Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I am very pleased to be on the industry committee, and I want to thank the witnesses for being here today.
I want to take a moment at the beginning to acknowledge the efforts of the Canadian scientific and research community in diving in to try to find a solution to the COVID pandemic, and to also acknowledge the efforts of Canadian-based biopharmaceutical companies.
I heard today some good suggestions of where to go forward.
My concern is that we need to know a bit more about what happened to advice given in the past so that we don't find ourselves, six months from now, looking back again and saying, my God, why didn't we do better?
I am going to ask Madam Nemer a question and I'll try to make it as clear as I can.
We're one year into the pandemic and we find ourselves without the capacity to produce vaccine in Canada, and without the right to produce vaccines in Canada that we have contracted for. My question is a simple one. Was the government advised that it would be critical to the health of Canadians to acquire the right to produce vaccines in Canada and to establish those production facilities? If that advice was given to the government, when was that advice given?