Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Sitting through these two committee hearings on this issue, I have to say I feel a little like a motorist driving by an accident. It's a horrible thing that has happened, the MAPLEs not being able to work, but I feel somewhat fascinated by the wreck that's happening there.
When you look at the timelines when this was started—I'm looking at some of my briefing notes—as part of the agreement, the government provided a $100 million interest-free loan to get this going, and the dedicated isotope facility was expected to produce radioisotopes by the end of the year 2000. So an agreement was reached in 1996, and things were supposed to be rolling by 2000. The last I checked, we're right now in 2008. I think it's pretty obvious just how badly this has gone wrong--not just to people who followed it, but to the general public.
My question is to Mr. Waddington and also MDS.
When did you realize this technology was high risk? Initially, when you look at the timelines, I think the assumptions would have been, coming from a more general public perspective, that this technology would be relatively low risk. They had some definitive timelines. But in your minds, when did it begin to become clear to you that this technology, as far as being able to deliver the product desired goes, was high risk? When did you start to come to those conclusions?