Thank you, Madam Chair.
I will go through the points that were raised in the notice one by one.
With respect to TRIPS waiver, I'd like to make the following points. Speedy and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines is imperative. The end is not in dispute; the means are. The key question is how to ramp up production quickly. The point of contention is whether waiving elements of the TRIPS agreement would help.
I would urge members to distinguish between those who are advocating for real solutions to today’s vaccine challenges versus those who are fighting yesterday's trade battles, especially with respect to intellectual property.
Notwithstanding the letter that has apparently been sent by former government leaders to President Biden and mentioned in yesterday's Financial Times and a campaign by certain NGOs, I have yet to read a single expert on vaccine production who says that compulsory licensing of intellectual property is the principal bottleneck to scaling up production of COVID-19 vaccines. I have read trade policy experts make such claims. I have not read any vaccine production experts who make such claims.
If one thinks about it, I think it's fairly clear why this is so. By now it should be evident that even the firms that have developed the intellectual property in question have faced significant challenges scaling up production. Moreover, AstraZeneca’s experience with contract manufacturing provides a shot across the bow to anyone who believes that solving this problem is merely a matter of transferring intellectual property.
The production of vaccines is a sophisticated, complex process that requires well-trained talent and specialist facilities. It is quite likely that the real bottleneck is the availability of talent able to manage these processes. I can understand the frustration of some listeners who would like to pass a law, introduce a new regulation or suspend a trade agreement to fix this problem, but I fear that is not the right place to start.
With respect to the CETA agreement and making sure that Canada’s advance purchase agreements will be respected, I do not see, in short, how CETA helps in this regard.
My remarks will focus principally not on the vaccine manufacturers but on the governments where those manufacturers are located. Those governments can block exports through a variety of means, some of which are very subtle. Many of those subtle means have been documented by my colleagues and me over the past year.
Few trade agreements contain provisions, let alone strong provisions, that curb the use of export controls. Agreements like CETA certainly indicate a high level of goodwill and trust between the signatories, but whether that goodwill amounts to much in times of crisis is far from clear. Clearly the lack of disciplines in trade agreements on export curbs is an oversight that should be fixed in the years ahead.
Let me turn, then, to the question of building domestic vaccine capacity. I'd like to make the following points.
The first is that American vaccine production is ramping up very quickly. Depending on the choices the U.S. makes concerning inoculation of children and the building up of vaccine reserves in the second half of 2021, the U.S. may well have very significant surpluses available. In this respect, an expert in London and I circulated a note this morning with estimates of what the scale of those surpluses would be.
What the Americans do with those surpluses is the key question. Already the U.S. has lent Canada AstraZeneca vaccines, and the White House has gone on record defending that action, saying that it is in the U.S.'s interest to ensure its neighbours have vaccines.
In light of these considerations, there is both a short-term and a long-term answer to the question of building vaccine capacity.
In the short run, we have to remember that such investments are costly and will take time to implement. What you may find is that, by the time any new capacity is installed, there may already be vaccines being shipped to Canada from the United States and elsewhere.
The longer-term answer to the question points to a precedent that is not particularly promising. Since 2012, Korea has built up its biopharmaceutical sector. It too vowed that it would never be short of vaccine production capacity; however, according to press reports I've seen, the Korean government has spent over two trillion won on this sector, yet this has not delivered during this pandemic.
Vaccination in Korea did not begin until February 26, 2021. According to the World Health Organization, Korea had administered fewer than 1.9 million doses of vaccine by April 5. That is just enough for 2.5% of its population. In other words, a decade-long effort of building production capacity for vaccines in Korea has not given that country a leg-up in terms of COVID-19 inoculation.
What I take from the Korean example is that, if one is thinking about engaging in industrial policy to build up vaccine production, one should learn form the Korean mistakes and understand why, despite spending over $2.2 billion Canadian in public money, they were unable to have in place production facilities to be able to deliver COVID-19 vaccines when this crisis arose.
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.