Thank you, Madam Chair and honourable members, for this opportunity to address this motion to study Canada's trade and investment policies and the impact they are currently having on the production and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines within our borders. These efforts, I'd like to note, have been remarkable for the degree of co-operation we are seeing across governments and our health systems during a time of unprecedented challenges. As someone who has worked in the health sector for most of her career, I would like to commend this government's unwavering focus and commitment to the health and safety of Canadians.
Before I speak to the scope of your study, I would like to provide you with some background information on Innovative Medicines Canada and how it informs our organization's perspective on aspects of the current motion. There are 47 companies that constitute our membership. Together they support 100,000 high-value jobs. They contribute $15 billion annually to the Canadian economy and $2 billion in research and development. Though so much of the spotlight is currently on our sector's biomanufacturing capacity for vaccines, it's also important to remember that even now there are more than 500 new products and medicines in development in Canada. This work includes the discovery and development of therapies for cancers as well as rare and infectious diseases.
Canadians can be proud of how our industry has taken up the fight against COVID-19 and the evolving challenges the variants of this virus present. The focus for our members from the very beginning has been on collaborating with each other, governments, researchers and patients to develop and deliver appropriate testing tools for diagnostics, medicines to treat those infected with the virus, and vaccines to stop its spread. This has been our industry's approach in Canada and across the sector's global ecosystem.
One aspect of your study is in relation to a proposal to the World Trade Organization's trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights council, or TRIPS, to essentially waive countries' core obligations under the TRIPS agreement to protect intellectual property for a broad range of technologies related to COVID-19 for the duration of the pandemic. Proponents of this initiative argue that revoking IP rights would lead to an increase in the supply of new vaccines in developing nations. However, there is no credible evidence validating this assumption. We recommend that Canada stand with leading innovative jurisdictions to oppose this proposal.
In the heat of a battle like the one we're currently fighting against COVID, we do risk making decisions without substantively analyzing their anticipated efficacy and potential consequences. We must look at the nature of vaccines themselves, as other witnesses have already mentioned. They are complex biologics that require highly specialized manufacturing facilities. Some of the new vaccines have been created using advanced processes and technology that did not exist until a few years ago.
As collaborative as the industry has been, we would not have been able to develop them without the support of a strong global innovation ecosystem rooted in competitive research and protected by globally agreed-upon IP standards. Pfizer's vaccine, as an example, involves 280 components, 86 suppliers and 19 countries. Sanofi and BioNTech's partnership will allow the latter to have access to the infrastructure and expertise to produce 125 million doses of the vaccine for Europe.
Companies and governments have worked together around the world, identifying other manufacturers with the appropriate expertise, technical capabilities and facilities, and entering into partnerships and agreements to speed up and scale up the production of vaccines. These are success stories based on the strong network for support and collaboration.
While we are open and receptive to policy measures that would improve on current processes and timelines, they must be evidence-based. Some may argue that desperate times call for desperate measures, suggesting that eliminating IP rights is worth trying, given the current issues with vaccination production and rollout in many nations.
Let me be clear: This will simply not address the problem, but it will have negative consequences. Biological vaccine-manufacturing capacity expansion requires expertise and know-how to be successful. Even if IP rights are no longer an issue, they cannot be efficiently and safely manufactured in a timely manner without the assistance and collaboration of the original manufacturer. However, the proposed IP waiver would create potential impediments to current technology transfer partnerships, which may in turn negatively impact the response to the current pandemic.
It is also important to look at the long-term effects of such proposals in detail. Weakening IP protections for vaccines will actually undermine the global response to the pandemic, and to the pandemics we could face in the future. It will create confusion in the ecosystem, and that will inevitably delay research and innovation. It will also undermine the confidence in what has proven to be a functioning IP system, one that has allowed industry to confidently partner with academia, research institutes, foundations and other private companies.
However, there are constructive improvements to our current processes that can be implemented. We can increase manufacturing capacity with technology transfer, voluntary licences and partnerships between companies. We can also identify and address regulatory inefficiencies, while maintaining strict safety standards. We can eliminate export barriers to mitigate situations, like what recently occurred in the EU where vaccine shipments to other countries have been delayed or blocked.
Canadian officials should be commended for their swift action to strengthen international supply chains in the wake of this incident. This is indicative of our core strengths in advancing multilateral solutions and international regulatory harmonization.
Biopharmaceutical companies are also working with international partners and NGOs to accelerate the delivery of COVID-19 vaccines. Our industry is working with the WHO's COVAX facility for global vaccine distribution, which began rolling out two billion vaccine doses for low- and middle-income countries in February this year.
Companies are also working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust and Mastercard on the COVID-19 therapeutics accelerator. Innovative life sciences companies are uniquely suited to collaborate in such partnerships, and know which partners will be best to help maintain an increased supply.
Canada's leadership role in the Ottawa Group, a group of 13 WTO members that was formed pre-COVID to ensure better coordination and co-operation among their countries, has been an important development. They have launched a trade and health initiative, outlining concrete measures that can be taken by members to strengthen supply chains and facilitate the flow of essential medicines and medical supplies, including vaccines. They've also promoted the implementation of trade facilitating measures in customs and services, limiting export restrictions, temporarily removing or reducing tariffs on essential medical goods and improving transparency overall.
Diluting IP protections will also have the effect of deterring investment in our own country's life sciences sector. At a time when the pandemic has shown just how important the life sciences sector is to the health and well-being of Canadians, we can ill afford supporting any measure that could drive out investment.
IP is one of the key elements for Canada to take into consideration if it wants to grow its life sciences sector and improve its biomanufacturing capacity in a sustainable way. While further domestic IP improvements could be and should be undertaken, the Government of Canada made incremental life sciences IP improvements in the landmark Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with the EU. We're also supportive of a new trade agreement with the U.K. that protects IP and promotes greater regulatory harmonization.
This progress must be reinforced with more agile regulations, timely public access to innovation, skills and talent development, and other elements of a comprehensive life sciences strategy that we are eager to discuss with Canadian governments.
Of course, we can do better. To that end, all changes affecting the Canadian life sciences sector and the innovative pharmaceutical industry should be addressed by a whole-of-government approach in order to properly evaluate the impacts on the various other components of the sector. Indeed, we have made such recommendations through this government's biomanufacturing consultations.
These recommendations include references to an urgent need to suspend the July 2021 implementation of damaging changes to the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board, or PMPRB, at least until the COVID-19 pandemic has abated.
The PMPRB changes are having a destabilizing impact on our industry at a highly sensitive time. They are strongly opposed, not only by industry but by patient groups and life sciences stakeholders, due to concerns about impacts on access to new, innovative medicines in Canada's future domestic life sciences capacity. We maintain it is the innovative research companies who have proven uniquely qualified to create and sustain the partnerships to maintain and increase supply.
Canada's trade and regulatory policies can and should be used to improve conditions for investment, ensure the acceleration of approvals, advance the most effective solutions to address supply chain bottlenecks and strengthen our health systems around the world to get vaccines to citizens as quickly as possible.
We continue to welcome an enhanced dialogue and partnership with the federal government in these efforts.
Thank you for the time you have provided to me to speak to you today. We would be happy to take your questions.