Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for having CIGI join your discussions on this important and timely issue. I look forward to engaging with you and the other witnesses on an interrelated set of issues that bear lots of scrutiny.
By way of introduction, my organization, the Centre for International Governance Innovation, has been before this committee previously. For 20 years, we have been working at the interface of innovation, international affairs, public welfare and prosperity. In the last two or three years, I've had even more of a window into this through the membership on two international panels on structural change and on global health and new technologies.
The committee has set for itself three main questions: first, Canada's position on the so-called TRIPS waiver; second, ensuring a vaccine supply for Canada; and third, ways to accelerate domestic capacity.
Rather than deal with each of these separately, I would like to speak around the issues that I expand upon with colleagues in the CIGI brief and make three sets of observations.
I'll begin with the issue of the waiver. To echo my colleague Nathaniel Lipkus, who appeared before you representing IP Institute of Canada last week, the TRIPS waiver itself is not so much about Canada; it is about ensuring access to technology and vaccines mainly for developing countries. Whether the waiver is granted or not would not make much difference in Canada. In fact, I'm aware of colleagues who make the point that it wouldn't make a difference anywhere.
I don't take a position directly on the waiver, but the waiver, in and of itself, is not the issue. The question is whether, in times of emergency, the global community has access to the technologies and processes it needs, because we're all in this together. That's because of the important spillover effects that the pandemic and vaccines have. There's a broader arsenal of policy issues in which the waiver might be one element, but it certainly cannot be a sufficient condition. In that arsenal of issues, I point to the COVAX facility and funding for COVAX, which is currently underfunded; the price of vaccines; the public subsidies that have gone to the pharmaceutical companies that have developed the vaccines; and the more basic research that public sectors have funded as a result.
There is the question of the negotiations with vaccine companies and the opacity of contracts, so-called vaccine hoarding and indeed what has become now a commonly used term, “vaccine diplomacy”, in which vaccines are used as a tool of foreign policy rather than to improve global health.
There are different kinds of innovation systems. I've said this before and I'll say it again: If you think back to the 1960s, when global hunger, famine and malnutrition were a major global issue, you'll see that Canada joined many philanthropic organizations in other countries. In 1971 a global network of institutes, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, or CGIAR, was created to work on different aspects of agriculture. That group has, in fact, created new strains of different kinds of grains and food, patents are held in the public interest, and although malnutrition is not behind us, hunger and famine, as we knew it in the 1960s, is behind us.
I simply end my first set of observations by making the point that Canada can contribute and has contributed to global efforts to use technology and harness it to improve global welfare, including in the countries where it is needed the most, and intellectual property regimes are part and parcel of that approach.
My second set of observations has to do with innovation. I make this point in the brief, so I won't spend a lot of time on it. I would simply remind the committee that increasingly, wealth is created through research, intellectual property and the marshalling of big data sets that can be prioritized in a way that yields meaningful results, creating both prosperity and equity.
This set of issues, which we may broadly call “intangibles”, in fact accounts for the majority of the value of companies on the S&P 500 and elsewhere. If we're going to be smart about the way we do prosperity and equity, we have to be playing this field. The fact is that Canada is a middle power, and I cite some indicators of that. We are sixth in the G7 when it comes to R and D and in the late teens when it comes to global innovation indexes. In fact, we're a net importer of IP, so we cannot claim to be using the comparative advantage we have in this field.
Not everything here has to do with federal policies. Some issues lie in the provincial domain—for example, the extent to which universities can participate in the research efforts of their faculties when they sign research contracts with foreign multinationals, who then hold the IP; it's not something the federal government can do.
I do think there is a set of coherent and coordinated innovation strategies that wouldn't perhaps yield results in the immediate term for the vaccine issue and for this pandemic but in the long term are really the only way forward.
I come to my third set of observations. CIGI has appeared before you twice recently, on Bill C-4 and on WTO reform. My colleague Bob Fay appeared before you, and CIGI made points then that the institutions and processes we have today date back 60 or 70 years, when digital was barely a gleam in diplomats' eyes.
We have an architectural problem in some senses, and we're using the wrong instruments to achieve the ends we should be achieving. We're using trade agreements—which are about trade, of course—to deal with issues that have important non-economic dimensions, like data. In a piece in The Globe and Mail today, I cite the example of CUSMA, which pronounces on data localization and the content that digital platforms carry, which is about the health of a democracy and the health of our society much more than about commerce. The WTO's e-commerce negotiations are also grappling with data as if it were a commercial issue, when in fact data has so many other dimensions. We have to think of new ways of doing international relations in this era. My colleagues and I have some thoughts on the kinds of processes and institutions we should be thinking about.
To conclude, I should mention that the digital economic partnership agreement that three countries in the Pacific have entered into, and that Canada wishes to enter into, is one way forward. When this committee turns its attention to that set of issues, I look forward to expanding on that as well.
To conclude, I'd simply say, as a good economist would, that there is the short run and the long run. In the short run, options are always limited and less nuanced, but in the medium term and beyond, there is much that Canada can do to improve global welfare, both internationally and at home.
With those few thoughts I will stop. I look forward to your questions.
Thank you.