Montreal Pushes for a Public Vaccine

Moderna coming to Montreal will secure long-term Canadian-made vaccines and secure hundreds of jobs for Montrealers. Once open, 100 million mRNA vaccines can be produced annually.

But with vaccine inequity worldwide, establishing more vaccines in Montreal and Canada – a city and country with high vaccination rates – shows hypocrisy in the country, according to Angella MacEwen, Chair at the Trade Justice Network.

The first of May marked International Workers Day, as many Montrealers took to the streets, an annual occurrence, to push for workers rights. Montreal nurses called for international access to the vaccine and denounced Trudeau limiting global access to patented vaccines. But there needs to be greater mobilization country and worldwide.

MacEwen has been involved in mobilizing the Canadian government to end patents. The Trade Justice Network has been pushing the federal government to end patents for the last year.

MacEwen said Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom are dragging their feet in terms of pushing to end patents. She said they’re being lobbied by big pharmaceutical companies and these companies are influential.

Without widespread access to vaccines, we can keep being infected, as travel has played a role in the introduction to new variants. 

The development of vaccines relies on a mix of publicly funded universities, pharmaceutical labs and for-profit pharmaceutical giants to get it out of the lab and into trials, approval and rollout to the public.

There’s been a push for a people’s vaccine – meaning a publicly owned vaccine. So let’s get into public versus private, what does this mean? It's essentially fully publicly funded and made for the public  – not for profits.

MacEwen said if a vaccine is publicly owned, then profits don’t get in the way of limiting access to all. Currently China and Cuba's vaccine are public.