Mr. Chair, I think the direct answer is the one that the minister provided herself, which was that for a company such as AstraZeneca to undertake vaccine technology transfer to the NRC, to a pilot facility, was not considered to be viable or a project of interest for AstraZeneca because, of course, they were producing at large scale in other locations around the world. For example, they were working with the Serum Institute, which produces a billion vaccines every year. I think it's more of a question of whether it made sense for them commercially. Although we technically can obviously handle that kind of vaccine at the NRC facility, it's a question of whether that was going to be an opportunity that that company would offer to Canada.
On February 22nd, 2021. See this statement in context.