International Trade committee  I have read about this case. My understanding is that CSL was a candidate trying to produce a vaccine that was unsuccessful. The production facilities were there, CSL met the regulatory standards, which one of your clients emphasized as being very important, and the Australian go

International Trade committee  Presumably the Government of Canada must know what it contracted for and what lands in Canadian airports.

International Trade committee  I think that's pretty clear. The chilling effect argument that I made earlier is one that we have seen within Europe. It may not yet have applied to exports to Canada, but then your colleague was asking me about risks, not necessarily about definitive outcomes.

International Trade committee  As a statement of fact, you're correct.

International Trade committee  One of the consistent messages that you hear from the manufacturers of vaccines and the developers of vaccines is the need to find manufacturing facilities that meet best practices, including the highest standards of safety and regulatory compliance. This is something that would

International Trade committee  Yes, I would consider it a concern. We are seeing more evidence within Europe of what's called a chilling effect; that is, that some vaccine manufacturers are not even asking for permission to export, because they suspect the national authorities and then the European Commission

International Trade committee  As I'm sure you know, a company that wants to seek an authorization from the European authorities must provide the information to the authorities. Then the authorities check it, and then Brussels checks the national authorities. Both of those authorities can ask for more informat

International Trade committee  That's one point. The second point is that we wouldn't even know about cases in which a vaccine manufacturer in Europe didn't ask for authorization because they anticipated denial of the application. That we wouldn't even know, either. That's exactly why the system the European U

International Trade committee  There's plenty of non-transparency, both in the contracting process and the export authorization process. I would say, however, that in preparing for today's session I looked on the Government of Canada's website and they have clear schedules for delivery. I'm assuming that those

International Trade committee  I agree that one needs to hedge, but please remember that there is a difference between vaccine development and contract manufacturing of vaccines, and the Swiss have, for example, contract manufacturers that are particularly good. I think a combination of smarter sourcing and di

International Trade committee  There's some merit to what you're saying about the contract manufacturing side of this.

International Trade committee  The one thing we have to do is to keep these supply chains open with vaccine ingredients, vaccine production and vaccine distribution. Anything that impedes this is going to be a major source of problems. The nature of vaccine production is that it's typically geographically con

International Trade committee  That's a very good question. I would also put on the table the H1N1 pandemic, which ended much faster than expected. As colleagues have said, a lot of vaccine manufacturers actually felt burned because that pandemic ended earlier. They had put in massive investments and were una

International Trade committee  I would make two observations. First, I would note with caution the Korean experience. Korea was exactly at this point 10 to 15 years ago. It drew exactly the same lessons you have from this and spent a huge amount of money on building a vaccine industry that has not delivered t

International Trade committee  My brief observation is that the cost-benefit analysis of investments in vaccine production and development were not correct. We have, as you noted, a $1-billion investment by the Canadian government. The losses to the Canadian economy are orders of magnitude larger. You have to