Subcommittee on Food Safety Committee on April 22nd, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Mr. Easter, you're well over your time. Do you have a question? I'll allow you to ask it.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

I do.

What I want to come to, then, is in the letter to the Ontario Minister of Health. It states: “Since the CFIA was not advised of sampling on July 21st, opportunities were missed that may have reduced the timeframe for confirming the source of contamination.” Now that's an extremely serious allegation.

In Health Canada's Lessons Learned document, on page 44—

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Do you have a question, Mr. Easter?

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Yes, I do. On that page it states that on July 10, PHAC's microbiology lab received several human isolates—and that was mentioned earlier—on July 18. Are you telling the committee that on none of these dates was the CFIA notified?

[Dr. David Butler-Jones]

I think the CFIA can speak to the CFIA aspects of this.

As I mentioned related to the previous question, this is not a matter of blame or shifting blame, this is focusing on the elements of the system. It's part of our lessons learned to make sure we have accurate information about what happened when, so every part of the system can actually learn from that. I thank you for the question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Shipley, five minutes, please.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Actually, I just want to follow on with that, and then I'd like to shift some gears. I want to continue on where Mr. Easter finished off.

You say, “Since the CFIA was not advised of sampling on July 21st, opportunities were missed. For example”--and we're talking about not shifting blame, but we're talking about responsibilities and protocol, it would seem to me--“samples taken by Toronto Public Health were sent to Health Canada's Listeria Reference Service (LRS) laboratory in Ottawa for testing, rather than to the CFIA regional laboratory in Scarborough. Significantly, these were submitted as routine”--you might help us with “routine”--“samples, with no indication of the potential connection to a disease outbreak and in the absence of important product identification.”

And then it goes on: “Based on the initial advisement received on August 6 from Toronto Public Health, the CFIA acted swiftly to launch a food safety investigation. From August 7 - 12...”.

Help me with the protocol. It seems as though somebody does not understand the protocol here, in terms of samples being sent to the right place.

Mr. Rosenberg.

[Morris Rosenberg]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to ask Dr. Farber to respond to the question.

[Dr. Jeff Farber, Director, Bureau of Microbial Hazards, Health Products and Food Branch, Department of Health]

Thank you, honourable member.

In terms of the samples, you may have heard of the listeriosis reference service that's operated jointly between Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada. Over a number of years, we have provided a service to the Ontario labs of analyzing food samples that come in for suspected cases of listeriosis. So we did receive these routine samples into our lab as part of our normal operation of receiving samples, as we had for a number of years before that.

So that's what happened in that particular case.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

It was referenced here that the samples went to the wrong place. These are professionals. It would seem to me that examples taken by Toronto Public Health were sent to Health Canada in Ottawa for testing rather than the testing lab in Scarborough.

[Dr. Jeff Farber]

Yes. This is part of our lessons learned, in terms of samples and where they're going. Historically, they've always come into our lab, and that's what happened in this case.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Mr. Plummer, I'd like to move to where we've been because, obviously since then a number of things have happened, a number of things that have been good. You talked about the PulseNet, you talked about Canada health protection system. I don't know if I got the whole thing right.

[Dr. Frank Plummer]

It's the Canadian Network for Public Health Intelligence.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

But things have happened now that would not have three years ago, I think you said. If this had happened three years ago, the consequences would have been worse, I guess.

What are some of the positive things that have actually happened since this? There were some changes made on April 1, I understand, in terms of procedures. I don't know if you could talk to us a little bit about those.

[Dr. Frank Plummer]

We've been working with a system we call PulseNet, which is basically a virtual laboratory spread across the country. For about 10 years, we have been gradually improving it and expanding its scope. We began with E. coli 0157:H7 and then moved on to salmonella, because the vast majority of food-borne illnesses are related to them.

Listeria is kind of a latecomer. We've been working on it for about three years. And that's why not all laboratories across the country were certified. We had Quebec certified, we had the Health Canada lab in Ottawa certified, and we were certified. But CFIA had not yet been certified, and none of the other provinces had been certified.

In spring of 2008, we developed a plan with the CFIA to get them certified. They are now certified, so they no longer have to send samples to Dr. Farber's lab. Ontario and Alberta are now certified as well, and other provinces are showing interest. So those are some very positive things.

The Canadian Network for Canadian Health Intelligence is a very sophisticated communications and alerting tool that allows real-time dissemination of public health information, based on the need to know, right to the front lines of the public health system.

For the National Microbiology Laboratory, we were able to deal with the increased testing demand during the outbreak quite well, but our staff were working overtime and weekends. We had to drag in equipment from other programs. Since that time, we've expanded the amount of equipment we have, and we've cross-trained more people and certified them. So we now have a bigger pool of people to draw on.

Those are a few of the things we've done since the outbreak.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Ms. Bennett.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

A lot of us were concerned on Friday. After the chief public health officer of Ontario's report, all of a sudden, quietly that afternoon, three reports ended up on a website, the newest being from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. In light of the efforts to have whole-of-government responsibility and accountability, do you think it's a good idea to have three different reports?

Are we putting people together to develop a Government of Canada response to this? Is that being left to Ms. Weatherill? Is it being left to this committee? The PHAC report, which came out in December 2008, you already had. It dealt very much with the food-borne illness outbreak response protocol. A lot of your recommendations are about that. The other reports don't even mention it. The Health Canada report came out February 10, and CFIA's came out last Friday.

Can we expect to see these groups come together? Will there be Government of Canada recommendations taking into account lessons learned?

[Morris Rosenberg]

First of all, each of the organizations, in dealing with an outbreak, will do a lessons learned exercise. In this case, given the nature of the outbreak, it was a more formal exercise. There were separate reports done for each organization, because each organization has a specific mandate and was looking at what it did. In doing the reports, there was a lot of discussion across all three organizations. There were interviews and discussions, in formulating the Health Canada report, with people from the Public Health Agency and people from CFIA. I think the same is true of the other reports.

In all the reports, there is a recognition that there were some things that worked well and others that should be improved, in respect of communication across agencies. And on an ongoing basis, that's going to take place.

We are continuing to work on a number of things. Dr. Plummer mentioned some initiatives that the Public Health Agency is undertaking. We are reviewing the listeria policy. There are some recommendations in our report about communications. There are some recommendations about information technology. There are recommendations about building search capacity and cross-training. PHAC is taking similar steps. We're going to be addressing all of these.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Do we expect a report from the Government of Canada like the report from the chief public health officer on the management of the 2008 listeria outbreak in Ontario? Will you include in it the feedback that you've had from Ontario now? Obviously they were hugely frustrated. The CFIA didn't allow them into the plant in a timely way. There were some things that I think you really do have to respond to in the whole-of-government way.

[Morris Rosenberg]

I'll just finish on one point, and then I'll let David speak. I will say--

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

I'm sorry, Mr. Rosenberg.

On a point of order, Mr. Anderson.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

I just want to correct something.

Ms. Bennett wasn't here the other night, on Monday, but we did address that issue and we were told that no one was denied entry to those plants. They could have gone in at any point. Just to be accurate, I think it's important that we stay on the same page so that the testimony is related in some way.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

On a point of order, Mr. Easter.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

That's still up for dispute. We haven't heard from the Ontario medical officer. That's not confirmed. We heard only one witness say that, and that was CFIA and they're covering their butt.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Both points are taken.