Pfizer Tells Canada, "Sorry." Remember When Canada Was a World Leader in Developing Vaccines?

 


Just as the number of Covid-19 infections is rising, the promised supply of Pfizer's vaccine is turning into just that - a promise. It seems the American giant is having production troubles in Europe so Canada may not be getting the promised doses we were counting on.

There was a time Canada wasn't dependent on foreign pharmaceutical giants or vulnerable to the vagaries of global supply lines. We had Connaught Laboratories. 

With the implementation of globalism in the neoliberal era, government lost its appetite for strategic industries and moved to unload them on the private sector. That's how Mulroney wrecked aviation in Canada - how we lost Canadian Pacific Airlines, Ward Air, Pacific Western Airlines and others until Air Canada emerged the tattered victor.

The government thought it could privatize Connaught Labs and yet keep the company in Canada. Maybe they didn't think that at all. Maybe that's what they said for public consumption. In any event that didn't happen. We lost Connaught Labs and, today, we're at the mercy of less than reliable foreign vaccine producers.

We can curse Mulroney for losing Connaught but then we would have to curse every subsequent prime minister for not correcting Mulroney's blunder. Every one of them, Chretien and Trudeau included.

Comments

  1. TrailblazerJanuary 15, 2021 at 9:29 AM

    But, but; it's a global economy!
    Just on time delivery!

    Must be difficult to be a conservative free marketeer nowadays.

    TB

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Disaffected LibJanuary 15, 2021 at 10:49 AM

      TB, I believe it's time Canada had a Commission of Inquiry into strategic industries and capabilities this country will need to meet the challenges of this increasingly troublesome world. There are many things for which we can save a few bucks by going to global markets but a few of those products or capabilities that are most critically necessary can become awfully hard to access when an emergency hits.

      Covid taught us that our supply and access to PPE needed to protect frontline healthcare personnel was horribly inadequate because of our dependence on foreign manufacturers. That's what can happen when you're on "dirt cheap" cruise control.

      Now we're seeing promised vaccines that we contracted to buy near the outset of the pandemic are being disrupted by the vagaries of foreign markets and production. On something like this, where lives are dependent on those vaccines, "oops, sorry" is no excuse.

      Strategic industries and capabilities usually require government support. There are many vital assets and services that governments around the world underwrite. We have seen that privatizing public sector assets, compounded by deregulation, often backfires. Recall when Harper allowed the meat packing industry to self-police its own packing plants. That's how listeria entered the food supply and people died.

      There's a balance in this public v. private debate but we're doing nothing to define it much less make rules to implement it.

      Delete
  2. TrailblazerJanuary 15, 2021 at 12:03 PM

    Do the Greens still promote local business be it large or small?
    There was a time when they wished to keep multinationals out of Canada.

    TB

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Owen GrayJanuary 15, 2021 at 1:59 PM

      The pandemic has exposed neo-liberalism for the fraud it always was, Mound.

      Delete
    2. The Disaffected LibJanuary 15, 2021 at 2:13 PM

      TB, the Greens, to my understanding were committed to rebuilding Canadian resilience. My argument about bringing back certain critical industries and capabilities is grounded in our resilience and adverse exposure to global markets.

      Owen, globalism - as it was pitched to the public by Reagan, Thatcher and Mulroney - was a fraud. The whole idea of a new, "information economy," in which we would outsource our manufacturing jobs so that they could be replaced by abundant, highly paid, high-tech jobs was, at best, a delusion. Instead we saw Canadians lose secure and well paid manufacturing jobs and having to chase for low-wage service jobs, usually without benefits or security in what Morneau championed as the "gig economy." He had the nerve to put the Canadian people on notice that they, the rank and file, faced a future of "job churn" and had damned well better get used to it. This was the most hard-right Conservative thing I've ever heard come out of a Liberal mouth. There wasn't so much as a peep of protest from the prime minister or the rest of his front benches.

      Delete
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