To answer the first question, certainly the development of new vaccines is a large portion of what the private sector does in terms of research and innovation. That said, Canada is a market that depends pretty much exclusively on the development of vaccines in the larger markets, and their production in those larger markets is similar to what we found with COVID vaccines during the pandemic, whereby we don't have a lot of domestic production facilities. We have some for autogenous vaccines in the veterinary sector, but we are highly dependent on the import of the vast majority of veterinary vaccines that we use.
As a result, the Canadian voice at the table in terms of determining what vaccines are developed is usually subordinate to those of the larger markets. That's another challenge we face in general as an industry here. Certainly, the global nature of diseases right now and the global spread of diseases work to a certain extent in our favour in terms of Canadian priorities being shared by those of the United States, but it's sometimes difficult, I think, to ensure that our voice is heard appropriately and that our needs are met with respect to that.
As for the second question you had in terms of priorities, I think what industry worries about is that we often have challenges in terms of identifying the availability of veterinary drugs and vaccines that are regulated by Health Canada, and we are, therefore, always competing against the importance of the availability of human drugs and vaccines—and rightly so. However, it can be very difficult to prioritize the availability of the veterinary drugs when it means that we may have to pull resources from activities geared towards ensuring that there are infant flu vaccines on the shelves in pharmacies as well.
I think anything we can do in terms of bringing government attention to the priority that needs to be given to veterinary drugs and vaccines as a way of ensuring that we are protecting the health of our livestock in this county and, therefore, our trade interest is always beneficial.