The Chinese Communist Party Industrial and Military Espionage Modus Operandi ... Naive and Foolish Canada

"The National Research Council retains the intellectual property related to the cell line, while CanSino, in turn, owns all intellectual property rights for the vaccines it develops."

then-Industry Minister Navdeep Bains, August 

"Under this agreement, CanSino was to provide candidate vaccine doses and transfer their vaccine technology, free of charge, for Phase 1 and 2 clinical trials in Canada, and grant the NRC a non-exclusive right to use, produce, and reproduce the vaccine for emergency pandemic use [NRC in  response to a question in the House of Commons]." 

Question raised by Conservative Health critic Michelle Rempel Garner

The Chinese embassy in Ottawa (Jolson Lim/iPolitics)

 

This, of a contractual agreement signed by the Canadian government with a Chinese pharmaceutical company whose founder and CEO had ties with Canada, having attended university and received his doctorate in Canada, and worked for a large Canadian pharmaceutical company before returning to China and launching his own business, linked to the People's Republic of China's military laboratories. 

This has a familiar ring. Canada's hugely successful communications giant Nortel, employed Chinese IT personnel, some of whom managed to infiltrate its highest echelons of executive management to secure trade secrets which made their way back to China as competitors to Nortel. A scenario that led to the company's demise while Huawei, where many of the former Nortel employees were then employed, began to rise becoming China's premier communications giant.

Infiltration by Chinese nationals who studied in Canada and became employed at Canadian companies securing classified data later transferred to China is not exactly new; industrial and military espionage is an acknowledged Chinese Communist Party specialty. Two years ago at Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Xiangguo Qiu, then head of the vaccine development and antiviral therapies section, along with her husband also employed there, and a Chinese student in microbiology were escorted out of the facility.

They had somehow managed to send to China Canadian formulas not meant to leave the country much less fall into the hands of any entity outside the Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg. An investigation was launched by the RCMP after they were removed from their positions for "policy breaches" linked to a laboratory in Wuhan, China known to conduct research into deadly pathogens. The background of the situation and the findings of the investigation were never made public.

Yet despite these sinister and blatant events at purloining trade and industrial secrets from other countries that China is infamous for, the Canadian government under Justin Trudeau chose to sign a contract with another Chinese company for the critical development of a vaccine to inoculate against a global pandemic. The vaccine, once developed, was to be tested at laboratories at Dalhousie University in Halifax.

The National Research Council was to begin producing the vaccine in Canada. Bearing in mind that the NCC transferred Canadian intellectual property for use by CanSino to enable it to create the vaccine for Ebola and SARS-CoV-2. The final product was to have been delivered to Canada, but it never passed Chinese customs to arrive in Canada. Although the product was sent on to Pakistan, Russia, Mexico and Chile for trials, simply not to Canada.

"Due to lengthy delays in the shipment of the vaccine doses to Canada, the fact that CanSino’s candidate had already entered advanced testing in other countries, and the new clinical-trial data that had emerged from other jurisdictions, it was decided in late August that the opportunity to conduct clinical trials in Canada for Ad5-nCoV had passed, and the government decided to focus on more promising candidates."

National Research Council

That setback meant that Canada had no recourse to any vaccines in development and completing their trials, so at that later date in August of 2020 the Trudeau government hurriedly began making deals with U.S. and British pharmaceuticals for vaccine doses, long after most G7 countries had already made their arrangements, sending Canada to the back of the line. The result of which is that Canada has received scant few vaccine doses while other countries which either produce their own or signed contracts to keep them well supplied are inoculating their populations at a rate Canadians can only envy.

Canada, it would seem, from its then-minister of industry, 'owns' the intellectual property relating to the CanSino Biologics vaccine, but cannot access it (punishment courtesy of the CCP for having the effrontery to detain Huawei's CEO on an extradition warrant from the U.S.) because China 'owns' the vaccine now in use by the Chinese military and sent abroad elsewhere.

Canada had, it seems, also seen fit to sign the contract with CanSino that contains the proviso that: "Canada cannot claim any revenue if the vaccine proves successful". At the time of the contract signing, CanSino was trading at HK$87.45 in the Hong Kong Exchange. At the present time CanSino stock is trading at an all-time high of HK$365. Clearly, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau neglected to read former U.S.President's "Art of the Deal".

 

Faisal Sultan

@fslsltn

·

Feb 8, 2021

Clinical trial data (phase-3) of a one-dose Ad5-nCoV vaccine for Covid (Cansino Bio) received. Interim analysis by the Independent Data Monitoring Committee shows 65.7% efficacy at preventing symptomatic cases and 90.98% at preventing severe disease (multicountry analysis).

Faisal Sultan

@fslsltn

In the Pakistani subset, efficacy at preventing symptomatic cases is 74.8% & 100% at preventing severe disease. The IDMC didn't report any serious safety concerns. Data incld 30,000 participants & 101 virologically confmd COVID cases Well done Pak team for conducting this trial

China's Exploitative Agenda : Canada a Willing Foil

"Why would we not choose to be affiliated with those efforts [other promising COVID vaccines backed by major Western universities and companies], and instead pick as our preferred partner the Chinese military and a Chinese company?"
"This vaccine candidate is nothing but a dead man walking now."
Dr.Amir Attaran, health policy professor, University of Ottawa

"There are a lot of challenges this vaccine platform will face ... This will be a little bit like winning the lottery to get this to the end."
"That's why I'm at a bit of a loss about this. I still don't understand how did that work? What was the decision mechanism to invest in this?"
"A vaccine that gives you grade-3 side effects in phase 1 is not a prime candidate."
Dr.Gary Kobinger, professor, Department of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, Laval University

CanSino Biologics, a Chinese company developing a COVID-19 vaccine with the help of some Canadian scientists, saw some early success in the first phase of clinical trials

Scientists across the globe are working tirelessly and anxiously, hoping to find a solution to the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19, in a vaccine to prevent the global ravages of the dangerous disease. Dangerous enough that it has infected eight million people worldwide and strained international medical resources beyond their limits, lethal enough that close to a half-million  people have lost their lives to its dread effects.

A Chinese company called CanSino Biologics has a vaccine in the final stages of development and Canada's prime minister announced in May that Canada would be holding human trials of that vaccine in a partnership between Canada and China. At a time of critically strained relations with a belligerent Beijing which has been bullying its way across the world in every sphere of human endeavour, technological advance and geographical sovereignty.

The Chinese vaccine in fact, is one based on a cell line that was developed by Canada's National Research Council. The NRC has long worked with Chinese scientists in partnership advances in the past. Ties between the NRC and a Vancouver-based biotechnology company with its own COVID-19 vaccine candidate also enter the picture, as yet another COVID-centric vaccine research effort.

Last month, CanSino was the first biotech company globally to publish a peer-reviewed outcome of a vaccine trial for COVID-19; early trial results that produced iffy results. Other COVID vaccines appear more promising, and backed by major Western universities and companies, so it seems passing strange that the government of Canada would support a partnership between its own and Chinese researchers,

All the more so given China's propensity to take full credit and to appropriate joint efforts; given badly strained political-diplomatic relations between Canada and China, where Beijing is holding two Canadians ransom in a tit-for-tat standoff related to the lawful detention of an elite Chinese tech executive on an extradition warrant called by the U.S., leading China to accuse the Canadians of espionage. Exacting, in addition, trade punishments on Canada, exerting pressure for her release.

Laval University professor, Gary Kobinger who previously worked at Canada's National Microbiology Lab where he helped to develop an Ebola vaccine and treatment, declared his opinion that the CanSino vaccine looks dubious, expressing his professional puzzlement at the Canada/China partnership in its development. This is the same laboratory where a Chinese researcher, her husband and Chinese research students were escorted off campus declared persona non grata a year earlier.

The CanSino Ad5-nCoV vaccine appears to have failed the most basic of tests for patient safety. Its phase 1 results, published in The Lancet, reflected a study whose immune response to SARS-CoV-2 was effective for half the subjects, but also resulted in a 'damping' effect on close to half the 108 subjects exposed to Ad-5. The elevated fever that half of the participants suffered represents a side effect seen as very negative.

CanSino Biologics’ sign on building in Tianjin, China  REUTERS/Stringer

In total, the government of Canada has committed $1 billion in funding to COVID-19 research, but refuses to divulge how much of that total funding is being spent on the CanSino studies overseen by Dalhousie University's Canadian Centre for Vaccinology. "Commercial confidentiality" shelters the details from public view, according to Hans Parar, an Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada spokesman.

The arrangement is for the National Research Council to produce the vaccine for the Canadian market at a manufacturing facility in Montreal should the trials prove a success, where the NRC should be capable of producing 70,000 to 100,000 does monthly by year's end. A role that would place Canadians "among the first in the world to have access to a safe and effective vaccine against COVID-19". A peculiar statement, given that Canada signed on to a global agreement that no one country should monopolize the vaccine, but see that it would be simultaneously available globally.

A technician at CanSino Biologics in Tianjin, China.  REUTERS/Stringer

Even while the government of Canada is funding a number of other vaccine projects, many within Canada, including one at the University of Saskatchewan, moving steadily toward human trials, the partnership with Canada and China has its worrying roots. CanSino worked with the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences' bioengineering institute on the Ebola product.

And while evidence does not exist that the academy has any inappropriate role in the coronavirus project, it is well to remember that the Communist Party of China has issued a broad reminder to all Chinese citizens and corporate interests of their obligated responsibility to place the interests of China first and foremost in all their dealings. U.S. researchers last yer produced an article stating that China's defence planners are interested in "biology as an emerging domain of warfare".

The article had as a co-author Elsa Kania, a research fellow at Georgetown University Centre for Security and Emerging Technology. It all makes eminently good sense from China's perspective. The point of advantage from the Canadian perspective is somehow missing.