitimate commercial confidentiality issues, and then provide those documents to the committee. We did get a number of documents coming here.
I want to remind all committee members, including those speaking today who weren't here at the time and who may have forgotten that the NDP played a key role in that transparency and accountability.
We believe that Canadians have a right to know how their government is spending their money. Frankly, given that it was the biggest pandemic of the century, we felt it was important that Canadians have a first-hand look at how their government was responding to the pandemic. Even though there may have been some small reservations for true commercial confidentiality considerations and maybe some national security, we felt the government was not anywhere close to being as forthright as it ought to have been, and that's the record of the NDP on this issue.
I'm going to get to this in a moment, because there have been a few inaccuracies stated this morning in that regard that really need to be cleared up at this committee.
We know that the government did contract with a number of potential vaccine manufacturers, and one of them was Medicago. We knew—before the meeting today and before this motion—that the reason the contract with Medicago never panned out and was cancelled before it even got off the ground was that the World Health Organization refused to accept its vaccine for emergency use in 2022 because it was partly owned by tobacco giant Philip Morris International.
The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, of which Canada is a signatory, contains clear direction, stating that signatories should avoid all operations that would, in effect, give a positive impression of big tobacco in the public health. Second, it contains guidelines for implementing the treaty, stating that government “should not accept, support or endorse partnerships...with the tobacco industry or any entity or person working to further its interests.” That's the crux of the matter here.
There are some very important questions that arise from that, and that's why I very much support—as I've said publicly, and as I will say here today—the sentiment behind this motion today.
Was the fact that Medicago had commercial relations and an ownership relationship with Philip Morris International disclosed to the Canadian government? Was it known? If it was known, why was the contract signed by this government? Why would the government go ahead and sign a contract with a company it knew had associations with big tobacco, when it was also a signatory to a convention where it agreed to do precisely the opposite of that?
If they did know and they signed a contract, why was there no escape clause in the contract with Medicago that would indicate that if it turned out that Medicago, or any other commercial vendor for that matter, was in breach of a significant policy or issue, the government would have the ability to cancel the contract on those grounds? Was there such a clause? If not, why wasn't there such a clause? If the government did not know that Medicago was involved with Philip Morris, how was that missed?
These are all extremely important questions, because the NDP very much agrees that giving $150 million away to a corporation and getting nothing in return is bad governance. It cannot happen and we need to get to the bottom of it.
Even worse, what ended up happening here, if you think about it, was that the taxpayers of this country and the Government of Canada gave $150 million to a company that's associated with big tobacco for nothing. That is a gross violation of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. I'm very much in favour of getting to the bottom of it.
I've already mentioned that the government was very reluctant to be wholly transparent on accountability throughout the COVID pandemic. It resisted the opposition's attempt to have it disclose documents. We had to bring motions to force it to do that and, frankly, even when it produced documents, most of the documents that were presented came slowly, and most of the documents were of a very standard form, like press releases, speaking notes and such. It took a long time to get any real documents of any value, and even then, we got very few.
That's why, by the way, the NDP moved an amendment at this committee just weeks ago to have a full, public, independent COVID inquiry that would look at every issue of the way this government handled COVID. I want to point out that only two parties supported that: the Bloc Québécois and the NDP. The Conservatives, who now claim to want to get to the bottom of this matter, sat on their hands. They abstained on a motion, but if they had voted for it, we would have had a majority and we would be well on our way to amending legislation that would be tabled in the House of Commons to create an independent, public COVID inquiry under the Inquiries Act, led by a judge with powers of subpoena and the power to compel the attendance of witnesses and documents, to be conducted in public on every issue, including mandates, masking and vaccine contracts—everything.
The Conservatives, at the height of hypocrisy, did not support that. Here they are, two weeks later, waxing eloquent—at least in their minds—and pretending they want to get to the bottom of this matter. They're grandstanding on a contract to which, by the way, we already have the answers now.
I want to stop and say that the response of the Public Health Agency of Canada when the National Post began asking questions of it about this $150-million loss to an “unfulfilled contract by a vendor” is absolutely unacceptable in a modern democracy. What did the Public Health Agency say? It refused to disclose any information whatsoever on the loss, such as the identity of the vendor, the nature of the deal or even the product or service that wasn't received.
That is shocking. It's unacceptable. That's not protecting commercial confidentiality. That's avoiding public accountability. Surely, Canadians have a right to know, and PHAC easily could have said it was the Medicago contract and it had to do with vaccines. They could have said that the nature of the deal was to procure vaccines from Medicago and we never received the vaccines. They could even have given the reason why. What commercial confidentiality is involved there? There's nothing. We knew Medicago had a contract. We knew the contract was cancelled. We knew it was because of its affiliation with Philip Morris, yet here was the Public Health Agency of Canada, last week, not telling a reporter, or journalists, or this committee anything at all about the $150 million.
I agree with my Conservative colleagues and Dr. Kitchen. Frankly, I think that for most Canadians $150 is a lot of money, so $150 million is a substantial amount of money.
I want to pause and say a few things now about.... I very much support this motion and having meetings to call the Public Health Agency to the carpet here and have them explain the details of how this happened. Clearly, someone made decisions that were wrong and bad and resulted in a significant loss to taxpayers, and we have an obligation as parliamentarians to get to the bottom of it.
Someone told me a long time ago, when I was first elected—and I don't know if this is true or not—that the number one duty of parliamentarians, the reason why we're elected here, our first duty, is to serve as a scrutineer of executive spending. That is actually the duty of parliamentarians of all parties, and this is a classic example of that, so I support the motion.
By the way, I would have signed it had I been offered it, but I was in the air at the time. When I landed in Vancouver on Thursday night, I saw this motion come forward.
Now, there are a few things. Accountability and transparency are based on truth. I see Conservatives nodding, so let's start telling some truths here too, though, because grandstanding, political myth-making and spreading misinformation, especially by people on the health committee in this time of health.... Well, frankly, it's appalling. Saying “the NDP-Liberal”—