OTTAWA -- Amid questions about when the 20 million AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine doses Canada has a contract for will begin arriving in this country, Ambassador to the United States Kirsten Hillman said U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration isn’t holding back any shots destined for Canada.

“The U.S. absolutely did not hold up the release of any vaccines that were destined for Canada,” Hillman said in an interview on CTV’s Question Period, noting the U.S. is offering to send Canada 1.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine early, in a dose-sharing deal that's still being solidified.

The 1.5 million doses would come from the U.S. stockpile, as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) hasn’t approved the AstraZeneca vaccine for use in that country, and not as part of the contract Canada has with AstraZeneca for 20 million doses of the vaccine developed in partnership with Oxford University that’s being manufactured in the U.S.

However, the expectation is that as part of the agreement, Canada would pay the U.S. back with 1.5 million of those AstraZeneca doses in return, in the months ahead.

“The arrangement that we secured with the United States late last week was to provide to Canada 1.5 million doses, from the U.S. supply that they had. This is terrific news for us, because obviously it means that those doses are going to get into the arms of Canadians, much more quickly,” said the ambassador.

Hillman went on to say that the holdup on Canada’s contracted AstraZeneca-Oxford shots isn’t due to Biden seeking to practice vaccine nationalism, rather that: “the delivery schedule of those doses was such that we were expecting the first delivery of those doses in June, with more to follow over the course of the summer.”

APRIL, MAY, OR JUNE?

While Hillman said Canada wasn’t expecting these doses until June, Procurement Minister Anita Anand continues to say the delivery schedule has yet to be finalized with the pharmaceutical company. The contract details with this and the other vaccine producers have not been made public by the federal government.

To date, the government has said the vaccines through the AstraZeneca-Oxford deal are expected to arrive starting in Q2, at some point between April and the end of June, with more expected in the third quarter between July and the end of September.

Seeking clarity on whether the Q2 shipments aren’t expected until the last month of that quarter, Anand’s office referred to comments made in a separate interview on Sunday’s episode of CTV’s Question Period.

“We are negotiating with AstraZeneca right now, and I have stressed the importance of having a delivery schedule for those 20 million doses as soon as possible, so that the provinces and territories can continue their planning,” Anand said.

Health Canada authorized the AstraZeneca vaccine in February. In the cases of the approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, batches of doses from those contracts began trickling into Canada in the days and weeks following the federal health agency’s regulatory approval, at regular intervals.

In total, Canada is expecting to receive 23.9 million AstraZeneca doses. On top of the 20-million contract, a separate agreement will see two million doses come to Canada from the Serum Institute in India, as well as another 1.9 million doses that are expected to be sent to Canada through the COVAX program in the coming months.

So far, 500,000 AstraZeneca doses have arrived in Canada from the Serum Institute.

MORE U.S. DOSES?

Asked if Canada could expect to receive additional extra doses from the United States, Hillman said that the Biden administration’s priority remains ensuring the supply is there to vaccinate all American adults by the end of May, but it’s possible.

“I think they will supply what they can, when they're confident they can meet their own needs, but as you know, just like our prime minister, the president here really has to put his people first,” said Hillman.

“We have been saying, and I think the Americans very much accept, that their country, here in the U.S., is not going to get back to full normalcy, and is not going to move towards economic recovery in a full way, if it cannot operate well with its neighbours. So, economic recovery is going to require both Canada and Mexico also being on a path to having the virus under control.”