Trudeau pledges 13 million doses to nations in need
PM says donation of surplus vaccines to worldwide effort won’t affect rollout in Canada,
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged 13 million surplus vaccines to help the world get immunized against COVID-19 as he and other G7 leaders wrapped up a two-day summit in Britain dominated by the pandemic, climate change and China.
Canada previously said it would offer up to 100 million vaccine doses to help poorer countries beat back the global pandemic, but was the only country from the G7 to not say how many of those would be actual shots rather than money.
Trudeau on Sunday said in addition to the 13 million surplus shots, Canada will pay for the purchase and distribution of 87 million doses through the ACT-Accelerator, a global program to make sure the entire world has access to COVID-19 testing, treatments and vaccines.
The prime minister told reporters during a closing news conference that some of the promised jabs are already on their way to countries lagging wealthy nations in the worldwide immunization effort. But he stopped short of saying when the rest would arrive.
“A number of these doses are on their way as we speak, more will come in the coming months,” Trudeau said.
“We’re going to be able to share around the world as we see Canadians getting vaccinated to higher and higher levels, and we simply do not need those doses.”
The Prime Minister’s Office later provided a breakdown showing more than 7 million of the doses being donated are from pharmaceutical firm Novovax, whose vaccine has yet to be approved for use in Canada.
The remainder are Oxford-AstraZeneca doses and shots from Johnson & Johnson that Canada bought through COVAX, an international vaccine sharing initiative. Canada has been criticized for being the only G7 country to take and use shots from COVAX.
U.S. President Joe Biden wrapped the summit by announcing a commitment to share 500 million coronavirus vaccine doses with the world. All told, G7 leaders confirmed their intent to donate more than 1 billion doses to low-income countries in the next year. But the commitment falls far short of the 11 billion doses the World Health Organization said is needed to vaccinate at least 70 per cent of the world’s population.
Trudeau emphasized that the donation would not affect Canada’s own vaccination efforts.
Surplus COVID-19 shots weren’t the only assistance that Trudeau pledged to poorer countries, as he also announced more than $2 billion in new Canadian aid over five years for nations struggling with the effects of climate change.
Yet while COVID-19 and climate change figured prominently in discussions and Canada’s post-summit pledges, the thorny issue of how to handle increasing competition and aggression from China was also top of mind.
G7 leaders presented an infrastructure plan called “Build Back Better for the World,” calling for spending hundreds of billions of dollars alongside the private sector while adhering to climate standards and labour practices.
It is designed to compete with China’s “Belt and Road Initiative,” which launched a network of projects in large parts of the world, primarily Asia and Africa. Critics say China’s projects often create massive debt and expose nations to undue influence by Beijing.
Trudeau did not explicitly mention the new initiative or China’s treatment of ethnic minorities such as Uyghur Muslims, topics touched on during the summit, but did thank fellow G7 leaders for supporting Canada’s calls for the immediate release of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.
Biden fought for the leaders’ joint statement to include language criticizing China’s use of forced labour and other human rights abuses as he worked to cast the rivalry with Beijing as the defining competition for the 21st century.
The final communique called for another investigation by WHO into the origins of COVID-19, urged China to respect human rights in Xinjiang and democracy in Hong Kong, and expressed concern about Chinese aggression in the South and East China Seas.