Evidence of meeting #16 for Health in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was vaccine.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
I'm having problems myself.
Dr. Annan, could you ensure that when you're speaking French that you're on the French channel, and when you're speaking English, you're on the English channel? I think that might help.
Of course, everyone else, make sure you're on the channel that you want to listen to. Thank you.
Please carry on.
5:35 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Genome Canada
I'm also thinking of the millions of Canadians who make sacrifices every day to help fight COVID-19. We're all facing extreme uncertainty, but we're showing a great deal of strength and resilience.
The challenges facing our world—in human health and disease, climate change and food security—do not involve inanimate objects but the living world and living systems, the world of biosciences. At the heart of these living systems lies DNA, the blueprint of life. DNA is the basis of the science of genomics. At Genome Canada, we believe genomics, responsibly applied, will change the world for the better. That is especially true now as Canadians are in the grip of a terrible biologic pandemic.
Today I will begin with a brief description of genomics and underscore how it is driving immense advances in biosciences. Then I will provide an overview of how genomics is helping us understand and address the current outbreak. Finally, I will introduce you to CanCOGeN, a new national genomics network launched to coordinate and amplify Canada's efforts.
Today Canada is a world leader in genomic research and the knowledge coming out of genomics is transforming our world for the better, but how did we get here?
Genomics is, at its core, the study of DNA, of genes, and how those genes interact with each other and the environment. It's about reading the blueprint of life and using that knowledge to understand how things work, or in the case of infectious disease, don't work.
Genomics is about data—the generation of molecular data about our health, our diseases, our food, our environment—and then using that data to improve our health, support the environment and improve our standard of living. Genomics really came to prominence during the human genome project completed in 2003. That international effort took 13 years and about $1 billion to complete, the equivalent of a biological moon landing.
Since then, we've gained powerful knowledge, technologies and tools, including the ability to read and interpret an organism's DNA, its genome. We can now sequence a human genome practically overnight and for a few thousand dollars, which we are increasingly doing, as genomics begins to find its way into our clinics, our public health labs, our companies and our research institutes. Genomics is producing massive datasets, which, through the application of AI and other tools, are opening our eyes to new understandings, innovative products and groundbreaking therapies.
Canada has some of the world's best researchers working across many sectors from health to agriculture, forestry to energy. They are world leaders in data production and analysis, genome sequencing, gene editing, synthetic biology, novel diagnostics and more.
5:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Dr. Annan, maybe speak a little slower. It might make it a little easier for the translators.
5:35 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Genome Canada
I am happy to do it. Sorry about that.
Why are we able to do this? It's because since 2000, the Government of Canada has made forward-looking investments to build Canadian genomics excellence through Genome Canada.
I'll say a few words about who we are. Genome Canada is a unique, collaborative national model that has leveraged over $1.5 billion in strategic federal support into 3.6 billion dollars' worth of research through partnerships with provincial governments, industry and other partners. Our federated network of six regional Genome Centres, from Genome B.C. to Genome Atlantic, ensures that Canada's genomic enterprise has national breadth and regional depth.
Moreover, our partnerships with industry, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, and other end-users in the public and not-for-profit sectors ensure that genomics research results have real-world applications. For example, we've helped create 82 start-ups and promoted the growth of 230 other companies. Canadian genomics patents are second worldwide after only the U.S. We help bring research to life.
Let me move to our role in health care and the mandate of this committee. With an aging population and increasing chronic disease rates, the imperative to bring genomic innovations to Canada's health care systems is clear.
Through Genome Canada investments in human health, genomics research has already led to saving lives and improving health outcomes and disease management for patients touched by cancer, heart disease, autism, epilepsy and rare diseases. These investments are at the intersection of genomics and health care and are leading the shift from a disease-oriented system to one that is—
5:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Dr. Annan, I'm sorry, but could you slow down a little more again? It's really hard for the interpreters.
Thank you.
5:40 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Genome Canada
These investments at the intersection of genomics and health care are leading the shift from a disease-oriented system to one that is more precise, personalized, predictive and preventative. Genome Canada has been laying the foundation for its implementation in clinics across Canada through All for One, Canada's precision health partnership. This strong health genomics foundation has been the engine driving our rapid response to COVID-19 today.
In mid-December, scientists identified and sequenced the genome of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in just 10 days. Scientists around the world, including Canadians, have since been working around the clock to understand what that genome tells us, how it interacts with people and who may be most at risk. They've started to use the viral genome and the mutations it accumulates like a series of fingerprints, so we're able to track the virus's spread and transmission patterns within communities and around the world.
Genomics can also help us understand why some people get very sick while others do not, and identify risks of disease severity and potential health outcomes. This is where CanCOGeN comes in. Announced by the Prime Minister on April 23, CanCOGeN is part of a new national medical and research strategy to combat COVID-19. It is a grassroots effort, led by Genome Canada but driven by Canadian scientists, public health labs and genomics institutions to use genomics to unlock understanding and help shape effective policy.
With the $40 million in federal support announced last week, the network will scale up sequencing of up to 10,000 patients and 150,000 viral genomes from individuals who have tested positive for the virus in order to generate large-scale datasets. CanCOGeN's members include the National Microbiology Lab and provincial public health labs, major genome sequencing centres through CEGn, hospitals, universities, the private sector and the six regional genome centres.
The network will be a coordinated and decentralized model, working with standard protocols for sample collection, data sharing and data analysis across provinces. Results will be shared with public health leaders and deposited in global databases. CanCOGeN will connect with national genomics initiatives around the world, the U.K., the U.S. and elsewhere. It will also align with Canada's national medical and research strategy on COVID-19, including the new Canada immunity task force and national serology study.
The data we collect today will help shape and inform public health policies, including test and trace plans, and will be available to researchers for years to come, enabling studies for future novel viruses to quickly determine how they spread and how to stop them. We are building a sustainable national genomics infrastructure to combat both the current pandemic and the next one.
Beyond the immediate health crisis, we need to think about Canada's future recovery. We know that Canada is not in this fight alone. Countries everywhere have implemented unprecedented health control measures, and how and when we will fully recover economically, socially and psychologically is still unknown. Genomics will make crucial contributions to Canada's economic and social recovery across all regions of the country and key sectors like agriculture, national resource management, advanced manufacturing and public health. It's clear there will be an imperative to develop industrial strategy with an eye to ensuring greater national self-sufficiency, and having made-in-Canada solutions based on genomics and the biosciences will be essential.
This experience has shown us that while we can't predict precisely where science will be needed, it is certain that scientific capacity is essential in a crisis like this, an important lesson we must remember as we emerge from this crisis.
I'll be happy to discuss these ideas further in the question and answer period.
5:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, Dr. Annan.
We go now to the Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences and Dr. Tarik Möröy.
Please go ahead, sir. You have 10 minutes.
April 30th, 2020 / 5:45 p.m.
Dr. Tarik Möröy President, Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences
Thank you very much.
Good afternoon, everyone.
I would like to thank you on behalf of the members of the Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences for inviting me to speak before this committee. Many of our members have been at the forefront of the response to COVID-19, and we welcome the opportunity to speak to our experience.
Good afternoon.
Thank you for the invitation to appear before the committee today to speak about Canada's response to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Our members have been at the forefront of the response. We welcome the opportunity to speak about our experience this afternoon.
I am a molecular biologist and biochemist by training. I am also a professor at the Université de Montréal and an adjunct professor at McGill University. I have a lab with graduate students, post-docs, and so on. I work on the biology of blood cells and leukemia and lymphoma. I was also president of my own institution and scientific director for over a decade, so I have experience in science administration.
I'm also president of the Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences. Again, I'm honoured to be here on behalf of our members. The society was founded in 1957, and recruits researchers and professors, mostly from university and research centres involved in biochemistry, cell biology, molecular biology and genetics. We are the group that does the investigator-driven research in the labs all over the country. This laboratory work is mostly basic and fundamental research that generates the knowledge that fuels innovation and trains the next generation of scientists.
We have a four-part mission. We want to promote biomolecular sciences. We would like to foster our younger colleagues, the trainees, the graduate students and the early career researchers. We organize scientific meetings with international visibility and give younger scientists the opportunity to speak and to make their science known. We support the implementation of EDI principles—equity, diversity and inclusion—in academic institutions. We have a strong willingness to do advocacy for science and research towards the federal government. Of course, we support a strong scientific and health research community in Canada and would like to ensure that Canada remains a world leader in innovation and scientific discoveries.
Most of what we know about viruses—how a virus enters the cells, docks into the cells, goes into the cells and replicates all the enzymes and proteins that play into the mechanisms—comes from basic research and fundamental research over many, many years. I have done a Ph.D. thesis on the—
5:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Excuse me, Dr. Möröy, but the interpreters are having a problem again. It's a little fast.
Do you not have a headset? Did we sort that out earlier?
5:45 p.m.
President, Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences
No, the sound was good when we tested it.
5:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Okay, just try to speak very clearly and a little more slowly, if you will. Thank you so much.
5:45 p.m.
President, Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences
My point was that most of what we know about the biology of viruses—and SARS-CoV-2 is just one example—comes from the basic science and knowledge of the biology of cells and how viruses interact. This has become important for all Canadians in this time of pandemic, and the basic science and fundamental research brings the basis to make innovative treatments and cure diseases that affect millions of Canadians. Without the investments—
5:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Dr. Möröy, I think we have a problem. We're going to suspend the meeting and we'll sort out this interpretation problem. We'll just suspend for a few minutes to see if we can sort this out. Thank you.
5:55 p.m.
Liberal
5:55 p.m.
President, Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences
Do you want me to continue now?
5:55 p.m.
President, Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences
Thank you very much.
This is by the grace of my daughter Claudia, who has all the equipment needed.
I was saying that most of what we know about viruses—how the virus enters the cell, how it replicates and what the known effects and the known responses are—comes from basic and fundamental research.
With fundamental and basic research, we have all the tools in hand for treatment and for innovative new drugs. We can confront the issues that we face today and that our children will face in the future. We feel strongly that without the investments that have been made by governments, both provincial and federal, to support the scientific community, Canada would have fared far worse in the face of this pandemic.
We would also like to acknowledge the strong and coordinated response of the Canadian government and granting agencies to combat COVID-19. We appreciate the fact that this response has been led by science and the scientific insight provided by the best and brightest scientists from across the country. We also appreciate that the communication has been of high quality in accordance with the difficult circumstances. It's based on the best possible available scientific data. This is also a consequence of science long being identified as a priority for the health and security of Canadians. We will uphold this in the days that come during the pandemic.
We also appreciate the ongoing communications from governments. Here I speak of the Quebec government and the federal government, including Canada's chief public health officer. They have all been guided by science. We acknowledge that this is a difficult task and that adjustments have been made, since situations sometimes change from day to day.
Many of our members have engaged in promising research and have been at the forefront of efforts to address this pandemic. I can give an example from my own institution. Within weeks, we were able to set up a testing lab with our RNA biology experts and with the PCR machines that are in the institute and the level 2 containment facility we have. We are now helping the local hospitals do clinical trials. We will also set up an antibody lab and will soon have a level 3 containment lab, which we already had, but it had to be recertified by Health Canada to do antiviral research with live human viruses.
The fact that we were able to react quickly is due to the government-financed infrastructure of personnel and equipment for fundamental science, such as biochemistry, genetics and so on. I would like to underline that without this, we would not have been able to react so quickly.
The positive aspect, if there is anything positive to say about COVID-19, is how quickly researchers in universities have come together to collaborate and to respond to the new CIHR funding line that has been offered. I can give many examples. Colleagues of mine from McGill University are collaborating with people from Alberta and people from Université Laval with others across the country. It brings scientists together like nothing before. It's really nice to see.
On the other hand, whereas many in the scientific community were preparing for the CIHR spring competition, we have noticed that CIHR has cancelled that competition. When we were ready to evaluate the already-submitted grants, I was on a panel and was notified that the spring competition had been cancelled. As a society, our members and my colleagues are very worried that this will do damage to early career researchers because they have put in their first grant application and are worried about how to finance their research. It is to be noted that Canada is the only country to have a major national financing agency cancel its competitions for funding health research. We worry that this is at the expense of other health research that will still be necessary after the pandemic is over. Cancer research and cardiovascular and diabetes research and many other problems need attention.
We appreciate the quick response of the CIHR, but we would like to underline that we need to maintain support for health research at the same level or an even higher level after the COVID-19 pandemic is over.
As I said, the excellent infrastructure that we have in Canada and the funding have enabled us to respond quickly. This is very paradigmatic.
However, even before the pandemic, there were warning signs that Canada's commitment to its researchers was starting to slip behind that of other countries, and I just want to give a few numbers here.
Canada is only spending 1.5% of its GDP on research and development, whereas the OECD average is around 2.4%. We as a society pointed that out in meetings with members of Parliament and other persons on the Hill early this year. We are no longer in the top 20 countries, and we are lagging behind countries such as the Czech Republic and Slovenia in terms of total research intensity.
Our first recommendation—and I would like to give three recommendations to the Canadian government or to this committee—is that the government enact policies and programs to get our funding on health and research up to the OECD average of 2.4% of the GDP.
We also recognize that in budget 2018 the Canadian government made significant investments in research, following the recommendations of a report of a panel that the government itself established, the fundamental science review, and this was very welcome. However, for fundamental research, I would like to cite one number. It only put into place 60% of what was recommended by the panel and the fundamental science review, putting in place $708 million over four years in budget 2018, while the fundamental science review panel recommended $1.2 billion over four years.
Our second recommendation would be to follow the guidelines of this panel—the Naylor report or the Naylor panel, the fundamental science review—and install $500 million over the next four years to maintain health research at a highly competitive level to keep Canada ready for health challenges that certainly may come.
Finally, our third recommendation is that we believe it is essential to collect data on a wide range of demographics. We have already seen that the pandemic plays out differently in different areas of Canada. We need to ensure that we collect information and data on how different demographics across the country are experiencing the pandemic differently, both to inform our response and other global health crises to come. The data should be collected through a multidisciplinary approach enlisting our social scientists, bioethicists and more to ensure that we gather the breadth of our research, that we quite appropriately analyze how Canadians were affected by the pandemic and how we were effective in our response.
Thank you very much for this invitation. Again, I'd be happy to answer your questions and I look forward to them.
6:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, Dr. Möröy.
We go now to VIDO-InterVac, with Dr. Gerdts or Dr. Hodgson. Please go ahead for 10 minutes.
6:05 p.m.
Dr. Volker Gerdts Director and Chief Executive Officer, VIDO-InterVac
Good afternoon. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much to the committee for giving us the opportunity to address the committee this afternoon.
My name is Volker Gerdts. I'm the CEO and director of VIDO-InterVac. I'm joined by Dr. Paul Hodgson, who is our director of business development. Both of us have been with the organization for more than 20 years, and personally, I'm still a researcher. I still run a lab and I'm also a professor here in Saskatoon at the University of Saskatchewan, at the local veterinary college.
This afternoon we were invited to talk to you about the ongoing efforts here in Saskatoon at the University of Saskatchewan, so I thought I would start by quickly giving you an introduction to VIDO-InterVac, which stands for the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization - International Vaccine Centre, a very long name. It's one of Canada's largest research organizations and is focused on infectious disease research and vaccine development.
We are truly a national facility, collaborating with researchers all across the country. Our InterVac facility, our high-containment lab, which I'll speak about in a second, is really designed to facilitate research in Canada by bringing in collaborators from all across the country to use our facilities and take advantage of the unique infrastructure that we have here.
VIDO-InterVac is a global leader in infectious disease research. We have more than 45 years of experience working in both the animal and human health sectors. We have developed 10 vaccines over the years, six of which were world firsts, so that really speaks to the type of research that's going on here. We have quite a bit of experience working with coronaviruses as we develop vaccines in animals, as well as currently also working on MERS, another coronavirus.
I'll give you an example. Just a few years ago, Canada was facing a coronavirus in pigs that was very similar to what we're seeing now. We responded to it as quickly as we're doing now. We made a vaccine in 18 months, and the vaccine for pigs is being licensed now to commercial producers.
Our research here at VIDO-InterVac is really addressing the threat of emerging diseases. We're one of the few labs in Canada right now that is equipped and has the infrastructure available to work on these emerging diseases, including both emerging human diseases such as the Zika virus, the new COVID-19, MERS or others, and animal health threats such as African swine fever, a very important disease that is currently threatening the Canadian pork industry. That is also being researched here at VIDO-InterVac.
To speak directly about our activities on COVID-19, we started our work immediately when the World Health Organization recognized on January 9, I think it was, that there was a new virus in China, a potential new problem. The same afternoon, we decided that we would start working on a vaccine for it. As soon as the sequence for the virus became available, we designed our vaccine and immediately started to work on it.
I also reached out to Dr. Matt Gilmour, who is the director general of the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg, to ask whether there was anything that we needed to do together, anything that VIDO could help him with. I'm proud to say that in collaboration with our colleagues at Sunnybrook and in Winnipeg, VIDO-InterVac was the first lab in the country to isolate the virus from a patient sample. We were the first lab in Canada to have an animal model developed, using ferrets for this. Now we have a second model in hamsters, and we're even working on a third model in cats. We are currently the first lab in Canada to have its own vaccine, which we started to develop right in January, and it is already in animal testing.
We call that the proof of concept stage. We already have animals vaccinated with our vaccine. Next week, these animals will be challenged with the virus and we will see whether the vaccine actually works.
All of that work is happening in our InterVac facility, the International Vaccine Centre. It's one of Canada's and the world's largest high-containment facilities, which speaks to the foresight that the government had several years ago in building a facility that allows us to address emerging diseases when they arise. We can house in there hundreds, if not thousands, of animals right now for our COVID-19 research, and we can host researchers from all around the world to perform this research. For example, Dr. Alyson Kelvin and her group from Dalhousie University are currently running a ferret trial here at VIDO-InterVac. There is a lot of interaction and research going on in collaboration with others right now.
In fact, we now have more than 100 requests from partners all around the world, including big organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as large industry and academic collaborators that want to use these animal models to look at antivirals and drugs and to even test other vaccines. In response, we have ramped up our capacity, and essentially our whole organization is now focused on COVID-19 research. We're using all the infrastructure that we have available right now to run as many studies as we can in parallel.
That initiative was recognized by the government, and we received generous support to do some of this work, which I'd like to acknowledge. You all may have seen the Prime Minister speaking directly about the $23 million for VIDO-InterVac to accelerate our vaccine development. That money will help us to take our vaccine directly into clinical trials.
The prototype of the vaccine has been manufactured already. Over the summer we will do the necessary safety testing—it is very important that we not take any shortcuts there—and we're looking forward to starting our clinical trials in the fall.
There was also an announcement of $12 million for our manufacturing facility. We have been working on this for a few years. Establishing a manufacturing facility right here at VIDO-InterVac in Saskatoon would allow us to essentially take prototype vaccines like the ones we have right now into clinical development to fast-track the process and make it more effective. With the $12 million, we will be able to do this. We're establishing a GMP manufacturing facility right here in Saskatoon, and that will enable us to not only develop or manufacture prototype vaccines for clinical testing, but also, in the long term, manufacture vaccines like the COVID-19 vaccine.
There was also funding from CFI to operate our InterVac facility, and we gratefully acknowledge that it was great support for us. It helps us to operate the facility and has helped us ramp up our research capacity for this work.
It is also important to mention that the Province of Saskatchewan, through Innovation Saskatchewan, provided $4.2 million to help us in our COVID-19 research.
Where are we right now? We're doing a lot of studies currently that address antivirals, as you heard earlier. Other producers and other manufacturers in the world have a lot of promising candidates. There are also some new compounds that hold great promise. We're testing them in our animal models and are offering that testing service to everybody around the world, including the World Health Organization. We're participating in three expert groups with the World Health Organization, and we were part of the expert meeting in Geneva that was organized in February. A lot of our contract requests come from international partners that are asking us to help with their antivirals and therapeutics.
On our own vaccine, as I mentioned, the safety testing will continue over the summer, and we will be able to do the clinical testing early in the fall. One of the highest priorities for us—and that's why I'm saying it again—is to make sure that this vaccine will be available to Canadians. It's a Canadian effort. We have partners in Canada involved in Montreal and we have collaborators from all across the country. The clinical testing will be done at Dalhousie. This is truly a Canadian effort, and the goal is to make sure that this vaccine will be available to Canadians all across the country.
We were asked to quickly address what vaccines are and the differences in these different vaccines.
The technology we are using is called a subunit vaccine, so only a piece of the virus is being used. We're using one of the structures, one of the proteins the virus has.
Other vaccines that are currently being developed globally use the whole virus. That's what we call an inactivated virus. We're just using the viral genome, which in this case will be RNA, although we can also have DNA vaccines.
Last, you may have heard about vectored vaccines. With these, we're using another virus, a viral vector, to deliver just a part of the genome of the virus as a vaccine vector.
Finally, I want to mention our efforts in helping our local communities.
Two weeks ago, we reached an agreement with the Saskatchewan Health Authority. We are using our facility to sterilize and decontaminate N95 masks and other protective equipment. We had this process approved by Health Canada. These masks are now being collected in the hospitals and are being shipped here to VIDO-InterVac, where we now essentially decontaminate them with vaporized hydrogen peroxide, or VHP, which we use here routinely for our processes. We can now decontaminate thousands of masks every week and ship them back to the hospitals to be reused.
My take-home message or summary is that at VIDO-InterVac, we're proud to be part of the national emergency response. We're proud to be part of Canada's response to this COVID-19 outbreak. As an organization, we are very uniquely positioned to rapidly respond to these emerging diseases. We very much acknowledge and are thankful for the support from the federal government as well as the provincial government. While this is helping us a lot in our efforts, and there's a lot of money available now, I think the real message is that we will continue to see these emerging disease outbreaks in the future, so it's very, very important for a country like ours to provide long-term support to organizations like ours, which are uniquely positioned to quickly address these challenges when they come.
Thank you very much.
6:15 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, Dr. Gerdts.
We'll go now to our questions. As normal, we will go through three rounds of questions.
We will start our first round of questions with Mr. Jeneroux.
Mr. Jeneroux, please go ahead. You have 10...or, sorry, six minutes.
6:15 p.m.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Oh, I'd take the full 10 minutes, Mr. Chair.
As well, Mr. Chair, just so you know, I was following the progress of the puzzle that was in the last background you had. I can't do that now with your new background, so you'll have to keep us verbally updated on the progress.
Thank you to all the witnesses for taking the time today. Thank you as well for what you're doing on the ground in the fight against COVID-19. I think it's certainly important to recognize that.
I'd like to start my questions with you, Dr. Möröy, from the Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences.
The funding from the Naylor report seems to have been stuck at the 60% level for a while now. Are there any indications that we'll see some additional funding to get that Naylor report fully funded?
6:15 p.m.
President, Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences
Yes, I think you make the right point. We spoke to a number of your colleagues on the Hill in February and made this point. I hope it will make the agenda of budget 2021. Certainly it won't be for this year, as it's already gone. It's important, because otherwise, we will lose our competitiveness with other countries that we have built over the years. In particular, the CIHR or NSERC tri-council open operating grants that fund basic research are very necessary.
I heard from the persons that I and my colleagues from the CSMB board spoke to that 2021 may be a good year for this to be back on the agenda, but this was at a time when COVID-19 was not yet on everyone's agenda, in the early February phase. I hope that budget 2021 will recognize the value of basic science for reacting to pandemics like this and the value of training people. Grants that come in the lab pay Ph.D. students, technicians and post-docs, and it trains them in this way. They will end up in all kinds of biomedicine and biotechnology professions. They may even go to Saskatchewan and develop vaccines with Volker Gerdts, so this is very valuable.
I don't have to underline that the Naylor report was commissioned by the government. It was a very high-level panel, and the recommendations were very well thought through. We would just advocate that we really implement these recommendations.
6:20 p.m.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Thank you.
I recall when Minister Ambrose commissioned the study back in a previous Parliament before me.
Would you agree with me, then, that the underfunding of $700 million has had a significant effect on the development of antivirals and a vaccine?
6:20 p.m.
President, Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences
I would not make a direct line from the underfunding of the $500 million. The $500 million is the sum that has not come up to the $1.2 billion. Making a direct line to not having a vaccine today would be difficult.
What effect it had was that some labs had to be closed. Some junior researchers didn't get the money that they were hoping for or had been trained for, and investments to put into these junior researchers by many institutions and universities were not available. This is the impact that the underfunding had and that it will have in the future—
6:20 p.m.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Sorry. I just have a couple of minutes left.
Obviously, in basic research and fundamental research, we don't know what we'll come up with. I guess we don't know whether it could have had a significant impact on antivirals and vaccines.
I want to quickly move over to Dr. Fowler, if I may, and get his comments.
We heard a lot about the splitting of ventilators. They're doing it in hospitals in New York. Could I get your experience on the ground as to whether the splitting of ventilators would significantly help on the ground today?