Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Minister, Dr. Lourenco, Ms. Jeffrey, and Dr. Sheppard, thank you for being here.
The $150 million, which was recorded in the losses in the Public Accounts of Canada, is a payment made for the receipt of vaccines ordered by Canada. We agree on that. These are vaccines that would have been approved in the United States and were also approved in Canada. However, the World Health Organization decided not to include them in the possible solutions, because one of the minority shareholders was a tobacco company.
Canada signed on to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2005. Earlier, you told us that we could not guess what the World Health Organization would do. In fact, it was clear that the WHO would reject the vaccine if there were alternatives. However, if this vaccine had been the only one available, it can be argued that the WHO would have accepted it.
Before the WHO made its decision, did you look into the possibility of Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma getting rid of the Philip Morris shareholder before the WHO approved the vaccine? Was that one of the requirements you would have asked Medicago for?