I'm going to get to that in a second, because that's a very important area, but we've been studying this subject for almost a year and we've had very few questions about the vaccine task force. You brought up this issue of conflicts of interest. I want to read to you something that was written about it just a few weeks ago:
An important issue in the medical arena is the ubiquity of conflicts of interest at play and how we consider this to be almost normal.... Public transparency of conflicts is not enough.... Independence is what is required for Canadians to gain trust in vaccine decisions. It is [therefore] mind-boggling, for example, that the task force decided that co-chair Mark Lievonen, who was the CEO of Sanofi Canada for 17 years (until 2016), who still owns shares in Sanofi, who is consulting with drug companies and who remains the director of two other drug companies, had no direct, material conflict of interest in assessing the Sanofi vaccine.
In your view, Dr. Lexchin, has the federal vaccine task force demonstrated sufficient independence and openness? What can you tell us about the way they've decided to conduct their activities essentially in secret?