Okay. Thanks, and thanks for the tip. I'm sorry about that, members.
Mr. Chair, as I was saying, we detected something in Wuhan on December 30 in the late evening. The next day, we sent out through the daily notification that in fact an infection event was occurring in Wuhan. The next day, Dr. Tam notified the Council of Chief Medical Officers of Health and we alerted the federal/provincial Public Health Network Communications Group and the Canadian Public Health Laboratory Network. For us, it started abruptly at the end of December and the very beginning of January.
With the world in the midst of the unprecedented global event that this resulted in, learning more about the zoonotic source of the virus has become crucial to better understand the situation and to help prevent future pandemics. That's why in May 2020 Canada co-sponsored the World Health Assembly resolution 73.1, which called for an “impartial, independent and comprehensive” review of the WHO-coordinated international health response to COVID-19 and scientific and collaborative field research missions, which laid the groundwork for the joint WHO-China mission on the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
In January 2021, a team of WHO-convened international experts travelled to China to work with Chinese counterparts to advance these efforts. Their reports are expected in the coming weeks. Canada has committed to supporting the WHO and its scientific work, and Canadian officials have reiterated the need for China to be open and transparent as part of this process.
Canada and China share a long-standing relationship in health, dating back to an MOU signed in 1995 calling for regular dialogue on health-related issues. The Canada-China policy dialogue on health has been the main vehicle for our formal bilateral engagement, including, at the ministerial level, four dialogues between 2009 and 2014. Since 2014, engagement with China has primarily been in health-related multilateral fora, such as the WHO and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation health working group.
China has a growing capacity for basic and applied research, and there's a mutual benefit from academic exchanges. Reflecting on this, in January 2007, Canada and China signed a science and technology co-operation agreement. The agreement launched a sustained effort to boost collaborative research and development in fields like life sciences to promote collaboration in research and development between Chinese and Canadian academics and both private and public sector researchers and innovators. The initial areas of focus in life sciences included vaccines.
As with all collaborations, care is required to make sure that both parties have a clear understanding of the uses of the information being exchanged and, of course, the intellectual property that underlies the research teams. In our work, we've taken important steps to protect against security threats and intellectual property concerns. The Minister of Health, the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, and the Minister of Public Safety jointly issued a policy statement on research security and COVID-19 in September 2020, encouraging members of the research community to take precautions to protect the security of COVID-19-related research, intellectual property and knowledge development.
Challenges persist in any relationship, but there are benefits in exchanging information and research, and there are meaningful opportunities to do so through the relationships that I've just described. The global pandemic underscores the importance of international engagement and coordination, and international coordination will remain important to managing the pandemic going forward.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to make remarks.
