Thank you, Madam Chair.
Dear international committee, I'm really pleased today to be talking to you as a witness on the subject of Canada's trade and investment policy and the trade agreements and your various points. I'm actually going to be covering off all the points in general throughout my talk. I won't be going item by item, but I will be reviewing each of them in all the comments that I'm making.
Again, my name is Renzo DiCarlo. My background and credentials are based on both my academic and my business experience. I'm a London School of Economics alumnus in stakeholder theory and research, with about 25 years in pharmaceutical GMP and medical research. I've done the management of a clinical trials company and also have been a GMP producer of radiolabelled antibodies, so I'm very uniquely qualified to talk about just-in-time logistics, which is what we're going through today in Canada in terms of the vaccine rollout.
I'm uniquely qualified to talk to the committee about views on strategies and policies on vaccines. I have been the CEO of Biopharma Services here in Toronto for the last 10 years. It's the largest privately held first-in-human clinical research site in Ontario, Canada. We're based in Toronto.
Over the last 15 years, we've provided essential drug discovery to over 200 pharma companies around the globe. We have about 250 leading-edge medical professionals who work here in Toronto and in St. Louis, Missouri, and also in Zurich, Switzerland. Our headquarters in Toronto have been focused on very critical drug development linked to organ anti-rejection drugs and antisense products, as well as COVID countermeasures. Even in the early days of our new normal, last year in April 2020, we actually provided preliminary feedback to the likes of Providence Therapeutics, which, as most of you probably know, is our very own RNA product based in Canada.
In the new normal, it's impossible to separate free trade from COVID safety. Trading blocs, safe travel and COVID domestic health are intertwined in our new reality. One cannot demand a strong NAFTA, for example, without a safe NAFTA. If the U.S. government wishes to maintain a strong and free trade relationship with Canada, it also needs to ensure that Canada is safe and healthy. This means that COVID vaccines coming from Pfizer in Kalamazoo or Moderna in the U.S.A. need to flow freely to Canada, just like other goods and services do now, similar to the comments our other witness just mentioned a few minutes ago.
Michigan should be treated the same way as Ontario by both the U.S. and Canada, whether it's Ford in Oakville or Ford in Detroit, or Pfizer in Toronto versus Pfizer in Kalamazoo or Pfizer in New York city. Free movement of vaccines across the border should be equivalent to the free movement of automobiles from Ford. I think we heard the example of General Motors a few minutes ago as well. If the U.S. government is limiting our vaccines in our darkest hours, then we too should limit critical goods to them. The same philosophy should be applied to the U.K. and also the European trading blocs. Free trade needs to be linked to vaccine free movement and health and safety.
As we all know, and as we're painfully aware right now, infection rates are on the rise in our economy, and our economy continues to weaken as Canada continues to be battered by wave after wave. Wave three is not the last wave, unless 80% of the population is vaccinated by July 2021. The only true path to success here is getting the first rollout of the vaccines completed as soon as possible, with an eye out for the booster dose or third dose, and yes, I'm calling it the “third dose” or the “booster dose”. Pfizer has already announced that it needs to apply a third dose, and we should be able to try to conduct that third dose by year-end, especially for the variants of concern.
Our current normal is not going away and could become worse if we don't start creating trading blocs, coupled with safety, with very specific countries. Unfortunately, we're rewinding history and we're going back to our roots.
This means forging strong alliances with the Commonwealth, the U.S. and western Europe. This virus is not going to be under control until certain countries can control their virus, and this could last as long as five years. I know it is a painful message, but that's my current belief, based on what we're seeing, both with our clients in the international markets and with our drug development partners.
We need to limit our trade and travel with countries that cannot control their infection rates, and especially with the variants of concern, or the VOCs. Yes, I am suggesting blocking travel to certain countries in North America, Asia, the Middle East and South America until those specific countries can demonstrate low infections. We saw in the media that we are talking about limiting travel from certain countries—I think all of you are aware of that—and yes, that also means draconian control measures for people who travel to these specific countries and expect to return home to Canada. It's not the current COVID-19 strain that we should worry about; it is the new COVID-21 that is being created in a country that cannot control its outbreak. We need to plan for that.
We need to start looking forward into the windscreen versus looking at the rear-view mirror, because up to now we've been looking at data from the past and not data going forward. It's the new VOCs linked to mutations, like the B.1.617 lineage, that should be our main focus, and don't be surprised if in a month or two we start talking about other variants that scientists start to detect. We need to look forward and create those countermeasures before the virus creates the measures for us. For example, B.1.617 isn't even measured in certain labs in Ontario, and it's more contagious and lethal than the other VOCs.
This is a breakthrough illness, and these mutations can cause other problems. Also, vaccinations are not 100% effective on some of these severe mutations, so we cannot solve all these problems by adding capacity linked to existing technology, especially when our closest allies should be able to exchange vaccines for us for free trade. Adding capacity on old or current technology will take at least two or three years to implement; we can surely go faster by obtaining current doses from Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca. They have the capacity and they are scaling up. Let's find ways on the trading blocs to get those vaccines into our country, because it's important to our allies and to ourselves.
This requires that our trading partners support and foster a healthy and free Canada. We need to leapfrog and support Canadian innovators, however, in developing the next-generation RNA solution for the VOCs that are mutating into new strains. This is where our spending should go: on getting ready for COVID-21 or COVID-22. Our safety and economy really depend on it. Let's support Canadian RNA developers so that the technology resides in Canada, but then we can pick and choose the options for outsourcing to contract manufacturers, whether in Canada or abroad, especially in our free trade zone, to produce innovative products.
Thank you.