Government Operations Committee on April 14th, 2021

[The Chair (Mr. Robert Kitchen (Souris—Moose Mountain, CPC)), Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 24 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates. The committee is meeting today from 4:07 to 6:07. We will hear from the Minister of Public Services and Procurement Canada as part of the committee's study of the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind all participants in this meeting that screenshots or taking photos of your screen is not permitted.

To ensure an orderly meeting, I would like to outline a few rules.

Interpretation in this video conference will work very much as it does in a regular committee meeting. You have the choice, at the bottom of your screen, of either “Floor”, “English” or “French”. Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. When you are ready to speak, you can click on your microphone icon to activate your mike. When you are not speaking, your mike should be on mute.

To raise a point of order during the meeting, committee members should ensure their microphone is unmuted and say “point of order” to get the chair's attention.

In order to ensure social distancing in the committee room, if you need to speak privately with the clerk or the analysts during the meeting, please email them at the committee email address. For those people who are participating in the committee room, please note that masks are required unless seated and when physical distancing is not possible.

I would now like to invite the minister to make her opening statement.

Thank you, Minister.

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Minister of Public Services and Procurement]

Thank you very much.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

Let me begin by acknowledging that I am meeting with you from the territory of many first nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples.

With me today I have Deputy Minister Bill Matthews and others from our team.

I am very pleased to be here to contribute to this committee's study on the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since the first days of the pandemic, my department has worked around the clock to procure essential personal protective equipment and other medical supplies to protect our frontline health care workers.

Given the rapidly evolving and uncertain nature of the pandemic, we proactively procured a vast range of equipment and supplies so that Canada would be prepared for any eventuality, including worst-case scenarios.

We fought hard in a hypercompetitive global market to secure urgently needed equipment and supplies. We have procured in total about 2.7 billion items of PPE across a range of supplies, and 1.5 billion of those items have been delivered to date.

At the same time, Canadian companies across this land answered our call and began to ramp up domestic production. Last year at this time, N95 masks were not produced in this country. Now Medicom in Quebec is producing N95s. It has produced 100 million masks to date. Medicom in Quebec is joined by 3M in Brockville, which has produced one million N95s to date.

Forty per cent of our PPE contracts, by dollar value, are with Canadian companies. Having these diverse supply chains operating simultaneously was one of the key items in our strategy relating to the procurement of PPE.

Despite the very best efforts of so many Canadians to follow public health advice and make so many personal sacrifices, we are in the midst of the third wave of this pandemic. Our PPE procurements prepared our supply accordingly, and we will continue to support the Public Health Agency of Canada and the provinces and territories as we make our way through to the other side of this pandemic.

We know that the only way to conquer COVID-19 is for us all to continue to follow public health advice alongside a successful vaccine rollout.

When securing doses of safe and effective vaccines for Canadians we took the same aggressive approach as in our personal protective equipment procurement. We initiated a science-based strategy to secure as many vaccine doses as possible.

We approached manufacturers early, negotiating aggressively to build a portfolio of the most promising vaccines to protect the health of Canadians. My department also procured supplies, such as 175 million needles and 262 million syringes to administer the vaccines, as well as hundreds of freezers for use across this country.

Mr. Chair, we laid the groundwork for the largest inoculation campaign in this country's history, and our portfolio of vaccine candidates is now delivering for Canadians.

We originally were promised six million doses of vaccines before the end of Q1. We exceeded this target by 3.5 million doses and reached 9.5 million doses by the end of Q1. That is an excess of 3.5 million doses for which my department and I negotiated aggressively.

Now Canada is in the top three G20 countries in terms of the rate of people who have received at least one dose of vaccine and in the top four for total vaccines administered to date by population. Twelve million doses of the Health Canada-approved Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines have been delivered to provinces and territories as of today, with 8.8 million vaccines administered to date.

Every day more and more Canadians are rolling up their sleeves and getting their shot. At the same time, my department and I continue to negotiate for earlier and earlier deliveries from vaccine suppliers. We have been successful in doing so. To be very clear, it is my role to get these vaccines to Canada as quickly as possible, and that's exactly what I'm doing.

Our most recent efforts are bearing significant results. Between April and June, we will now be receiving 18 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine rather than the originally scheduled eight million doses. Altogether, we have accelerated 22 million doses to earlier quarters—22 million doses earlier than what was otherwise targeted.

In addition, Moderna has confirmed that in addition to the shipment we received this week, we should expect just over 1.2 million doses to arrive at the end of April and more than 2.8 million doses in May. We have also negotiated for millions of AstraZeneca doses to arrive, and they will be continuing to come into this country.

As a result of the successful negotiations, Mr. Chair, by the end of September or before, we will have more than enough doses for every eligible person in Canada.

In closing, the Government of Canada continues to provide information about the number of doses coming into the country. We have exceeded our targets, but we are far from finished.

While supply chains are stronger, vaccines are moving directly from production to shipping so any manufacturing issues have a direct impact on delivery timelines.

To help mitigate these potential schedule disruptions, we are working very closely with suppliers and, through the Public Health Agency, with provinces and territories so that information is shared in real time.

As I mentioned, I am personally pushing our suppliers every day for even earlier delivery of vaccines.

Mr. Chair, our government will keep doing whatever it takes to get Canadians through to the other side of the pandemic. At PSPC, we will support this effort through our procurements.

I look forward to taking your questions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Minister.

We'll now start the first round of questions, beginning with Mr. Paul-Hus for six minutes.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon to the minister and the officials.

Madam Minister, as you know, Canada is currently second only to the United States in terms of the number of COVID-19 cases per capita. In your speech, you said that all Canadians should be vaccinated by the end of September. So everyone should have received two doses by the end of September. Is that correct?

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Yes, that's correct. Everyone should have received the first dose by the end of June and the second by the end of September.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Okay.

As we know, there are problems with the AstraZeneca vaccine and several countries have decided to stop using it. Are the quantities of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines that you are announcing sufficient to achieve the same result by the end of September? Do you absolutely need AstraZeneca's vaccines to achieve this?

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Thank you very much. That's a good question.

I would like to use some words in English that I don't know in French, so I will switch to English here.

Pfizer and Moderna are the workhorses of our portfolio. We have 44 million doses of Moderna and 40 million doses of Pfizer. In total, that's 84 million doses, and that is sufficient to innoculate all Canadians who wish to be vaccinated prior to the end of September.

We have a diversified portfolio of vaccines, as you know. We have Pfizer and Moderna, and we also have AstraZeneca, J&J and Novavax supplementing our total portfolio.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

So you think Pfizer and Moderna will be able to provide us with a sufficient number of doses of their vaccines, which are known to be safe, according to the timelines.

In that case, don't you think we should cancel the Johnson & Johnson contract? We know there are problems with their vaccine. Do we have to continue to pay for the vaccine or can we cancel the contract?

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Thank you for the question.

The advice from the Public Health Agency of Canada and the vaccine task force informed our procurements. Once we received their expert and scientific advice on which vaccines were beneficial for Canada, we then executed those contracts. We will continue to execute those procurements going forward, given that Health Canada has deemed J&J safe and effective.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

However, if Canada feels that the vaccines are not effective and we don't want to give them to our people, do we have to buy them?

We will not send these vaccines abroad if they are not effective for Canadians.

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Well, as I said, Health Canada has deemed both J&J and AstraZeneca—and Pfizer and Moderna—safe and effective. As a result, we will continue with our procurements of these vaccines.

I realize the question is whether we would continue going forward with these contracts, given the information that has come out recently, but until we hear otherwise from Health Canada, our procurements are “all systems go”.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Okay, thank you.

Given the decisions made abroad, particularly in the United States and throughout Europe, we can already foresee that Health Canada will eventually make the same decision and cancel the use of these vaccines.

In any case, AstraZenaca's vaccine is still approved and considered effective for Canadians. We know that the Americans have 20 million doses in storage, but do not want or need them. According to their contract with AstraZeneca, they are not allowed to give it away, but can they give us an additional loan quickly? Have you already approached the U.S. or started negotiating a contract similar to the one that included 1.5 million doses, so that we can get more doses quickly?

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Our negotiations with the U.S. are continuing. I hope we will get more doses from the United States. That's what we are talking about right now.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

If the Americans were willing to lend doses to Canada quickly, we could accelerate the vaccination even more and finish vaccinating Canadians before the end of September. We could make up for lost time, if we were able to convince our American colleagues.

Now I would like to turn to the topic of transparency. The government's web page entitled “COVID-19 contract information” was last updated over two months ago. Usually this is done at least every two weeks.

Why hasn't the web page been updated in two months?

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

I will ask the deputy minister to respond.

[Bill Matthews, Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services]

Thank you for the question.

I would just like to say that we will be updating this web page in the next few weeks with the latest information.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

You are saying that the website will be updated in the next few weeks. When, specifically, will we have that information?

[Bill Matthews]

I can provide the details to the committee after the meeting, if you don't mind.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Yes, please. Thank you.

Madam Minister, there is a lot of media coverage about a quality control issue with Moderna. What exactly is the problem?

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

The deliveries from Moderna were delayed in the last two shipments by about three or four days over the weekend. They tend to arrive on a Monday. Then they're delivered out to the provinces—

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Yes, but I want to know what the problem is with Moderna. Why did they have some delays?

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

The issue that I have been told from the supplier is with regard to the quality assurance process at the company. It is not the case that there's an issue with the quality per se, but there is a backlog of vaccines that need to be tested before they can leave the factory.

All the permits from the EU are in place. That's not the issue. The vaccines need to go through the quality assurance testing before they leave the factory. We want that, of course, because we need to make sure that our vaccines are safe and effective for Canadians.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Minister—

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

I have pressed them for fewer delays. It's very important that we keep that very tight in terms of the deliveries.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Minister. We'll now go to Monsieur Drouin for six minutes.