Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my deep concern with the Liberal government's failure to support the request by South Africa and India to temporarily waive intellectual property rights through the TRIPS waiver. By failing to support the TRIPS waiver, and by failing to ensure that all people and all countries can get vaccines to their populations as quickly and efficiently as possible, the government is putting Canada on the wrong side of history. This is not where Canadians want or deserve to be.
The decision to not support the waiver is ethically bankrupt. It will potentially cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands, or possibly millions, more people. It is indefensible, but more importantly it is also not very smart. We have heard so many times before, and I cannot reiterate with enough emphasis, that none of us is safe until all of us are safe. Until people around the world are vaccinated, until this virus is contained and eradicated and until variants stop evolving, we will not recover from this pandemic. We may believe that it is over, but if we fail to act globally, this virus will evolve and we will find ourselves in a second pandemic in which vaccinated Canadians are not protected. It would be a second pandemic that could have been prevented.
Why is the government willing to watch more people die? Why is the government willing to see our global economy crumble once again? Is this the price we are being asked to pay to protect big pharmaceutical companies? We should keep in mind that these companies, which use massive amounts of public dollars to develop, test and produce vaccines, are making billions of dollars in profit this year. These companies using public dollars, our money, are profiting off of the pandemic. They are looking for more and the government is obliging. Why choose big pharma over lives? Why choose big pharma over our future? This is not what Canadians want from their government.
The United States has said that it will support the waiver. Over 100 countries around the world have supported the waiver. There are 280 European parliamentarians who support the waiver. Members of the minister's own party, Liberal members of Parliament, have called upon the government to support the waiver. Even Pope Francis is urging Canada and all countries to support the waiver. Pope Francis recognizes that selfish politics, such as those shown by the Liberal government, are another variant of the COVID-19 virus. He said, “Another variant is when we put the laws of the market or of intellectual property over the...health of humanity.”
The TRIPS waiver is not the only step we need to take to ensure vaccines are available as quickly and as widely as possible, but it is a vital step. It is a tool in the very limited tool box that humanity has right now to fight this virus, and frankly we need to use every single tool that we have at our disposal. The situation is urgent and the repercussions are catastrophic if we fail to act.
I am speaking from the heart. I am using every means I have to convince the government that it is not too late to do the right thing. It should stop dithering, stop deflecting and stop avoiding the issue by saying it is studying it and thinking about options. It should stop the ridiculous wait-and-see approach that insults the intelligence of Canadians and fails to recognize the urgency of the pandemic. It should do the right thing, support the TRIPS waiver and help the world combat COVID-19 before it claims even more victims.