Thank you very much.
Thank you to the witnesses for their expert testimony today.
I'd like to follow up on a previous question asked by Ms. McPherson and touched on by Mr. Aboultaif. It's about how donations are provided, as cash versus actual vaccines.
When there are supplementary doses a country doesn't need, or options to purchase, there's a mechanism to provide that bilaterally from country to country. My understanding is that cash donations directly to COVAX and the ACT-Accelerator are far preferable. Rather than having to find existing doses and sending those vaccines somewhere, providing cash can be done much more flexibly. It can also add to things like health systems. When Canada provides cash donations equivalent to vaccines, we're also including things like syringes and everything else, and we're one of the few countries doing that.
I'm looking at numbers. My understanding is that if you include the cash transfers in lieu of vaccines, we're well over 100 million already and well on our way to the 200 million vaccine doses that we pledged. That's not even including the extra billion dollars in budget 2022.
Can you talk about whether or not the cash donations equivalent is most needed right now?