A collaboration between a Chinese company and a Halifax research team aiming to carry out Canada’s first clinical trials of a potential COVID-19 vaccine has been abandoned amid rising tensions between the two countries.
A team at the Canadian Centre for Vaccinology at Dalhousie University was supposed to work with CanSino to run the first Canadian clinical trials for a possible COVID-19 vaccine. CanSino’s vaccine, called Ad5-nCoV, was already being run through human trials in China and has shown promising results.
In May, Health Canada gave the go-ahead for the Canadian trials to begin, and the hope was that clinical trials in Halifax could begin within weeks.
But in late July, The Canadian Press reported that the Canadian-Chinese partnership was on the rocks, saying China had held up shipments the company was supposed to send to the Halifax researchers by the end of May.
The National Research Council said in a statement that a COVID-19 vaccine candidate being worked on at CanSino Biologics in China, pictured in November 2018, had not been approved by Chinese customs to ship to Canada. (Reuters)
In an emailed statement, the National Research Council (NRC) said the vaccine candidate had not been approved by Chinese customs to ship to Canada.
The statement said CanSino’s collaborators in the Chinese government — the Beijing Institute of Technology and the Ministry of Science and Technology, which had provided funding to CanSino — reviewed the agreement between the NRC and CanSino before it was signed.
“Subsequent to signing, the government of China introduced process changes regarding shipping vaccines to other countries,” the NRC said in its statement.
“The process is not clear to the NRC, but CanSino does not have the authority to ship the vaccine at this time.”
CBC News has reached out to CanSino, but did not get a response by the time of publication. However, company chairman and CEO Dr. Xuefeng Yu told The Globe and Mail, which first reported this story on Tuesday, that bureaucratic indecision was the reason behind the shipping delays, and now the time to do the trials had “already passed.”
Yu told the newspaper that some divisions of the Chinese government were not clear on whether the vaccine should “go to global trials or how to handle it.”
Study ‘past its best-before date’
Scott Halperin, the director of the Canadian Centre for Vaccinology, said it was disappointing to not be able to work with CanSino.
“We were ready to start the study, had all the approvals back in June, but the company had been trying to ship us the vaccine but had not been permitted to do so,” he said.
“No matter what they tried, they were not able to get approvals to ship the vaccine.”
Based on the amount of time that’s gone by, Halperin said the study has become less relevant.
“At this point, CanSino’s already ready to go into Phase 3 studies,” he said. “So this study, which was going to provide some more information, I think it’s past its best-before date.”
Scott Halperin, director of the Canadian Centre for Vaccinology, said news that their collaboration with CanSino would have to be abandoned came as a disappointment. (Brooklyn Currie/CBC)
He said CanSino’s vaccine is one of the vaccines that’s furthest along worldwide in terms of its approval process, so it could have potentially been one of the first vaccines available to Canadians if all the studies continued to look good.
Halperin said there are always risks in collaborating with other countries, which is why Canada has been pushing to make sure there will be Canadian-manufactured vaccines available.
“There are other vaccines in the pipeline, and there will be plenty of other studies that are [being] done with other vaccines that will hopefully also look good.”
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
