NDP will Continue Fight Against Privatization of COVID Vaccines, according to Singh
Photo Credit: (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)
Written by: David Cassels
NDP Leader announces his plan to push for public funding of vaccines and other medications during Friday night video game live stream.
Jagmeet Singh took to online streaming platform Twitch to play the video game Among Us alongside US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other Twitch streamers.
In between games Singh and Ocasio-Cortez were quick to strike up friendly conversation about their respective country’s political systems. Singh told Ocasio-Cortez and his party would be discussing the public manufacturing of vaccines in the coming week.
“It really speaks to the sovereignty of your country if you can start producing [vaccines] yourself, so we are going to start floating this idea next week,” Singh said.
NDP MP Matthew Green, who has been criticizing the COVID-19 vaccine task force since Oct., is excited to see Singh getting involved in the fight.
“Don Davies is doing incredible work on all of this, I’ve been hammering [the Liberals] on it, and now with Jagmeet we are going to be more vocal about it,” Green said during a phone interview.
Conflicts of Interest in the Covid-19 Vaccine Task force
Green said that the privatization of pharmaceuticals has left the COVID-19 vaccine task force “riddled with apparent conflicts of interest,” and has been a series of “late and utter disappointments.”
“The [co-chair of the COVID-19 vaccine task force] is funded in her research chair at Dalhousie University by a pharmaceutical company,” Green gave as an example.
The co-chair Green was referencing is Joanne Langley, Langley holds the GSK Chair in Pediatric Vaccinology at Dalhousie University and has collaborated multiple times with Sanofi Pasteur, a pharmaceutical company with whom Canada has signed agreements for up to 72 million doses of vaccines.
Langley herself worked as a consultant for Sanofi Pasteur in 2018 while they were developing an influenza vaccine. Langley did not personally receive payment for this work, but Sanofi Pasteur did give funding to her department at Dalhousie University.
The COVID-19 vaccine task force concluded that there were not enough “direct, material linkages,” for this to be considered conflict and for Langley to be recused.
This is only one of many potential conflicts of interest identified at COVID-19 vaccine task force meetings.
Green believes that this an inappropriate level of conflicting interest.
“[This conflict of interest] is ridiculous,” Green said, “This is manufacturing consent, this is basic Chomsky, about how institutions are corrupted by the private foundation’s interests within them.”
Confusion in Military Distribution Plan
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has repeatedly said that the military will be utilized to distribute vaccines when the time comes.
“The Prime Minister announced the military was going to do it,” Green said, “and then when I had the military in front of me on an audit on their own internal logistics, I roasted them and found out that they hadn’t been asked about vaccine distribution yet.”
Deputy Minister of National Defense, Jody Thomas said, “the military will know the role it’s meant to play when it’s asked to play a role, we haven’t yet been asked to play a role in vaccine distribution.”
“I’m extremely concerned, this is life and death, 10,000 people have died. We have this now outbreaking in northern communities, in Indegenous communities, where this will be another form of smallpox for some of these communities that have been chronically underfunded,’ Green said, “[the Liberal government] has been an abject failure.”
On Nov. 27 Trudeau announced that former NATO commander in Iraq, Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin would head vaccine distribution logistics.
Liberal Government Stance on Canada Pharmacare Act
Bill C-213, an act to enact the Canada Pharmacare Act, is a bill sponsored by NDP MP Peter Julian. The legislation would have the Liberals act on previous promises.
Universal pharmacare would lessen the power of pharmaceutical industries and further decomodify Canadian healthcare and would be vital in ensuring the public manufacturing of vaccines and save billions of dollars.
In a now deleted tweet Liberal MP Adam Vaughan was dismissive of the NDP’s Bill C-213, “An act to enact an act… wgaf,” an acronym which stands for ‘who gives a fuck’.
Vaughan later stated that it was a typo and he meant to instead type ‘wow’. He apologised for the confusion.
Vaughan’s attitude towards Bill C-213 did not come as a surprise to many NDP MP’s. Neither Singh nor Green are expecting the Liberals to make good on their campaign promises.
“Do [Liberals] actually mean what they say? They’ve promised this for years,” Singh said at a press conference on Nov. 18, “are the Liberals just talk? Because here is a chance to back it up.”
“[The Liberals] continue to prioritize the profits of shareholders over the health of millions of people who live in Canada,” Green said, “and it’s an ideological thing that they have, it’s just the basis of their Liberalism.”
David Cassels is a third-year Bachelors of Journalism student at Ryerson University. He has spent the majority of his life in East Africa, living in both Uganda and Kenya. David is currently an intern at the Ontario Association of Former Parliamentarians.
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