The WTO kicked off its last ministerial conference on Sunday at its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. Ahead of the four-day conference, The Council of Canadians issued an open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trindade calling on the federal government to change its position on lifting copyright rules on COVID-19 vaccines and other therapies. Speaking to CTV’s “Your Morning” on Monday, Nicolas Barry-Soo, a trade and privatization activist for the Council of Canada, said the move would allow other countries to produce and make their own generic versions of these drugs. more widely available. However, he said a handful of pharmaceutical companies had monopolized the supply of vaccines, using their position to charge extremely high prices that he said had “estimated almost half of humanity”. “So we are in a situation today where 2.7 billion people do not yet have access to vaccines and we are in danger of reproducing this situation as we start releasing updated vaccines to deal with new variants, and as we start releasing treatments.” he said. The question of whether to waive WTO copyright protection for COVID-19 vaccines remains throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, with the pharmaceutical industry wanting to protect its innovations and advocacy groups saying the pandemic deserves an exception, especially for developing countries. In 2020, India and South Africa led a joint proposal to suspend the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights in the run-up to the pandemic. In its open letter, the Council of Canada states that Canada is “in a position to stand up to the rest of the world”, as more than 100 other countries have supported the resignation. The government of US President Joe Biden has announced its support for the resignation a year ago, a position then criticized by European Union leaders. Canada, meanwhile, has pledged to donate surplus vaccines through the global COVAX initiative. As of June 2, the federal government says more than 14.8 million installments have been delivered. Barry-Soo pointed to the billions of dollars in government funds used to develop vaccines against COVID-19, which he said have now become the private property of a handful of companies. He also highlighted one signatory to the open letter, Achal Prabhala of the AccessIBSA project, who pushed for greater access to medicines in countries such as India, Brazil and South Africa. The Human Rights Watch in December 2021 highlighted a list compiled by AccessIBSA and Médecins Sans Frontières, with more than 100 companies in Africa, Asia and Latin America capable of producing mRNA vaccines. “So the idea that there are only … a few companies and rich countries that can produce these vaccines is really very selfish and I do not think we really have to believe what these companies have to say about that,” he said. With files from CTV News, the Associated Press and Reuters
