Liberals filibuster vaccine contracts

Tories fight to see the details of secret deals

The Conservatives are pledging to keep fighting for the release of Canada's COVID-19 vaccine contracts — despite the Liberals filibustering a health committee meeting in a bid to keep them secret.

The Tories are expected to resume the battle to see the documents when the health committee resumes, which could be Friday.

Last Friday, Conservative MP John Barlow introduced a motion in the House health committee that could have led to contracts being reviewed by members in camera.

However, filibustering by Liberals meant the motion was never voted on. Instead, the chair suspended the nearly six-hour meeting after the committee lost access to translation services.

“We had the votes to pass it and the Liberals filibustered it,” Conservative health critic Michelle Rempel Garner said in an interview. “That motion is eventually going to pass. It's just a matter of when, not if.”

Liberals have warned that releasing contract details could antagonize drug manufacturers and even harm vaccine supply to Canada.

On Tuesday, Rempel Garner argued in the House of Commons that suspending Friday's meeting due to a lack of resources was improper. Committee chair Ron McKinnon said in the House the meeting wasn't adjourned, only suspended, and the debate will continue at the next meeting.

Rempel Garner said in the interview that if the motion doesn't result in the contracts being made available, the Conservatives will keep pushing the issue, though she declined to provide specifics.

“There's other means that we have available to us procedurally to get this information, and we're certainly considering using them, depending on what happens with this motion,” she said.

On Friday, Barlow introduced a motion that said if the committee law clerk has already received the documents as part of a massive trove of documents the government was ordered to disclose by the Commons in October, then the contracts should be prioritized and published. If the contracts are not among those documents, Barlow's motion would have the committee ask the government to table the vaccine agreements with the health committee and members would be able to review them in camera.

Barlow told the committee that some of the details he's looking for include what the obligations are on manufacturers to deliver the vaccines, whether there are cash penalties if those obligations aren't met, and why the deliveries are contracted on a quarterly basis, as opposed to monthly or weekly.

“As we've seen a substantial reduction in the number of vaccines that have been distributed to Canadians, we now hear that we may get a massive dump at the end of the quarter. What implications is this going to have on the provinces? Do they have the resources to distribute these vaccines? And what are going to be the implications for Canadians?” Barlow asked.

Procurement Minister Anita Anand has maintained that the government cannot release more information about the contracts because they are covered by confidentiality clauses. Earlier this month, she addressed the issue during two committee appearances, telling MPs the confidentiality clauses apply to the whole contract, but that she has gone back to the companies involved to see what can be disclosed.

Liberal MP Marcus Powlowski argued Canada shouldn't be antagonizing the vaccine manufacturers at the moment by pushing for more information to be revealed.

“I think the pharmaceutical industry and the vaccine producers are not going to like this,” Powlowski told Friday's meeting.

He pointed out the pharmaceutical companies and the producers of the vaccines don't want the documents revealed, and said it wouldn't be prudent to take any actions that could undermine Canada's relationship with vaccine producers.

“This is a very sensitive issue because we're kind of at their mercy,” he said.

Powlowski likened the motion to “going into the bull arena and waving a red flag at the bull that we want your contractual obligations revealed to the health committee.”

He said it was his understanding that this could jeopardize our vaccine supply.

“Does the opposition really want to roll the dice?” he asked.

“Maybe it will, maybe it won't, but let's roll the dice because we're Conservatives and we're macho. So let's play hard ball with them. I don't think this is the time to be playing hard ball.”

During her Feb. 5 appearance at the committee, Anand said that the contracts are different from country to country. “Every country is different given their domestic capacity for example, and therefore the negotiations with countries and the resulting contracts are not identical,” she said.

Barlow said Friday it's become apparent “that other countries have negotiated some better commitments and penalty clauses into their contracts that we have not. I think those contracts should be made public, or as public as public can be. And Canadians deserve to know that.”