Agriculture Committee on Oct. 23rd, 2023

[Dr. Jean-Pierre Vaillancourt]

Variants of the H5N1 virus that's in Canada now do have zoonotic potential. It hasn't really happened yet, but it could. As long as the virus isn't zoonotic, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is responsible for working with livestock producers. If at some point it looks like the virus is making people sick, responsibility shifts over to the Public Health Agency of Canada, and that's as it should be.

We've noticed that people are more used to dealing with problems with different industries in cities than in rural areas. Those people mean well, and they're very good at what they do, but they could make decisions that would make things worse from a public health perspective. The H5N1 virus is an example of that. Quebec's public health authorities wanted all employees to wear fitted N95 masks. That shows they don't really understand the level of risk related to employees' contact with animals. Better collaboration and communication with those people will take work, and that needs to be facilitated.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you for your comment.

Dr. Filejski, you've talked about the availability of vet drugs in Canada and how, perhaps, Health Canada needs more resources. Is that something you're hearing from those who manufacture drugs?

Are they saying there aren't enough resources at Health Canada to approve drugs in Canada or just to do the re-evaluation right now?

[Dr. Catherine Filejski]

I think the one we hear most often has to do with drugs that are currently on the market. Health Canada has performance standards that it needs to meet in reviewing current submissions for new drugs. The division of Health Canada that is responsible for that is the veterinary drugs directorate. When we are talking about trying to either make label changes or approve foreign sites for a manufacturer, we're dealing with a different branch of Health Canada. It's the regulatory operations branch, and it does not have a veterinary-specific team. In that case, we're competing against the needs of the human pharmaceutical world.

I think, in general, the review times for Canada are longer than they are in the United States. That makes things like joint reviews of new drugs difficult, because the U.S. is not willing to wait for Canada to go through its entire review process. As a result, products will either hit the market in the United States first, or they just won't come to Canada at all because there are additional time and resources that are just not worth the return on investment in terms of the market size.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you.

[Heath MacDonald, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Dr. Filejski, I have a quick question based on the conversation you just had with Member Drouin.

Are the drugs you're talking about new drugs, or are they existing drugs that are being used in the United States presently?

[Dr. Catherine Filejski]

New drug submissions are one thing, and that's what the veterinary drugs directorate deals with. The other part that we face challenges with is keeping the drugs that we have registered on the market here, and that's what the regulatory operations enforcement branch deals with.

In terms of trying to bring drugs to the market here that are already on the market in the United States, we don't have the ability to have any kind of joint reviews, nor do we have the ability to essentially grandfather in or recognize foreign approvals by the USDA or the European Medicines Agency. That would be really beneficial in cutting down both the time it takes to register something that's already registered somewhere else and, probably, the costs that would be associated with doing a complete review of something that regulatory authorities we consider to be trusted regulators have already done.

[Heath MacDonald, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

I have a quick question. Was it expedited by COVID-19, relevant to animal health and human health, on the drugs and vaccines side?

[Dr. Catherine Filejski]

Do you mean expedited in terms of delays? It didn't help.

We certainly saw backups in the veterinary supply chains, which we were also seeing on the human side of things. There's been a bit of a perfect storm of factors over the last five years that the pandemic certainly contributed to.

[Heath MacDonald, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Thank you.

I'm going to switch to Dr. Vaillancourt.

The previous panel talked about having a disparity across the country relevant to several things inside biosecurity. You mentioned something about regional differences in your preamble. I was wondering if you could expand on what you think. You mentioned the industry, but you also likely mentioned local governments.

Can you expand on what you were identifying there that may be an issue?

[Dr. Jean-Pierre Vaillancourt]

There are some things going on, depending on the species, but essentially.... For example, in Quebec right now, we've had several swine farms that have been transformed into duck farms. That's been done by whomever has the means of doing it, and there is no consideration for whether it is wise to do it in this particular place. We've had situations where you have duck farms now that are very close to egg layers and turkey farms, and it has resulted in more cases in Quebec of high path AI, as an example.

People can build a new farm and a new barn within 100 metres of an existing farm, as long as they respect the regulations for the water table and all that. There is no consideration for the risk represented by building a new facility so close to another one, so that's problematic.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Thank you very much, Mr. Vaillancourt and Mr. MacDonald.

I'll go to the Bloc Québécois next.

Mr. Perron, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Thank you for joining us.

Mr. Pelletier, you talked about a specific fund for avian flu. Can you expand on that? What are you recommending?

[Martin Pelletier]

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada created a $23.4‑million fund for African swine fever. It began taking applications last fall and will be open until March 31, 2025. Projects are happening all over Canada to better prepare for African swine fever outbreaks, everything from developing new technology to acquiring equipment and facilities.

I think that, having gone through the avian flu cases, many provinces want better tools, but that means allocating substantial resources. That's what I meant by my comment.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

So you're suggesting the creation of a fund similar to the one for swine fever. Okay.

The other thing you mentioned is the fact that producers are compensated for the value of the birds, but not for cleaning and disinfecting facilities. Are you making a recommendation about that? What does being left to their own devices mean to producers?

[Martin Pelletier]

In the United States, the federal government covers the cost of cleaning and disinfection. In Canada, the government has never offered compensation for that even though stakeholders have argued for it. That lack of compensation is the reason the industry in Quebec decided to set up a fund. As I said, the fund is now under tremendous pressure because of payouts. Plus, not all producers signed on. Of course additional compensation for cleaning and disinfection would be welcome.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. Vaillancourt, you proposed a few things. If I understand correctly, when you talked about standards for new facilities, you said there should be rules preventing facilities from being too close to one another in order to avoid infection. That would mean a system like supply management, for example, for small farms located some distance from one another. I imagine you would support that.

The rules you're proposing include specific distances. Do you have data to support that?

[Dr. Jean-Pierre Vaillancourt]

Yes, absolutely, we have data.

Look at how Italy does it. Italy had huge avian flu problems in early 1999-2000, so now it requires four or five risk factors to be considered when anyone wants to build a new facility or start up a new farm somewhere. One of those factors is distance from existing sites. If someone wants to start up a new farm in Italy, in general, it has to be at least two kilometres from other farms. However, for large breeding herds, the distance can be even greater. It depends on the type of livestock you want to raise, but there are data about that in the scientific literature.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

When you talk about converting an agricultural operation from one species to another, say, from pigs to geese, that's what you're referring to. We have no way of knowing if a farm will make the switch and would, as a result, be too close to other farms that would be at risk if it does. Am I understanding correctly?

[Dr. Jean-Pierre Vaillancourt]

In Quebec, we created a situation that made people with pig farms stop production, but they still wanted to make use of their buildings, which is understandable. However, there aren't any rules around how that's done, so we realized there was a problem because it created too much livestock density, and that contributed to the number of infection sites we had.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Okay, so there has to be some regulation.

You also recommended a computerized system with a database, a registry for every disease, including endemic ones that aren't reportable, to help with prevention. But you're saying it should be Canada-wide. Is that what you mean?

[Dr. Jean-Pierre Vaillancourt]

Yes, Canada-wide would be great, but not for all diseases. We'd have to select the important diseases for each type of livestock.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Okay, thank you.

Dr. Filejski, I know what you meant when you said Canada is too small a market for vaccine and drug producers. What can we do about that? Are you saying that our agencies don't have the funds to evaluate drugs available in other countries, or that the government needs to invest more in research and development? If you have another solution, I'm all ears.

[Dr. Catherine Filejski]

I think the biggest thing we can do to make the Canadian market more attractive in terms of bringing products here has to do with better aligning our regulatory requirements, for both new products and existing products, with those of the large markets, particularly the United States and the European Union.

I think it's a matter of the better use and more effective use of foreign decisions in terms of the licensing of products by regulatory authorities that we consider to be trusted. There's a core group of those. There are five of them. They collaborate a lot.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Thank you. Sorry to cut you off, but do you think we need to expedite regulations for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances?

[The Chair, Liberal, Kody Blois]

Ms. Filejski, go ahead.

I gave all the other parties another extra minute. Don't worry about trying to get it all in in 15 seconds.

You have one minute.