BREAKING: Trudeau says he has no regrets over Canada's vaccine rollout and procurement

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Tuesday that he had no regrets over his government's handling of the procurement and rollout of vaccines.

Canada currently ranks at 45th in COVID vaccine doses administered per 100 people.

When asked directly if there was anything in retrospect that the prime minister would consider a mistake, or he wishes he would've acted earlier on, Trudeau responded: "No, not in terms of our vaccine rollout. Obviously, we worked extremely hard from last summer onwards to sign many different contracts with different potential vaccine makers around the world, and we were among the first countries to start getting approved vaccines into arms back in December."

The prime minister said that, in general, the vaccines have arrived in Canada despite production delays.

"I think it's important to remember that vaccination alone, even being well advanced in vaccinations, doesn't necessarily lead to an ability to ease public restrictions," he continued, noting that the UK had "obviously" administered more vaccines, but "have significant restrictions and have kept them in place for quite a long time."

Trudeau said that, in order to ease restrictions, that more vaccines needed to be administered and that case loads decreased.

Opposition says Canada becoming 'international embarrassment'

Conservative Party Leader Erin O'Toole has criticized the Trudeau government over tarnishing Canada's international reputation, frequently calling the pandemic response "slow and incompetent."

This after CNN's Jake Tapper noted that Canada now outpaces the United States in new COVID cases per capita, saying that the Canadian vaccine rollout "is not going well at all."

Tapper points out that 1 in 3 Americans have gotten their first shot in the US, where as in Canada, that number sits at fewer than 1 in 5.