Hon. Marty Deacon: My question is for the Government Representative in the Senate, and it concerns the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Senator Gold, yesterday the Auditor General released two important reports on the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, one on vaccine procurement and the other on COVID-19 benefits. These are two important snapshots of the government response that are part of a much larger picture.

Throughout the pandemic, I often heard that, through no fault of anybody’s, the government’s response to the pandemic was like building an airplane in mid-flight. There are lessons to be learned here that we cannot forget. We need a blueprint for the next big pandemic or whatever the next big thing is.

As we’ve been reminded through the daily work of Justice Rouleau, a commission of inquiry is incredibly effective at working through events in a transparent and systematic way.

Does the government intend to establish a commission of inquiry into the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and if so, when can we expect this to occur?