Health Committee on March 12th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Do you have another question, Monsieur Dufour?

[Nicolas Dufour, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Yes.

Why would the other universities be concerned about the bill?

[Ayoob Ghalami]

I can't speak on behalf of other people. I wouldn't know what their concerns are.

I have talked; I get calls from other institutions asking why and when we started our post-exposure prophylaxis in our medical surveillance program. I can guarantee you that half of our institutions don't have it. But we have worked hard, we do have it at the University of Toronto, and it's the right thing to do. If someone has not done it, and they don't want to do it, I can't talk on their behalf.

[Nicolas Dufour, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

By providing for overly restrictive frameworks, particularly as regards the inclusion of risk group 2 pathogens, an area that poses a problem for the majority of scientists, are you not worried that research will be unbalanced? Some scientists told us that labs in the United States had shut down because of overly restrictive regulatory frameworks. Could the other universities or research centres be penalized if overly restrictive regulatory frameworks are brought in?

[Ayoob Ghalami]

You mention a great point. When George Bush came into power and they didn't want stem cell research, we got lots of scientists. It was their loss, our gain. We got lots of scientists from the States who couldn't do research there and they came to Canada, exactly. If we have such a restrictive rule, we will lose scientists to elsewhere.

But the reality is, if I go back to my initial statement, that if the security requirement, as promised, gets lifted off risk group two, and if, as we have discussed with the Public Health Agency of Canada, they adopt what the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission does--namely, you get certified as an institution so that you can deal with anything under risk group three--it will not have any paperwork burden or administrative burden on us.

There are two “ifs” that I put: one, if they give us an institutional licence, which they've agreed to because it will be good for them as well, since they won't have to do 250 labs individually; and two, if they elevate the security requirement for risk group two. My clearance on the bill is that if these two, as promised, go out, then we won't have to do anything differently than we do. If other institutions are not doing it, they owe it to their staff and students to do it, because that is the right thing to do. I can't talk on their behalf.

[Nicolas Dufour, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Have your scientists made any recommendations concerning Bill C-11? Have they shared their concerns or views with you?

[Ayoob Ghalami]

Absolutely. Change is always hard. One major concern that scientists especially have is the jail term, that if you do something wrong you go to a jail, with a car thief. But I guess this is the only way that bill could be introduced. There are concerns, and the reality is that the consequence of not acting properly is something I personally disagree with, having a scientist go to jail. If we can introduce a bill that has a different kind of consequence, as with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, I would personally prefer that. But that does not eliminate the fact that we need Bill C-11 yesterday.

We need a federal baseline that tells every single individual who works with virus bacteria, with the potential to make individuals sick, that they have the same rules to play with. Listeria, as I mentioned, is risk group two; E. coli pathogen is risk group two; salmonella is risk group two; varicella is risk group two; HIV in blood is risk group two. These are serious pathogens. We need to regulate them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you very much, Mr. Ghalami.

We're now going to go to Ms. Hughes.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Thank you.

This certainly is a bit different from what we've been hearing across the board with regard to the other witnesses, so you can sense the little bit of apprehension that we have now. We're trying to figure out what's going on.

I'm curious, Mr. Ghalami, how long have you had the responsibility at U of T?

[Ayoob Ghalami]

This is my third year.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

How have you been coping up to now with regard to the way things are in terms of your restrictions and all that? I'm just trying to get some sense of it, because you've indicated that there is a mandatory training, but you've used words like “terrifying” and “underlining your concerns”. I'm just trying to get some sense of whether you've raised these concerns in the past.

[Ayoob Ghalami]

I said I would be terrified if I were the Public Health Agency of Canada and having the authority without knowing what I am responsible for. It was nothing to do with or relevant to my work. If the University of Toronto had hired me as a biosafety officer without telling me what we have, where we have it, and who does what, I would never have signed up for that job.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Go ahead, Ms. Hughes.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

We've had some concerns with regard to what's in the bill.

First of all, they talked about broad powers for the minister. Now, you didn't talk about the broad powers, but other people did. This bill actually would give broad powers to the minister and there is some concern with regard to that.

You talked about E. coli. What we heard over and over again is that E. coli actually would probably be even more prominent in a grocery store when you're handling chicken and all of that, so if you put in those types of restrictions--

[Ayoob Ghalami]

There's a category four for that.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

--it becomes problematic.

[Ayoob Ghalami]

There is a key point that needs to be addressed. That comes with the concentration. When you go to the grocery store and you deal with chicken, with the cold temperature you will not have as much as E. coli as you will when you have a culture in which you cultivate that E. coli and you produce large numbers.

When we deal with biologicals and we put them in risk groups, we look at the infectious dose: how much of it do you need to get sick? These are other factors. One E. coli is totally different from one million E. coli. E. coli is a bad example to use because we have a lot of non-pathogenic E. coli. There are more than 300 different strains, but there is a pathogenic one that cost a lot of people their lives in Walkerton.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

But at the same time, this bill actually covers all E. coli. It doesn't actually restrict some of them. Let's be clear on that.

[Ayoob Ghalami]

If you go back to my comments, I did mention specifically that I do not like the schedules. I think the schedules should be supervised. This is an extremely fluid industry. Biosafety changes all the time. When I worked in research, the promoter was 25 base pairs. They changed it to ten. Now I don't even know what it is. Having a rigid schedule is not going to really help that much. There has to be a panel that decides what goes in and what stays out.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Now, this question is addressed to both of you. Really, how do you determine this? Don't you think it may be problematic with regard to getting students to work on this, especially when you're looking at international students, or even with the cleaning staff in regard to getting clearance for them to go to these labs and clean them? These are some of the concerns that were raised.

This one is actually from Dr. Hynes: “Does this mean that undergraduate students or visiting scientists pursuing activities in such facilities on a short-term, temporary basis will not be permitted to do so unless they apply to the minister for security clearance”--and we all know how long that takes--“and that security clearance is awarded? And what about the custodial staff?”

I'm just wondering about your concerns and your feedback on that.

[Ayoob Ghalami]

Honourable member, again, I go back to the comment I made. I said that I will live with this bill if the security clearance has been lifted for risk group two organisms. I addressed that concern earlier.

[Dr. Wayne Conlan]

Bill C-54 didn't have that provision for level two pathogens in its original form. That security clearance was only for level three and four pathogens in Bill C-54. All Bill C-54 was asking for was a list of what pathogens an organization held and where they held them. It wasn't that onerous a thing to produce, I don't think. You know, there's a safety issue: if I'm a firefighter and I go into a burning lab, I think I'm entitled to know what I'm going into.

[Ayoob Ghalami]

Actually, there is an example, if I could come in here. There was a teaching hospital that had a fire. The lab had a biohazard sign on it. The firefighter didn't enter. Four million dollars later, when they got the PI, they entered the lab. There is a consequence of putting a level two sign on your door.

They have asked us, saying that they're going to do it like CNSC does. You give a blanket list saying that these are the bugs you have and these are the locations you have, and we don't have to go through them every time we get a risk group two organism. The only restriction that is going to apply for security clearance and others is the select agents. Not even risk group three, like HIV, can be used as bioterrorism means, so it's going to be select agents, the agents that could be misused in the wrong hands. Those are the guys that have to go through security clearance and others. That was the understanding we had when we met with the public health people at the University of Toronto.

[Dr. Wayne Conlan]

It would take CSIS decades to go through the number of security clearances required, if everybody had to get a security clearance to work in a level two lab. It's not practical.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Are you worried about the red tape at all? I know that we've talked about the security thing here, and there are some concerns about that, but what about the delays in being able to get people to work in these labs, just the duplication in the paperwork that needs to get done and the delays in maybe being able to find a cure using these—especially when you find yourself in a crisis situation like SARS?