What Do We Need China For, Anyway?

It's not only our national industry and resources. It's our sovereignty, as well:

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced last month that Canada would soon be holding human trials of a new COVID-19 vaccine, there was a lot of excitement, and some confusion.
The developer of the would-be vaccine was a Chinese company called CanSino Biologics, hardly a household name in the pharmaceutical industry.

But not only is CanSino a leader in the international race to find a preventive solution to the pandemic — working alonside the Chinese military’s medical-science division — it has surprisingly deep roots in this country.

The vaccine is based on a cell line developed by the National Research Council. The company has worked with the NRC previously on an Ebola vaccine, and with scientists at the council and McMaster University on a tuberculosis shot. More recently, it partnered with a Vancouver-based bio technology company that came up with its own COVID-19 vaccine candidate. ...

The government refuses to reveal how much it’s spending on the studies, to be overseen by Dalhousie University’s Canadian Centre for Vaccinology. Particulars of the CanSino deal are shielded by “commercial confidentiality,” said Hans Parmar, an Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada spokesman. But Ottawa has committed $1 billion to COVID-19 research generally.

The National Research Council would produce the vaccine for the Canadian market at a manufacturing facility in Montreal if the trials prove successful. It says it should be able to make 70,000 to 100,000 doses a month by the end of the year. ...

But if Canada wanted an international partnership, other projects seem to have more potential, insists Attaran. He points, for instance, to one led by Oxford University and AstraZeneca, which is in phase 2 trials and has been setting up manufacturing arrangements worldwide. Canada has yet to join.

Ottawa has invested in a small Boston-area company, VBI Vaccines, developing a vaccine against COVID-19 and two other coronaviruses, SARS and MERS. And the government is seeking to partner with major international vaccine-makers and the UK’s Vaccine Task Force, said Parmar.

Attaran also questions what benefit, if any, Canada received from CanSino in exchange for the NRC’s cell lines and, now, an unknown amount of funding for clinical trials. ...

Similar to the new COVID-19 vaccine, CanSino worked on the Ebola product with the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences’ bioengineering institute.

What can go wrong here?:

A former leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada. A former Conservative foreign minister. Two former Liberal foreign ministers. Four former Canadian ambassadors to the United Nations, under Liberal and Tory governments. Two former Canadian ambassadors to the United States, under Liberal and Tory governments. A former Supreme Court justice. A former Liberal justice minister. A former Conservative senator. A flock of name-brand diplomats. Former CBC host Don Newman, for some reason.

This is the panoply of 19 elite opinion-makers that gathered in the Laurentian Boardroom at an online hotel and drafted a letter, released Wednesday, calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to intervene in the extradition process, set Huawei CFO Meng Wangzhou free, and thereby secure the release of Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.

This China:

China lashed out at Canada on Saturday over criticism about Chinese prosecution of two Canadians, saying the matter is based on evidence and urging Ottawa to cease “megaphone diplomacy.”