Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the officials for appearing in front of the committee.
I want to go back to COVID-19 spending, specifically as it relates to supplementary estimates (A).
We know that in the supplementary estimates (A), $1.5 billion was allocated to PHAC. When you do a deep dive, you realize it's in support of therapeutics and treatments, which is, in my view, a good sign. As you all know, we started with huge spending on vaccines, PPE, research and development, building domestic capacity and buying a lot of testing.
In this budget, we are now turning our focus to therapeutics and treatments. Specifically, I want to point back to the comment the PBO made on this expenditure. He mentioned that the shift from funding medical research and vaccine development to therapeutics and treatments represents “the changing needs over the pandemic stages”.
My question for the department—for Mr. Lucas—and for Dr. Tam and Dr. Kochhar at PHAC, is this: Do you foresee future alterations to government expenditure on COVID-19 as a result of these changing needs? What should we be looking at in supplementary estimates (B) and (C) relating to these types of needed investments?