International Trade Committee on April 16th, 2021

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to point out Ms. Bendayan's comments about looking back to previous years and trying to lay blame. I don't know that's all that productive. If you go back a previous government and a previous government, pretty soon you're at John A. Macdonald for blame here. It's pretty safe to say the Liberals had four or five budgets before COVID, and spent over a trillion bucks. If they wanted to do something, they had plenty of time and money to do it.

I appreciate everybody's comments here today. I think back to my manufacturing years and to set up a basic plant takes an extreme amount of time and takes a lot of expertise—engineers and electricians. To be able to set up a plant that runs is one thing. To set it up to run well and without scrap.... In this case, it would have to run well to produce world-class vaccines.

There is a lot to be said here, and I hope that everybody that's involved in politics, governance and public service has learned a very valuable lesson with our lack of production here and the inability to procure vaccines when we need them.

I look at the Australian example, the recent CSL example, where it's producing AstraZeneca in a big way. That's a model we need to look at, to have the ability to procure something here and manufacture something here to protect our citizens, so that we can then serve the rest of the world in a generous way.

Did anybody want to comment on that example in Australia, with CSL and what's going on there right now that's positive?

[Simon Evenett]

I have read about this case. My understanding is that CSL was a candidate trying to produce a vaccine that was unsuccessful. The production facilities were there, CSL met the regulatory standards, which one of your clients emphasized as being very important, and the Australian government did, indeed, tie the procurement contract to a requirement for some degree of local manufacturing. Again, some hedging was built into this. This might be the type of flexible and smart procurement that could be done, but please note the prerequisite that the Australians had the facility in place before it could take this step.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Yes, and that's a fantastic point.

My preamble there was to indicate just how complicated it is to set up the most basic of production facilities, let alone a world-class vaccination production facility.

Does anybody else want to comment on that briefly before time runs out?

[Declan Hamill]

For the benefit of the committee members, there's a really good article that came out a few months ago by Derek Lowe, entitled “Myths of Vaccine Manufacturing”. It is worth taking a look at in terms of what goes into manufacturing vaccines. It demonstrates that the discussion around TRIPS waivers and IP is a little bit off-key in the context of the issues relating to manufacturing. We can provide a copy of that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Lobb, it's three o'clock. Do you have your answers?

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

That's good, Ms. Sgro. We go over many times, and we'll finish on time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

You have a minute left if you want to use it.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

No, I appreciate it. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you, Mr. Lobb.

Thank you so much to all of the witnesses for the very valuable and interesting information, as we deal with a complex and critically important plan. We need to learn as much as we can from all of our witnesses. We appreciate your being here, especially Mr. Evenett, who was talking to us all the way from England via video. Thank you all very much.

This is Friday, so have a wonderful weekend and we will see you all on Monday.