MPs vote to order release of Canada’s COVID vaccine contracts despite Pfizer’s objections

OTTAWA – Despite executives pleading otherwise, Canadian MPs in the House of Commons public accounts committee have voted to mandate the Department of Public Works hand over the country’s clandestine COVID-19 vaccine contracts with Pfizer for investigation. 

On March 23, as noted by Blacklock’s Reporter, executives from Pfizer, while testifying before the committee, made a veiled threat that Canada might lose its “reputation” and lose foreign investments should the details of the $5 billion COVID jab contracts some to light. 

Bloc Québécois MP Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné said that “Confidential information would remain confidential,” however Pfizer executives shot back claiming that any disclosure at all would constitute an abuse of power.

Canada’s Department of Health signed multiple COVID vaccine contracts in 2021 and 2022 with seven different manufacturers. Those seven included AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Medicago, Moderna, Novavax, Pfizer, and Sanofi.  

After a back and forth with executives, MPs voted that Canada’s public works department must hand over all the contracts for scrutiny.  

The contracts would only be allowed to be viewed by the 11 members of the public accounts committee, behind closed doors with no access to electronic devices or even written notes. 

Despite these embargo conditions, Pfizer executives claimed that certain secret items in the contracts should never be seen by any MP. 

“Disclosure of our confidential agreement would be an extraordinary use of authority,” said the president of Pfizer Canada Najah Sampson. 

Sampson claimed that allowing MPs to view the contracts would set a “precedent with unintended consequences on Canada’s reputation,” and that “It would send a strong message to business partners and to companies looking to invest that here in Canada confidentiality protections negotiated in good faith with the federal government may not be binding.”

According to Canadian health department records, some 238 million doses of the COVID shots were ordered from Pfizer Canada. This number includes some 30 million jabs yet to be delivered in 2023 and 2024.  

The total cost for each jab has not been made public and there are still no details regarding the specifics of the contracts, even though it is known that $1 billion worth of COVID vaccines have expired. 

When looking at cost-per-jab rates from other countries, prices range from $14.50 per shot in the European Union, to $19.50 in the United States.  

What is known is that a December 6, 2022, Auditor General report shows Canada’s COVID jab cost per unit to be somewhere around $30 per dose.

‘We have a right to access this information’ 

Sampson’s remarks claiming that MPs seeing the contracts would not be a good thing were immediately dismissed by Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) MPs. 

CPC MP Garnett Genuis, who is pro-life, shot back at the Pfizer executives, saying, MPs have a “right” to know what’s in the contracts, and that their trying to block the information from being revealed is “outrageous.”  

“It’s not a question of us engaging in some kind of negotiation, like we’re going to ask really politely and we’re going to let you eat some cookies at the back and then maybe you’ll give us a little more information in the documents,” said Genuis. 

“We have a right to access this information.”  

Genuis continued by saying the “situation is outrageous,” adding that “It makes me wonder, what is so damaging to you or the government that allowing Members of Parliament to privately review them would be such a concern?” 

CPC MP Kelly McCauley also blasted the withholding of information as troubling. 

“There are implied threats to investment in Canada if 11 MPs in a private room have access,” said McCauley.

“… And yet where they have leaked whole contracts you haven’t divested. It seems like an odd, implied threat if 11 MPs were to look at it,” he added. 

This is not the first time Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has come under fire regarding its relationship with Big Pharma.

In February, LifeSiteNews reported that Trudeau ordered members of his cabinet to swear an oath of secrecy as a condition to be allowed to view the jab contracts. 

And just last week, LifeSiteNews reported that the Trudeau federal government refused to disclose how much money it lost on an unsuccessful $200 million plan to build a COVID-19 jab manufacturing facility in Quebec.