Government Operations committee  Medicago, I believe is in phase 2 and about to start phase 3. Joanne, you could correct me.

Government Operations committee  Providence is in phase 1.

Government Operations committee  I'll defer to Joanne who's an expert in the field.

Government Operations committee  We have vaccine manufacturing capabilities in Canada. We have Sanofi Pasteur, the former Connaught Labs, which has a significant presence in Toronto. It makes vaccines for tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis, and combines them with polio and haemophilus influenza B, and supplies Ca

Government Operations committee  There would be a lot to unpack in that story. If I could come to the current one, the fact is that we are using mRNA technologies, which, quite frankly, up until the time of this pandemic, lots of time and effort had been put into, but there had not been a product commercialized,

Government Operations committee  I don't know that it's nationalized. What seems to be happening in the way we have addressed this pandemic is that there's been unbelievable and unprecedented co-operation between industry, government, academia and health authorities. We have compressed what would normally be 10-

Government Operations committee  We have met with Providence a couple of times. We've discussed them at a number of our meetings. They made some proposals to us. They have received $5 million of funding from NRC IRAP. They also received some funding from Next Generation.

Government Operations committee  I'd be happy to, but could you restate the beginning of the question for me, please? It might have been lost in translation. I'm not sure.

Government Operations committee  As to the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board, yes, there is, as I understand it, ongoing review of that. Dealing with PMPRB, the pricing issues and so on was not part of the work of the vaccine task force; that did not enter into our discussions. In terms of the advice that

Government Operations committee  I could take that question. I'll go back to some earlier comments. When we looked at securing safe and efficacious vaccines for Canadians as soon as possible, it became clear that sourcing international potential candidates was going to be the quickest way. We very much looked a

Government Operations committee  We are the vaccine task force. There's also a therapeutics task force, and they were charged with looking at that and coming up with a therapeutic strategy. Where the two overlapped in terms of biomanufacturing, we formed a joint biomanufacturing subcommittee, which I chaired. Jo

Government Operations committee  I think you summarized it well, Joanne. There are a number of factors that come into consideration in some of the earlier points that were raised: a manufacturer's credibility and their ability to supply and comply with challenges with supply chains. Vaccines are extremely diffi

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, I could take that question. Yes, we looked at it. As Joanne said, we were looking to provide advice on securing safe and efficacious vaccines for Canadians as soon as possible. We looked at domestic and international candidates, and we took all of that into considerat

Government Operations committee  If you look at the task that was given to us—and we all certainly embraced it—you see that it was quite monumental. Here we were to provide advice on securing vaccines that did not exist yet. They were not licensed; they were still in the clinical trial stage. We reviewed a lot o

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Joanne. Let me start by echoing the remarks of my co-chair. It is indeed a pleasure to be with you this afternoon. When the joint vaccine task force started looking at biomanufacturing, we undertook that work by forming a joint biomanufacturing subcommittee consistin