Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all members of the committee for your time and interest in clearly what's a very important matter.
My name is Alan Bernstein. I am president and CEO of CIFAR. We are a Canadian-based global research organization. I believe I have been called as a witness here today because I also serve with honour as a volunteer member of the federal vaccine task force.
As you know, the vaccine task force was formed in June of last year to advise the government on the very best strategy to secure a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine for Canadians as quickly as possible. In doing so, we were also tasked to look at both domestic and international candidates and to look at the state of biomanufacturing capacity in the country.
The vaccine task force is made up of a distinguished group of immunologists, vaccinologists, vaccine developers, biomanufacturers, ethicists and lawyers. We serve as volunteers, providing our very best possible advice in a timely manner in a very changing and uncertain environment. You will recall there was no vaccine last summer, nor was it clear whether there would ever be a vaccine. I want to stress that. Most vaccine journeys end in failure. We were trying to cover our bases with the vaccines we recommended to government.
Our very first meeting was on June 16. We've now met at least 40 times as a task force, for a total of over 125 hours, plus roughly an equal amount of time devoted to studying the proposals that were put in front of us. Let me stress one thing: our primary objective and the charge we were given by ministers was to recommend those vaccine candidates that were most likely to lead to safe and effective vaccines for Canadians as soon as possible. At our first meeting we quickly decided not to put all our eggs in one basket, to put many shots on goal, which you have to take if you want to win a game. We also decided that, given the uncertainties and the seriousness of the situation, we would hedge our bets by recommending at least two vaccine candidates for each one of the three main scientific platforms that are available: RNA vaccines, a new platform; viral vectors; and protein subunits. Such a diverse portfolio of candidates might also reflect the needs of different target groups in any immunization strategy that government might decide to implement.
We were also very cognizant of two factors. First, the majority of vaccine development journeys end in failure. Second, the successful development of a vaccine, through trials to regulatory approval to scaled-up capacity to rollout, is best characterized as a voyage in very rough seas. We therefore felt that Canada needed an appropriately diverse mix of science platforms and firms within the portfolio of candidates that we would ultimately recommend to ministers, even if that meant recommending that Canada purchase more vaccine doses than we might need.
Although ministers made clear that the first priority was to recommend the very best vaccine candidates, some special attention should be paid to domestic proposals. Twenty-four Canadian proposals were carefully examined and three were recommended: Medicago, Variation Biotechnologies and Precision Nanosystems. These three companies are receiving significant government support for vaccine development through the strategic innovation fund.
Some other domestic candidates showed promise, but for a variety of reasons the vaccine task force felt they were at too early a stage for significant investment at the time we looked at them. Therefore, we recommended that six of these projects be referred to the National Research Council for funding through IRAP, the industrial research assistance program. The six projects that received funding in that way were Biodextris, Entos, Glycovax, Inovio, Providence Therapeutics and IMV. In addition, several companies, such as Entos and Providence, received significant additional funding through grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the NGen fund respectively.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.