Thank you for your question.
Like my colleague, I'm not an expert in vaccination issues. We've seen that in the global response, different states apply somewhat more protectionism and nationalism, while others tend towards multilateralism and universalism; these are the two extremes. Canada, at least for the time being, is straddling these two camps. There was a huge commitment to purchase vaccines. I do not want to comment on the brands or the effectiveness of these vaccines, because I'm not knowledgeable about this area. However, in terms of absolute numbers, Canada was one of the countries that took a position. It made a commitment to buy a very large number of vaccine units. Although this may be wishful thinking, let's hope that collective immunity and saturation will occur in Canada fairly soon and that any surplus not yet shipped to Canada but already purchased from companies, could perhaps redistributed to those regions of the world that have not had access to them.
If you will allow me to make one further comment, I'd like to add, in connection with this recommendation, that in view of the ecosystem for a pandemic like this one—and this was observed with Ebola—Canada remains vulnerable for as long as the threat of protectionism in the management of safety remains. Ensuring universality contributes to Canada's national protection. Universality and solidarity with regard to vaccines will serve national security interests too. This is not a paradox because all these factors are closely related.
To return very briefly to your first question, if you will permit, we have studied the financial commitments of countries for a long time. I agree with Ms. Percival that amounts should be in keeping with donors' ability to pay. However, the most important issue is trust in donor promises. I believe that we can criticize…