Government Operations Committee on June 5th, 2020

[Mitch Davies]

I would say that the areas to work on are related to the evolution of where the equipment is needed now. The market demand for PPE, for example, is extending to the private sector as it returns to business. We need to continue the effort we've started so that, domestically, our businesses and organizations will have access, broader and beyond the health care system, to this necessary equipment.

I would say that in the area of masks, some of the specialized masks.... We talked about the N95 mask. In particular, there's a very important filter material in these masks. We've dedicated some challenge efforts to coming up with new alternatives to this material. These are areas that we have to continue to focus on to ensure that we have a full response to be able to meet the needs and provide this critical equipment.

The work is not done. We have to continue focusing on the areas to build out our supply chain.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

With a view to the recovery of Canada's economic sectors, you established the Industry Strategy Council to build on the economic strategy tables.

I would like to know how transparent this council is required to be. Will it have to be accountable? How will it do that?

[Mitch Davies]

Thank you for the question and the interest in the industry strategy council, which will provide, in short order, advice and guidance to the government on the restart, coming up with very concrete proposals in our sectors to get our economy moving again as we emerge from the crisis.

I would say that the chair, Madame Monique Leroux, and the membership will obviously have to turn to the question of engagement with Canadians, a broad-based engagement, to ensure that all voices are heard and are taken into account as they form their advice to the government. This is a very important area.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

We will have to go on to our next six-minute intervention, from Mr. Green.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Davies, for being before us today.

I appreciate the previous speaker's line of questioning, so I'm going to pick up on that.

Has the council already met?

[Mitch Davies]

We have had a number of discussions with the chair recently. The full membership was announced, and they will be meeting in a short number of days. In fact, we expect that they will be meeting on a regular basis to provide advice in an accelerated time frame to the government. The chair has been very active in her own regard, building networks, support, advice and counsel for her work. We've been supporting the effort fully so that they can get up and running very soon.

I know that a meeting will be held with the full council very soon, but I don't have the precise date. I'd have to get that back to the committee.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Do you have a sense of what the agenda is going to be? What's going to be their priority in terms of delivery, aside from giving advice? What's going to be their major focus?

[Mitch Davies]

I would say there are three phases of work or analysis that we think the committee would obviously pursue, but I don't want to be presumptuous as to how they would wish to carry out their mandate. Obviously, they have to turn to the situations in our sectors as they stand now, and each of them is facing very unique challenges and pressures. They have to take that into account and also understand fully our health response and how the public health advice and the evolution of the restart are affecting those sectors.

The next phase is obviously to look at how to stabilize and how to ensure that we incentivize a return to work that is safe, to make people confident and make them trust that their workplaces will be safe, and to restore confidence overall in the restart effort.

The third phase is reimagining and looking for opportunities coming out of this crisis, returning to growth and looking at each sector to identify opportunities for government, industry, and stakeholders to work together to get on a solid growth track coming out of the crisis.

I would say there are three phases of work, but again, I would defer to the council. It will decide how it will conceive of this and come back to the government of its own accord.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

That's fair. I do appreciate the fullness of that answer, and I see that on June 2 a list of the members of the advisory council was announced. It seems like a very diverse and accomplished council. I'm wondering what the process was for selecting these folks. How did we come to have this particular group?

[Mitch Davies]

I would of course suggest that some of the work to establish the council had been under way, in that the economic strategy tables were an ongoing program in the government at the onset of COVID-19. It was something we were already working on with our minister, and we were working to establish the chairs of the various economic strategy tables. Through this effort, we are bringing them all together in a unified council for a very focused mission, which is more or less along the lines that I described to you. Madame Monique Leroux has been recruited to come in and chair the council. As you said, the background, expertise and knowledge of these council members are there for Canadians to assess. We would also say that the chair, with her background as a business leader, a community leader and a long-standing leader and adviser in a number of government panels, obviously will be a good fit for us to have a strong group going forward.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you.

On May 22, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated during a news conference that Canada is working closely with Apple and Google and prevention partners on an update to a mobile application to support contact tracing, which is expected in early June. What is the nature of the federal government's collaboration with Apple and Google? How much funding, if any, has the government provided for this initiative?

[Mitch Davies]

Mr. Chair, I'll ask my colleague Mark Schaan to answer that question, since that is his area of responsibility in the department.

[Mark Schaan, Acting Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Department of Industry]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mitch, for turning the question over. The Government of Canada has been exploring options for mobile apps that will enable Canadians to monitor their exposure to COVID-19 and minimize the spread of the virus. Sometime into the pandemic, Apple and Google made note of the introduction of an API that would allow for Bluetooth technology to help facilitate the peer-to-peer capacity of telephones to signal interactions, particularly interactions that may actually highlight the risk that people are at in terms of a potential infection.

The Government of Canada has been working with Apple and Google to understand the nature of that API, its functionality and how it works within the telephone space, and how it may interact with the potential exposure notification application that could be brought to bear to allow Canadians to understand their relative risk and the potential for them to come into contact with COVID-19.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Would you care to comment on how we're ensuring that all the data from the contact-tracing applications would remain in Canada and that we would have sovereign access to that, or is it a privatized commodity?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Could we please have a very brief answer?

[Mark Schaan]

Any application that the Government of Canada potentially would work into this space would have to conform to the directives given by the privacy commissioners of Canada, who have laid out very clear guidance as to how contact-tracing applications and exposure notification applications would potentially come to bear in this pandemic.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

We'll now go to our five-minute round of questioning, starting with Mr. Aboultaif.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Welcome to the witnesses.

I think this pandemic is presenting an opportunity for us in Canada to build a sector or industry that we somehow ignored for a long time. In order to do that, I think the aim is to build the industry and to have 100% efficiency in terms of building products for Canadians, whether for the private sector or the public sector.

Mr. Davies, is this the direction of ISED and the government at the moment?

[Mitch Davies]

I would say that the direction of our department is to build the Canadian economy. Our efforts, the work that we do with the private sector, the programs of support and the policy support that we provide are intended to build up our industrial base. It's heartening to see how our industrial base has responded and made it possible for us to find Canadian solutions in a challenging time when it's absolutely necessary that we bring these forward, because the entire world is of course pursuing the same products, services and solutions. We need to be able to manufacture and produce those solutions ourselves.

One area of optimism is the area of vaccines. We know that there are over 100 different vaccines in development around the world. At this point, we have many in Canada that are looking for support, and we'll be evaluating them very soon. It's very encouraging to see how much talent and expertise we have in this area, and now we're able to bring that to bear on this immediate challenge for Canadians. It's also a long-term potential for Canada in the life sciences.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

PPE is the new norm. This is something that we're going to use probably for a long time and that will be part of our lives moving forward. In order to be able to produce a product, you need equipment, capital and raw material. How are we doing on those three? I know the capital is being provided by the government. On the equipment side and on the raw material side, how are we doing?

[Mitch Davies]

As a high-level answer, in terms of capital and equipment, I think the constraints are less daunting. In the area of raw material, this is where you can follow a supply chain all the way up and find that you have to go outside of Canada for certain critical components, particularly chemical components or elements of different products that are required.

For example, in the pharmaceutical industry, the APIs used to create pharmaceutical products are made in other countries. We're sort of chasing these different issues on a daily basis. One thing I've been pleased with is that, to maintain our testing effort, we've unlocked supply in Canada of chemical reagent manufacturing. If we hadn't done so, we would have heard about a constraint in testing related to the manufacturing or production of reagent in the country, but we've been successful in bringing a number of companies into that market to supply our domestic needs. It's a very critical question.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

If we don't have raw material independence, we're really doing nothing. We're establishing an industry, but the main element in it is basically the raw material. I understand, and I know that some of the product comes from different countries, whether in South America, Asia or other places. How are we going to be more innovative and do the research to be able to produce product and raw material that is going to give us that independence that we need without having to depend on anybody down the road?

[Mitch Davies]

It is an important policy goal. For Canada, in many areas, I think we'll be extending our ability to manufacture and supply for our own needs. However, we are also a country that wants to supply goods and services to other countries, wants to engage in trade and wants to benefit from global markets, so of course there will always be a balance between supply chains where we depend on other countries that specialize in specific areas, and they connect and co-operate with us.

At the moment, the priority of course is made-in-Canada solutions, because everyone is facing the same challenge all at the same time.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

In order to do that, we need to focus more on the small guy. There are so many great ideas across the country from all different corners, but it seems now.... We've received complaints that the focus is only on sole suppliers and big guys, ignoring the small ones. How come we don't go more across the country to the smaller guys with good ideas and support them in order to achieve our goal?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Please give a brief answer, if possible, sir.