Is Trudeau monopolizing vaccine technology? We investigated

It turns out that the Canadian government does receive royalties on the lipid nanoparticle technology. It’s an old technology not specific to COVID injections, but there doesn’t appear to be a conspiracy around it, despite the assertive claims running rampant on social media that says otherwise.

There are many claims floating around online that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has a monopoly on the COVID biologic injectables. It’s a topic that has received a lot of attention and it speaks volumes to the integrity of this Prime Minister when this is readily believable.

The claim appear to originate from David Martin. He’s chairman and CEO of M-Cam, a global financial and analyst firm that partly focuses on the ethical use of intangible assets such as patents. Martin has a bachelors degree in biology, psychology and sports medicine, a masters in physiology and a doctorate in sports medicine.

It is alleged that this NASDAQ report is the proof of these claims. The report is from 2018 and outlines Arbutus Biopharma Corporation annual commissions.

On page 92 under “Product Development Partnership With The Canadian Government” it states that:

The Company entered into a Technology Partnerships Canada ("TPC") agreement with the Canadian Federal Government on November 12, 1999. Under this agreement, TPC agreed to fund 27% of the costs incurred by the Company… As at December 31, 2018, a cumulative contribution of $3 702 000 CAD had been received and the Company does not expect any further funding under this agreement. In return for the funding provided by TPC, the Company agreed to pay royalties on the share of future licensing and product revenue, if any, that is received by the Company on certain non-siRNA oligonucleotide product candidates covered by the funding under the agreement. These royalties are payable until a certain cumulative payment amount is achieved or until a pre-specified date.

Technology Partnerships Canada was a special operating agency of Industry Canada with a mandate to provide funding support for strategic research and development and demonstration projects that produced economic, social and environmental benefits to Canadians. It was scraped in 2006 but all ongoing and pre-existing contracted projects continue.

This means that Arbutus will continue to give the government royalties until it repays the amount that it borrowed because if it didn’t, then our tax dollars went to a waste initiative.

As of May 1, 2017, Arbutus had paid back a measly $14,445 of the original $3 million it received in the grant.

Seems like we need those royalties.

My attempts to reach David Martin for comment have been futile. My first attempt was in February when I posted my original article questioning these insistent claims.

In an interesting turn, while researching Dr. Martin’s claims of government conspiracy and claiming that he would imminently be filing charges against government entities, I discovered that Dr. Martin faced his own conspiracy charges.

In 2017, the United States government accused him of fraudulent deceit and trickery. Dr. Martin did not respond when asked for an update on the case.

Regardless, it speaks to the ethical nature of Justin Trudeau and his cabinet when claims like this can spread like wildfire online. Trudeau is the only sitting prime minister who has violated conflict of interest laws on two separate occasions and skirted it on others.

The Ethics Commissioner found that Trudeau’s 2016 taxpayer-funded Christmas vacation to the island in the Bahamas owned by the Aga Khan, whose private helicopter flew him there, broke four sections of the Conflict of Interest Act.

The second was the SNC-Lavalin scandal that saw the resignation of two top Liberal staffers. Trudeau narrowly missed the WE Charity violation. Each time he apologized and promised to never do it again.

This gross misconduct is par for the course as to why this allegation is a believable claim but, when searching for the evidence, appears to have no merit.