Thank you, Madam Chair.
I want to thank all the witnesses. We've heard very impressive background and knowledge from you on this committee.
I want to commend the industries that created vaccines in such a short and accelerated period of time. The current model we have shows that if you invest in research and development and the world puts its minds together, you can come up with solutions very quickly.
Having said that, Mr. Evenett, I heard you saying that you want to ensure that trade rules are solidified so that vaccines get to the right people at the appropriate times. However, vaccine production is concentrated. That model used to work. That seems to be the previous case. That's what we relied on. That's what the whole world expected and that's what Canada did. It invested in them. It contracted with agencies. It tried to do so with some of the better countries that had good trade relationships.
However, as someone said earlier, desperate times call for desperate measures. Countries don't exactly abide by those rules when things get rough and when their own population starts saying, “Me first, and then we'll take care of our backyard afterwards.”
What's your thought process on that? Doesn't that call for more domestic production, even if it's not concentrated and even if perhaps, going forward, it might not be economically as wise? The government may have to put some efforts—as we have done in Saskatchewan and Quebec—into ramping up production for the future.
Do you not see that countries will be having more domestic production facilities so that this predicament doesn't happen again?