Ladies and gentlemen, my colleague Claude Vaillancourt and I would like to thank you for inviting us to appear before the committee on behalf of the Réseau québécois sur l'intégration continentale.
Currently, as you know, the debate on the waiver of intellectual property rights on anti-coronavirus vaccines reveals a divide between those who are for the waiver and those who are against the waiver.
As my colleagues reminded us earlier, the waiver has been officially endorsed by 58 governments and is supported by 100 countries. A small number of powers are opposed; they include Brazil, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom and the European Union.
Ladies and gentlemen, whether we are for or against the waiver, one thing is certain: no one can deny that vaccine nationalism may well harm all the investments that have been made to contain the pandemic since it began. That a number of anti-coronavirus vaccines have been produced in less than a year is an unprecedented scientific accomplishment. However, that success, laudable though it is, is presently undermined by unequal, troubling and worrying access to the vaccines. That is why the Réseau québécois sur l'intégration continentale is calling for property rights on the anti-coronavirus vaccines to be suspended for two fundamental reasons. First, for reasons that are humanitarian, not economic, and second, for reasons that are purely economic.
First and foremost, it is time to put humanitarian issues before all other considerations. It is unjust that the least fortunate, basically those from developing countries, should remain at the mercy of pharmaceutical giants, when we know full well that most subsidies intended to support research into the coronavirus come from public funds.
Here we are once more, privatizing profits and socializing losses. The public is paying twice for the same vaccine. We pay first to finance the research and development and we pay again to acquire the doses we need.
Because developed countries have obtained more than half of all the contracts for vaccines, many developing countries will not have mass vaccination before 2025. A delay of that kind could set the scene for potentially dangerous variants in the future and cost many their lives.
Economically, the vaccine war is likely to cost more than the war against the pandemic. That is the conclusion of research published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in the United States. In fact, if countries of the North become vaccinated and countries of the South remain largely excluded from vaccination, the global economy will sustain losses of more than $9.2 trillion in 2021, almost half of which will be absorbed by advanced economies, including Canada.
Because of the recession that the pandemic is imposing on less-advanced economies, exporters and importers in the advanced economies, of which Canada is one, would be prey, first, to markets that are stagnating or even declining, and second, to global value chains that are more and more disrupted. This is why ensuring free and universal access to anti-coronavirus vaccines, and doing so today, is not only an altruistic and moral act, it is also an economic necessity.
In the light of these factors, which we invite Canada to consider, our network urges the Government of Canada to support the waiver of intellectual property rights on vaccines and to promote it in international discussions.
In the long term, lifting property rights on vaccines against COVID-19 must be followed by the dissemination of knowledge. Some countries in the South have shown that they have a great capacity for producing generic medications. But restrictions on importing them in the TRIPS and the extension of protection for brand-name medications in various free trade agreements, have made it difficult to disseminate essential data so that the medications can be produced and made available.
Ladies and gentlemen, whether the issue is saving lives or relaunching economies, free and universal vaccination is currently the only way we have to achieve it. The extraordinary circumstances of the pandemic call for extraordinary action.
Thank you for your attention.