Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question and I thank him for raising the fact that the people at Medicago in Quebec are offering a promising solution that could result in local production.
It is not as though they were favoured or encouraged from the start. They had to work very hard to keep their head above water and get to where they are today. As others mentioned earlier, governments have divested from the pharmaceutical industry in Quebec, which was flourishing, including in the capacity to produce vaccines. We must address that situation because, as I was saying, there will be more pandemics.
The government also should have held on to the provisions that were put in place during the first wave, even if that means paying fees to pharmaceutical companies to allow the vaccine to be produced here. This divestment in the pharmaceutical industry and the unfortunate experience with the Chinese pharmaceutical industry has reduced Quebec's production capacity. There is a way to come up with a solution if we make the necessary investment and do not put all our eggs in the same oil production basket in western Canada.