Mr. Chair and honourable member, thank you for the question.
Research collaboration occurs on a number of different levels. It could be at the level of individual researchers collaborating on a particular project or a particular question, and there are broader overarching collaborations.
To be clear, the National Microbiology Laboratory has never had an institutional-level collaboration with the Chinese military. As has been highlighted, there are a number of publications where there has been overlap of research interests, but that is not equivalent.
The research endeavour of the laboratory is always to collaborate, to advance public health for Canadians, but also to advance public health on a global scale since we have seen that as infections arise in other places they can readily spread and reshape our societies. Therefore, we are all stronger through collaboration.