Madam Chair, thank you very much.
Members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to discuss the Canadian HIV vaccine initiative.
As assistant deputy minister of the infectious disease prevention and control branch with the Public Health Agency in Canada, I'm responsible for the development and implementation of national public health strategies to address really a range of infectious diseases, including influenza, pandemic and otherwise, hepatitis, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS.
Through partnerships with Canadian and international scientific public health and community organizations, the agency takes a leadership role in mobilizing a comprehensive response to HIV/AIDS. This includes research, surveillance, epidemiology, broad spectrum, including the development of new prevention technologies and specifically a vaccine for HIV/AIDS.
In February 2007, the Prime Minister and Mr. Bill Gates announced a collaboration between the Government of Canada and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
This collaboration's main goal was to help speed up the global development of an HIV vaccine, which is our greatest hope for overcoming the HIV/AIDS epidemic worldwide. Altogether, funding of $111 million was provided by the Government of Canada and $28 million from the Gates Foundation was dedicated in support of this collaboration.
To achieve the important goal of developing a vaccine, in 2007 the Government of Canada established the Canadian HIV vaccine initiative. That brings together five federal departments and agencies: the Canadian International Development Agency, the Public Health Agency, Industry Canada, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and Health Canada. Each shares a commitment to position Canada at the forefront to develop this HIV/AIDS vaccine.
My agency helps to ensure a coordinated effort among the departments, and currently houses the secretariat for the initiative. I'd like to note that I'm joined here today by Mr. Steven Sternthal, who is the director of the agency's office of HIV vaccines and is responsible for the initiative's secretariat.
The initiative is aligned with priorities established by the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise in 2005.
The Enterprise's global scientific plan followed global consultations, which identified some key obstacles that were facing researchers in vaccine development, and specifically the initiative has focused on four key program areas.
On the first area, discovery and social research, funding is being provided to support HIV discovery and the social research components thereof. We strengthen the research and capacity in Canada, as well as in low- and middle-income countries. Under that, 13 discovery and social research projects are currently in place on HIV vaccines, totalling a commitment of nearly $3 million. A single example, and an interesting one, is that McGill University has received $440,000 to learn about the special characteristics of immune cells in certain people exposed to HIV but who remain uninfected. There are additional research funding opportunities that are funded under that program.
A second key program is the clinical trials capacity building and networks, through which funding is being provided to researchers and to research institutions, particularly, again, in low- and middle-income countries, to strengthen their capacity to conduct high-quality clinical trials on HIV, and HIV vaccines in particular, and other related prevention technologies. A request for applications for clinical trial capacity building is currently under way for Africa, and the results of these trials are supposed to be released by 2010.
The third program area is for the policy and regulatory issues, community and social dimensions, through which funding is provided to strengthen vaccine policy approaches that promote global access to HIV vaccines, regulatory pathways and processes for the vaccines in low- and middle-income countries that can be enhanced through capacity-building initiatives, and, again, community involvement in vaccine research and development, clinical trials, and activities in public awareness and education related to them.
Currently, there are two HIV community initiatives under way and two international initiatives that have been completed, totalling more than half a million dollars, including, for instance, the Canadian AIDS Society, which is receiving $268,000 under this program. Also, just to note, $760,000 has been provided to the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise's renewal of the global scientific strategic plan, and an additional $2 million is being provided to the World Health Organization to improve the capacity of regulatory authorities in Africa.
I'd like now to turn to the HIV vaccine manufacturing project under the initiative. The primary reason for launching this project was to address a global shortage of pilot-scale manufacturing facilities for an HIV vaccine, as identified by the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise in 2005. Given the importance of addressing this global gap identified at that time, the establishment of the facility became an initial priority for the Canadian HIV vaccine initiative. Consultations were held in late 2007 by the Government of Canada and the Gates Foundation to seek the input of experts to design the most appropriate process to establish a facility here in Canada. Based on this consultation, a call for letters of intent was launched in April 2008 to seek the interest of not-for-profit organizations and their potential partners. During these consultations, it was also decided that a minimum of two months would be needed to put together a letter of intent and an additional four to five months would be needed to put together a full application. These letters of intent were received in June of 2008 and were subject to a thorough review, and based on that review, it was decided by the Government of Canada and the Bill Gates Foundation that four applicants should be moving forward to develop a full application. That was announced in November of 2008 and those applications were received in March of 2009.
I understand there were several questions from committee members regarding the process that was undertaken to review the applications, as well as how the decision not to move forward with the facility project was made. I'd like therefore to take this opportunity to clarify just a few points.
As Dr. Butler-Jones has previously noted in his appearance before this committee on March 16 and 18, a thorough and comprehensive review process was put in place to assess each of the applications. Key international experts were brought in to assess the scientific merit of the applications. These experts, just as a sidebar comment, were highly qualified in HIV vaccine research, facility construction and operation, governance, and financial management.
Also, officials from the Government of Canada and the Gates Foundation undertook their own due diligence, focusing on two key areas: value for money and applicant risk, meaning the sustainability and feasibility of the proposals. The end result was that the review process found that all four applications had strength in their applications. But overall, it also found that none of the four applications met all of the pre-established criteria, which was a difficult finding on our part. To ensure, then, that full and complete applications would be submitted and considered, the Government of Canada clearly outlined, in the invitation to submit the application, the necessary requirements as stipulated in the terms and conditions.
I want to stress that the criteria assessed in the review were shared with all applicants at the outset of the process.
In a separate process, the Gates Foundation commissioned a study that analyzed the current HIV vaccine manufacturing capacity in North America and Europe. That study, by Gates, concluded that at that time, sufficient manufacturing capacity had become available to support the anticipated demand for pilot-scale manufacturing of candidate HIV vaccines. That capacity study was made available to us in late July 2009.
As the overall endeavour of facility construction is certainly costly--potentially valued at $88 million--it was our responsibility to ensure that there was value for money for Canadian taxpayers. It was after careful consideration and much discussion that the Government of Canada and the Gates Foundation decided, as you know, not to proceed with the vaccine manufacturing facility.
I want to reiterate what Dr. Butler-Jones stated, which is that at the end of the day, the decision not to move forward with the facility, which was not an easy decision, was based on purely scientific and technical considerations.
Although the facility project was not moving forward, I'd like to say that there have also been significant benefits arising from collaboration with the Gates Foundation. Through working with the foundation, the Government of Canada has been able to leverage the foundation's scientific excellence as well as its worldwide connections and experience in this field.
The collaboration has allowed us to further strengthen our strong Canadian foundation in biomedical science, technology innovation, and vaccine research.
Moving forward, the Government of Canada remains committed to fighting HIV and AIDS. In support of this, the government and the Gates Foundation will continue to work together. They have reiterated their financial commitment to supporting HIV prevention.
In summary, both parties remain committed to accelerating the development of a safe, effective, accessible, and, importantly, affordable HIV vaccine as one of their key priorities.
Thank you very much.