Industry committee  Madam Chair, I can give a brief answer on the issue of capacity. The countries that the honourable member mentioned generally had in place at the outset of the pandemic substantially greater biomanufacturing assets available. South Korea has huge biomanufacturing capability, as Minister Champagne mentioned.

Industry committee  I can provide an answer, and Mr. Matthews could add to it. This is actually one of the reasons we have engaged in a discussion with Novavax to localize production. This does not concern only the existing vaccine. It's also in case we need an additional booster dose or new versions of the vaccine.

Industry committee  Madam Chair, we are working very diligently to support the government in rebuilding Canada's biomanufacturing capacity, but the main point, which I think is indisputable when looking at the facts, is that we're unfortunately starting from a much lower base. The U.K. is home to two of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, which are both involved in the production of COVID vaccines: GSK and AstraZeneca.

Industry committee  Yes. I could just say, generally speaking, that if you look at the portfolio of international vaccine candidates that the government has purchased, there has been an effort to make sure there are a number of each of the main different types of vaccines. The ones that have been approved are using messenger RNA, but there are other vaccines that are protein-based.

Industry committee  Madam Chair, I'll try to give a brief answer. It's a very technical answer to give a full answer. I also don't want to pretend I'm a technical expert. I would say that if we did a full survey of all of the assets in Canada.... As Minister Anand noted earlier, there were very active discussions to see whether we could get technology transfer to have some of these candidates produced in Canada.

Industry committee  I apologize. Maybe I'll stop, because I don't want to take up too much time. It's just to say, Madam Chair, that the international facilities we're generally partnering with—like AstraZeneca and others—were able to produce, by an order of magnitude, far more than any facility in Canada could produce.

Industry committee  I'll be very brief on this one. The end of September date is driven by the quarterly allocations of the two approved vaccines, Pfizer and Moderna. To the extent that additional vaccines are approved and deliveries occur, obviously that date can be put forward, but the end of September is based on two vaccines and quarterly allocations from those companies.

Industry committee  Madam Chair, I'll be pretty brief here because we're drifting into Public Health Agency territory, but a key point here is that provinces and territories have a key role in the actual final mile to get vaccines into people's arms. I think the two vaccines that are in play right now, Moderna and Pfizer, as I think all are aware, have fairly specialized shipping and storage requirements in terms of cold temperatures.

Industry committee  Members will know that not all vaccines are the same. There are different platforms. There's messenger RNA. There's viral vector. There are proteins. The advice we got, much as was the case with these international purchases, was that to have domestic security of supply, we really need to be looking at investments across a portfolio of different kinds of manufacturing technology.

Industry committee  Perhaps I can try to give a quick answer. I can't really get into the internal deliberations of the task force. I can say that we did meet and discuss with the U.K. vaccine task force. We were quite interested in learning the lessons from other countries. On this issue of the U.K. experience and of domestic biomanufacturing, I said that my ministry did an extensive survey of the biomanufacturing capabilities in Canada.

Information & Ethics committee  Well, I think we are definitely thinking about the recovery and how we can best support the government and best support Canadian workers and the business sector in the recovery to come. The other thing I think we as a ministry are doing is trying to reflect on some of the lessons and some of what we've seen during the pandemic.

Information & Ethics committee  We're already thinking about some of these issues, for example in terms of masks. The governments invested in N95 masks and some other types of masks, which has given Canada good long-term capacity. It will be up to the government to decide whether it's necessary to conduct a somewhat broader study.

Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Chair, I think everybody—certainly I felt this way—had a profound sense of the need to move quickly. The global situation evolved very quickly over the months of February and March. I would say that there was a real premium placed on moving rapidly to put support programs in place.

Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Chair, it probably won't surprise you that the working relationship has been excellent. In order to manage faster processes, if you like, and to try to move with alacrity during this crisis, we did establish quite a few governance mechanisms. For example, I have very regular meetings multiple times a week with my colleagues at Public Services and Procurement Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada, Health Canada, the Privy Council Office and so on.

Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Chair, I would clarify that other than preparing some briefing notes for ministers, which we typically would do with virtually every cabinet submission, we've had really no engagement with WE Charity or an involvement in that particular proposal. I'm not really able to comment on it.