Right. But based on the initial criteria, which provided the guidelines for the bidders to make their proposals...which added up to a lot of money in the case of the Winnipeg consortium, $750,000 at least, if I'm not mistaken. As Kirsty and others have said, it could be up to $2 million for all the bidders. A lot of money went into putting in bids based on criteria that were then not included in the decision. So that's a highly questionable process to begin with.
My question is really back to the minister. I asked her if at any time there was a recommendation moving forward.
You said “no”, Madam Minister. There was a recommendation moving forward based on the original criteria and the process that was put in place. Why did you say there was no recommendation moving forward when there was? Who intervened, and when, to quash this process and in fact cancel a very important initiative that would have ensured the production of a vaccine on a not-for-profit basis?
I know you said earlier, Madam Minister, that we should look at our responsibilities vis-à-vis the taxpayer. It would seem to me that when we're talking about a made-in-Canada facility that would operate on a not-for-profit basis, that is so important to the world and to Canada that in fact the head of Canada's HIV researchers said it will now be difficult for them to test their work now that a non-profit facility to get potential HIV vaccines into clinical trials has been shelved....
I also want to reference the international AIDS vaccine initiative, which described, in a letter to the Prime Minister, unprecedented advances that have occurred in the AIDS vaccine field this year, and specifically the discovery of two new broadly neutralizing antibodies by a research consortium that are breakthroughs and important to be tested and produced in such a facility.
Minister, what are you hiding? Who's behind all of this? What is the real reason for cancelling a process that has been in the works for three years? Certainly you can't fall back on a study done in July of 2009 showing, in fact, that there's a capacity in the for-profit sector, which we knew all along, and certainly knew in 2007.