Bill C-293

Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness Act

An Act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness

This enactment enacts the Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness Act to require the Minister of Health to establish an advisory committee to review the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada in order to reduce the risks associated with future pandemics and inform a pandemic prevention and preparedness plan.
It also requires the Minister of Health to establish, in consultation with other ministers, a pandemic prevention and preparedness plan, which is to include information provided by those ministers.
Finally, it amends the Department of Health Act to provide that the Minister of Health must appoint a national pandemic prevention and preparedness coordinator from among the officials of the Public Health Agency of Canada to coordinate the activities under the Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness Act .

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Stephen Ellis]

Very good. Thank you for clarifying that, Mr. Fisher.

I will echo those comments; I'm sorry to the witnesses. Obviously this is committee business that is not related to Bill C-293. I am unsure as to how long this may take. I would ask my honourable colleagues to consider thinking about releasing the witnesses. This may take some time.

I'm at the will of the committee, but I would suggest to my honourable colleagues that, if it is your desire to release the witnesses and apologize to them, I'd be absolutely happy to do that. I'll leave it to the will of the committee.

[Dr. Kathleen Ross, President, Canadian Medical Association]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My name is Dr. Kathleen Ross. I'm joining you from the traditional territories of the indigenous people of Treaty No. 7 and the Métis Nation of Alberta Region 3. We acknowledge and respect the many first nations, Métis and Inuit who have lived in and cared for these lands for generations.

I am a family doctor working in British Columbia. As president of the Canadian Medical Association, I represent the voices of the country's physicians and medical learners, those they care for and those who don't have access to care.

As the committee studies Bill C-293, an act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness, it's important to hear from those who have been on the front lines since long before COVID-19. Already caring for patients in a broken system, health care workers were submerged under deeper backlogs and even greater system impacts with each subsequent wave. Canada's response to COVID-19 must inform our plans for future pandemic preparedness and prevention strategies. Appropriate planning to support our health workforce at the outset remains critical to keeping Canada safe.

The spirit of Bill C-293 is to improve the way we prepare for the next pandemic. We welcome the proposed steps towards collaboration across jurisdictions and are pleased to see an emphasis on building primary care capacity. The language that speaks to improving working conditions for essential workers while increasing the ability of health care workers to perform their duties in a scenario of increased demands is promising. However, the stark truth is that we must focus on alleviating the significant impact the pandemic continues to have on the health workforce today. Creating a safe, robust and healthy workforce can't wait.

The heroic efforts of our health workers continue, and we are at record-high levels of burnout and exhaustion. My colleagues are demoralized and looking to exit the profession. We hope the impact on the health and wellness of health professionals will be a big part of any review and an even bigger piece of planning.

Rebuilding the trust of our health workers and Canadians is critical to pandemic preparedness. Mr. Chair, the announcement of increased health funding earlier this year was welcomed. That spending must be targeted and invested in areas that truly bolster health care systems. Canadian physicians must be able to work where the needs are greatest.

As an example, in April 2021, COVID-19 cases were surging in central Canada and many communities were pushed beyond their resources. A cadre of health care workers, including physicians from Newfoundland and Labrador, assembled quickly to help struggling communities 3,000 kilometres away. That deployment necessitated a swift and temporary lifting of the usual provincial licensing restrictions, allowing physicians to get an Ontario licence within one week.

Look at the potential of that model: A single licensing system implemented across the country can alleviate the pressure on medical workforces, serve patients in rural and remote communities, provide virtual care across provincial and territorial borders, and provide more timely access. This is critical in preparing for future pandemics. Pan-Canadian licensure can be implemented across the country, which provincial and territorial health ministers committed to last week in P.E.I. This is the time to deliver on our promise to increase access to family doctors and primary care. Scaling up collaborative, interprofessional care is central to increasing access and limiting the spread of future disease.

Physicians are overwhelmed by unnecessary administration, a lack of interoperability, third-party and federal forms, and managing large volumes of data that are often incomplete. Admin burden amounts to 18.5 million hours per year. Those hours could be transferred to better patient care and physicians' own wellness—hours we cannot afford to lose in the surge of a pandemic.

We must plan for what our health workforce may face. Gaps in the availability of timely health data are critical. We need to be able to harness data in order to contribute to the development of an integrated pan-Canadian health human resources plan. Data is necessary to understand the breadth of the myriad of health care challenges we face and to chart a sustainable course for the future. Without a transparent and accountable blueprint, we are unlikely to reach consensus on our destination.

Mr. Chair, I thank you for the committee's time today.

I'll welcome any questions the members of the committee might have.

[Melissa Matlow, Campaign Director, World Animal Protection]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and committee members for the invitation to testify on Bill C-293.

I'm the campaign director at World Animal Protection. We're an international animal welfare charity with offices in 12 countries.

We conduct a lot of research on the intersectionality of animal health and welfare, environmental sustainability and human health. That research then informs our policy recommendations that we bring. Those intersections really are what “one health" is all about.

We have general consultative status with the United Nations. We have a formal working relationship with the World Organization for Animal Health and we're members of the National Farm Animal Care Council.

Joining with me today is Michèle Hamers, our wildlife campaign manager, who has an M.Sc. in animal biology and is co-author of the first published article on Canada's wildlife trade, specifically on the potential for disease risk and the lack of data and monitoring for it.

You may be wondering why an animal welfare group wants to testify on this bill. Seventy-five per cent of new and emerging infectious diseases originate in animals, principally from wildlife. It is our mistreatment of animals and exploitation of nature that is driving the frequency and severity of diseases, and it's not just us who are saying that. It is repeatedly cited in various UN reports like the report by the United Nations Environment Programme on pandemics, or the report by IPBES on pandemics, with regard to Mpox, Ebola, SARS, MERS, West Nile virus, Nipah, Zika, COVID-19.

It is widely acknowledged that a wildlife market played a significant role in the COVID-19 pandemic, whether it was originating the origins of the virus or amplifying it. These markets typically hold a variety of different animal species that wouldn't normally encounter each other in the wild. They are kept in cramped, stressful and often unsanitary conditions. These are called hotbeds for emerging diseases. When animals are stressed they become more vulnerable to infections and they become more infectious. That is why this is very much an animal welfare problem at the core.

We strongly support this bill because it takes a “one-health" approach and puts emphasis on prevention, it identifies the top pandemic drivers and requires government to address those drivers and mitigate those risks.

So often prevention is viewed as increasing surveillance and monitoring, but surveillance cannot detect asymptomatic animals that carry disease, nor does it prevent pathogen mutation and emergence. Scientists have warned that we are entering a pandemic era. If we truly want to reverse course, we must include pre-outbreak measures to prevent spillover at the human-animal-environment interface.

To quote from the IPBES report, “Without preventative strategies, pandemics will emerge more often, spread more rapidly, kill more people and affect the global economy with more devastating impact than ever before.”

Tackling the root causes of spillover is a fraction of the cost of responding to a pandemic. One study found that halting deforestation and regulating the wildlife trade could cost as little as 2% of the economic cost of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is also critically important that this bill mentions well-known pandemic drivers. These are already identified in the scientific literature by credible authorities and global agreements that Canada has committed to.

These drivers include the illegal and under-regulated legal wildlife trade, which is growing in volume, live animal markets, intensive farming methods, and land use changes. These have been identified, again, in the UNEP report and the IPBES report, which I believe are available to you.

The current draft of the World Health Organization's international pandemic instrument also mentions the need to address disease drivers including, but not limited to, climate change, land use change, the wildlife trade, desertification and antimicrobial resistance. Bill C-293 would help Canada fulfill its obligations to this new global agreement.

The World Health Organization refers to the rise in antimicrobial resistance as the silent pandemic and one of the biggest public health concerns of the 21st century. This relates back to animal welfare because three-quarters of all antimicrobials used in Canada and around the world are given to farm animals. For decades, these preventative antibiotics have been given in the absence of clinical disease to stop stressed animals from getting sick and to facilitate intensive farming methods.

Thank you for your time.

[Patrick Taillon, Professor and Associate Director of the Centre for Constitutional and Administrative Law Studies, Faculty of Law, Université Laval, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would first like to thank the members of the committee for this invitation to testify about Bill C‑293.

Right from the outset, I'd like to share three criticisms of the bill.

First, it's an unnecessary bill in many ways; second, it distracts us from the real issue; and third, it contravenes the principle of federalism and provincial jurisdiction in the health field.

First of all, it is unnecessary, to some extent, because it aims to set up a preventive bureaucracy. Cabinet members, along with senior federal government officials, already have all the latitude they need to assess, forecast and anticipate the next crisis. It's already their role to do so. They don't need legislation to do it. It's already part of their job description.

Next, it's a bill that distracts us from the real issue, which is the need to take stock of federal action during the last pandemic. It seeks to anticipate the next crisis on all fronts, including those outside federal jurisdiction, rather than focusing on the important issues. Why was the federal government so slow to shoulder its responsibilities during the COVID-19 crisis? Why was it so slow to manage border controls, which are its responsibility? Why was border quarantine so slow to be established? Why did cities like Montreal have to try to make up for the federal government's shortcomings? Why were the maritime provinces forced to create borders within Canada to compensate for federal inaction? Why was the slowness in establishing rules and procedures to manage the crisis accompanied by a delay in withdrawing the measures at the end of the crisis? Why was the federal government always two or three steps behind?

The bill's ambition to coordinate everything is very unhealthy. It's a distraction. It deprives the federal government and its administration of a critical examination of its own action. Above all, the bill clashes with federalism and the provinces' common law jurisdiction in health matters. It is the manifestation of a centralizing intention, of the idea that everything would be better managed if it were coordinated from above. This standardizing ambition is clearly evident. It is evident, for example, in paragraph 4(2)(c), which states that care must be taken, with the provincial governments, to “align approaches and address any jurisdictional challenges [...].”

“Align” means everyone doing the same things, which is a euphemism for saying that we're really trying to standardize everything. To “standardize” is to deprive ourselves of the contribution of grass-roots initiatives, and of the freedom and autonomy that have made it possible for certain provinces within the federation to do well, and for others to imitate them. If we centralize and standardize everything, that means that, in the next crisis, the mistakes we make at the top will be made uniformly across Canada. This is the opposite of the spirit of autonomy and freedom that federalism implies.

The same section also mentions “the collection and sharing of data.” Once again, this is a euphemism for a form of accountability in which the provinces are required to provide information in areas where they are nonetheless fully autonomous.

In closing, let me say that we shouldn't be naive. If the prevention and coordination work proposed in the bill is not really about decision-making, in that case we don't really need a bill, since the administration already has all the freedom to do the necessary reflection and coordination work. If, on the other hand, we're really looking to delegate new powers to the administration in order to coordinate and harmonize some things with the provinces, that means we're really looking to distort Canadian federalism, i.e., a federalism in which the bulk of responsibility for health care lies with the provinces.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Stephen Ellis]

Good evening, everyone. I call the meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 82 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health. Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders.

I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of witnesses and members.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mike, and please mute yourself when you're not speaking.

With regard to interpretation, for those on Zoom you have the choice at the bottom of your screen of the floor, English or French. Those in the room can use the earpiece and select the desired channel.

I will remind you that all comments should be addressed through the chair—that would be me. Additionally, screenshots or taking photos of your screen are not permitted.

In accordance with our routine motion, I am informing the committee that all remote participants have completed the required connection tests in advance of the meeting.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Wednesday, February 8, 2023, the committee is resuming its study of Bill C-293, an act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness.

I would like to welcome our panel of witnesses. Appearing as individuals and by video conference, we have Dr. Lisa Barrett, physician-researcher; and Patrick Taillon, professor and associate director of the Centre for Constitutional and Administrative Law Studies, faculty of law, Université Laval. Representing the Canadian Medical Association, we have Dr. Kathleen Ross, president, by video conference; and representing World Animal Protection, we have Melissa Matlow, campaign director; and Michèle Hamers, wildlife campaign manager.

Thank you for taking the time to appear today. You will each have up to five minutes for your opening statement. The order we will use will be Dr. Barrett, Mr. Taillon, Dr. Ross....

I'm unsure, so could you clarify, Ms. Matlow, whether you will do the entire five minutes? Very well.

I will remind you when you have one minute left. We're going to keep to a schedule here this evening.

That being said, thank you all for being here, and let's get the show on the road.

We'll start with Dr. Barrett.

Thank you.

Health

[The Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

It being 3:26 p.m., pursuant to order made earlier today, the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion to concur in the 14th report of the Standing Committee on Health concerning an extension to consider Bill C-293.

Call in the members.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 14th report of the Standing Committee on Health, in relation to Bill C-293, an act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness.

The committee has studied the bill and, pursuant to Standing Order 97.1(1), humbly requests a 30-day extension to consider it.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thanks, Sean.

Thanks to everyone for the time today. I have to admit that it's a bit odd to be the one presenting instead of the one asking questions, so bear with me.

This bill is really straightforward in many respects. We've all just lived through a devastating pandemic. It upended our lives in so many different ways. It has taken lives. It has damaged businesses. It has undermined livelihoods. It has upset schooling, and on and on and on.

We don't want to live through another one. There are a couple of things we need to do. One is to take every step we can to reduce the risk of a future pandemic, and there are steps we can take, working here domestically and working with international partners. We need to make sure that, when the next one comes, we are the best prepared for it.

I don't propose that I've managed to include every single thing that should be included in this piece of legislation, but the architecture is there. It's an accountability architecture that would require the government every three years—and you could consider changing it to five, but it would be on a regular basis—to say, “Here is our pandemic prevention and preparedness plan” and table it in Parliament. Parliamentarians from all parties, working with experts, could then hold the government to account on its plan.

Is enough being done? Can we take additional steps to reduce risk? What are other countries doing that we aren't doing? What's in their plan that isn't in ours?

It is essential that we have that ongoing accountability, because if you look at the experience with SARS, there was a review, there was a report and there were recommendations. Some were even acted on, but not all were. There wasn't a recurring accountability so it fell off the table. When we came to the COVID pandemic, we weren't as prepared as we ought to have been. Frankly, we didn't take the steps we could have taken to prevent COVID in the first place.

The architecture is there. I almost called it the “one health bill”. It's the pandemic prevention and preparedness act. I almost called it the one health bill because on the prevention side—and we already have a one health framework at Health Canada, working with agriculture—it is incredibly important that we keep in mind, we take to heart and we keep in this bill this idea. It's grounded in science, grounded in international bodies and grounded in science here in Canada that animal health, environmental health and human health are interconnected ideas.

If we don't have a clear-eyed focus on environmental health, that can impact animal health, which can then impact human health. It's especially important when you consider the particular risk posed by zoonosis. If you have other experts who testify in the course of these proceedings on Bill C-293, you will hear over and over again that the core primary risk of another pandemic is a zoonotic disease and spillover risk from animals.

That's on the prevention and one health side.

At a high level, I want to say there is a lot in this bill. I consulted with the United Nations Environment Programme's report about preventing future pandemics. I consulted with the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services' report about preventing future pandemics, including consulting with a Canadian expert involved in that report. I consulted with the independent panel, which has written reports on pandemic prevention and preparedness and worked directly with the researchers who wrote and put those reports together, and consulted with a range of other experts.

That's how this bill came to be.

Again, I don't propose that it's perfect, and I would expect amendments are going to be forthcoming. I want to say that amendments should be forthcoming.

For one, I know the review section in the bill has caused some consternation, because there is some question about whether it should be independent. My view has generally been that there should be some more fulsome, searching independent review. This review is more focused on informing the plan, but I don't want to get into the politics of it. I understand there's an agreement to remove that section of the bill, and I'm comfortable with that. That seems right by me in terms of the conversations that have been had.

The second piece is on specific language in the bill. I would say, in everything that you do, improve it, take certain language out if you don't like it and add other language in if there's language missing. At all times, my ask, and it's how I came to this legislation at all times, is to make sure that everything we do is going to put in place an architecture whereby a future government—this government, the next government and the government 20 or 50 years from now—is going to be required to turn its mind to certain issues that are core to pandemic prevention and preparedness, and follow the science.

I know I've received some questions. I engaged with the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, for example, on the agriculture amendments. They said it could perhaps be even tighter and more specific with the language. That's fair.

I would encourage all of you, as you look at amending the legislation—I know amendments will be warranted—to make sure that we, at all times, focus on what is best in the science when it comes to prevention and preparedness.

I appreciate the time, Sean.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 62 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health.

Today, we will consider Bill C-293 during the first hour, before proceeding to committee business in camera during the second hour.

In accordance with our routine motion, I'm informing the committee that all remote participants, specifically Mr. Erskine-Smith, have completed the required connection tests in advance of the meeting.

It's now my pleasure to welcome Mr. Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, member of Parliament for Beaches—East York, who is joining us today via video conference to speak to Bill C-293, an act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness.

Nathaniel, I know you have a few things going on in your life. It's very good to have you here with us. You know the drill.

You have five minutes for your opening statement. The floor is yours.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Dr. Georgiades, I'm really glad we gave the extra 30 seconds. That was an excellent note on which to finish. Thank you so much for that.

Thank you, to all of our witnesses, for sharing your expertise and experiences on the front line. It will be of significant value to the committee.

There are a couple of administrative matters that I need to raise with committee members.

Witnesses, you are welcome to stay, but you're free to leave. We're very grateful to you for your attendance today.

I have three things to raise with you, colleagues. I know Mr. van Koeverden has something.

First of all, yesterday another private member's bill, Bill C-293, was referred to us. I know that our plan is to complete the work on this study before we consider whether we're going to private member's bills, but just so you know, we now have three that are waiting.

The second thing is, during the meeting today I received a notice from the whip that the Board of Internal Economy is going to be meeting on February 16, which will bump our committee out of its time slot. How that's going to be resolved is not yet determined, but I just wanted to let you know that there may be a problem with the meeting on February 16. We'll work on it between now and then. That's just for awareness.

Mr. van Koeverden, you had something.

Pandemic Prevention and Preparedness Act

[The Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

Pursuant to order made on Thursday, June 23, 2022, the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at second reading stage of Bill C-293 under Private Members' Business.

The House resumed from February 6 consideration of the motion that Bill C-293, An Act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Madam Speaker, I ask everyone to consider what the role of a member of Parliament is with respect to private members' business. I am not a member of the government. This is a private member's bill. For all of us across party lines who have introduced private members' bills, we know how much work goes in to them, the guidance we receive as a parliamentarians and the convention, as it were, if we respect it.

I heard my colleague for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan say that, in principle, he agrees. I heard the Bloc say that the intent is laudable. I heard NDP colleagues say that they agree with the general purpose of a pandemic prevention and preparedness strategy, but that it needs to be an independent review.

If one agrees in principle with a bill, and if one takes one's role seriously, not as a cabinet minister who is seized with government legislation but as a member of Parliament considering backbencher and private members' business, one should send to committee the legislation we agree with in principle and we could work out the details.

I am certainly open to amending the legislation based on the details, but surely we should not kill a bill at second reading that has merit in principle. We have just lived through our most serious health crisis ever, and here is a bill to make sure we are more prepared next time.

The conversation for today is that it sounds great, but we are going to kill it right now before we have experts, provincial ministers and PHAC attend committee. We do not actually want to think about this issue again. We just want to rail in a political way about an independent review.

Therefore, let me turn to the need for an independent review. Of course there should be an independent review. The NDP referenced SARS, and good on its members for referencing the independent SARS Commission led by then Justice Campbell. There was also a national advisory committee, which was a separate dual-track process under Health Canada, led by David Naylor. There were recommendations from that national advisory committee that were implemented ultimately by the government. That is why we have the Public Health Agency of Canada.

Forgive me if I am astounded at the lack of history from my colleagues who say we need some independent review, and therefore we need to kill this piece of legislation. No, we need both. In this particular instance, the core accountability to a law like this is not in the review function. That is laughable. The core accountability in this bill, Bill C-293, is parliamentary accountability. The government should be accountable to us as Parliament with respect to its pandemic prevention and preparedness efforts.

The member for Port Moody—Coquitlam said that we need more emphasis on nurses. Guess what. This bill would require that the government table, every three years, to us in Parliament, a pandemic prevention preparedness plan that speaks to supporting local public health and primary care capacity building. Yes, it speaks to nurses. It also speaks to the working conditions of essential workers across all sectors.

The government should be creating these pandemic prevention preparedness strategies and then tabling those strategies to us in Parliament. If we kill this bill, yes, it means we could rail about an independent review. However, it functionally means that it would be this government and future governments that would create those strategies, and they would not be accountable to Parliament for those strategies.

For the same reason, we need climate accountability legislation. It does not mean some independent review of how climate change is occurring. It means that the government is accountable to Parliament for its climate action plan. Similarly, for the accountability mechanism in this bill, the government is accountable to us for its prevention and preparedness strategies.

I heard my colleague from Regina—Lewvan read out the “one health” approach and say that maybe it was a good idea but it sounded too international for him. We literally have a one health approach in Health Canada to prevent antimicrobial resistance.

If people are going to vote against this bill, please, just read it first. Do not read it for the first time in Parliament, while railing against it. We need a pandemic prevention preparedness plan, full stop. We need accountability to Parliament, full stop. All members know I have supported not only Conservative bills but also NDP bills to get to committee. My instinct and my role in this place, and I hope members see their role in the same way, is to get bills that we agree with in principle to committee so we can improve them.

Thanks for the time. I hope we all change our minds.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Madam Speaker, 35 months ago, almost to the day, everything came to a halt in Canada and around the world. It was a stressful time that I sincerely hope we will never experience again. That said, it makes sense to be rational without being alarmist: Epidemics and pandemics are bound to happen more frequently, for a variety of reasons.

Today we are considering Bill C-293, which seeks to help the country prevent and prepare for future pandemics. When I saw it appear on the Order Paper, I must admit that, for a moment, I was dismayed.

I would like to take my colleagues back to 2020 to explain why I was dismayed. In 2020, when the pandemic hit, I reassured myself and my family by saying that epidemiologists had been warning governments everywhere that the next big post-SARS pandemic was bound to be a coronavirus pandemic.

I want to take a small detour for a moment. Epidemiologists suspected a coronavirus pandemic because, thanks to SARS, they realized that we did not know much about these viruses. They knew that we were not necessarily prepared to deal with coronaviruses, since we knew so little about them. This is not a conspiracy, just a simple logical analysis. That is all I am going to say about that.

Given that we had been on alert since the SARS crisis and given that we had a bit of a trial run with H1N1 in 2007-08, I figured that we were ready to handle the pandemic and that Canada and the provinces were properly equipped.

That was not the case, though. Masks were expired. There were no respirators. Investments were made in test cubes that cost $8,000 apiece but never amounted to anything. The government had trouble finding reliable suppliers. They had to play catch-up and on and on. I will not go over everything that happened over the past three years.

To err is human. Everyone is allowed to make mistakes. Planning something and making a mistake is one thing. Not planning, flying blind, awarding contracts that turn out to be overpriced to unknown parties that subcontract the work to a Liberal member who very recently gave up his seat? That is not human error. That is a boondoggle.

Whenever I think about all that, it reminds me of a scene in a movie where a guy is trying to make a hasty exit while getting dressed because his lover's husband has just come home. He would never have found himself in such an awkward position had he had the sense not to pursue another man's wife in the first place.

There is a reason I am reminding my colleagues how surprised I am to see the lack of preparation in Canada and around the world, despite more than 15 years of warnings. This is directly related to Bill C-293, which shows that the government was not adequately prepared. If the mechanisms had already been in place—and they actually were in place, but I will come back to that—would new legislation have been needed? The answer is no. We would have simply needed to adapt existing legislation, policies, regulations and working methods.

Once the shock of all this passes, we still need to read the bill. The preamble sets the stage. As the first paragraph indicates, it costs a lot less to prevent than to cure. I will not dwell on that.

The second paragraph states that “Parliament is committed to making efforts to prevent the risk of and prepare for future pandemics”. Should this not have been started back in 2003 or 2004, by any chance, after SARS? Why did Jean Chrétien, then Paul Martin and then Stephen Harper do nothing when they were in power?

Prevention involves a lot of measures, particularly environmental and health measures. The more money is invested in forms of energy that produce greenhouse gases, the more temperatures rise. This causes icebergs and the permafrost to melt, releasing viruses and bacteria. Work on pandemic prevention should have started a long time ago, but it is never too late to do the right thing.

In health, the individual behind the cuts in transfers to Quebec, the provinces and the territories was Jean Chrétien. If, starting in 2003-04, health transfers had been restored to the levels intended by the Constitution, the pandemic's impact on our health networks would have been far less severe.

Once again, it is never too late to do the right thing. There is a meeting coming up. I hope the outcome will be that the federal government is forced to abide by its own Constitution.

Let us come back to the bill's preamble. The third paragraph sets out a list of viruses and diseases that have affected the world, though they may not necessarily have hit Canada that hard.

The fourth and fifth paragraphs state that a multisectoral and multidisciplinary collaborative approach is central to taking preventive action. I agree with that. With regard to collaboration, we need only think of the constitutional agreements on health transfers. Had those agreements been respected starting in 2003-04, then the federal government would not have had to give Quebec and the provinces and territories so much money during the pandemic to support their respective health care systems, because they would have been resilient enough to deal with the situation. When a person, business, non-profit organization or government has to do without up to 32% of their budget for 30 years, it leaves a mark. It makes it more difficult to act in a time of crisis.

Before my colleagues tell me off by talking about how much money the government gave the provinces and territories during the pandemic, I would like to remind them that it is part of the federal government's constitutional role to provide help when a major crisis occurs. Canada does not have a constitutional agreement with the other countries in the world, but it gives them money, as well as help and services on the ground. We do have constitutional agreements, so it is not fair to tell us off when we are pointing out needs that are there.

To sum up, Canada is responsible for its own lack of pandemic preparedness. The Global Public Health Intelligence Network alert system was deactivated in 2019. The national emergency strategic stockpile was so grossly mismanaged that millions of masks that hospitals desperately needed had to be thrown out because they were expired. I could also cite the chaotic management of the borders and quarantines and our pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity, which has been put in jeopardy over the past few decades.

Some may be wondering if I can think of anything good the government has done. Once it had made up for earlier mistakes and its lack of planning and prevention, the situation did end up improving. I commend the unparalleled work done by the then minister of public services and procurement and her team, who worked around the clock.

The way the pandemic was managed needs to be analyzed honestly and calmly. Complete neutrality is absolutely necessary to shed light on what the public and the health care system went through. Let us take this out of the hands of the politicians who were at the centre of the storm.

The bill is certainly interesting. It calls for an advisory committee to study the “before” and “during” and make recommendations, yet the bill already includes a whole list of things that a plan must include. What is the point of recommendations if the plan's contents have already been decided? We need to take the politics out of it.

I applaud the goodwill of my colleague from Beaches—East York. I consider prevention to be a much easier remedy to swallow than treatment. However, in order to ensure that this remedy is non-partisan, it is imperative that it be created outside this political arena. That is why we need an independent public inquiry. Only an independent public inquiry can ensure an unbiased, non-partisan analysis. Complete neutrality is absolutely necessary to shed light on what the public and the health care system went through. Let us take this out of the hands of the politicians who were at the centre of the storm.

I would like to hear what the member for Beaches—East York has to say on his right of reply.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

I had a slogan suggestion for his leadership campaign as well. It was “Get high in the polls”, but anyway, I will carry on with my remarks here. I wish my friend well, but I will not be supporting his bill.

This bill is about a review of our pandemic preparedness and comes out of the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, which, it is sort of cliche to say but it is obvious, is the seminal event in all of our lives that has had so many dramatic consequences. There are the health consequences for so many people, but also the social and cultural consequences of the pandemic that have deeply shaped us and will continue to shape us. Most of those consequences, quite frankly, are negative and require a reaction to the social and cultural damage that has been wrought as a result of the divisions that have been created through this pandemic, some of them maybe just incidental or unintended, but some of them very much intentionally sown.

It is right that we, as politicians, as leaders but also as a society in general, should be evaluating and reviewing the effects of the pandemic and asking what happened here, how we got some things so badly wrong, what were the things that we got right, and how we could approach future pandemics in a better way. In principle, I agree with the idea of having a postpandemic review and having in place provisions to ensure that there is a plan for future pandemics. I do not regard this bill, sadly, as a serious approach to those things.

I will just mention some aspects of this. One is that Liberals love to put forward new advisory councils appointed by government ministers. We saw this with their child care bill, Bill C-35. We are seeing this again with Bill C-293, where they are saying they have this issue they have to think about and therefore they are going to have an advisory council that is going to be responsible for advising the government about it. The minister responsible for that area is going to appoint the advisory council. By the way, the advisory council should be, in certain respects, diverse, reflective of different kinds of backgrounds, experiences and so forth.

However, what guarantees diversity of thought in an advisory mechanism is diversity in the appointment process, that is, bringing in multiple voices in determining who are the right people to sit on this advisory council. If a minister chooses who sits on the advisory council, then obviously they are going to be tempted to appoint people who share their pre-existing philosophy and who are not necessarily going to dig into providing the kind of criticism that is required of the government's approach.

Various members have put forward proposals in terms of the kind of broad-based, genuinely democratic postpandemic review that we would need to have. Many of those conversations are already going on. There should be a mechanism within the government to have this kind of review. I know various provinces are looking at this already. There should be international mechanisms around pandemic review. All these things are important, but those review processes should not be a top-down, controlled whitewash. They should be authentically empowered to hold governments accountable, to ask whether we got some big things wrong in the context of the pandemic, why we got them wrong, and how we could ensure we fix those issues.

In the time I have left, let me highlight some of the things I think we got badly wrong about the pandemic, and some of the ways we need to think about how we go forward.

There were a lot of things that we did not know about COVID-19 when it started. Let us acknowledge that it was probably inevitable that we were going to get some things wrong, but at a basic level we should have had the stockpile of PPE that was required. This was coming out of past pandemics, so that people could eventually come to conclusions such as to what degree certain kinds of masks limit, or not, the spread of the virus. At the very beginning, before we knew anything, it would have been a good kind of default to say, let us make sure that we have protective equipment in place and that we have that stockpile available so that it could be available to people.

It was out of the discussion after the SARS pandemic a couple of decades ago that we created the Public Health Agency, which was supposed to help us be prepared for these things. We were not prepared. We did not have the stockpiles of PPE. In fact, we sent away PPE at a critical juncture early in the pandemic. There was a lack of preparedness, particularly around having the equipment that was required.

Members will recall, and it is important to recall, that the leading public health authorities in this country and in the U.S. said not to use masks and that masks are ineffective or even counterproductive. That was the message at the beginning. Likely, part of the reason that message was pushed, in a context where doctors and nurses were using that equipment but the general public was told not to use these things because they are counterproductive, was that there was a shortage of supply. The government could have been more honest about acknowledging the fact that there was a shortage of supply and that it had failed to plan and prepare for that reality.

This speaks to another point. There is the lack of preparedness in terms of having the PPE available, but also we would have been much better off if governments and public health authorities had been more willing to openly acknowledge the things they did not know. I think early discussions around masking were a good example of the tone we had. People were told that if they were for masking when they were supposed to be against masking, they were anti-science and they were pushing an anti-science message. Later, there was the revision, in terms of the government's messaging.

Our public health authorities and governments could have shown a greater degree of humility right at the beginning of the pandemic and said that there were just things they did not know and that masking was a reasonable precautionary measure. However, it was a very assertive approach that carried itself throughout the pandemic with respect to any diversity of opinion in terms of pandemic strategy. If people were disagreeing with the prevailing consensus, then they were supposedly anti-science. As members have pointed out, the way science progresses is through some degree of open debate and challenging presumptions. The reality is that public health bodies and governments were expressing certainty about things that they were less than certain about.

Let us acknowledge that throughout the pandemic there were various revisions. I recall, for example, that when vaccines first came out the government's message was to take the first available vaccine. Then the government said not to take AstraZeneca and recommended Pfizer or Moderna but not AstraZeneca. At the same time as the government was not recommending AstraZeneca for Canadians, I had constituents who did what the government told them to do with the first shot, and now it was telling them that they were supposed to have a second shot of a different kind, which was apparently totally fine in Canada, whereas other countries were saying that people needed to have two doses of the same kind. I understand that as the science is unfolding there are going to be things we do not know, but if the government had been willing to acknowledge in a more honest, transparent way throughout that process that there were some things we did not know, we would have been much better off.

I want to conclude by saying that I am very concerned about some of the social and cultural impacts of this pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, we were already seeing trends where there was sort of a breaking down of traditional community and a greater political polarization. People were less likely to be involved in neighbourhood and community organizations, community leagues, faith organizations and these kinds of things and were becoming more polarized along political lines. Those existing trends were dramatically accelerated through the pandemic, where the restrictions made it difficult for people to gather together in the kind of traditional community structures that had existed previously, and we have seen a heightened political polarization, with people being divided on the basis of their views on masks and their vaccination status.

As we evaluate what happened in the pandemic, and this is more of a cultural work than a political work, we need to think about how we can bring our communities back together, reconcile people across these kinds of divides and try to rebuild the kinds of communities we had previously, where people put politics aside and were willing to get together and focus on what united them.