CIIT Committee Report

Supplementary opinion of the New Democratic Party of Canada

It is important to note that circumstances are very different now than they were when the committee undertook this study. Since the beginning of this study, the world has been upturned by a global pandemic and a significant critic of the World Trade Organization, former President Donald Trump, lost the 2020 presidential election in the United States of America and has been replaced by President Joe Biden.

While the change in administration in the U.S. has caused some to speculate that the U.S. may return to a posture toward the WTO similar to its approach in the years preceding the Trump presidency, the pandemic has caused many to think more critically about the global trade regime that obtained prior to the pandemic. More specifically, it has highlighted the way that issues which are treated narrowly as trade issues at the WTO, sometimes simply called trade ‘irritants’, actually have far reaching social, economic and environmental consequences.

The role of WTO intellectual property rules in frustrating the production and dissemination of COVID-19 vaccines is a case in point. Many countries, lamentably not Canada, have joined the call to temporarily waive the WTO TRIPS provisions in recognition of the important public good that would be done by making it easier for potential vaccine manufacturers to access and deploy the intellectual property relevant to the production of COVID-19 vaccines. Unfortunately, these considerations of social justice and the public good fall outside the narrow scope of the WTO.

New Democrats recognize the moral deficiency in treating life and death questions about vaccines in a pandemic as if it were a discussion of simple trade in commodities in a context that, by design, fails to account for the very real human costs at stake in the outcome of the discussion. This perverse outcome is a symptom of the general problem that the WTO allows international trade policy to restrict the social, economic and environmental policy of various democratic governments across the globe.

The pandemic has shown that when push comes to shove, countries can be relied upon to look after their own first. It has shown the folly of giving up the capacity to produce certain essential goods domestically.

That should lead us into a conversation about how we can reform the WTO in a way that allows for democratic governments to implement good social and environmental policy without fear of sanction and implement industrial plans that allow for the development of domestic production of various essential goods and services.

If sincerely adopted by the government, some of the recommendations in this report could help to create a more just global trade regime. New Democrats are committed to putting that option on the ballot for Canadians across the country who share our concern about these issues.