To clarify, Deloitte was the contractor hired by the Government of Canada through the vaccine task force to search out companies like Biolyse.
As far as I know, there are a handful in Canada producing injectables. There are Omega, Sandoz and Biolyse Pharma that I know of. They're three industrial-sized facilities. They reached out, I think, on May 1, 2020. We started a dialogue. We were sending all kinds of documentation, so they—the government and the task force—were well aware that Biolyse existed.
I think what we need going forward is a meeting just like this, where there's transparency and there are independent groups that could look at this—not a task force that the public wasn't made aware of until a few months after it was in existence. Just having this kind of discourse and this kind of conversation now is a help.
If we had a time machine to go back two years and try to put together a group like this to have this discussion.... Biolyse is sitting there with all that equipment, all that expertise and Health Canada approvals for producing vaccines, and it's still sitting idle. They only asked for a few million dollars to hire more contractors and more staff. It could have been up and running.
We tried to use CAMR, Canada's access to medicines regime. I've been calling and sending emails. I met with over 40 different individuals, officials within the government, and we can't get a straight answer on how to use the legislation that I used effectively in 2005-06. They won't have a discussion with us regarding that. They won't start talking, because once the government starts talking about the addition of COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics, it triggers the addition to schedule 1. Once we're on schedule 1, we can ask for a compulsory licence and move forward with the project.
I had a lot to say here today. Unfortunately, I got cut short, but that's really it. It's having these kinds of open discussions with the public, experts and government officials to really figure out how to solve this problem.