Thank you.
First of all, good morning and welcome to our committee.
I have a preamble. It was during a very difficult time. Our government chose to take a multipronged approach. We signed, as you highlighted, seven advance purchase agreements. That's the purchase part of the vaccine. It was both international and, in the case of Medicago, domestic. We invested a lot of money into R and D, both domestically and internationally. We also realized that we really needed to build a domestic capacity.
When we look at Medicago, this is a cross between the very well-thought-out strategy of purchasing, which is hedging bets; focusing on R and D, both domestically and internationally; and building domestic capacity.
Was it a sound strategy? I would say yes. Did we execute it? I believe, when we look at the $172 million that was spent.... Did it generate the result? I would say, yes, it did, because we managed to get a vaccine approved by Health Canada. Did we know that the World Health Organization was not going to approve this vaccine because of its affiliation with a cigarette-manufacturing company? I don't know, and we are not 100% sure. That might be an area that's worth diving into a bit deeper.
On the issue of IP, the federal government, through various programs, invests in the work of many companies, and the IP remains with the company. I just finished making an announcement on Friday about a company, Visual Defence, into which the Government of Canada, through Scale AI, invested about a million dollars, and the IP belongs to the company. I'm not sure that who owns the IP should be the focus of this.
I think what we need clarification on...and this leads to the question I'm about to ask you. What did the Government of Canada pay $150 million for, aside from the $172 million, which we can justify? What did we pay the $150 million for, and what did we get as a result of that?
Anyone can answer that question.