Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I want to join my colleagues in thanking the Canadian Forces for the contribution they've made in the fight against the COVID pandemic, in particular for the assistance they've provided in long-term care homes in Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba, and, of course, General Fortin's team in the distribution of vaccines.
I want to start with a question to General Fortin. However, I'll make some remarks about the context to keep myself from asking would-have, could-have, should-have questions, which are clearly beyond his wheelhouse.
We're in a situation where Canada has lost the capacity to produce vaccines in Canada due to decisions by governments that precede this one. We're also in a situation where we have not provided as strong support for research and development as we could have provided for vaccine development in Canada. Finally, there were discussions last summer about the contracts that we were negotiating. They would include the right to produce vaccines in Canada, or a condition that some of the vaccines be produced in Canada. The Prime Minister was talking about that in August and then walked that back in November. I don't want to ask any of those things of General Fortin.
What I want to ask about is our relationship to the pharmaceutical companies that are providing the vaccine. This morning, AstraZeneca released highly redacted versions of its contract with the EU. That contract says that they will make best reasonable efforts to provide vaccines in the quantities stated in the contract.
General Fortin, is your understanding of these contracts that they are contracts for delivery of vaccines by a certain date or that they are contracts only for best reasonable efforts to deliver vaccines?