Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. First of all, I want to thank all of the committee members for the opportunity to be here today to speak about LuminUltra's role in providing essential COVID-19 testing supplies. I will aim to keep this brief so that we will have ample time for questions,

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. McCauley. Having been in business for the better part of 20 years, and with primarily an international focus to date, we have quite an extensive supply line all around the world. Traditionally, the vast majority of our supplies would come from No

Government Operations committee  At present, the focus is on the reagents. That has been the bottleneck. To perform these types of tests, you need to have, as has been mentioned, swabs. You need to have reagents. You need to have disposable plastic parts. You need to have equipment and you need to have trained p

Government Operations committee  The federal government is doing the primary procurement and then the distribution of the products to the different provincial health laboratories. We do have some interface, simply by virtue of shipping product to those provincial health laboratories, but the contract is with Can

Government Operations committee  The vast majority of our production is actually in Canada, right here in Fredericton, and we intend to continue down that track. We're not currently ramping up anything in other countries. We're making Canada the focus. In fact, we're breaking ground on a brand new production fac

Government Operations committee  At the end of June.

Government Operations committee  Once we're absolutely 100% certain that we've met the needs of Canada, then we'll look at the potential for export, yes.

Government Operations committee  I think it's some of the more basic materials, Mr. MacKinnon, things around having Canadian production facilities for swabs and some of the base chemicals that are required for reagents. Having that capacity, I think, will make a world of difference from the standpoint of prepare

Government Operations committee  Yes, I do. In discussions with ISED, PSPC, PHAC and NRC, they are already working to shore those things up.

Government Operations committee  As for the laboratory-based or centralized testing, the advantage is simply scale: being able to process a very large number of samples very quickly using large equipment that is typically automated or robotic. The backbone of that style of testing lies in the different provincia

Government Operations committee  Yes, absolutely, and investment not only in the equipment but also in the people, the trained professionals who can run these styles of tests. It's important to have that infrastructure, that backbone, so we can crank out a maximum number of tests.

Government Operations committee  It was an interesting situation. It was a supplier we typically use that we know to be very reliable. It makes the highest quality product in the world. Typically this material has to be shipped by boat. We had a shipment scheduled, but it would have taken 30 days to cross the P

Government Operations committee  The answer to that is no. We were making similar technologies and measuring similar things, bacteria and other viruses, but not COVID-19 specifically.

Government Operations committee  We actually already have. Saying we have not produced this test for COVID before is perhaps a bit of a mistake on my side. We are producing the chemical reagents that are universal for measuring any virus, including the novel coronavirus, and we have produced them before. We hav

Government Operations committee  Yes, absolutely. In fact, in our work with the different government partners I've mentioned, they have already identified basic chemical manufacturers where many of these raw materials that are currently sourced outside of Canada can be synthesized and produced in large quantitie