Welcome to meeting number 17 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.
Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Tuesday, March 1, 2022, the committee is meeting to study domestic manufacturing capacity for a COVID-19 vaccine.
Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format. For those present in the room in Ottawa, you know the rules in place, so please govern yourselves accordingly.
I want to thank all the witnesses who are with us today. We have many witnesses for the panels in both the first and the second hours.
For the first hour, from the Department of Industry, we have Mr. Eric Costen, senior assistant deputy minister, industry sector.
We also have Rodrigo Arancibia, Senior Director, Life Sciences and Biomanufacturing Branch; Darryl C. Patterson, Director General of the Life Sciences and Biomanufacturing Branch; and, lastly, Daniel Quinn, Director, Research Infrastructure and Outreach, Science and Research Sector.
From the National Research Council of Canada, we also have Maria Aubrey, Vice-President, Strategic Initiatives; and Lakshmi Krishnan, Vice-President, Life Sciences.
Thank you, everyone, for being with us today for the first hour.
In the second hour, we will hear from Dr. Alain Lamarre, Full Professor at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique, who is appearing as an individual; John R. Fulton, President of Biolyse Pharma Corporation; Andrew Casey, President of BIOTECanada; Oliver Technow and Marc Sauer from BioVectra; and, lastly, Dr. Volker Gerdts, Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization.
As we have a very full agenda, I would ask everyone to stick to their allotted time. I normally have a small yellow card to signal one minute left and a red card to indicate that time is up.
Without further ado, we will begin the first hour of our meeting with the first witness panel.
Mr. Costen, the floor is yours.