China blocked Ottawa test plans
CanSino would have run trials, possibly produce vaccine, in Canada
Justin Trudeau’s government found out that China’s government was getting in the way of Canada’s plan to test and potentially produce a COVID-19 vaccine made by a Chinese company just days after the prime minister announced the deal, according to newly released government documents.
The agreement between the Canadian government and CanSino Biologics Inc. would have allowed the company to be the first to conduct clinical trials for a COVID-19 vaccine in Canada. It was also the first deal through which Canada could have secured a COVID-19 vaccine supply. It wasn’t until three months later — and after Trudeau announced additional vaccine deals with two other pharmaceutical companies — that Canada’s government conceded its deal with CanSino was dead.
The National Research Council (NRC), the Canadian government’s scientific research organization, signed a deal with CanSino on May 6, 2020, to conduct Phase 1 and 2 clinical trials of its COVID-19 shot, according to an NRC document tabled in the House of Commons on Monday.
Trials were planned to take place at Dalhousie University’s Canadian Center for Vaccinology.
CanSino’s product, called Ad5-nCoV, was considered one of the world’s top vaccine candidates at the time. It was made with the help of the Chinese military’s research arm.
“Under this agreement, CanSino was to provide candidate vaccine doses and transfer their vaccine technology, free of charge, for phase one and two clinical trials in Canada and grant the NRC a nonexclusive right to use, produce, and reproduce the vaccine for emergency pandemic use,” the NRC said in the response to a question on the House’s Order Paper from Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner.
Neither CanSino nor China’s government received any money from the Government of Canada through the deal, the NRC said. In anticipation of producing vaccines, the federal government pledged $44 million to ensure the NRC’s facilities in Montreal met manufacturing standards.
On May 12, the NRC announced its plans to work with CanSino. Four days later, Trudeau promoted the partnership at one of his then-daily media briefings.
“If these vaccine trials are successful, we can produce and distribute it right here at home,” Trudeau said on May 16. “Research and development take time and must be done right, but this is encouraging news.”
Dr. Scott Halperin, the director of Dalhousie’s vaccinology centre, told iPolitics around the same time that he had hoped clinical trials would be approved “within the next week or two.”
On May 19, the Canadian government learned that the shipments of the vaccine candidate were being held by China’s customs agency at the Beijing Capital International Airport, according to documents tabled by Global Affairs Canada.
China’s State Council, the country’s cabinet, refused to issue the approval letter allowing the vaccine to ship to Canada. Around the same time, Chinese-made vaccine candidates were permitted to ship to other countries for similar trials as CanSino had agreed to with the NRC. It wasn’t until July 6 that the vaccine’s holdup was made public, when iPolitics reported that Halperin told a Commons committee that the Canadian Center for Vaccinology hadn’t received CanSino’s initial shipment.
On July 9, iPolitics reported for the first time that China’s customs was responsible for stalling the shipment.
The NRC said that while the government originally had high hopes for CanSino’s vaccine, its expectations fizzled once more data about the vaccine was made public.
“The vaccine task force had originally ranked the CanSino Biologics vaccine candidate among the most promising globally, their recommendation was subsequently revised based on their analysis of additional clinical trial data,” the NRC said.
John Power, the spokesperson for François-Philippe Champagne, the minister of innovation, science and industry, the federal department that the NRC belongs to, told iPolitics in a statement on Tuesday that the task force revised their recommendation about CanSino after the company released clinical trial data in July.
The Canadian government and CanSino abandoned their partnership in late August.
The failed vaccine collaboration came in the midst of ongoing diplomatic tensions between Canada and China.