Foreign Affairs Committee on March 21st, 2022

[Joshua Tabah]

Of the data and polling I have seen, and there has been extensive work done by WHO and UNICEF as well as the African Union and countries themselves, it appears that it was lack of access to vaccines that allowed misinformation to spread more actively.

I do expect, though, that the portfolio we offer through COVAX will continue to evolve and be much more reliant on mRNA vaccines. I wouldn't expect to see a lot more viral vector distributions, because the demand for those from countries that set their own national immunization goals is shifting away from viral vectors just as has been the case in Canada.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

As I've maybe said previously, I don't know whether that's an answer to my question. You're saying that the delays allowed misinformation to set in, but I'm sharing that it was clearly information, not misinformation, which is that Canada is choosing to distribute vaccines that are not recommended for use in Canada, and that some proportion—and we'll find out when you follow up with the written answer—of what's coming from other countries may be vaccines that aren't even approved, let alone recommended, here in Canada.

Is it not logical to wonder that people who are looking at that and saying, “People in Canada are being encouraged to choose other alternatives, and yet Canada is sending this to us” might contribute to hesitancy in terms of uptake, at least until other kinds of vaccines are available?

[Joshua Tabah]

I respect the decisions that our partner countries are taking about what vaccines to prioritize in their national immunization strategy. If that aligns with viral vectors, including those made available for donation by Canada, so be it, but, as we've seen increasingly, their priorities are also shifting to mRNA. They're following the science, much as Canada has.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Genuis. I'm sorry, we'll have to leave it there.

Mr. Ehsassi, go ahead, please, for three minutes.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

I'd like to share my time with Ms. Vandenbeld.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you very much.

I have a couple of final questions. There was mention earlier in the committee of what a lot of people are talking about as future-proofing the world from future pandemics. Can you talk about how the work Canada has done and our leadership role on the ACT accelerator and the COVAX mechanisms, and also the work in terms of transforming health systems, training health professionals, transportation of vaccines and cold storage, will have a multiplier effect in terms of the future so that what we're putting in right now is going to have impact going forward, not just for future variants but also for future pandemics?

[Joshua Tabah]

We have also spoken of production capacity. Diversifying and increasing production capacity is a key element, as is speeding up the sequencing of diseases once we understand that there are new outbreaks so that we can determine vaccine responses much more quickly.

The G7 has adopted a goal to try to carry out that genomic sequencing so that we can come up with new vaccine solutions within 100 days of a novel outbreak. That, married alongside increased vaccine production capacity, means that we'll be much better positioned to ensure a broad-scale vaccine rollout in the future, but as you've said, these investments we're making in health systems are to strengthen immunization capacity today but hopefully carry on in a sustainable way in the future.

That community health worker who is putting shots in arms is also the person at front lines who will be best placed to detect when there are new viral outbreaks. When they see any kind of a disease occurrence that is different from what was to be expected, by equipping these community health workers at the front line with diagnostic capacity and simple multi-variant testing capacity, we will be able to to detect much earlier what these novel outbreaks might be.

That said, the work isn't done yet. We continue to need to find better ways of managing this. The World Health Organization is in a leadership role in terms of convening us around a table to see whether there is a need to put in a new international instrument to ensure better data exchange and better management of information at the onset of a pandemic.

COVAX and ACT-A are functioning at a really high level right now, but obviously it took a very heavy lift by many of us to develop mechanisms and put them in place. We now have identified what these effective multilateral mechanisms are and can be, and they will continue to be there should the world require their kind of assistance in the event of another catastrophic novel disease outbreak.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you, Ms. Vandenbeld.

We now go to Mr. Bergeron for three minutes.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to follow up on Canada's support for certain countries since the pandemic began.

Everyone knows that we have been adamant from the start that Haiti, Taiwan and Palestine should receive special consideration. It appears, however, that the government did not heed our call, even though Taiwan helped us out in the early months of the pandemic, when we were in desperate need of medical equipment—masks and gowns, in particular. We received more than a million masks from Taiwan at the beginning of the pandemic, at a time when it was facing its own supply challenges because of the People's Republic of China. I argued that Canada should move quickly to provide Taiwan with vaccine doses.

Nevertheless, Canada has so far not delivered a single dose to Taiwan, whether directly or through COVAX. Conversely, Japan, the U.S., Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic all have. It's the same story with Palestine. If I'm not mistaken, Canada offered to give Palestine doses that were about to expire, doses that it refused—I imagine because of delivery and administration issues.

How do you explain the fact that Canada paid so little attention to those countries' needs? After all, they were in unique situations and certainly could have used swift help from Canada through bilateral arrangements.

[Joshua Tabah]

Thank you for your question.

Forgive me, but I'm not able to give you details about every country, but my colleagues in charge of bilateral relations with those countries are probably better people to ask.

I didn't know that Taiwan had asked Canada for doses. As far as I know, Taiwan was a model in its domestic pandemic response. It really set the standard for many countries in the world.

As for Haiti, we talked a bit about the challenges that exist there. We strongly support the Haitian people, but the recent string of political crises has certainly complicated the reception of the many doses that Canada and other countries have supplied. We have much more work to do with our partners in Haiti. It is my hope that political and technical discussions will lead to better co‑operation, and make it easier to ship vaccine doses and administer them to the population.

With respect to Palestine, I don't have any up‑to‑date information.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Mr. Tabah, if you would be so kind as to send us the information in writing, we would appreciate it.

Once again, thank you for being here today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you, Mr. Bergeron.

Next is Ms. McPherson, please, for three minutes.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you.

I have the enviable position of being last in this committee, so I always get to ask the last question. I want to end with something.

I spoke to a doctor who has been working very hard on this work, Dr. Madhukar Pai, a professor and Canada research chair in epidemiology and global health. I asked him what he wanted me to ask the experts today. He expressed deep dismay that we are studying vaccine equity right now, but in fact we should be in a situation where vaccine equity is a reality because we are two years into this pandemic. He is deeply concerned about the BA.2 variant, the potential for future variants, the potential for impacts on Canadians and the potential for people around the world.

He has stated very clearly that Canada should have already donated our 200 million doses, that we should have already backed the TRIPS waiver and that we should have already ramped up vaccine production.

What has been the biggest impediment to Canada fulfilling its promises? We did promise the 200 million doses. We did not achieve that. We have repeatedly said that we are open to engage on intellectual property, but we have done nothing to waive intellectual property rights, even temporarily. CAMR is still inaccessible.

It's two years in. Why has Canada shown such limited understanding of the urgency of this issue with regard to the impacts on Canadians and the impacts on people around the world?

[Joshua Tabah]

Perhaps I can start.

I would note that increasing equity and increasing access by all populations, in particular low- and middle-income populations, has been the single overriding focus of my team for the last two years. What our partner organizations asked for as the priority was financial support and an improved coordination mechanism to work together. We delivered them the ACT-A, the COVAX facility, and fully met Canada's burden share to ensure that they had the resources necessary.

We are on track to achieve the 200-million dose commitment by the end of 2022, and right now what we're hearing from our partners is that they need more support for delivering administration at country level.

No one has sat by to analyze or to just look at things; we have acted and we have acted with alacrity and urgency since the beginning, and I think more than any other country donor.

I'll turn to Ambassador de Boer if he wants to say anything on the TRIPS side.

[Stephen de Boer]

Thank you.

I would say two things, the one is there isn't a waiver proposal yet on the table but it's also very important to understand how the TRIPS waiver operates.

The TRIPS waiver only allows a WTO member to enact domestic measures so as not to implement various provisions of the TRIPS agreement with regard to COVID-19. In other words, a TRIPS waiver would not, by itself, suspend patents.

The second question with respect to Canada in the domestic context is what exactly would Canada be suspending and what patents does Canada hold that go towards the vaccine production or mRNA production. I'm not aware that there are any in fact.

The waiver itself is waiving us from international obligations, not to implement those obligations domestically.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much, Ms. McPherson.

Colleagues, on our collective behalf I'd like to thank our officials, Ambassador de Boer and his colleagues, for being with us, for their service and for their testimony. We'll allow them to disconnect and take care of a number of housekeeping items in the next 15 minutes.

The first of these takes us to two budgets from SDIR that were distributed through the office of the clerk on March 4. The first of these was for a World Food Programme briefing in the amount of $575 and the second was a briefing with human rights organizations in the amount of $875. These are customary approvals for us for the work that's done by SDIR.

Colleagues, is there any opposition to approving those budgets as presented to you by the office of the clerk?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

The second item is the approval of two of three work plans that were circulated also by the clerk, I believe about a week and a half, two weeks ago. The two that we would like to get approval on this afternoon to allow the analysts and clerk to move forward are the draft work plan on vaccine equity and the one on the Taiwan Strait. There's still a residual item that needs to be clarified on the Ukraine draft work plan that will come to us in a subsequent session.

Is there any discussion or objection to those draft work plans as presented by the clerk?

Mr. Chong.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Mr. Chair, there's a witness my office had submitted for the Taiwan work plan who I would really like to have appear. His name is Doctor Steve Tsang. I'll just give other members of the committee some background on him. He is the director of the SOAS China Institute at the SOAS, University of London, England. He's a professor and an expert on politics and governance in Taiwan, China and Hong Kong, and in the foreign and security policies of China and Taiwan. He's been often quoted in leading publications in recent years.

I think he would be a valuable witness to have appear in front of our committee because of his expertise.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Mr. Chong, thank you and noted.

Colleagues, I will just remind you that if there are discussions on witnesses and prioritization that go into more detail than the presentation of qualifications as Mr. Chong has just done, the option is at your disposal to go into an in camera session. The committee usually does that in camera but if there's a quick approval here or no objection to including that witness, then it becomes a matter of scheduling and making sure that we have enough time for the various witnesses to be put forward.

I will take Ms. McPherson next and then see if we can end this discussion without having to go in camera, but I'm in the committee's hands.

Ms. McPherson, please go ahead.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you. I'll be very brief.

In terms of the vaccine equity study, I wanted to flag that the names we brought forward for the in camera portion were not included. I think it's important that we have somebody in the in camera portion, because it has to do with how we will be able to provide vaccines around the world. We put forward The Council of Canadians and somebody from Bolivia. Perhaps they could be considered.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much, Ms. McPherson.

If there are no additional interventions from members on this, I will ask the clerk to address briefly whether we can take those points on board without having to do a reprioritization among members.

Go ahead, Mr. Oliphant, please.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have no trouble at all with adding Dr. Tsang. I don't know whether that means we have to take someone off; I will leave that decision to the clerk and analysts. I think he would be a good witness. We should try to fit him in. We are even willing to go with a lengthier meeting.

I'm fine with the other study, as well.

There are no other issues, from our perspective, with respect to these work plans.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sven Spengemann]

Thank you very much, Mr. Oliphant. That's helpful.

Go ahead, Mr. Bergeron.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I didn't necessarily realize that the committee would be approving these work plans today.

I'm just quickly going over my notes for the vaccine equity work plan.

I don't mean to criticize any of the witnesses that have been selected so far, but I do want to point something out to the committee. Mira Johri would be able to share some valuable insight into the pharmaceutical side of things if we were to include her in the first panel of meeting number two.

I also want to flag that, for meeting number four, panel two, no researchers in the humanitarian field were invited to appear. One of the people we would've liked to hear from is Karl Blanchet. I do want to bring that to your attention.

I'm still looking for my notes on Taiwan.

If it's all right with you, Mr. Chair, can you come back to me in a moment?