Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to the committee.
I am an emergency physician and have been one since 1982. I taught health policy at York University from 2001 to 2016, and I've been researching pharmaceutical policy for about 40 years.
I'm going to go into four different areas.
First of all, we have the situation that Canada found itself in with respect to vaccine production at the start of the pandemic. Back in 1989, we sold off Connaught Laboratories to a French company. Then, in 2005, ID Biomedical Corporation was sold to GlaxoSmithKline. Therefore, when the pandemic hit, we had no domestically owned independent production. We did have warnings that we might need it back with SARS in 2003 and then with H1N1 in 2009. The Naylor report after SARS recommended that we develop an independent vaccine strategy, but we never did.
When the pandemic hit, we were vulnerable when it comes to vaccines. In order to try to ensure that we were going to be able to get the necessary vaccines, in June of 2020 the National Research Council set up an 18-member COVID-19 vaccine task force charged with making recommendations about vaccine acquisition to the federal government. Initially, the conflicts of interest of those committee members were kept secret until there was a public outcry.
The task force was highly selective. There was no representation for indigenous or Black people, the elderly, women or people with disabilities. Both the chair and the co-chair had significant conflicts of interest. Whether or not those conflicts of interest affected the recommendations they made to the government is unknown, because the exact nature of the recommendations is not public.
Other countries have handled the situation much differently. In the notes I submitted, you can see that Australia did things in a much different fashion.
We're now faced with the delays in the delivery of the Pfizer vaccine and possibly others. The delays in different countries are different. That might be due to the terms of the contracts that have been negotiated, but we don't know, because the contracts are kept secret. Also, we don't know anything about the price that Canada is paying versus the price in other countries. What are the guarantees about vaccine delivery and are there penalties for companies if they can't meet delivery schedules?
Finally, I want to talk about Canada's position on ensuring vaccine availability and affordability in low- and middle-income countries. Canada is one of the largest donors to COVAX. In July 2021, Prime Minister Trudeau signed a letter, along with other global leaders, which said, among other things, “We”—the global community—“cannot allow access to vaccines to increase inequalities within or between countries—whether low-, middle- or high-income.”
At the same time, Canada didn't support—and still hasn't supported—the WHO COVID-19 technology access pool. It hasn't supported the call by India and South Africa at the World Trade Organization for a temporary suspension of patents and other intellectual property. It has not publicly demanded that companies making vaccines ensure that they are available at production costs, and it has not said when it's going to donate excess vaccines to low- and middle-income countries.
I have four recommendations to make to the committee.
One, Canada needs to develop a national vaccine strategy that will consist of a strong and enduring financial commitment to publicly funded and publicly run vaccine research.
Two, we need a domestic, publicly owned vaccine manufacturing facility, so that in the future we can avoid the situation of privately owned Canadian companies being sold to foreign interests.
Three, Canada needs to make public the terms under which it granted money for COVID vaccine research and the terms of the contracts that it has signed with companies for vaccines.
Finally, Canada needs to publicly outline a detailed strategy about how it will contribute to ensuring that vaccine nationalism is avoided so that low- and middle-income countries can access vaccines in a timely manner in line with their needs.
Thank you very much.