Good afternoon. My sincere thanks to the honourable members of this committee for the opportunity to testify today.
In the context of appalling inequities in access to COVID-19 vaccines between wealthy countries and the global south, as this committee knows, South Africa and India have requested that the World Trade Organization adopt a temporary waiver on intellectual property protections related to COVID-19 health technologies. I would like to briefly make a few comments in relation to the merits of this specific proposal before handing over to my colleague Prashant Yadav to discuss the intricacies of a manufacturing scale-up.
First, I think we would all agree that Canada has a moral imperative and self-interest in taking all possible actions to accelerate the timeline for global vaccine manufacturing, distribution and administration. I understand that there has been frustration in Canada and in many other wealthy countries about the pace of vaccination to this point. Nonetheless, that is now ramping up.
However, in large African countries like Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya and Angola, it is still the case that less than 1% of the population has been vaccinated. The most optimistic projections suggest that widespread vaccine coverage and herd immunity are roughly a year away in many of these countries. Others suggest a much longer timeline, into 2023 and 2024. Ongoing circulation of the virus will also create ongoing opportunities for mutation, potentially creating new variants that evade existing vaccines and that will threaten countries like Canada anew.
Finally, the optics of Canada's return to normal life and full economic activity amid ongoing death and devastation across the global south would be a foreign policy disaster, driving justified anger and resentment. Canada must therefore examine the merits of this specific proposal vis-à-vis the goal of rapidly ending the global pandemic and mitigating these moral and practical risks.
It is my view in this context, however, that the proposed waiver would have very limited impact, in practical terms, on efforts to scale up manufacturing and make COVID-19 vaccines available to poorer countries. This is not to say that patents never pose a problem; they do. To the contrary, for many drugs, including HIV drugs in the 1990s, patents have created an artificial monopoly that has kept many in the global south from accessing life-saving health innovation.
It is important to understand that there is a key practical distinction between HIV drugs, for example, and COVID-19 vaccines. HIV drugs and most essential medicines are relatively simple chemical compounds that can be reverse-engineered by a competent generic manufacturer. In these cases, it is patents and patents alone that would prevent a generic manufacturer from imitating and selling these products for affordable access in low- and middle-income countries.
COVID-19 vaccines, in contrast, cannot be easily reverse-engineered. Generic manufacturers require not just IP rights, which could be waived under the TRIPS waiver, but also access to proprietary know-how, cell lines, manufacturing processes and so forth, to produce equivalent versions of approved vaccines. With or without a patent waiver, this is almost impossible to accomplish without the active assistance and co-operation of the originator pharmaceutical company.
For these reasons, it is my view that the adoption of the proposed waiver would have roughly zero net impact on the availability of COVID-19 vaccines in low- and middle-income countries. However, Canada's trade policy posture can still play a constructive role in increasing global access, and it must not signal apathy or indifference to poorer countries' need for affordable, timely vaccine access.
G7 countries have used all policy levers at their disposal to increase the pharmaceutical industry's sense of urgency in meeting domestic vaccine demand in their respective countries via voluntary licensing deals, contracted manufacturing and technology transfer. They should use the same tool box, while leveraging global advocacy, to drive that same sense of urgency around prompt and affordable global access.
Canada, along with its G7 allies, should leverage the TRIPS waiver campaign and use trade policy and leverage to further the pharmaceutical industry's sense of urgency vis-à-vis this goal. As one specific measure, for example, Canada could unilaterally declare a policy of non-retaliation for any use of existing TRIPS flexibilities—not adoption of this waiver—vis-à-vis COVID-19 health technologies and encourage its allies to follow suit by a broader G7 declaration.
Thank you. I yield now to my colleague Prashant Yadav to further discuss the intricacies of manufacturing challenges.