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Trudeau Blames Conservatives For Canada’s Vaccine Manufacturing Decline

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responds to a question during Question Period in the House of Commons on Nov.  25, 2020 in Ottawa.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responds to a question during Question Period in the House of Commons on Nov. 25, 2020 in Ottawa.

OTTAWA — Canada doesn’t have the manufacturing capacity to quickly mass produce a COVID-19 vaccine and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says previous Conservatives governments are partly to blame.

That was the tenor of the debate in the House of Commons Wednesday, a day after Trudeau acknowledged in a televised briefing outside his home that Canadians could see American, British, and German citizens get vaccines first when one becomes available.

Conservative health critic Michelle Rempel Garner pressed for clarity on the deals the federal government has signed to secure millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccines, asking if those agreements give Canada the right to manufacture its own supply.

“It doesn’t matter what portfolio of vaccines that we have if Canadians can’t get it until 2030,” Rempel Garner said, evoking a date a decade away after the prime minister and Ontario’s premier have said they expect doses to become available in early 2021.

Watch: Trudeau says Conservatives to blame for vaccine manufacturing decline. Story continues below video.

Trudeau responded: “allow me to reassure anyone who has listened to or might tend to believe anything the opposite members just said.”

Canada has signed vaccine delivery contracts for 2021 for “tens of millions of doses,” he said. “We know how important it is to deliver for them quickly.”

Rempel Garner, displeased with the prime minister’s response, called the prelude to his answer “sexist.”

“Whenever we ask him direct questions and he can’t answer, the first thing he does is impugn the character of strong women and that’s wrong and that’s sexist,” she said.

Trudeau then listed the names of pharmaceutical companies that closed their manufacturing operations in Canada under the previous Conservative government.

“The member opposite was asking what happened to domestic manufacturing in Canada,” Trudeau said. “The Conservative government happened to domestic manufacturing.”

He...

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