Came across this Dec/21 article today on my Canada. If 1/2 of what is said is true, seems like big pharma had a hand in putting themselves in charge, and it reads like letting them was a mistake in the bigger picture of things:
How Canada became a vaccine villain
Relations between Big Pharma and the Trudeau government have warmed considerably over the past year, an analysis of lobbying records by The Breach shows, with lobbying meetings jumping by 80 percent. One
casualty of this budding friendship has been Trudeau’s universal pharmacare agenda, which the Liberals appear to have abandoned.
But Big Pharma’s sway over policy reaches far beyond domestic matters. Trudeau’s political capitulation extends all the way to Geneva, where Canada’s trade representatives at the World Trade Organization (WTO) have for over a year blocked progress on a proposal to temporarily lift patents on vaccines and other essential medicines. Contracts the Liberal government has signed with companies even initially banned Canada from donating surplus doses to lower-income countries. ....
Sensing early on that the Global South would be locked out, India and South Africa approached the WTO in October 2020 with a proposal to facilitate cheaper, generic production of vaccines, therapeutics and other medical products needed to fight COVID-19.
Their proposal: by suspending the WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) on these urgently needed items, other pharmaceutical companies could increase the supply of vaccines and bring down the prices. Over 120 countries have rallied behind the “TRIPS waiver” proposal. But not Canada. ....
But in response to the call for a TRIPS waiver, Big Pharma’s leading vaccine producers spearheaded a continent-spanning political counter-offensive in the form of lobbying and public relations. Despite receiving billions of dollars in
public money at the development stage, in the form of subsidies and advance purchase agreements from the US and EU, Big Pharma regarded the vaccines as their exclusive “intellectual property,” and they intended to keep it that way.
Here in Canada, the local representatives of Big Pharma made it clear the TRIPS waiver was a red line the Trudeau government should not cross. The industry’s official voice in Ottawa, Innovative Medicines Canada (which represents Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca), warned that temporarily suspending patents at the WTO would be “a disappointing step that will create greater uncertainty and unpredictability” for the future supply of vaccines.
As occurred in other countries, Big Pharma stepped up its lobbying of the Canadian government significantly just as the TRIPS waiver idea emerged. Over the next year, lobbyists hired by Big Pharma’s vaccine producers contacted politicians and high-ranking civil servants a total of 181 times, or an average of 3 to 4 lobbying visits every week.
“We do not believe that waiving [intellectual property rights] is an easy answer to the capacity challenges that we face,” Cole Pinnow, CEO of Pfizer Canada, told a
parliamentary committee in March 2021.
Innovative Medicines Canada lobbied elected representatives and government officials 55 times in the past year. Lobbyists for U.S.-based pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson (via one of its affiliated companies, Janssen Inc.) paid designated office holders in Canada a combined 116 visits since October 2020.
Pfizer’s lobbying effort increased a staggering seven times relative to previous years while lobbyists for Johnson & Johnson met with officials nearly twice as often as they had on average in the years between 2015 and 2019. Representatives for Moderna and AstraZeneca, smaller companies with a fraction of Pfizer’s revenues, nevertheless lobbied officials five times between October 2020 and October 2021. .....
Big Pharma’s lobbyists knew a friend in need when they saw one—and used their leverage to the maximum. The vaccine rollout meant the Trudeau government “quickly realized that we now have a common desire to work together on a hot topic,” Pfizer Canada’s Pinnow told
Maclean’s in February 2021. Heavily redacted vaccine contract documents reveal that Canada paid a very steep premium to Pfizer and Moderna to ensure timely deliveries in the initial scramble for deals. The contracts also
banned Canada from donating surplus doses to lower-income countries. This surrender of control over vaccine surpluses to Pfizer and Moderna, which together have provided over 95 per cent of Canada’s vaccines, largely explains Canada’s lamentable donations record.
The Trudeau government only renegotiated to modify this provision and allow donations in late October 2021. Donations of Moderna vaccines have started, and overall donations by Canada have gone up since late October—but this is difficult to track since the government doesn’t reliably update data. .......
https://breachmedia.ca/how-canada-became-a-vaccine-villain/
