Politic?: Bad Faith China Syndrome

"It's likely that the shipment is being delayed as part of China's retaliation against Canada over the Meng [Wanzhou/Huawei Technology] arrest."
"But it could also be due to the kind of sudden, unexplained delay that routinely happens when you're dealing with China's opaque and often uncooperative customs authorities."
"Either way, it raises the question of why the National Research Council thought it was a good idea to work with a Chinese partner on such a sensitive project."
David Mulroney, Canadian ambassador to China, 2009--2012

"We are continuing to wait for the vaccine."
"All we know is that it's awaiting customs clearance by the Chinese government for export. We have not been able to obtain any projected time lines."
"Nothing much else I can say, other than we can start the trial as soon as we receive the vaccine."
Scott Halperin, head, planned Phase-1 trial, Canadian Center for Vaccinology, Dalhousie University

Chinese vaccine maker CanSino Biologics’ sign is pictured on its building in Tianjin, China, Nov. 20, 2018. Stringer/Reuters/File

CanSino's Ad5-nCoV vaccine is the first of many vaccines to have published the results of its initial stage 1 tests. Which led to the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet publishing the first set of data about the efficacy of CanSino’s vaccine in humans. A coup for CanSino, and a hope that an efficacious and safe vaccine would shortly be available. If successful, however, it would be one among many. The initial findings indicated Ad5-nCoV induced binding antibodies in most people given the vaccine within 28 days.

Of the larger number of study subjects exposed to the vaccine, one-hundred-and-eight healthy volunteers responded to the vaccine in a way that was read as "safe and well-tolerated", though some of the subjects experienced troubling side-effects. Ad5-nCoV was also approved by China’s military for use by its soldiers for one year. The Chinese military’s medical research unit was also known to have played a role in the development of Ad5-nCoV.

Which leaves open to question why the National Research Council, Canada's premiere medical research group, would choose to make itself available in an agreement with a Chinese biomedical corporation with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese military. CanSino's founder has a Canadian connection, having studied and worked in Canada on biomedical research. But Canada's experience with China, in particular the most recent events have been so fraught with enmity it becomes a puzzle that the government -- not the NRC -- agreed that this critical file would be attached to China's whims.

China has already demonstrated aptly its disregard for international norms when it arbitrarily took under arrest two Canadian businessmen on trumped-up charges of espionage to use them as leverage to force Canada to release Huawei's chief operating officer held on an extradition warrant issued by the United States. Further pressure was applied when a Canadian charged with drug smuggling was suddenly given a death penalty for his crimes. And previous trade agreements for the import of Canadian canola, pork and other comestibles were suddenly cancelled.

The very issue of China's miserable human rights record has never given pause to the Liberal government in its ambition to strike an advantageous trade agreement with Beijing. That ambition of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's was aborted when conditions were placed on any trade agreement that Canada would sign with any international trade group; insisting on inclusion of respect and equality for women and unions and minorities. China doesn't appreciate being lectured or dictated to.

China is known as a country whose government has never been averse to hijacking other countries' trade and military secrets through cybersecurity infractions. And its past performance infiltrating Canada's world-renowned Nortel Networks, purloining secret data which eventually helped lead to Nortel's downfall followed by former Chinese Nortel employees helping to found Huawei should have been an object lesson in the benefits to be had by maintaining a wide distance between Ottawa and Beijing. A lesson Prime Minister Trudeau flung aside.

According to the agreement signed between CanSino and the NRC in mid-May, the Canadian Centre for Vaccinology at Dalhousie University was to have begun a small Phase 1 safety trial with the vaccine, with the possibility of Phase 2 and 3 trials to follow. On regulator approval, the vaccine could be manufactured at a facility in Montreal owned by the NRC to ensure that Canada was "among the first in the world to have access to a safe and effective vaccine against COVID-19", according to the National Research Council.

It is now known that CanSino conducted talks with Russia, Brazil, Chile and Saudi Arabia to conduct Phase 3 trials. And it just signed an agreement with Egypt to test and produce the vaccine once it could be determined that the vaccine does protect people against infection by the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID-19. "It might also be that China would prefer to ensure that any vaccine is developed in China first and not shared with a foreign country, especially Canada", suggested Guy Saint-Jacques another former Canadian ambassador to China.

Alternately, he said, the situation "could well be part of the Chinese arsenal" in the dispute over Meng's arrest. As for the CanSino vaccine candidate, it makes use of a harmless virus as a system of delivery where the "adenovirus" is modified to express part of the SARS-CoV-2 germ causing COVID, which should trigger the immune system to fight the coronavirus. Dampened immune response occurred in some people, theoretically attributed to the thought they were exposed previously to the adenovirus backbone in the vaccine and resulting antibodies repelled the vaccine.