Trudeau looking out for Big Pharma
There was much ado last month when the federal government announced a partnership with Merck to manufacture its COVID-19 pill, molnupiravir, in Ontario. Coming on the heels of billions in public investment the federal government has already poured into the biomanufacturing sector — including agreements with Sanofi to produce influenza vaccines in Mississauga, Novavax for a domestic vaccine plant in Montreal, and Abcellera for monoclonal antibody production in Vancouver — this is seemingly all good news. The devil is, of course, in the details. Abcellera’s Bamlanivimab is no better than placebo, and Merck’s pill in Phase 3 analysis is comparable to fluvoxamine — a generic, widely available and affordable antidepressant, priced as low as 21 cents per pill. The Sanofi plant will build domestic vaccine production capacity, though it will be too late for COVID-19, and the federal government has placed a large bet on Novavax, which has yet to obtain vaccine regulatory clearance.
The government’s generosity to industry shows no signs of strain, at a time when already wealthy pharmaceutical companies find themselves dictating terms to officials in order to gain access to desperately needed vaccines. The results are visible in talking points familiar to Big Pharma, used to stall a patent waiver for COVID-19 vaccines, and the sudden roadblocks, perhaps permanently, to universal pharmacare.
Compounding these challenges, Canadians still haven’t been able to find out how much is being paid for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. We may never. It is now a long-standing practice that prices our federal and provincial governments pay for pharmaceuticals are bound by confidentiality agreements. Some policymakers even describe operating this way with a sense of powerlessness.
What we do know is that Canada pays some of the highest prices for drugs in the world. The history is complex, but a pattern is clear — repeated failed commitments to hit R&D targets in exchange for high prices, threats to reduce domestic investments when faced with regulation, government capitulation despite evidence to the contrary, and consistent opposition to national, universal public pharmacare, despite Canada’s status as the only high-income country in the world with a universal health-care system that lacks a universal drug plan.
Perhaps most tragic is the game the prime minister is playing with the lives of those in the Global South. His government’s much touted donations to the COVAX initiative have delivered only 50 per cent of the committed doses, with many of them nearly expired and hence, useless. Small wonder that many have called the global vaccine inequities a vaccine apartheid.
Justin Trudeau has also repeatedly refused to endorse a TRIPS waiver, which would allow compulsory licensing of vaccines during the pandemic, meaning that Pfizer and Moderna would be forced to share their recipes and hence expand production in the Global South. This, despite support from the majority of the countries at the UN, including the United States.
A temporary and emergency suspension of COVID vaccine patents would have provided more vaccines, faster, and into the arms of billions across the world, not to mention reduce the chances of new, concerning variants.
It is ironic that despite mounting evidence to the contrary, this government’s doublespeak to describe its approach to progressive policy reforms is “accelerate.” It described its nonuniversal and non-national pre-election agreement with P.E.I. on drug coverage as a move to “accelerate the implementation of national universal pharmacare.” When responding to calls for a TRIPS waiver, it has declared a commitment to “an agreement that accelerates global vaccine production and does not negatively impact public health.”
What is moving quickly is Canada’s loss of global stature as country after country calls us out for abetting the needless prolongation of this pandemic.
The prime minister would be wise to reflect on what kind of legacy he wants to leave behind — his failure on Pharmacare notwithstanding. Lives hang in the balance.
DR. SAAD AHMED IS A RURAL FAMILY PHYSICIAN AND LECTURER AT THE
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would be wise to reflect on what kind of legacy he wants to leave behind