ABSTRACT
This chapter compares Canada’s and France’s policies and practices regarding COVID-19 vaccines. It asks to what extent they advance domestic interests versus international ones and what the impact is on their influence globally. Both countries have a history of global health diplomacy. Both countries quickly embraced, at the rhetorical level, the need to address the global crisis via multilateral channels, including ensuring an equitable distribution of vaccines. The Canadian government took a strong “Canada First” position, in spite of verbal and some financial support for multilateral responses, and impeded patent waivers. France, on the contrary, acted more multilaterally and strategically from the perspective of soft power, reversing its initial self-interest in intellectual property rights.
The chapter argues that Canada’s and, to a lesser extent, France’s domestic policy objectives undermined their global health diplomacy efforts and ultimately acted against their own interests in terms of health outcomes and their ability to influence global affairs, especially in the Global South. By emphasizing approaches characterized by selfishness and charity, rather than equity and justice, they are also, along with their counterparts in the Global North, undermining the credibility of Northern aid donors, more generally, and the legitimacy of the aid regime.
