Thank you for that important question.
You're absolutely right. The work that Canada has been leading on with like-minded countries preceded COVID-19. Canada leads the Ottawa Group with a number of like-minded countries, like Australia and Japan—the EU is included in there—New Zealand, Singapore and Switzerland. We've been working to ensure that supply chains flow freely and that protectionist measures are not in place.
As I said earlier, we did see projectionist measures at the very beginning of this pandemic, in the order of 90 countries with over 200 restrictive measures. I am pleased that during COVID-19, the Ottawa Group and its members have worked on a plan to make sure there is greater transparency and that if measures are put forward, they are filed with the WTO to ensure that critical supplies like food and medicines continue to move around borders, and to make sure we are working on trade and health.
In fact, this is an initiative championed by both the Europan Union and Canada to ensure that we are enabling key goods—critical goods, essential goods—including vaccines, to move freely so that there are no impacts on people in our countries.