Loading ...MEANWHILE IN TURDISTAN : Liberals Want MPs to Sign Non-Disclosure Agreements to View Vaccine Contracts
PAYWALLED…SO COPIED IN A COMMENT ( HA ! )
If I was an MP I would gladly sign the Non Disclosure Agreement…Gladly I say….Not my fault if some unknown whistleblower accidentally releases it .
Opposition MPs on the House of Commons public accounts committee want to view the contracts for billions of dollars between the federal government and COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers, but the Liberals are seeking a requirement that the MPs sign a non-disclosure agreement before doing so.
Bloc Québécois MP Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné had tabled a motion in committee on Feb. 13 to have MPs look at the contracts free of any redactions and in a controlled setting where no electronic devices would be allowed.
On Feb. 16, however, Liberal MP Anthony Housefather moved an amendment to seek the permission of vaccine manufacturers to allow MPs to view the unredacted documents only after having signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).
Housefather said public servants who view the documents have to sign NDAs, and also explained why the documents have so many redactions.
“It’s because these documents were signed at the beginning of a pandemic when everybody was desperate for vaccines, when companies were being told to rush vaccine production, do testing in an unprecedented way, in a way they normally don’t do it,” he said.
He added that the companies were exposed to “way higher liability” for rushing the products to market, skipping the testing that in a normal scenario would take years to complete.
“So that’s why these companies said, ‘If I’m going to deliver you this product that I haven’t tested in my normal way, I want to have different conditions.’”
Housefather’s amended motion was not voted on during the committee meeting and he called a vote to adjourn as there was no settlement in sight with opposition MPs.
Commenting on Housefather’s amendment, Sinclair-Desgagné said he seemed to be “representing pharmaceutical reps rather than his constituents.”
“We as parliamentarians don’t have to sign non-disclosure agreements with pharmacy companies—that is an aberration,” she said.
Conservative MP Kelly McCauley called Housefather’s motion “insulting” and said he wasn’t aware of previous circumstances where an MP would have leaked information shared in camera.
McCauley quoted from a Washington Post article based on a report by NGO Public Citizen on Pfizer’s vaccine contract negotiations with governments.
Public Citizen obtained unredacted versions of contracts with a number of countries and said they “offer a rare glimpse into the power one pharmaceutical corporation has gained to silence governments, throttle supply, shift risk and maximize profits in the worst public health crisis in a century.”
“I’m not casting aspersions against Pfizer, I thank God for them, that they created that vaccine, but that being said, it is an issue,” McCauley said.
NDP MP Blake Desjarlais also expressed concerns about the Liberals’ request to sign NDAs.
He said the government should not have gotten into an agreement knowing there could be a breach of confidentiality due to scrutiny from Parliament, and suggested this should be a consideration going forward.
Sinclair-Desgagné’s motion was tabled in relation to the Auditor General’s reports 9 and 10 released in December pertaining to the government’s procurement of vaccines and distribution of COVID-19 benefits.
Auditor General Karen Hogan found that the government had acted urgently to procure enough doses, but also ended up wasting a lot of them.
Hogan’s report says Ottawa spent approximately $5 billion for 169 million doses during the reporting period of December 2020 to May 2022, for a price tag of $30 per dose.
Sinclair-Desgagné remarked how countries paid different prices for vaccine doses and suggested this explains why manufacturers want to maintain confidentiality.
Her motion requests the public accounts committee undertake a study of the contracts between Ottawa and Moderna, Sanofi, Pfizer, Medicago, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and Novavax.
No dates for future meetings of the public accounts committee have been announced, where the Housefather amendment will be modified or voted on.
The House of Commons is currently adjourned until March 6.
Isn’t this a peculiar idea of democracy; that we are not permitted to know the particulars of contracts signed in our name.
“I’m not casting aspersions against Pfizer, I thank God for them, that they created that vaccine, but that being said, it is an issue,” McCauley said. Good grief! What a moron. And he’s on the team that will lead us out of this mess. Sheesh!
Yes, “representative democracy” where your “representative” won’t tell you what was in the contract he signed with the people who just injected you. I don’t know what’s worse, the lies the government has been telling everyone or the gullibility of the people believing them. The secrecy around the vax, both the holding back of testing data by the vax companies and the contents of the contracts by the governments that signed them, ought to be an obvious sign of guilt. Furthermore, how can they possibly defend themselves against that without revealing all the secrets? In a critical environment like a genuine free press or a court room, or an election campaign, none of this secrecy stuff will protect them. They will have to reveal everything or throw us all in concentration camps.