Okay.
The second question I wanted to get at is this. There's an allegation that there's been a breach of the contract. I would come back to what Mr. McCauley said, that there are civil servants who have gotten these contracts and have read the contracts unredacted. The Government of Canada has said that we will waive the redactions that we requested in previous parliamentary committees, so there will be no redactions at the request of the government.
The question is this: Would the government be in breach of our contract with Moderna, Pfizer, Sanofi and others in the event that we provided the contracts in an unredacted way and the company said that certain provisions of the contract needed to be redacted for trade secrets or other reasons?
I haven't seen this contract, but I've seen the released Pfizer contracts that have been leaked from other countries. In all of those countries, there's a pretty standard provision in the confidentiality provisions that says that an exception to the confidentiality provisions is when, as a matter of law, the contract needs to be disclosed. In Canada there's the Parliament of Canada Act, which is a law that allows a parliamentary committee to compel the release of the document.
Can I understand, if this is the case...? I assume it is. I was a general counsel, and like Madam Gauthier I had the legal experience. In the past, whenever I had a confidentiality clause in an agreement—which is the standard, Mr. Genuis; it's in all agreements and both sides want it—I did an exception for providing it if a law requires it. Then the normal thing is that the disclosure has to give the opportunity to the recipient, the other party, to seek a protective order and co-operate. These are the standard clauses.
If this is the standard clause, how would the government then be in breach, provided we gave you notice and helped you seek a protective order or agreed to co-operate to help you seek a protective order?
I think Madam Gauthier would probably be best placed to answer that question.