Health committee  Yes, it does. I'll keep it short here, because I know we're pressed for time. I'll go back to my days working with the World Bank. I was in a program with a representative from a large pharmaceutical company. I asked him, “How do you determine prices?” He put his hands in the ai

Health committee  To answer the question where I feel I can, again, this goes back to bigger questions like, why are we offering intellectual property? Why are we allowing for pricing to be so secretive? The best thing we can do is expand access through the waiving of intellectual property rights

Health committee  Again, I apologize for my lack of technology skills here. My point is that, yes, we in the public domain should have access to information contained in these reports. As I mentioned earlier, when we did our studies—I'm not just referring to Canada here, just to be clear—we found

Health committee  I still stand by my quote, happily, and I would say that the government indeed can take a stand. Oftentimes, the argument is made—and I know this happens usually behind closed doors—where the industry will say they're going to give you a better deal, but they don't want others to

Health committee  We now live in a world that has shifted. The industry is still operating like it did 25 years ago, when it concealed things. Again, though, in terms of information, we have a revolution that's been happening for a long time now. This is nothing new. The public wants to know. The

Health committee  There absolutely is, and I don't know the exact numbers but we could refer to Operation Warp Speed, which, again, had huge amounts of money invested from the U.S. side. One could argue that this is just for U.S. citizens, but again, I was making the case that I think it's for the

Health committee  That is absolutely what I'm saying. As I said, I'm referring to research I did. Canada was a small part of a pool of countries that we looked at, including countries within the European Union, as well as Brazil, the United States, etc. The bottom line is that we should know what

Health committee  Those are fair points and absolutely true. Vaccines are very complex to manufacture. There are always going to be delays, but this goes back to my main message regarding the lack of transparency. What Canadians needed to know.... Again, I'm not assuming that every Canadian was

Health committee  Thank you. That's a very good comment. I'm going to go back. The world has changed since I wrote my op-ed. I don't think it should be an us or them proposition. I want to stand very clearly on that. Of course, I don't want to be accused of saying that I'm trying to take vaccin

Health committee  I apologize. I'm using my own microphone. Does that work better? Even with the contracts we found, there were a lot of redactions. Even if they are publicly available, oftentimes the information is limited. I'm speaking generally now. My point is that I think this is a politica

Health committee  Again, I defer to you on that. I would say, though, that it in fact gives Canada a lot of power to negotiate. When we purchase so many doses, we can say, “We're going to be a big purchaser, and this is what we want: We want transparency.”

Health committee  It's a big question. I would argue that we're talking here about bigger issues. We're talking about foreign affairs. We're talking about geopolitics here, so I don't think we can look at that as simply a contract between the Canadian government and one supplier. I think we're loo

Health committee  I'm going to speak to what I know, which is intellectual property. I'm not an economist; I'm a political scientist. I'm going to actually say we don't need to be giving IP protection. In fact, I think if anything, we need to be rethinking the IP model. That is one of the major i

Health committee  It's about where the market is, quite frankly. The industry will be the first to say that it will invest where there are markets and where profits are greatest. I know I'm sounding extreme here, but I've been working in this area for 25 years as a policy person and as an academ

Health committee  Absolutely not. In the development world, we look at value for money and the biggest bang for the buck. If there's not a bang for the buck and it's not working, then shift resources elsewhere. Maybe it's more about public health education and information strategies, etc. In term