Our demands and why they should be your's too.
Taking the lead of international organizations working to end the pandemic, we have demands for the Canadian government.
We are incredibly fortunate to live in a country where we can hold our government accountable. It is our responsibility as citizens to carry that out.
Our Demands
Canada provides all the promised doses to COVAX.
Canada votes in favour of the COVID-19 Vaccine TRIPS Waiver that would allow vaccines to be produced closer to where they are needed and decrease dependence on donations.
Increase the Canadian Official Development Assistance by $1.5 billion in the 2022 budget to support strengthening of health care infrastructure in the world's poorest countries so they have the capacity to respond to COVID-19. Canada's global COVID-19 response must not come at the expense of other commitments to international development.
Cease to enact travel bans related to COIVD-19.
“No one is safe until everyone is safe.” - Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
The why: Health is a human right.
In April 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic, international organizations banded together to come up with a global response.
The WHO created the ACT-Accelerator (Access to COVID-19 Tools) to "accelerate development, production and equitable access to COVID-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines."
Canada was the second G7 country to give its fair share to the ACT-Accelerator back in May 2021.
COVAX is the vaccine pillar of the accelerator. The idea behind it was to deliver vaccines to the most vulnerable populations first, regardless of their ability to pay or where they live.
COVAX is a donation based tool funded by governments, philanthropists and other international organizations. Vaccine doses are also contributed on a donation basis.
As vaccines were being developed, countries were under pressure to secure doses for their citizens. Canada bought more doses per capita than any other country in the world. There were enough doses to vaccinate each Canadian five times over.
Canada outlined their intention to donate surplus doses to low and middle income countries. They are not the only country to take this approach, prioritizing their own citizens above a truly global response.
Not taking an equitable approach to vaccine distribution means donated surplus doses are expired before they arrive at their destination or before they can be distributed. It is not only necessary to donate the doses but to ensure the donation is made in a timely matter with the proper support in place so the vaccine makes it into an arm.
Canada has committed funds to finance the cost of getting the vaccine into an arm. These are good steps.
Our group is asking Canada to live up to their promise of donating a minimum of 200 million doses to COVAX by the end of 2022.
No matter where someone is from, they are deserving of the same access to healthcare and the opportunities available to people in good health. Health is a human right, under the United Nations.
Vaccines are a key step to moving from a state of COVID-19 response to recovery. High-income countries who have reached 70 percent vaccination coverage are in the recovery stage and have the financial capacity to continue to dedicate resources for economic, social, political and environmental recovery and progress.
This is not the case for developing countries. As of March 5, 2022, only 13 percent of people in low-income countries have received one dose. All the while, Canadians are receiving booster doses.
Low to middle income countries do not have the same financial capacity to respond to the pandemic in the same way and will face significantly more challenges in recovering from it.
According to a report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights , "Under current pricing schemes, low-income countries would need to increase their health expenditure by 30 to 60 per cent to reach the target of vaccination of 70 per cent of their population. By contrast, high-income countries would need to increase their health expenditure by only 0.8 per cent to achieve the same vaccination rate." (p. 11)
This is just one example of the difference in economic capacity to respond to the pandemic and illustrates the need for high income countries to assist in vaccination efforts outside of their own borders. As we have all experienced, new variants arise when populations don't have adequate health services.
We are asking Canada to cease all travel bans related to COVID-19.
The virus traverses borders. Time and again we see the ineffectiveness of the action. Travel bans encourage fear, stigma and discrimination against people who are already marginalized. The same report said, "Reactions of States, such as the imposition of travel restrictions immediately on countries where the Omicron variant was first detected, pose a risk of creating a disincentive for vital reporting on new variants, thereby jeopardizing the world’s ability to quickly respond to, and recover from, the pandemic and its detrimental human rights impact." (p. 9)
In addition to responding to COVID-19, developing countries are disproportionately affected by other development issues such as tuberculosis, polio, hunger, poverty and inadequate access to clean water. These issues have not stopped for the pandemic and continue to harm people around the world.
The diversion of resources to pandemic responses means that some of these issues that were being closely targeted by development agencies and governments were no longer receiving the same attention.
We are asking Canada to increase their Official Development Assistance by $1.5 billion in the 2022 budget to try and combat these development losses.
For example, the U.N. report said, "Mass immunization campaigns of children against other diseases were interrupted and postponed in many countries, putting some 228 million people – mostly children – at risk of contracting highly infectious diseases, such as measles, polio and yellow fever.40 Disruptions of such routine immunization may increase the risk of the resurgence of diseases that the international community has worked hard to eradicate." (p. 7)
We hope you join us and demand our government do better. Check our TAKE ACTION page for how you can be involved.
Comments