Government Operations committee  I think our added advantage, in addition to what Mr. Whalen said, is that we have that equipment too, but we actually test our employees every three days, because we have all of these portable COVID-19 tests.

Government Operations committee  Yes, and so we've already agreed with the government that as of, I believe, July, the price will come down by 50%, and so it would go down to about $4,000 Canadian. As well, we're about to launch a redesign effort that, hopefully, within six to nine months, will drive that furthe

Government Operations committee  The way we're planning internally is that we're giving the government the first shot at all of our future supply. Once they tell us they don't want any more, our second phase will be to give it to Canadian corporations. After we've satisfied that domestic demand, then we'll open

Government Operations committee  We've had excellent interaction with ISED, PSPC and also PHAC. Right now PHAC is creating a model as to how many Canadians will have to be tested in order to get back to work. Once they have those numbers, we will, hopefully, be negotiating a contract to increase that supply to m

Government Operations committee  I agree with Mr. Whalen as to the sense of timing. I think the Prime Minister announced a letter of intent with our company on March 20, and by March 25, PSPC had a contract with us. Similarly on the Health Canada side, because ours is a regulatory-approved device, they had a tea

Government Operations committee  For our company, it's the same. The federal government goes to the National Microbiology Laboratory, and we have separate contracts with the provincial governments and also with the territories.

Government Operations committee  For our product, our device cost $8,000 Canadian and our per test cost, which includes everything—swab, cartridge, obviously everything we use to test—is $73 Canadian.

Government Operations committee  Our environmental testing is a relatively small part of our business. What we are now moving towards is driving the cost of the devices down and also increasing what we call the test menu. In addition to offering COVID-19, we can offer strep, flu, chlamydia, gonorrhea, and then,

Government Operations committee  We just hired a VP of software and data who used to be a top person at Shopify. That person is going to be building out this contact tracing implementation. For example, Tobi Lutke, the CEO of Shopify, is actually leading the team to develop this software. There's another team th

Government Operations committee  Unfortunately, I have a board meeting that starts right at 12, so I cannot extend.

Government Operations committee  We're ramping up our production to over 10 million tests per year, because we believe that in the foreseeable future we're going to be a complement to tests like Mr. Whalen's. High-throughput testing will be done at the lab and then remote communities will be done with us.

Government Operations committee  Thanks, Mr. Aboultaif. One of the great advantages of Ottawa is that Ottawa is the global hub of excellence for point-of-care blood chemistry analyzers. There are two companies, Abbott i-STAT and Alere Epocal, which have generated billions of dollars in sales over the last deca

Government Operations committee  For us, to the best of our knowledge, there are only five FDA-approved portable DNA analyzer companies in the world. We're the only ones in Canada. There are two in the U.S. and two in Europe. What we heard from our provincial customers was that there are soft export bans on our

Government Operations committee  For our company, we've been highlighting to the government that we are facing overwhelming demand from foreign governments—I think there are over 20 of them—and foreign corporations that want to buy all of our supplies starting in the summer, once we have more. Right now, PHAC is

Government Operations committee  Similar to what Mr. Whalen said, I think our big advantage is that we make our swabs and our cartridges here in Ottawa, and we own all the intellectual property and designs around them, so we can then bring on contract manufacturers like Sanmina and specify that we want them to a