India’s gesture of sending vaccine supplies to Canada suggests ‘long-range view’ of relations, despite irritants
The bigger challenge that faces India in undertaking one of the world’s biggest immunization campaigns is the logistics, rather than a shortage of vaccines, says Stewart Beck, president of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.
by BEATRICE PAEZ
MARCH 11, 2021
Procurement Minister Anita Anand is in charge of brokering deals with pharmaceutical companies for COVID-19 vaccines and other pandemic supplies. She has defended Canada's procurement approach, saying Canada wanted to hedge its bets in locking in a variety of deals. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade
India’s apparent acquiescence to strike a deal with Canada to send two million coronavirus vaccine doses amid heightened competition and demand for vaccine supplies could create an opening to broaden dialogue between the two nations, and may suggest India has a long view of the relationship, despite long-running irritants, say experts.
“India has sort of a long-range lens on how it’s looking at the relationship with Canada,” said Jonathan Miller, director of the Indo-Pacific program and senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. “This could be an element of where India’s thinking on this is that this is a gracious offering, a truce … and an area of goodwill to move the relationship forward.”
Health Canada’s approval of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine on Feb. 26 was accompanied by news from Procurement Minister Anita Anand (Oakville, Ont.) that the government’s efforts to secure more supplies through bilateral talks with India had paid off, with an additional two million doses expected from the Serum Institute of India. The vaccine maker produces a version of the AstraZeneca vaccine, and with the deal, Canada was able to slightly revise its projections. (Prior to the approval, it was expecting six million doses by the end of March.)
Ms. Anand marked the arrival of the first batch of 500,000 doses from India by tweeting out a photo of herself with the shipments and a thank-you to the High Commission of India in Canada and other partners involved in brokering the deal. “Thank you to all whose hard work made this happen. We look forward to future collaboration,” she tweeted March 3.
The news of the deal came more than two months after a spat between New Delhi and Ottawa. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s (Papineau, Que.) comments in early December expressing concern about the Indian government’s reaction to the farmers’ protests over agricultural reforms rankled India. That sparked a sharp rebuke from India’s Ministry of External Affairs, saying his remarks amounted to “ill-informed,” “unacceptable interference.”
A Feb. 10 call between Mr. Trudeau and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi appeared to have smoothed things over. Indian High Commissioner Ajay Bisaria told The Hill Times last month that the two had a “very positive” conversation.
Mr. Miller said India’s simmering frustrations with Canada, including the “phenomenal failure” that was Mr. Trudeau’s trip to India in 2018—and separate from this recent tiff—are unlikely to cool down anytime soon. Still, he said, India appears to be sensing an opening in the relationship, especially with Canada working on developing an Indo-Pacific strategy, as it tries to pivot away from China.
“Now, they’re seeing Canada regionally, being much more interested,” he said.
As one of the world’s largest vaccine manufacturers, India’s gesture of sending two million doses to Canada—when it can produce about 2.4 million a day—is unlikely to set its own vaccination campaign back. It’s been using that manufacturing capacity to outmanoeuvre China in its own efforts at vaccine diplomacy, sending millions of supplies to neighbouring countries such as Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, even as it copes with mitigating the pandemic’s impacts on its own population.
In India, more than 20 million people have been given at least one dose, per the BBC. Canada, meanwhile, has administered about 2.7 million doses, according to COVID-19 Tracker Canada.
The bigger challenge that faces India in undertaking one of the world’s biggest immunization campaigns is the logistics, rather than a shortage of vaccines, said Stewart Beck, Canada’s former high commissioner to India and president of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.
“The question is, ‘Can they actually deliver 2.4 million doses a day within India?’ because there are always issues around infrastructure, health care, health-care delivery programs,” he said. “So, I think part of their calculation is that ‘Okay, we produced 2.4 million out of the Serum Institute … so maybe we can deliver two million and we have 400,000 doses a day that we can put out for diplomacy reasons.”
India’s vaccine-maker may end up producing nearly half of the world’s COVID-19 vaccine supply, according to The Economist. At full capacity, its factories are able to churn out 60-70 million doses a month.
That estimate was before an anticipated announcement on Friday that the Quad—a group of countries comprising of the United States, Japan, India, and Australia—would form agreements that would bolster vaccine manufacturing capacity in India to counter China’s vaccine diplomacy, according to Reuters. That’s one item on the agenda for the Quad’s first-ever summit since U.S. President Joe Biden took office, and it’s taking place amid a backdrop of concerns that Western nations have created a vacuum in this area of diplomacy for countries like China and Russia to swoop in.
Gilles Rivard, president of the Retired Heads of Mission, said India may be building up a lot of “mileage” and bolster its image internationally. He said it’s a chance for India to show the world that it’s on the ascent: “You keep seeing us as a developing country, but look at what we’re doing for you.”
Like Mr. Beck, Mr. Rivard doesn’t see any immediate risk of India’s vaccine diplomacy blowing up in its face domestically, given its capacity to produce vaccines at a rapid clip. Where there’s potential for blowback is if its vaccination campaign starts to hit major snags while it’s continuously sending supplies to other countries, he added.
“It’s not a question of having a vaccine, it’s a question of having the logistics, the capacity to be able to distribute those vaccines—that can be a problem for them,” he said, “if they spend too much time helping other countries while internally they are facing other problems.”
Asked what India might potentially stand to gain from helping Canada boost its vaccine supply, Mr. Beck said its calculation might be that, if it extends this type of arrangement, “one would hope that the rhetoric [on the farmers’ protest] will change somewhat from the Canadian side.”
“Where’s the rhetoric gone since we’ve had that conversation? Is it still ramping up around the farmers’ protests? Or has it become more muted?” he said.
But, he added, it’s unlikely that Ottawa entered into some form of quid pro quo, and that the gesture may have been seen by India as an avenue to move past that dispute and to work on other areas where the two countries see alignment, including opportunities to build on trade links.
Andrew Caddell, fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and retired Global Affairs official, who had a stint at the High Commission of Canada in India, said he doesn’t see a downside to India’s approach.
“We have to work on the strengths that we have. [In Canada’s case], we have to work to focus on trade as a real sort of a conduit to better relations,” said Mr. Caddell, who is also a regular columnist for The Hill Times. “If the Indians are hoping to use one of their strengths in the pharmaceutical industry as an opening, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I couldn’t see a downside on it.”
François LaRochelle, a former Canadian diplomat and fellow at the Montreal Institute of International Studies, said having other countries, including in Canada, reliant on India for vaccines could be a source of pride for Indian officials. “For the Indian government, the fact that they are able to provide vaccines to many developed countries, such as Canada, is probably a source of pride,” he said.
Mr. Miller agreed, noting that its homegrown vaccine, Covaxin, could boost its “prestige,” especially if the drug receives authorization in countries like the U.S. Covaxin has an estimated efficacy rate of 81 per cent. “This is a significant measure of global power,” he said. “I think that that would be something that many Indians would sort of wear on their lapel [as] a sign that India really is coming up as a significant power.”
International Trade Minister Mary Ng’s office says Canada is working to find ‘consensus-based solutions’ around issues related to the production and distribution of vaccines. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade
Concerns about vaccine equity persist
Siham Rayale, Oxfam Canada’s women’s rights policy and advocacy specialist, said the deal cut with India “fits the same pattern” that the country has been following in its efforts to secure more than enough vaccine supplies for its population.
Through the seven advance-purchase deals it signed, Canada has secured upwards of 400 million doses for a population of some 38 million people. Three of the four vaccines that have received regulatory approval require two doses.
“Bilateral deals undermine vaccine equity and access and only furthers vaccine inequality, which is why we think multilateral schemes like the COVAX facility are great, because you draw buy-in from a number of other nations to be able to evenly and equitably distributed based on need,” she said. “It’s secured enough vaccines to vaccinate our population five times over. That is a clear example of really missing the mark on where the need lies.”
The Trudeau government has defended its procurement approach, saying that Canada struck those deals to hedge its bets on vaccines. Ms. Anand told CBC last week that Canada’s priority is to vaccinate its citizens first and will later share whatever excess supplies it has on hand. “We are going to make sure that all Canadians have access to vaccines. That’s our priority, that’s the role of the federal government,” she said.
While Ms. Rayale said Canada has “shown a lot of leadership” in its support of the global-vaccine sharing initiative known as COVAX, its move to sign side deals, coupled with its apparent hesitancy to back a proposal at the World Trade Organization (WTO) that would ramp up vaccine production undermine efforts to democratize access to vaccines.
According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, most low-income countries are not expected to get “widespread vaccination coverage” by at least 2024.
Canada has not given a thumbs-down to a proposal by more than 100 developing countries at the WTO to waive Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS), a move that, Ms. Rayale said, would lower the barriers for manufacturing vaccines and allow a ramp-up in production. But, she said, Ottawa has argued that the TRIPS agreement already has “flexibility for licensing” and questioned whether “there’s evidence to suggest that vaccines supply manufacturing would rapidly increase” with the waiver.
In an email response, Youmy Han, press secretary to Trade Minister Mary Ng (Markham-Thornhill, Ont.) said Canada “continues to engage WTO members … in order to identify specific IP-related barriers, and find concrete, consensus-based solutions.”
“Canada is working with other WTO Members to clarify any trade-related barriers and encourage the acceleration of production and distribution of affordable, safe, effective COVID-19 vaccines and medical supplies.”
Ms. Rayale noted that India and South Africa—two countries with manufacturing capacity—were among those pushing for this waiver proposal, adding that that should address questions about its impact.
“A number of other countries are now coming forward to indicate their preparedness to be able to scale up vaccine supply and manufacturing,” she added. “Before any of these low-income and middle-income countries have been given an opportunity to get access to a vaccine, we’re really just sort of cutting them off at the knees, and protecting intellectual property and technology for pharmaceutical companies.”