Thank you.
I do want to refer to the Oliver Wyman study itself, where it says, “An open and transparent process to identify a not-for-profit corporation with the expertise to build and operate the proposed facility was launched in 2007 and is still ongoing.” So it's clear that there was a change from the original criteria given to the bidders, from that point to the present, and I think that's a most unfortunate revelation. Because, in fact, it means that people went to a lot of work to abide by certain criteria and then were told it was over through no fault of their own. I think they need to have full explanations for why their bids weren't accepted.
I want to ask, though, how you will in fact meet the... We now have this report from Dr. Gerson, who says the capacity isn't there, and we have concerns from the Canadian HIV association, which says that you can't test a vaccine without a production facility and this new direction isn't going to provide it.
We now have comments from the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, which has said that we've had unprecedented advances: the discovery of two new broadly neutralizing antibodies by a research consortium led by International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, and the results of a clinical trial in Thailand by the Thai ministry of health.
So we have clear developments in the world, and this was all supposed to come together in terms of this not-for-profit facility in Canada, and it is now gone. So Canada has a black mark and we've lost an important leadership role. On top of it all, the world-renowned facility in Winnipeg, which was told by numerous sources that it had won the competition, is now left trying to explain to the world why, with world-class researchers on HIV and AIDS, with a level 4 laboratory, and with a world-class institution, they're suddenly not able to win the bid, for reasons unknown to them.
For the sake of the reputations of scientists, of people have struggled so hard to put together a world-class facility, I think an explanation is owed.
I think, in fact, that you know as well as I do, Dr. Butler-Jones, that Winnipeg won the bid and suddenly new criteria came into play. For reasons that are unknown to any of us, something changed. It was global drug politics, or regional politics, or local petty politics. Something happened, and you've been asked to carry the can on this. You've been asked to try to explain something that is inexplicable.
In fact, I just want to quote from one of the news items on this. It is by Dan Lett, who, as you know, has done enormous in-depth research on this issue. In fact, he has said:
It is also known that the evaluation committee met for three days last May to make its final recommendations. And that following that meeting, several sources told ICID it had been chosen to host the facility.
ICID is the International Centre for Infectious Diseases. No one was surprised about it being chosen, because in fact ICID has a record for doing this kind of work, and its proposal was backed by the largest vaccine production facility in the world, Serum, and by the largest biotech producer in this country, Cangene. It had the backing of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. It had the support of numerous universities, including Manitoba, obviously, and Montreal. It clearly, as they were told, met the criteria and then some.
I think explanations are owed to them. I don't expect I'll get them today, but I will ask this one question. Will this government continue the annual funding of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative or the International Partnership for Microbicides? The lack of any news on these fronts is causing both of these organizations considerable anxiety. I just want to know: will that funding be continued?