Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. Gagnon, when we talk about what's being proposed, which is a temporary and targeted waiver in the TRIPS provisions at the WTO, it often sounds as though some witnesses at committee imply that the governments who are asking for this waiver don't understand the complexities of vaccine production.
We hear a lot about the importance of the privacy of commercial agreements from companies that are producing vaccine. Then, with respect to the waiver, we're told, oh well, governments should be disclosing which companies in their domestic jurisdictions might be able to produce vaccines, and on what terms, if they had an IP waiver.
Is it normal that governments would expend so much time, energy and effort asking for an IP waiver if they didn't believe there was untapped domestic capacity that could actually produce more vaccines?
It's almost as if we're supposed to believe that this is some sort of political hobby horse side project that governments in the middle of a crisis have decided to take on—that either they don't believe this would produce any results or they don't understand the industry well enough and aren't talking to industry players at home.
Is it plausible that they would be spending this much time and energy on something that has no promise of increasing the vaccine supply?