Bill C-11 (Historical)

Human Pathogens and Toxins Act

An Act to promote safety and security with respect to human pathogens and toxins

This enactment creates measures to promote safety and security with respect to human pathogens and toxins and all activities associated with them. It establishes a comprehensive legislative regime that extends beyond the present importation regime. It requires every person conducting activities involving human pathogens or toxins to take all reasonable measures to protect the health and safety of the public.

Motions in Amendment

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Madam Speaker, I too, am pleased to have this opportunity to comment at the report stage of Bill C-11, An Act to promote safety and security with respect to human pathogens and toxins.

I would like to begin by commenting on something the member for Yukon said. After the government moved Motion No. 1, which we will be voting on later, my colleague from Yukon seemed very pleased that the bill now includes a requirement for the government to table the regulatory framework in both houses of Parliament.

I would just like to say that that is the very least we could have agreed to, and that is why I proposed just such an amendment in committee. Allow me to review the beginnings of this bill so that I can explain all of the work that we had to do to improve this bill—even slightly—although I still find it unsatisfactory.

At second reading, after briefings from public servants who told us that they had done an excellent job of consulting all of the stakeholders affected by the bill, that everything had been done according to standard practice and that consultations had been held, we called on a certain number of stakeholders. What we heard from them was an entirely different story, and it did not sound as though they had been consulted properly. Many of them had major misgivings about how Bill C-11 was to be applied to their labs.

I did talk about that during my speech at second reading here in the House. At the time, the parliamentary secretary thought it would be a good idea to hear from these groups in committee, but I think he took it for granted that the debate in committee would go relatively quickly and that the committee would fast-track Bill C-11.

However, that was not the case. We heard witnesses, people who work daily with micro-organisms that fall primarily in risk group 2, which is a category that does not pose a serious risk to public health. We know that a number of standards are being followed in these laboratories regarding handling procedures, because in many cases the provinces have set operating rules.

So, we heard from these groups at committee stage. I will even go so far as to say that, just before the clause by clause study, these stakeholders still had serious and legitimate doubts about the negative impact that Bill C-11 might have on their activities.

At no time did we sense, on the part of the department or of the government, a will to reassure these researchers, and the students who work with them, on the negative consequences that the bill could have on their work.

Therefore, it was necessary to see that this regulatory framework would at least include all the flexibility required to ensure that these people would not be adversely affected.

However, we would have liked to go further in our committee report and to remove from the bill the provisions on laboratories that use pathogens that fall into risk group 2. A number of people felt that the risks posed by these pathogens are already controlled. Therefore, they should not be subjected to very strict standards that could—as I mentioned in my speech at second reading—generate significant costs. Such costs could jeopardize a number of important studies on the development of state-of-the-art technologies. The result would be that studies done by our researchers and by the postgraduate students they supervise would not be conducted, due to a lack of adequate funding caused by the costs generated by the implementation of Bill C-11. At no time were officials or the government able to reassure these people as to who would foot the bill for the improvements that would have to be made to these laboratories.

Another important thing that I would have liked to see included in the bill is the exclusion of activities conducted in any facility that is regulated, operated or funded by a province. Indeed, in many cases, the provinces have already put control structures in place. Therefore, we do not need the federal government to create more paperwork and to add another level of monitoring, particularly for those facilities that come directly under a provincial government, namely hospitals and universities. This is evidence again that the government claims, on the one hand, to want to respect provincial jurisdictions, but, on the other hand—and through its actions—deprives Quebec and the provinces of their ability to fully exercise their authority. Yet, they have already put structures in place to monitor this research.

The second point is that at committee stage we heard experts who told us that, given the way this bill is drafted, it could be deemed unconstitutional. Why move forward with legislation that has not been thoroughly examined by the government before introducing it, and even less so in committee, where we felt that the government was turning a deaf ear, instead of listening to those who did not agree with its bill? Why is it that before introducing a bill and adopting it here, the government does not make sure that it respects every constitutional requirement? We did not get an adequate answer from the government on this.

Clearly, we must ensure that the minimal amendments presented by the government are adopted, so that if Parliament has to deal with Bill C-11, it will see the regulatory framework before the legislation is passed. However, this Parliament could go much further in terms of the assurances that we could give to our researchers. They have told us that and we know it. For the past while, they have been very concerned about whether they can continue to conduct their activities adequately.

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Winnipeg-North.

Before the hon. member begins, I should advise her that we will be ending at about 6:08 p.m., so she has about four minutes. We will continue her intervention afterwards.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague in the Bloc Québécois for his excellent speech and his analysis of this bill. Moreover, I agree with a number of aspects in his analysis.

I want to indicate that we in the NDP also have grave concerns with this bill and with the government's whole approach to what were supposed to have been routine proceedings. In fact, we found out shortly after about the ruse created by the government that full dialogue had taken place with all players. That was not true. There was enormous concern all over this country, with provincial health officers, universities and researchers feeling that they had not been consulted and that this bill would create serious problems in terms of their research capacity by setting out all aspects dealing with level 2 toxins as coming under this rubric of criminal activity and being subsumed under this broad, heavy-handed approach.

I find it offensive that the government stands up today pretending that it brought forward amendments to improve the bill by making all regulations in the future come before Parliament. I want to put clearly on the record that in fact it was the New Democratic Party that proposed the amendments because of our deep concerns about this bill, amendments that were also initiated by the members of the Bloc and I thank them for their contribution.

I think we are dealing with a complete charade by the Conservatives on this front, because the amendment passed by the committee on March 31 said, with a friendly amendment, that the regulations should be put before both houses of Parliament. It was clearly established in our committee hearings that it was the agreed-upon amendment by all sides, yet we find the government coming forward today with an amendment that varies that wording slightly and pretends it is its own amendment.

The government does not acknowledge the fact that there were serious problems with this bill and that in the process it had to accept certain recommendations by the opposition. We remain concerned by the government's approach today. We are not satisfied that the government has treated all the concerns of the committee seriously. While we have said that we might be prepared to support the bill in final reading, I am certainly getting concerned day by day with the arrogance of the government and its attitude of pretending and creating a mythology that it has no lessons to learn, knows everything, and will not admit to any errors.

From beginning to end, the government blew this bill, to the point where the Minister of Health was almost faced with the embarrassment of having to pull the bill right off the agenda because it was so flawed. Given the almost unanimous concerns we heard from witnesses, it was clear to me that without work by all committee members in a cooperative fashion and without the government actually accepting some of the opposition amendments, that would have been the case. The minister would have been faced with pulling her very first bill, in terms of legislation, as Minister of Health for the Government of Canada.

Let it be clear that we are going to continue to monitor this process and ask questions about the government's intentions. We had proposed an amendment to delete all level 2 pathogens from this bill, because that was the expressed wish of researchers and scientists across this country. That would have been the appropriate way to go. There would be no reason to believe that research in this country could be curtailed because of the criminal sanctions being imposed on anyone handling pathogens and toxins in this area. The government refused to accept that amendment.

The Bloc makes a very good point about outstanding concerns. I certainly share those concerns, and I want the government members to know we will be further analyzing the bill and determining why the government is playing games with the amendment process. By that I mean denying the work of the committee, pretending there was a flaw in the wording and coming to the House with an amendment that has already been adopted by the House as a result of the work of the NDP and the Bloc.

We have much more to do to try to make the government realize that it is accountable to Parliament and Canadians. It cannot run as though it has no responsibility to Canadians for its actions or to members of Parliament. We believe that the government has shown disregard for the parliamentary process. It ought to learn from the mistakes of this bill. It ought to recognize that proper accountability, transparency and dialogue is needed at every step of the way. I hope the government has learned some lessons from this sorry chapter in the history of its short term in government.

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

The hon. member for Winnipeg North will have four minutes left to finish her remarks the next time this bill is before the House.

It being 6:08, the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.

The House resumed from April 22 consideration of Bill C-11, An Act to promote safety and security with respect to human pathogens and toxins, as reported (with amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

Human Pathogens and Toxins Act

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak today on this issue, a bill that deals with human pathogens and toxins. It is an issue that is very important for all Canadians. It is a public health issue that has both domestic and international implications.

The bill deals with the proper handling of human pathogens, the safety and security of our researchers, and those involved in treating people who are ill. They have to be engaged. This bill ensures that Canada's laboratory legislation is in line with that of other international partners, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.

I want to take this opportunity to showcase an area of excellence that perhaps many Canadians are not aware of. In Winnipeg, we have one of only 14 level 4 laboratories in the entire world. Dr. Frank Plummer is the chief scientist there. As a Canadian, I want to compliment the people who work at the Public Health Agency level 4 laboratory in Winnipeg and the work that Dr. Plummer and his team have been doing there.

In fact, just last year, they made some groundbreaking discoveries into HIV-AIDS. They were studying Kenyan prostitutes that seemed to have a resistance to the HIV virus. They have managed to do a lot of work on identifying aspects around that, which I hope will have implications for us in order to deal with this. It is one of the biggest scourges to ever hit our species. It has already claimed more than 35 million lives so far that we are aware of and it is probably a lot more than that.

I also want to talk about the issue of laboratory testing. We saw tragically last year in Newfoundland where the testing of pathology samples was not done in an effective way. Many women received diagnoses that were not correct and subsequently received medical care that was inadequate, unnecessary and sometimes damaging to their health. We cannot allow that to happen and no one in the House wants that to happen. There is an opportunity on the part of the government to work with the provinces to establish national standards for immunohistological and pathological testing for tissue samples.

In my view, we need to have a national standard for immunohistochemical testing in our country so that laboratories all operate under the same standard. We need to have national electronic reporting standards, national quality management standards, and common follow-up and reporting standards. This is important because patients will understandably go in with a great deal of anxiety to be tested for something they are deeply worried about. Oftentimes, they are worried that they may have cancer. It is exceedingly important that we develop national standards as to how those patients are treated and how the reporting mechanism takes place, so that no patients fall through the cracks and all are able to receive timely knowledge about test results. It is also important to have national licensing and regulations for this.

I also want to talk for a minute about the issue of pathogens in two ways. First, we have natural catastrophes that take place, such as what we are seeing potentially right now in Mexico. We know that the flu pandemics that occur roughly every 20 to 30 years kill many people. We know that this happens and that it is going to happen again. The virus that does this is an avian flu virus that generally begins somewhere in south China. This virus is an RNA virus. It has eight genes. It is pretty sloppy. These genes come and go very easily when the virus multiplies.

That type of virus is very difficult to treat and follow because it is always changing its structure. This virus is in aquatic birds. As they move through their breeding patterns, which run from Indonesia to Siberia, those birds actually fly into areas where there are domestic birds. There is a transference of this virus to domestic birds. If this virus keeps on changing, the danger we have is that the flu virus will change itself so much that it can go from aquatic birds to domestic birds, swine to humans, and eventually from human to human. That is our worst case scenario.

That has happened in the past and we know it will happen in the future. There are dozens of viruses that have actually moved from animals and birds to humans. HIV is an example of that. There are other viruses that are residing in animals. We know those viruses will change and cross the species barrier and affect us. The important thing is to have the mechanisms in place with the proper surveillance, the proper approach and the rapid response that is required.

I do not hear anything from the government as to what it has been doing to improve our surveillance and response capabilities. This has to occur under public health because this is a public health issue. The government has an absolute moral obligation and a duty to the public to establish a surveillance mechanism that is national and that ties up with other countries, so we would have an international surveillance mechanism. We also need to have rapid response. If we have a rapid response to natural pathogens and natural outbreaks, then we can also apply it to bioterrorism.

One of our concerns is that we could have a chemical, biological or radiological attack on our shores. These viruses can run from anything from anthrax to botulism to small pox. Our concern is that we do not see the government responding to this issue, which is an international issue.

The biological and chemical weapons treaty that exists needs to be strengthened. We also need to work with our partners. There is a great opportunity to intelligently work with the new administration in the United States. We would not only have a North American surveillance mechanism but we would lead in this area so that we are able to transfer this in order to develop the international surveillance mechanism that is required to not only deal with natural pathogens but also to address bioterrorism.

Groups have been trying to acquire these materials, the source of which exists in many government labs, and some of these exist in the old U.S.S.R. One of our concerns is the post-collapse of the U.S.S.R. and the fragmentation of that country. There are many laboratories and sources of these pathogens in some of these countries. The control mechanisms on these pathogens, as the control mechanisms on nuclear material, are wanting.

There is also the issue of the scientists in these countries and what they are doing with their time and expertise. It is very important for us to see this as not only a national problem but quite frankly an international problem. We as a nation can use our fine scientists, like Dr. Frank Plummer and his team, and many others in our country, to work together to provide a surveillance mechanism that our country and our citizens need.

Part of the response must also involve our reserves. The reserves in our country and our Canadian Forces are exceptionally well-trained people. At some time I would like to hear the Minister of National Defence tell the House what he is doing to enable our reserve forces to have the tools to respond to chemical, radiological and biological warfare that may occur and affect our citizens.

There have been some tests and responses here in Ottawa by our military. That is wonderful, but what they need is a greater investment in training and equipment to enable them to respond in an effective way.

I will simply close by saying that in the human pathogens and toxins act to which we are speaking, the government must not see this simply as a local issue, a national issue, but as an international issue.

The government has to listen to some of the studies that have been done that provide good solutions, such as the Walkerton inquiry, to make sure we have national standards for water, to prevent domestic waterborne disease outbreaks, and deal with the studies that have been done on past reports in Newfoundland and adopt those national standards. It should also work with our international partners, so we truly have an integrated mechanism of surveillance and response to these challenges that can be lethal and that affect and kill millions of our citizens.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we are concerned and seized with the issue of pathogens and protecting the health of Canadians. We have heard on the news recently concerns about what is happening in Mexico and concerns about protecting Canadians coming from Mexico, and for that matter people living in Mexico.

Coordination is one of the challenges that we face in this country. The member laid out the need for investment in a more robust infrastructure. One of the areas we need to do more on as it relates to this legislation is coordinating the facilities in Atlanta with those in Winnipeg.

What does my colleague think of the approach the Americans have taken in the past in terms of sharing data and protecting human health? Does he believe that we have enough infrastructure in place right now to do what this legislation is asking for?

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know the answer to that. That question must be posed to the government and the government must be able to provide the House and our citizens with a response. We have to ensure that we have the ability to engage with the Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta. We are looking for not only a North American integrated response for surveillance standards and containment but we are also looking beyond North America.

As I mentioned before, south China is generally the source of the avian flu. China is investing a lot of money right now into its primary health care structure after it suffered a collapse. As a result of the history that Norman Bethune, a great Canadian, had with respect to the Chinese, there is an opportunity for the government to engage the Chinese on the issue of public health.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, with regard to Bill C-11, report stage Motion No. 1 ostensibly requires that the regulations being drafted and proposed, and appended to the legislation, go through the appropriate standing committee for review. I want to indicate that I support this very much. The reproductive technology act had a similar proposal. Over 200 draft regulations have yet to come on a piece of legislation that passed many years ago. This means that significant aspects of the reproductive technology act are not even in force yet because regulations have not been propagated.

I want to simply ask the member whether or not he supports Motion No. 1, that the draft regulations go before a committee so it can ensure that they properly reflect the enabling provisions of the legislation in question?

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is absolutely right. We fully support Motion No. 1. This is too important an issue to not do it right. It is an issue of public health and public safety. We will work co-operatively in a bipartisan way in the interests of our citizens and their health to ensure that it is done right. The government will see our team as a very willing participant. We will give the best of what we have to ensure that the bill will serve the needs of our citizens and the safety of our citizens now and into the future.

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

The question is on Motion No. 1. A vote on this motion also applies to Motion No. 2. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

I declare Motion No. 1 and Motion No. 2 carried.