Evidence of meeting #25 for International Trade in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was vaccines.
A recording is available from Parliament.
2:25 p.m.
Liberal
2:25 p.m.
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
About an hour and a half from where I grew up, just to give you a sense of where they're at today in terms of vaccines distributed and administered, in Michigan 8.3 million vaccines were distributed, 6.2 million were administered and 27% are fully vaccinated. That is quite a different story from what we're facing here in Canada.
The other point is that there was an article this week that said there are 13 states that have over 100,000 shots each that the federal government in the States has allocated to them but they haven't ordered. I think that the state of North Carolina has over 400,000.
When Mr. Medhora talked about a clearing house, I wonder why we can't have a clearing house with the United States, which is just a few minutes up the road from where I grew up. Is there a calculation around the world of exactly how many vaccines are in this situation of being available but not being used?
April 23rd, 2021 / 2:30 p.m.
President, Centre for International Governance Innovation
On global statistics, the WHO itself has a database that tracks some of this. How accurate and up to date it is is always a question.
However, on your point about whether we can do something interactively—Mark might be able to shed some light on it—there's no reason that we couldn't be more creative. I think back to the agreement some days ago between Manitoba, I think it was, and a state south of it, in which truckers going south could be vaccinated in the U.S.
There's lots of room for this kind of creativity at the national level. The U.S. said that they hadn't approved AstraZeneca and had one and a half million doses and that many of them would go to Canada, and there's no reason we shouldn't be doing that.
That tells me something else, which is that vaccine distribution has become part and parcel of foreign policy and foreign relations, which is still one step removed from improving global welfare. I'd remind us that the very scary variant that we're now hearing about from India, and previous to that from the U.K., South Africa and Brazil, all come from regions where the vaccine was not being deployed as much as it should have been. As much as it would be great to have the U.S. and Canada exchange vaccines, that's doing nothing for the medium-term problem, which is that 130 countries have yet to deliver a dose. That's where the mutants are going to be originating.
2:30 p.m.
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
That's a fair point.
I look at St. Clair County, which is right along Port Huron. If they're having a clinic and they're only getting 30% to come out to the clinic, it seems crazy to me that people in Sarnia, and even where I'm from—I mean, we wouldn't let them drive across the border—wouldn't be allowed to drive across to the border to get the shot or that we wouldn't bring the shot up into Ontario so they can get it. However, I understand the global perspective too.
Mr. Warner, you probably mentioned it and it probably went in one ear and out the other, but in the beginning of this, if it were to happen again, would the proper strategy be for the world to come together and say we are going to make this open source and that everything we have is going to go into a working group consortium so that when we get the solution, everybody makes it? Is that pie in the sky, or is that something we should be looking at when we're faced with this the next time? Where is that...?
2:30 p.m.
Principal Counsel, MAAW Law, As an Individual
I'm afraid I think it is pie in the sky, to be honest. We saw that as the pandemic was crossing the whole world, it became every person for themselves very quickly.
When COVAX was originally designed, the idea was that everybody was supposed to buy their vaccines through COVAX. No sooner did it became very clear that countries were doing these advance purchase agreements than COVAX was amended and we were getting into these footnotes about whether what Canada was doing was legit or not.
However, the original idea was that all of us would buy from COVAX. Nobody wanted to do that. The European member states didn't want to go along with it. The United States, of course, never signed up, and Canada was quickly out the door with its advance purchase agreements.
I think on a reasonable basis—and this is what I keep coming back to—from a Canadian point of view, the opportunity would have been to just get on an airplane and have the Prime Minister have a conversation—as difficult as it might have been for him—with Mr. Trump. That's just as it was a difficult conversation for Stephen Harper to get inside the tent for GM and Chrysler. The Americans didn't want us. I don't know how many people realize that. The Americans were quite happy to do GM and Chrysler restructuring on their own, and there is a pretty decent argument that Canada overpaid. We paid 20% of the freight for that. We did not have 20% of the North American auto industry at the time.
2:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
Thank you, Mr. Warner. My apologies for cutting everybody off.
We have Mr. Sheehan for five minutes, please.
2:35 p.m.
Liberal
Terry Sheehan Liberal Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Thank you very much for your presentations. I want to thank everyone very much. It was very thoughtful and very important.
One interesting question I have is going on from where Mr. DiCarlo had been speaking about the amount of capital in innovation and the time needed for creating new vaccines.
You had started going on about how this could not only help COVID-19 but could also open up to other things, such as our fight against cancers and things of that nature. I just wanted you to delve a little bit more into how that could happen.
I'm going to turn it over to you again, sir.
2:35 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, BioPharma Services Inc.
Thank you.
There are two exciting technologies. For example, both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are mRNA vaccines, which existed before for cancer therapy in other products. Even the adenoviral vectors that are being used by J&J and AstraZeneca were previous technologies that existed. COVID leapfrogged them forward because of, unfortunately, the increased demand—the increased demand politically for our economy, and also for volume.
It's a good-news, bad-news story. The bad-news story is COVID. The good-news story is that now we have two new technologies that can be applied to infectious diseases, including HIV. We can apply them to cancers, things that in the past didn't get the funding and support for these breakthrough technologies. It is actually an exciting time from a medical technology perspective, even if it was created for the wrong reasons, given this pandemic. It was for the right reasons—you know what I mean—but it was the wrong motivator, because it should have been done probably five to 10 years ago and should have had that funding back then.
2:35 p.m.
Liberal
Terry Sheehan Liberal Sault Ste. Marie, ON
How would a blanket waiver of the TRIPS affect innovation and life sciences and the biotech industry, then, in your opinion?
2:35 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, BioPharma Services Inc.
This is probably not my area of expertise, but in my view, if you have a waiver, I would say you have more parties at the table that can work together and collaborate on both technology and manufacturing. That waiver allows a lot of companies to work closer together and a lot of jurisdictions and countries to work together without the restrictions of IP, but the reality, as we've heard from some of my colleagues already, is that India has a lot of manufacturing and technology, and South Africa does as well, and Brazil. Some of these countries already have a lot of base in technology, so it's more than just the waiver; it is the global industries and governments working closer together to develop those technologies.
2:35 p.m.
Liberal
Terry Sheehan Liberal Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Mr. Warner, you were involved in helping the multinational pharmaceutical companies distribute the HIV-AIDS drug globally. Could you please speak more about the technology transfers, the sharing of know-how and the considerations for local manufacturing capacities that were involved in that particular process?
2:35 p.m.
Principal Counsel, MAAW Law, As an Individual
As I said before, it started out that companies were giving their drugs away for, in our case, a dollar a day. Then at some point they got to a comfort level that there wasn't as much diversion as they were fearing back into the developed world, to be honest. We could then license, so we started to license. Again, it was not the state-of-the-art technology but, let's say, the first generation of antiretroviral drugs that seemed to be having some success, and that's what created them. Aspen Pharmacare in South Africa, which we keep talking about, really was one of the great creations of that, because that really spurred their growth. In Brazil as well there were similar types of things, and in India as well with their companies.
That's how it began. From that, they built out to a point where you can see the Serum Institute of India today being able to have a voluntary licence to do the state-of-the-art AstraZeneca vaccine. You have to think that part of that came from the training that came from the HIV work; but on the other hand, as I keep saying, now that Serum has that training, they no longer want to just supply Africa.
Somebody mentioned earlier, and I think this is an important point to get in here, that Africans are paying more. The interesting thing about that is that the African countries are being charged more by the Serum Institute of India, not by AstraZeneca of London. That is something we need to keep in mind as we think through some of this as well.
2:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
Thank you very much, Mr. Warner.
We'll go on to Mr. Aboultaif for five minutes, please.
2:40 p.m.
Conservative
Ziad Aboultaif Conservative Edmonton Manning, AB
Thank you, Madam Chair.
The question is for Mr. DiCarlo.
You mentioned a fourth, fifth and maybe sixth wave. I'd like to know if governments were aware of these new waves from before or not, due to the nature of the pandemic and of COVID.
2:40 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, BioPharma Services Inc.
I can't speak to whether governments, in their modelling, are aware of a fourth or fifth wave. From a forecasting perspective, you can see that wave one was smaller than wave two. Wave three is bigger than wave two. I think that many people can foresee that if we don't get the vaccinations out fast enough and if we don't get ahead of the virus, there will probably be a fourth wave and there will be a fifth wave after that.
Hopefully, if we vaccinate, the fifth wave will be smaller than the fourth wave. It's a race against time in terms of timely administration of these vaccines so that we don't get repeated curves that continue to spike up quickly, especially when the new variants are more infectious.
2:40 p.m.
Conservative
Ziad Aboultaif Conservative Edmonton Manning, AB
You also mentioned something about how if we don't vaccinate 75% to 80% of the whole population in Canada by July, we will be exposed to these waves one after the other. That means the catch-up that we're trying to play is out of our hands.
Can you confirm that?
2:40 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, BioPharma Services Inc.
I don't know if the catch-up is out of our hands. I think all the provinces and the federal government, as you know, are trying to work together to expedite that. The ramping up of volume is increasing. I know the government has tried to expedite the vaccination by focusing on the first dose.
I'd like to be hopeful. I think we need to plan for the worst-case scenarios, but we need to be aggressive. We need to bring in these vaccines as quickly as possible. We need to get as close to that 70% or 80% as possible.
2:40 p.m.
Conservative
Ziad Aboultaif Conservative Edmonton Manning, AB
We don't have capacity at the moment to produce vaccines in Canada. We were not ready to do that for many reasons. Now we are hoping just.... The vaccine is the only way we're going to face and win against those waves that are coming.
What other solutions do you think we haven't had? For example, isn't closing the ports or banning some of the flights the solution? That should be a measure we could have taken since day one. Do you agree with that?
2:40 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, BioPharma Services Inc.
Yes, I think what we're seeing in the news right now—talking about banning Indian and Pakistani flights—is the right thing to do. I think it should be very country-specific. Yes, we should do it. We should limit our ports, depending on the locations of highest infection. We should be aggressive at limiting who comes in so that we can manage both community spread as well as foreign-introduced spread.
Should we have done it earlier? Yes. I think everyone agrees with that. I think if everyone had to rewind and say they were worried about variants of concern a year ago, they probably would have done it. That's why I'm saying we should not just be worried about the variants now but should also be worried about the new strains that might develop.
Let's forget about what we did badly before. Let's be aggressive now and start hammering down on those countermeasures.
2:40 p.m.
Conservative
Ziad Aboultaif Conservative Edmonton Manning, AB
Thank you.
I have a quick question for Mr. Warner.
We know that the TRIPS waiver doesn't solve the problem. Passing this IP to any given third party isn't going to solve the problem, because you still need the raw material, which could be very exclusive to certain places, certain countries and certain companies. If, at the end of the day, you cannot pass the IP to be able to produce locally and to increase the production capacity, that is fine. If you're going to aim to reduce the price per dose, this is another issue.
How do you see that dynamic?
2:40 p.m.
Principal Counsel, MAAW Law, As an Individual
I think that's one of the really tough questions here. The vaccines that have really succeeded are these mRNA vaccines. The world is really not so much in a race for vaccines at this point; we're in a race for lipid nanoparticles, which were developed by a Vancouver firm but are licensed to many people around the world. People are scaling up in the United States and Europe and elsewhere. That's one of the big blocs—there are other blocs as well—that are really scaling up fast. Not only would you have to get people up to speed in producing more vaccines, vaccine technology and the transfer of technology, but you also have to somehow scale up that whole process of creating the lipid nanoparticles.
It is really hard. One of the reasons we're fighting about the export controls from Europe and wherever else is these very shortages. It's a very tough Rubik's cube to solve.
2:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
Thank you, Mr. Warner.
We go now to Mr. Dhaliwal for five minutes, please.
2:45 p.m.
Liberal
Sukh Dhaliwal Liberal Surrey—Newton, BC
Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to thank all the witnesses.
Madam Chair, in February the Prime Minister stated that since the beginning of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the Government of Canada has worked quickly to strengthen and expand Canada's capacity to manufacture safe and effective vaccine treatments and related supplies across the country. This includes investing in made-in-Canada products to protect Canadians from COVID-19 and ensuring that the country is well positioned to fight future pandemics here at home.
Today the Prime Minister announced that a Quebec-based company, Medicago, has applied to Health Canada for approval of a COVID vaccine.
I would like to know from the witnesses what additional policies and measures the Government of Canada should take to strengthen and expand the domestic capacity to manufacture safe and effective vaccines, treatments and related supplies, and how investments made today in made-in-Canada projects will protect Canadians against future pandemics. Are regional investments needed?
The floor is open to any of the witnesses who want to contribute.