Thank you, Madam Chairperson.
Thanks to all of you for being here today.
I want to start with you, Dr. Stefano Bertozzi. I know that Bill and Melinda Gates are very committed to this project of trying to find a solution to a disease that is infecting 700 a day and killing 400 of those, as Dr. Bernstein said. We have some 43 million children. The numbers are huge. So I know they are committed to finding a solution. They have shown incredible integrity, as we saw yesterday with their commitment to stop funding to IDRC because a board member is involved in Imperial Tobacco.
So, Dr. Bertozzi, now that you know from the scientists and academics, and from those who are intimately involved in this issue on an administrative or a research basis, that in fact there is no basis in the arguments you presented today for rejecting the proposal or the project, I'm wondering if you are prepared to go back and find another way to allow this to move forward. I say that for two reasons. Number one, you know that in fact this proposal from the start was not about a simple production facility. It was about a discovery centre. It was about a place to do clinical trials, and you know that in fact there are, as we've heard from others, enormous breakthroughs in this field, and we need a place to do that clinical trial research. In fact, as we heard from scientists on Tuesday, this is a golden opportunity. Never has it been so important to have this kind of facility to do this work.
Secondly, you know that there is--unless you can produce something today--no evidence to say that any of the four projects that bid on this had scientific or technical or sustainability flaws.
So I'm asking you today, are you prepared to go back to Bill and Melinda Gates and tell them the time is right to put this back on the table, and to either call for a review of the present four bids or say to the Government of Canada, we need this project to get back on the agenda? The $88 million investment was a good one in 2007, and it's as good today as it was then. Are you prepared to go back to the Gates Foundation and make that case?