Hi. Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee, for having me today.
My name is Jesse Whattam. I'm here representing the Trade Justice Network, which is a coalition of environmental, civil society, indigenous, labour and social justice organizations that came together in 2010 to call for a new global trade regime founded on social justice, human rights and sustainability.
Some of our members include the Canadian Labour Congress, Unifor, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, United Steelworkers, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and Climate Action Network Canada, to name a few.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, world leaders have repeatedly spoken of the need for global solidarity to get us all through this once-in-a-century health crisis. Our Prime Minister was among the first to call for global equal access to COVID-19 health technologies. As time has passed, calls for unity have been followed by a disappointing lack of commitment by many wealthier nations, including Canada.
Today I'm going to focus my statement, first, on the fact that we can all agree that we need to vaccinate more quickly and more fairly, and that current production has not been up to the task. Second, that while it's not a silver bullet, the TRIPS waiver would be a step towards realizing that goal and would increase the leverage governments have to deal with the publicly subsidized big pharma vaccine-makers. Third, the “third way” and current TRIPS flexibilities are just not good enough, as the Canadian experience has shown.
Over the past several months, the Trade Justice Network has been working with other civil society organizations to call for Canada to support the waiver. People from across the country, across sectors, and from all different backgrounds have participated. We have hosted panels and meetings and written letters and articles. We've had a House of Commons petition that was recently brought to the floor, and we are awaiting a reply. Last month we sent a letter to this committee and to Prime Minister Trudeau on behalf of 40 civil society organizations that represent hundreds of thousands of Canadians.
As the coordinator of this network, I've been interacting and talking to a lot of people from across the country about this waiver. It's very clear to me that Canadians want this waiver for the global community. There's a resounding consensus that business as usual is not going to cut it. I can hear all the people I've been speaking to, and that's kind of where I'm coming from today.
The early days of the pandemic saw vaccine development, and even the initial scale-up of manufacturing capacity happened quickly. However, today we're facing a scarcity issue. Manufacturing constraints, supply chain barriers and vaccine hoarding have created this scarcity.
Now countries with the highest incomes are vaccinating 25 times faster than low-income countries. Of the 800 million vaccine doses that have been administered globally, over 83% have gone to higher-income or upper-middle-income countries, while lower income countries have received just 0.2%. This global inequality in distribution means that it will be somewhere above 4.6 years before we reach global herd immunity, and the thing is that we won't be out of this pandemic until all of us are.
To meet this unprecedented global demand, solutions must alleviate immediate supply limitations, and we must also establish conditions that allow for longer-term solutions to ensure manufacturing and supply capacity is increased and diversified. For this, we must enable and develop local capacities across the world to independently contribute to a more sustainable global supply system, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.
The main vaccine developers could openly share their IP and transfer know-how and technology right now, but so far this has not been sufficient. Even when the WTO encourages companies to have more licensing with other countries, they have no desire to do so because there is no profit imperative there for them. It's clear that global supply should not, and cannot, be dependent on the business imperatives and exclusive rights of pharmaceutical companies holding that technology. Health imperatives and IP imperatives are not always in line. In the case of this global pandemic, we're seen this play out in the extreme inequality of vaccine access.
Further, the charity model that's being used cannot solve the fundamental disconnect between the pharmaceutical company monopolies and the calls from developing and least-developed countries to produce for themselves.
Right now, Canada is allowing large pharmaceutical companies to dictate the majority of the vaccine global supply and the distribution system, competing over a limited supply and leaving billions of people behind, particularly in the global south. We could redirect that to combining efforts to help build global production capacity.
The proposal at the WTO, sponsored initially by South Africa and India, is an important step in creating the policy space to ramp up manufacturing, scaling up, and supplying COVID vaccines and other technologies. It would mean WTO member countries would not have to grant or enforce patents and other intellectual property rights covering COVID-19 vaccines and other technologies. With these barriers and restrictions removed, member states, the scientific side, and suppliers can work together without fear of litigation and trade sanctions under the TRIPS agreement.
As I said and as other people have said, it's not a silver bullet and it's not the only challenge, but it is an important legal option countries need. Temporarily waiving relevant intellectual property rights that right now are simply reinforcing monopolies is an important move, and Canada shouldn't stand in the way of it.
What's more, Canada is claiming that existing flexibilities in the TRIPS agreement, such as those for the issuance of compulsory licences to manufacture patented medicines, are sufficient. While there are a number of important safeguards already enshrined in the TRIPS agreement that countries can use to protect public health and increase access, these flexibilities weren't designed for a global pandemic and aren't enough. It's not one or the other; they aren't enough.
For one, they are only accessible on a case-by-case basis, which can take years to settle. Responding to COVID requires for goods subject to exclusive patent and other IP claims and restrictions to become accessible and affordable now.
Over a year into the pandemic, this business-as-usual approach, premised on voluntary, secretive, limited and restrictive licensing, has failed to leverage global expertise and capacity to scale up manufacturing and deliver equitable access.
As it stands now, vaccine technology and knowledge are being treated as private property by pharmaceutical companies, despite the $100 billion of taxpayer dollars that went into research and the development of technology. As a taxpayer, I'm enraged that this public money was taken to fund research and is now being used for a few corporations to profit as my family, communities and the poorest and most marginalized people in Canada and globally suffer so deeply. As the director of Oxfam put it, “This is a public health emergency, not a private profit opportunity.”
I think that the corporate priorities and imperatives are clear and not surprising. For one, the pharmaceutical corporations involved continue to reject the WTO-led C-TAP initiative as a means of sharing know-how, going so far as to call it dangerous at some points.
As well, at a WTO gathering earlier this month, Pfizer and Moderna said they won't share their mRNA technology vaccines with vaccine firms in developing countries on the grounds that they're far too complex and require a lot of raw materials, which, beyond the obvious condescending nature, is also untrue. Over two-thirds of the WTO members want this, because of the untapped capacity that does exist. Vaccine companies in the global south—to name a couple, Bharat Biotech in India and Aspen from South Africa—have expressed capacity.
Further, this week the People's Vaccine Alliance calculated that over the past 12 months, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca have paid out $26 billion in dividends and stock buybacks to their shareholders, which would be enough to pay to vaccinate at least 1.3 billion people, which, put another way, is the entire population of Africa.
I think a few of these examples illustrate the imperatives of the status quo that are not going to get us out of this pandemic.
I've heard claims that the private sector is more efficient and leads to more innovation, but the evidence points to the contrary. In the first months of the pandemic, we saw open science at work, leading to rapid innovation through public funding. There are structures and examples that show that without IP rights, a global network of vaccine research and production is possible. While not easy, it is possible.
For the past 50 years, the flu vaccine has been produced by a global network of medical professionals who monitor for emerging strains of a virus and periodically update the formula for vaccinating against it, which I understand is a different formula, but the structure exists. They then make this information available to companies and countries around the world, and as a network of laboratories in 110 different countries, funded almost entirely by governments, it is done without any intellectual property considerations. The difference here is that the imperative is solely on protecting people, not on profit, and this opens up the capacity of developing and updating the vaccine and sharing information with a network of producers.
It's possible; there just needs to be a will.
In closing, we know that the waiver is not the only answer and it's not the silver bullet, and there are certainly other challenges, but it would help break down barriers to scaling up manufacturing and supplying lifesaving COVID-19 medical tools across the world. It can also help build capacity for future pandemics that public health scientists have warned us about.
It's morally unacceptable for leaders of rich countries to allow a few corporations to keep the vaccine technology and know-how under lock and key, selling their limited doses to those who can pay the highest prices as people die. Canada must be part of the global effort to save lives, not an obstacle. Therefore, we call on the Canadian government to please support this waiver now.
Thank you.