Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for inviting us to appear before the committee.
The health and lives of Canadians, in the context of a pandemic, depend on the health of all humanity.
Amnesty International, as a global human rights organization, has been involved since the earliest moments of the pandemic to call for unwavering international solidarity from all countries, including Canada.
Under international human rights law, states have an obligation to provide the financial and technical support necessary to implement the right to health, particularly in the case of the international spread of a disease.
We therefore call on Canada to strongly support the proposal for a temporary waiver of intellectual property protections for health-related technologies related to COVID‑19 put forward by South Africa and India in October 2020 at the World Trade Organization, or WTO.
However, we are deeply concerned about a draft text that has been leaked to the media, which proposed a compromise for this waiver between the European Union, the United States, India and South Africa, and which appeared to be under consideration last weekend.
As currently drafted, this text will never ensure the supply and transfer of technology that is necessary for equal access to COVID‑19 care resources and the protection of the right to life and health. We therefore urge Canada not to endorse this text.
The original waiver sought by India and South Africa from the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, the TRIPS Agreement, is intended to democratize the production of medicines needed to combat COVID‑19 until global herd immunity is achieved.
The World Health Assembly has recognized the role of “extensive immunization against COVID‑19 as a global public good for health in preventing, containing and stopping transmission in order to bring the pandemic to an end [...].”
However, pharmaceutical companies around the world are continuing business as usual, thus limiting production and supply capacity.
We will have to live with COVID‑19 for years to come. Everyone must have access not only to vaccines, but also to treatments. We need to democratize production, especially now that new treatments are becoming available.
By supporting the lifting of intellectual property protection for vaccines and other products to fight COVID‑19, Canada will put the lives of people around the world, and of Canadians, ahead of the profits of a few pharmaceutical giants and their shareholders.
The only way to end the pandemic is to end it globally. The only way to end it globally is to put people before profits.
International human rights standards to which Canada adheres and international trade regulations make it clear that intellectual property protection must never come at the expense of public health.
The COVID‑19 pandemic crisis is also a human rights crisis. It cannot be overcome without a genuine commitment to one of the United Nations, or UN, Sustainable Development Goals, namely “reducing inequalities and leaving no one behind”. Based on the premise that no one will be safe until everyone is safe, Canada has an opportunity today to make a decision that can help achieve this goal.
Amnesty reiterates its express request to the Canadian government to support the original waiver request in its entirety and to show exemplary leadership in international solidarity.
Thank you for your attention.