Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Davies, last Thursday the co-chair of the federal vaccine task force, Mark Lievonen, told the industry committee that domestically producing and supplying a COVID-19 vaccine was never possible in Canada before the end of 2021. However, from March to August of 2020, both Prime Minister Trudeau and Minister Navdeep Bains repeatedly set the expectation that Canada would be producing 250,000 doses per month by November 2020 at the NRC's Royalmount facility, and up to two million doses by the end of 2020. In fact, the Prime Minister sent out a press release on August 31 committing to that.
My question to you is this simple: In 2020 did or did not the NRC have the capacity to produce vaccines in Canada?