It’s been five months since the Bolivian government called on Canada to allow COVID-19 vaccines to flow from a manufacturer in St. Catharines, Ont., to the Global South.
Now, the country, where fewer than thirty per cent of people are fully vaccinated, is repeating its request for Canada to override the patent waiver and issue a compulsory license to allow manufacturing to begin.
“It is time to make decisions in the name of humanity,” said Benjamin Blanco, Minister of Foreign Trade and Integration, Ministry of Foreign Relations for Bolivia in an interview with Global News.
In May, Bolivia signed an agreement with Biolyse Pharma, a St. Catharines-based pharmaceutical company, which is prepared to manufacture the Johnson and Johnson one-dose vaccine. The deal would ensure Bolivia received the first 15 million doses produced by Biolyse. However, the company still has not been approved to begin manufacturing by the Canadian government, leaving the Bolivian people in the lurch.
“We continue to wait,” said Blanco. “We have been waiting too long.”
Currently, the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement protects Johnson and Johnson’s patent on their vaccine and prohibits Biolyse from producing it. The TRIPS waiver, if put into effect, would allow for member states like Canada to scale-up their manufacturing of patent-protected COVID-19 vaccines.
Biolyse has also made a formal appeal to the Canadian government to amend a list of Schedule I drugs under the Patent Act to include COVID-19 vaccines under the Canadian Access to Medicines Regime, a separate entity from the TRIPS waiver. The Canadian manufacturer also approached Johnson and Johnson to help them in producing their vaccine, but were turned down.
Multiple attempts by Global News to reach Johnson and Johnson went unanswered.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada wrote in an email to Global News they are “aware of the interest in exploring IP flexibilities to increase COVID 19 vaccine production.” The spokesperson did not directly answer concerns from the Bolivian government or about Canada not issuing a compulsory license to Biolyse.
They’ve said that companies like Biolyse can apply for Canada’s Access to Medicines Regime (CAMR) to acquire a compulsory license to produce and export the COVID-19 vaccine, which the company has already done. The vaccine has not been added to Schedule 1 and even if added would not itself result in a compulsory licence.
Canada lacking ‘political will’ on TRIPS waiver
Canada’s lack of movement on the TRIPS waiver has left Blanco stunned. The Bolivian cabinet minister said Canada, where more than 75 per cent of people are fully vaccinated, is looking out for companies, not people.
“What we need is political will,” said Benjamin Blanco. “We need the governments of developed countries to be able to think of life before the interests of a few transnational pharmaceutical companies.”
In May, then-Minister of Small Business, Export Promotion and International Trade of Canada, Mary Ng said Canada will “actively participate” in negotiations to waive intellectual property patents for COVID-19 vaccines as part of a World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement.
“We have been a leader in the global effort to ensure there is equitable access to successful vaccines,” she said.
2:00 Canada working on solution for COVID-19 vaccine patent waivers, not ‘interfering or blocking,’ Trudeau says
Canada working on solution for COVID-19 vaccine patent waivers, not ‘interfering or blocking,’ Trudeau says – May 7, 2021
Ng’s comments were reiterated by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who said his government was “working with others around the world to come up with a solution.”
“We’re engaged wholeheartedly in these discussions on various proposals,” he said at a press conference in May. “I can assure you that Canada is not interfering or blocking. Canada is very much working to find a solution that works for everyone.”
In many ways, Blanco said he is “disappointed” in Canada’s lack of decision-making to how the country positions itself as a global champion for equity and public health.
“We are confused. Canada in multilateral organizations uses one discourse, but in practice, we see another action,” he said.
Biolyse prepared to create vaccines
While it seems like initiating the TRIPS waiver might be a major move for Canada to undertake, the country did exactly that in 2007 when it approved Apotex to produce TriAvir, an HIV drug, to be sent to Rwanda.
“It was for a good cause, but it was a bureaucratic headache for all,” said Richard Gold, a law professor at McGill University who specializes in patent law and the biomedical field.
1:51 WHO calls out rich countries for ‘empty promises’ COVID-19 vaccine donations for poor nations
WHO calls out rich countries for ‘empty promises’ COVID-19 vaccine donations for poor nations – Sep 8, 2021
Biolyse is going down the more process-intensive and bureaucratic method of CAMR, according to Gold.
In 2006, the company won approval to produce the drug Oseltamivir, better known as Tamiflu during the bird flu pandemic. The process took seven months, but during that wait, the demand dwindled.
John Fulton, executive vice president at Biolyse, oversaw the process in 2007, so knew it would take some time. But, he still admitted the constant jumping through hoops the past several months has him “losing sleep” and it’s hard to stomach given the depths of the current global situation. He thinks that Canada could’ve approved the drug through CAMR or supported the TRIPS waiver, but has done neither.
“In some ways, I’m embarrassed as a Canadian that the government is not jumping on this opportunity,” he said.
1:28 WHO says COVID-19 vaccine hoarding in developed world is “prolonging the pandemic”
WHO says COVID-19 vaccine hoarding in developed world is “prolonging the pandemic” – Sep 7, 2021
Biolyse is in the midst of preparing to handle vaccine manufacturing, which Fulton said would require about four to six months and an injection of cash from the federal government.
Fulton said Biolyse checks off most of the boxes needed to produce the vaccine, but he alleges it is bureaucracy that is causing the delay, not the financial shortcomings or lack of experience. Over the past several months, Fulton claims he has been passed back-and-forth from different ministries and spoken to well over 50 government employees, none of whom can give him a clear answer on when he can expect an approval.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada told Global News that “federal government officials have met with Biolyse on a number of occasions to discuss their manufacturing capabilities, the process for Schedule 1 listing, and subsequent authorization requirements.”
1:51 WHO calls out rich countries for ‘empty promises’ COVID-19 vaccine donations for poor nations
WHO calls out rich countries for ‘empty promises’ COVID-19 vaccine donations for poor nations – Sep 8, 2021
Even if Canada did approve the vaccine to be on Schedule 1, Biolyse would still need to conduct trials to meet Health Canada safety requirements. According to Fulton, if all went well and Johnson and Johnson worked with them, that timeline could be four months, but if they have to reverse-engineer the vaccine, which is doable, it would take 8-12 months.
Blanco said in many respects, Canada has talked about making vaccines available to everyone, about the need for global vaccination, and now when presented with an option to follow through, the country has not moved on the opportunity.
“We thought that the Canadian government was going to be much faster,” said Blanco. “The days go by at the diplomatic level, we have no answer.”
What to do about the TRIPS waiver?
In March 2020, the Government of Canada amended the Patent Act and the Drugs Act in direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The changes would allow the government to use and authorize the use of patented inventions on a time-limited basis to address drug shortages.
At the time, Srinivas Murthy, a Faculty of Medicine member at the University of British Columbia, thought it would be a sign of things to come, but noted that we’ve trended the wrong way.
“I don’t think we’ve even moved the needle in wanting to waive patents,” he said.
According to both Murthy and Gold, some of the arguments to uphold patents, mainly around innovation, lack empirical evidence. But, to Gold, part of the reason why Canada could be hesitant around touching the intellectual property (IP) of big pharma is the desire to have them invest and build in the north. The desire to drive investment coupled with buying vaccines from the companies in question is another reason Gold thinks Canada is mum on the TRIPS waiver.
“Any time that the government worries about exporting or decreasing IP, they’re going to get attacked by certain sectors, including the pharmaceutical sector,” he said.
In May, 62 member states at the WTO supported a TRIPS waiver proposal brought forth by India and South Africa, with almost 100 low-income countries throwing their support behind the idea. But, wealthier nations like the U.K., Japan and Australia opposed it. While the U.S. announced support for re-negotiations, they have yet to sign onto the proposal.
2:09 Canada still undecided on vaccine patent waivers
Canada still undecided on vaccine patent waivers – May 9, 2021
To Murthy, Canada and other rich countries tend to be “chipper” about how much they do for smaller nations, but in reality, he thinks the pandemic has shown the gaps in global public health. Now, while rich countries have an abundance of vaccines and are able to have nuanced conversations like overcoming hesitancy or whether a third booster dose is needed, the rest of the world is still struggling to get even first doses.
In Bolivia, only 27.9 per cent of their people have received a full set of COVID-19 doses while the entire continent of Africa has only 2.2 per cent of their population vaccinated, according to Our World in Data, which tracks global vaccination rates.
“We’ve all realized that supply of these vaccines isn’t enough to meet demand globally,” said Murthy in an interview with Global News. “Rich countries have vaccinated their populations and poor countries have not. And that is almost exclusively because of supply and distribution on the supply side of things.”
Murthy knows there will be some arguments against citing a potential ‘loss of innovation’ if Canada moves to remove patents, but said a significant part of the COVID-19 vaccines were developed in part due to the work of researchers from the University of British Columbia. The technology used by the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine can be “traced back to research pioneered in the lab of Dr. Pieter Cullis in the late 1970s,” according to UBC. In Murthy’s view, it’s clear that innovative public health research is being used for-profit, but the public isn’t always reaping the benefits.
“People don’t have access to supply of the lifesaving intervention purely because of patents,” he said.
Gold thinks big pharma has enough profits off the vaccine and now it’s time to ensure people across the world can get the jab.
Outside of sports and a “Cold front coming down from Canada,” American news media only report on Canadian events that they believe are, or will be, influential to the US. Therefore, when Justin Trudeau’s announcement, having finally read the room, that Canada will be reducing the number of permanent residents admitted by more than 20 percent and temporary residents like skilled workers and college students will be cut by more than half made news south of the border, I knew the American media felt Trudeau’s about-face on immigration was newsworthy because many Americans would relate to Trudeau realizing Canada was accepting more immigrants than it could manage and are hoping their next POTUS will follow Trudeau’s playbook.
Canada, with lots of space and lacking convenient geographical ways for illegal immigrants to enter the country, though still many do, has a global reputation for being incredibly accepting of immigrants. On the surface, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver appear to be multicultural havens. However, as the saying goes, “Too much of a good thing is never good,” resulting in a sharp rise in anti-immigrant sentiment, which you can almost taste in the air. A growing number of Canadians, regardless of their political affiliation, are blaming recent immigrants for causing the housing affordability crises, inflation, rise in crime and unemployment/stagnant wages.
Throughout history, populations have engulfed themselves in a tribal frenzy, a psychological state where people identify strongly with their own group, often leading to a ‘us versus them’ mentality. This has led to quick shifts from complacency to panic and finger-pointing at groups outside their tribe, a phenomenon that is not unique to any particular culture or time period.
My take on why the American news media found Trudeau’s blatantly obvious attempt to save his political career, balancing appeasement between the pitchfork crowd, who want a halt to immigration until Canada gets its house in order, and immigrant voters, who traditionally vote Liberal, newsworthy; the American news media, as do I, believe immigration fatigue is why Kamala Harris is going to lose on November 5th.
Because they frequently get the outcome wrong, I don’t take polls seriously. According to polls in 2014, Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives and Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals were in a dead heat in Ontario, yet Wynne won with more than twice as many seats. In the 2018 Quebec election, most polls had the Coalition Avenir Québec with a 1-to-5-point lead over the governing Liberals. The result: The Coalition Avenir Québec enjoyed a landslide victory, winning 74 of 125 seats. Then there’s how the 2016 US election polls showing Donald Trump didn’t have a chance of winning against Hillary Clinton were ridiculously way off, highlighting the importance of the election day poll and, applicable in this election as it was in 2016, not to discount ‘shy Trump supporters;’ voters who support Trump but are hesitant to express their views publicly due to social or political pressure.
My distrust in polls aside, polls indicate Harris is leading by a few points. One would think that Trump’s many over-the-top shenanigans, which would be entertaining were he not the POTUS or again seeking the Oval Office, would have him far down in the polls. Trump is toe-to-toe with Harris in the polls because his approach to the economy—middle-class Americans are nostalgic for the relatively strong economic performance during Trump’s first three years in office—and immigration, which Americans are hyper-focused on right now, appeals to many Americans. In his quest to win votes, Trump is doing what anyone seeking political office needs to do: telling the people what they want to hear, strategically using populism—populism that serves your best interests is good populism—to evoke emotional responses. Harris isn’t doing herself any favours, nor moving voters, by going the “But, but… the orange man is bad!” route, while Trump cultivates support from “weird” marginal voting groups.
To Harris’s credit, things could have fallen apart when Biden abruptly stepped aside. Instead, Harris quickly clinched the nomination and had a strong first few weeks, erasing the deficit Biden had given her. The Democratic convention was a success, as was her acceptance speech. Her performance at the September 10th debate with Donald Trump was first-rate.
Harris’ Achilles heel is she’s now making promises she could have made and implemented while VP, making immigration and the economy Harris’ liabilities, especially since she’s been sitting next to Biden, watching the US turn into the circus it has become. These liabilities, basically her only liabilities, negate her stance on abortion, democracy, healthcare, a long-winning issue for Democrats, and Trump’s character. All Harris has offered voters is “feel-good vibes” over substance. In contrast, Trump offers the tangible political tornado (read: steamroll the problems Americans are facing) many Americans seek. With Trump, there’s no doubt that change, admittedly in a messy fashion, will happen. If enough Americans believe the changes he’ll implement will benefit them and their country…
The case against Harris on immigration, at a time when there’s a huge global backlash to immigration, even as the American news media are pointing out, in famously immigrant-friendly Canada, is relatively straightforward: During the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration, illegal Southern border crossings increased significantly.
The words illegal immigration, to put it mildly, irks most Americans. On the legal immigration front, according to Forbes, most billion-dollar startups were founded by immigrants. Google, Microsoft, and Oracle, to name three, have immigrants as CEOs. Immigrants, with tech skills and an entrepreneurial thirst, have kept America leading the world. I like to think that Americans and Canadians understand the best immigration policy is to strategically let enough of these immigrants in who’ll increase GDP and tax base and not rely on social programs. In other words, Americans and Canadians, and arguably citizens of European countries, expect their governments to be more strategic about immigration.
The days of the words on a bronze plaque mounted inside the Statue of Liberty pedestal’s lower level, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” are no longer tolerated. Americans only want immigrants who’ll benefit America.
Does Trump demagogue the immigration issue with xenophobic and racist tropes, many of which are outright lies, such as claiming Haitian immigrants in Ohio are abducting and eating pets? Absolutely. However, such unhinged talk signals to Americans who are worried about the steady influx of illegal immigrants into their country that Trump can handle immigration so that it’s beneficial to the country as opposed to being an issue of economic stress.
In many ways, if polls are to be believed, Harris is paying the price for Biden and her lax policies early in their term. Yes, stimulus spending quickly rebuilt the job market, but at the cost of higher inflation. Loosen border policies at a time when anti-immigrant sentiment was increasing was a gross miscalculation, much like Trudeau’s immigration quota increase, and Biden indulging himself in running for re-election should never have happened.
If Trump wins, Democrats will proclaim that everyone is sexist, racist and misogynous, not to mention a likely White Supremacist, and for good measure, they’ll beat the “voter suppression” button. If Harris wins, Trump supporters will repeat voter fraud—since July, Elon Musk has tweeted on Twitter at least 22 times about voters being “imported” from abroad—being widespread.
Regardless of who wins tomorrow, Americans need to cool down; and give the divisive rhetoric a long overdue break. The right to an opinion belongs to everyone. Someone whose opinion differs from yours is not by default sexist, racist, a fascist or anything else; they simply disagree with you. Americans adopting the respectful mindset to agree to disagree would be the best thing they could do for the United States of America.
CALGARY – Sam Edney and Jesse Lumsden sat on a bench on Parliament Hill during an athlete celebration after the 2014 Winter Olympic Games.
Having just represented Canada in their sliding sports — Lumsden in bobsled and Edney in luge — the two men pondered their futures together.
“There was actually one moment about, are we going to keep going? Talking about, what are each of us going to do? What’s the next four years look like?” Edney recalled a decade later.
“I do remember talking about that now. That was a big moment,” Lumsden said.
As the two men were sounding boards for each other as athletes, they are again as high-performance directors of their respective sliding sports.
Edney, an Olympic relay silver medallist in 2018 and the first Canadian man to win a World Cup gold medal, became Luge Canada’s HPD upon his retirement the following year.
Lumsden, a world and World Cup bobsled champion who raced his third Olympic Games in 2018, leaned on his sliding compatriot when he returned from five years of working in the financial sector to become HPD at Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton in July.
“The first person I called when BCS reached out to me about the role that I’m in now is Sam,” Lumsden said recently at Calgary’s WinSport, where they spent much of their competitive careers and now have offices.
“It’s been four months. I was squatting in the luge offices for the first two months beside him.
“We had all these ideas about we’re going to have weekly coffees and workouts Tuesday and Thursday and in the four months now, we’ve had two coffees and zero workouts.”
Canada has won at least one sliding-sport Olympic medal in each of the last five Winter Games, but Edney and Lumsden face a challenge as team leaders that they didn’t as athletes.
WinSport’s sliding track, built for the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary and where Edney and Lumsden did hundreds of runs as athletes, has been closed since 2019 needing a $25-million renovation.
There is no sign that will happen. WinSport took the $10 million the provincial government offered for the sliding track and put the money toward a renovation of the Frank King Lodge used by recreational skiers and snowboarders.
Canada’s only other sliding track in the resort town of Whistler, B.C., has a fraction of Calgary’s population from which to recruit and develop athletes.
“The comparison is if you took half the ice rinks away in the country, hockey and figure skating would be disarray,” Edney said.
“It just changes the dynamic of the sports completely, in terms of we’re now scrambling to find ways to bring people to a location that’s not as easy to get to, or to live out of, or to train out of full time.
“We’re realizing how good we had it when Calgary’s (track) was here. It’s not going to be the end of us, but it’s definitely made it more difficult.”
Lumsden, a former CFL running back as well as an Olympian, returned to a national sport organization still recovering from internal upheaval that included the athlete-led ouster of the former president and CEO after the 2022 Winter Olympics, and Olympic champion pilot Kaillie Humphries suing the organization for her release to compete for the U.S. in 2019.
“NSOs like Luge Canada and Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton, they’re startups,” Lumsden said. “You have to think like a startup, operate like a startup, job stack, do more with less, especially in the current environment.
“I felt it was the right time for me to take my sporting experience and the skill set that I learned at Neo Financial and working with some of the most talented people in Canada and try to inject that into an NSO that is in a state of distress right now, and try to work with the great staff we have and the athletes we have to start to turn this thing around.”
Edney, 40, and Lumsden, 42, take comfort in each other holding the same roles in their sports.
“It goes both ways. I couldn’t have been more excited about who they hired,” Edney said. “When Jesse was coming in, I knew that we were going to be able to collaborate and work together and get things happening for our sports.”
Added Lumsden: “We’ve been friends for a long time, so I knew how he was going to do in his role and before taking the role, having the conversation with him, I felt a lot of comfort.
“I asked ‘are you going to be around for a long time?’ He said ‘yeah, I’m not going anywhere.’ I said ‘OK, good.'”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 4, 2024.
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Canada’s Gabriela Dabrowski and New Zealand’s Erin Routliffe remain undefeated in women’s doubles at the WTA Finals.
The 2023 U.S. Open champions, seeded second at the event, secured a 1-6, 7-6 (1), (11-9) super-tiebreak win over fourth-seeded Italians Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini in round-robin play on Tuesday.
The season-ending tournament features the WTA Tour’s top eight women’s doubles teams.
Dabrowski and Routliffe lost the first set in 22 minutes but levelled the match by breaking Errani’s serve three times in the second, including at 6-5. They clinched victory with Routliffe saving a match point on her serve and Dabrowski ending Errani’s final serve-and-volley attempt.
Dabrowski and Routliffe will next face fifth-seeded Americans Caroline Dolehide and Desirae Krawczyk on Thursday, where a win would secure a spot in the semifinals.
The final is scheduled for Saturday.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on Nov. 5, 2024.
