TRIPS is a treaty on intellectual property rights at the World Trade Organization and there's a TRIPS council that meets regularly. They have, in the past, allowed waivers of intellectual property in certain circumstances. And so, in the middle of the pandemic, India and South Africa—which have both been badly hit by COVID-19—proposed to this committee at the World Trade Organization that they suspend the intellectual property rules to allow them to produce generic versions of vaccines because they have generic manufacturers there where they could do that. That would allow their population to be vaccinated more quickly, which would protect global health. They also wanted to be able to manufacture parts for ventilators, PPE and other things that might have intellectual property restrictions on them. Now, what Canada and other rich countries have said in this council is, “Well, prove to us that this is delaying your response. We think that you can resolve this on a case-by-case basis. We think that these huge global profitable corporations that have never seen more money come into their bank accounts—we think that right now, they're probably going to be in a good mood and they'll let you do this. We don't have to go to this extreme of lifting this whole provision.”
The countries came back and said, “Here's an example of where we've been trying to do this and it's been stalled. It's taking us a really long time and it's hurting us. There are people dying in our country because we're not able to provide the stuff that you need to do—the testing—and we're not able to provide these things on an affordable basis because of this intellectual property restriction that you're refusing to lift on our behalf.”
Canada has still said, “Well, no. We think that you're probably fine, that we don't need to do this.” We think, in the interest of global public health, human rights and basic decency, that in an emergency like this pandemic, it makes sense to lift that intellectual property rule that says these companies get to negotiate how much they can be paid. It's a little bit like Uber drivers with the surge pricing. In the absence of this waiver, the global north is protected; we're vaccinated. But you're going to keep seeing more variants produced in South Africa, in India. You're going to see more people in the global south dying from COVID-19 because we did not act swiftly and allow these things to be produced in a generic way that would be affordable for these countries.