Canada’s vaccine approver says she has not been politically pressured by COVID-19

The official who had final authority to approve new vaccines in Canada says she was at no time pressured to approve COVID-19 vaccinations, even though the prime minister had said vaccination was the only way to get back to normal.

“Nobody ever told me that the Prime Minister wants this done,” said Dr. Celia Lourenco, now acting Deputy Under Secretary at Health Canada and previously Director General of the Department’s Biological and Radiopharmaceuticals Directorate.

Dr. Lourenco was questioned on July 13 as part of the first complaint against the federal vaccine mandate adjudicated by the Federal Public Sector Labor Relations and Employment Board.

The case involves Slim Rehibi, who worked for Employment and Social Development Canada and was given seven months of unpaid leave for failing to comply with mandatory vaccination policies. He was also denied unemployment benefits.

The Liberal government has imposed a COVID-19 vaccination mandate on the public service and federally regulated sectors from October 2021 to June 2022.

Bernard Desgagné, who is a civil servant and not a lawyer, represents Mr. Rehibi and another defendant. He discussed a wide variety of issues with Dr. Lourenco, including whether politics played a role in the approval of COVID-19 vaccines.

He asked dr. Lourenco whether she or anyone else had advised the government early during the COVID-19 crisis about what kind of treatment or medicine would be best to save lives and return to normal.

Dr. Lourenco said her department was reviewing the literature and clinical studies at the time, but there was nothing leading them to recommend any particular treatment or vaccine.

Mr Desgagné asked why Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in that case, stated in April 2020 that “normalcy as it was before will not fully return until we have a vaccine for this”, as reported by Global News.

He noted that it appears that at the start of the pandemic, the Canadian government decided that the solution to returning to normal would be to vaccinate a large portion of the population with a product that did not yet exist.

Dr. Lourenco said it was not unreasonable for Mr Trudeau to make that statement given that vaccines are used to control infectious diseases and that he could have gotten that advice from scientists.

After the vaccine rollout, Mr. Trudeau initially said vaccination was a personal choice, but he later made vaccine mandates an electoral issue in 2021.

Dr. Lourenco said her team was not concerned about the political objectives or “noise” surrounding the issue of vaccination and was only focusing on reviewing the data submitted by the drug companies.

The main goal was to ensure the “safety, efficacy and quality” of the injections before they were approved, she said.

“Of course we hope… that the product will demonstrate safety and efficacy and be of acceptable quality,” said Dr. Lourenco, “but we have to go through the process of reviewing all the data to make sure all those checks and balances are met.”

The COVID-19 vaccines were approved under an interim order that gave way to a rare avenue to bring a drug to market. The data has been received on an ongoing basis from drug companies and made public with no long-term safety data.

Dr. Lourenco was also cross-examined in June last year under the challenge of the federal government’s travel vaccine mandate.

She said if the COVID-19 injections had shown their current effectiveness against infection of less than 50 percent, they would never have been approved for the market, but their approval has been retained to avoid serious consequences.

Several lawsuits have been filed against the federal government regarding the vaccine mandates.

Complaints have also been made to the Canadian Forces, most recently to a military administrative tribunal pronunciation that some provisions of the vaccination policy were unconstitutional and infringed on charter rights.