Opposition MPs Reproach Pharmaceutical Execs for Not Releasing Unredacted Vaccine Contracts

The first Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine dose in Canada is prepared at The Michener Institute in Toronto on Dec. 14, 2020. The Canadian Press/Frank Gunn

Conservative MPs on the public accounts committee admonished pharmaceutical executives on March 23 for refusing to release unredacted versions of their companies’ vaccine contracts with the federal government.

“We are not asking for it for public release. We are asking for it so that the small group of members of Parliament—who have been charged with holding the government accountable in these areas—can privately review these documents and provide recommendations to the government,” Conservative MP Garnett Genuis told the executives.

“It makes me wonder what is in it that is so damaging to you, or to the government, that allowing members of Parliament to privately review them would be such a concern.”

Representatives from Moderna, Pfizer Canada, Medicago Inc., and SANOFI Canada testified before the committee, while AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and Novovax declined to attend the hearing.

Toshifumi Tada, president and CEO of Medicago, said that given the company’s announcement that it will be shutting down operations, it was not opposed to sharing the unredacted version of the vaccine contract.

“However, we request that the committee will keep the confidentiality of our commercial and preclinical information in the contract in the context of its audit,” he said.

In the other pharmaceutical companies’ opening statements, they argued that their contracts contained commercial and technical information that needed to remain confidential.

Najah Sampson, president of Pfizer Canada, said the MPs’ request to view the confidential agreements with the government “sends a very concerning signal about how this country upholds its contractual obligations, and could challenge its reputation as a reliable partner for future contracts across all business sectors.”

A motion to look at the contracts between the federal government and COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers was tabled on Feb. 13, but on Feb. 16 an amendment was introduced stipulating that MPs would need to sign non-disclosure agreements before viewing the contracts.

Liberal MP Anthony Housefather, who introduced the amendment, argued that the reason there were so many redactions was that the companies were exposed to “way higher liability” for quickly rushing the vaccines to market without the usual long-term testing.

‘The Situation Is Outrageous’

Genuis argued that since Parliament is the supreme lawmaking body, MPs have the “unfettered, constitutionally protected right” to request the unredacted documents.

“The situation is outrageous and I’m extremely frustrated by it,” he said. “We have witnesses who don’t understand how the law works, who don’t understand the fact that a parliamentary committee is unfettered in its right to access documents.”

Sampson replied that she understood the direction the committee would like to take. “I am not refuting any of the authorities that have been placed with this committee, but it is still Pfizer’s position that we not provide an unredacted contract,” she said.

Conservative MP Kelly McCauley noted that the Pfizer vaccine contracts had already been leaked by the consumer rights advocacy group Public Citizen. The group said Pfizer used its power to “shift risk and maximize profits” and to “consistently place Pfizer’s interests before public health imperatives.”

McCauley asked the executives whether any leaks of the contracts had come from Canada, to which they replied they had not. So this narrative that “11 MPs in a guarded room with no phones or copiers or any ability to copy anything is somehow a risk to Canadian investment from Moderna and Pfizer, we’re just putting that to bed,” he said.

Conservative MP Michael Kram made the point that parliamentary committees often deal with sensitive matters, such as military documents during the war in Afghanistan.

“So what is it about the vaccine contracts that make them so much more sensitive than troop movements in Afghanistan or new fighter jets?” he asked.

Sampson replied that there are commercially sensitive cases within vaccine contracts, as well as proprietary information. “Pfizer hasn’t provided that contract information unredacted anywhere around the world, voluntarily, and that’s not a precedent that we believe needs to be set here in Canada,” she said.

NDP MP Blake Desjarlais asked the executives if they felt that the “confidential process of Canada’s Parliament is insufficient for the purposes of reviewing your contracts in a confidential way?”

Patricia Gauthier, president and general manager of Moderna Canada, replied that the company had not provided any unredacted copies of the agreements to any governments.

“There are very strict confidentiality clauses in the agreement that would put us at breach, should we go outside of what is provided in these agreements and share these agreements in an unredacted manner,” she said.