Thank you, Chair.
I'd like to thank our guests for joining us today.
Welcome back to all of my colleagues from the weeks in our constituencies.
This is obviously an issue that's very important to me. I brought forward the motion for us to study this in this committee, so I'm looking forward to asking some questions today.
The first question I want to ask is regarding the TRIPS waiver. It recently emerged that a compromise agreement was negotiated. We heard about that earlier. This would soon be presented to the WTO. In the view of most CSOs, the document is only a small step forward as it applies only to small geographical areas and addresses the export of vaccines made under compulsory licence.
Will Canada support the TRIPS waiver at the WTO? Why has Canada been dragging its feet on the original waiver? Is any action ready to be taken on this reintroduced waiver?
One big concern that I should flag is the idea that this is so urgent. We have heard time and time again that the government is thinking about it, questioning it and looking at it, but we haven't seen the urgency.
Mr. Tabah talks about the idea that we had a very big problem in terms of supply at the beginning of the pandemic.
My questions are, will we be supporting that going forward and why didn't we support this in a more expedited way?