Thank you.
Dr. Kobinger, drawing on the advice of the vaccine task force last September, the federal government pre-ordered 72 million doses of the vaccine candidate developed jointly by GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi. That represents Canada's second-largest vaccine supply agreement. Of course, that vaccine development has suffered from significant delays after failing to produce a strong immune response in trials.
Dr. Joanne Langley, one of the task force's co-chairs, holds a $700,000 research chair at Dalhousie partly funded by GlaxoSmithKline, and she has worked with Sanofi on research and as a consultant. According to the task force's website, there were no “direct, material linkages”, no conflict of interest and no need for her to recuse herself from discussing the company's product.
At the same time, in February we received evidence that the federal vaccine task force determined 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, also had no direct, material conflict of interest in assessing the Sanofi vaccine.
Is it possible to say with certainty that conflicted members did not provide biased advice with respect to vaccine procurement in these circumstances?