Foreign Affairs committee  The first thing would be to list COVID-19 treatments and vaccines under schedule 1 of the Patent Act and support the TRIPS waiver. What for me is very important.... Basically, we had massive public subsidies and advanced market agreements in order to make sure that we were de-ri

Foreign Affairs committee  I see that Dr. Pai has come back, and in fact, I would like him to answer this question because I have not followed the help that we've been providing to the health systems. I want to say one thing in terms of COVAX and donations. For me, COVAX emerged in response to C-TAP, the

Foreign Affairs committee  The basic short-circuit that prevents things from moving forward is the fact that, even if Bolivia and Biolyse Pharma had succeeded in going through all the required hoops, Canada refused to include it in schedule 1, leaving no other recourse. What was absolutely deplorable in m

Foreign Affairs committee  Since I think Dr. Pai's connection is frozen, I'll jump in. We need not underestimate what tobacco means in terms of the global health crisis as well. Robert Proctor has discussed this in his book the Golden Holocaust, for example, which looks at the history of this. A move like

Foreign Affairs committee  I say a resounding no as well, but the difference is that, the next time, we will have no excuse for not making these choices.

Foreign Affairs committee  I believe it's a clear case of regulatory capture. It's a regime that was designed in partnership with pharmaceutical firms, which ensured they would be able to set up all kinds of administrative impediments to make things extremely complex. Don't forget that in 2011, Canada pas

Foreign Affairs committee  We're talking about the AstraZeneca vaccine, but it's important to mention that it was the Oxford University vaccine, which was transferred to AstraZeneca under certain specific conditions set out in the licensing contract. These conditions made AstraZeneca the only company for w

Foreign Affairs committee  Okay. I had finished talking about AstraZeneca and was talking about the Canadian firm Genevant, which owns many of the patents for messenger RNA vaccines. Providence Therapeutics, an Alberta company which wanted to work on messenger RNA technology transfers for vaccines, was in

Foreign Affairs committee  I can jump in, if you like. This is an important question. Let's keep in mind that the compromise text is a compromise in a way I consider to be very problematic. We're just focusing on article 31 of TRIPS and putting aside article 39, which is about non-IP or trade secrets. Thi

Foreign Affairs committee  One element I would like to bring in, which for me is important, is that the WHO has this little organization when it comes to flu, which is called the global influenza surveillance and response network. Basically, they're taking care of seasonal flu. The whole organization is wo

Foreign Affairs committee  When it comes to therapeutics, I mentioned there's the C-TAP to develop the technology. The MPP is a patent pool from Unitaid, but it is a voluntary patent pool. Both Merck and Pfizer have been using this—for example, Pfizer with Paxlovid—but at the same time, they can impose t

Foreign Affairs committee  We're talking about the cost of donating the vaccine. That is, basically, the manufacturing cost and the money that goes to the company versus what needs to be paid for delivery—getting the vaccine into the arms of people. The issue of intellectual property is not based on the p

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much. Thank you for your invitation. My remarks today will be about intellectual property with respect to COVID‑19 vaccines, and about ways of reviewing institutional structures to make vaccine production faster and more equitable in Canada and abroad during pand

International Trade committee  You are totally right, and let's keep in mind that many companies pledged that they would not make a profit during the pandemic. However, once the pandemic is declared over, the vaccinations will still have to continue for generations, basically, and then we do not have a clue ho

International Trade committee  That's a good question. Are you referring to regional trade agreements such as the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, or CETA?