Government Operations Committee on May 5th, 2021

[Mark Lievonen]

I could take that question.

I'll go back to some earlier comments. When we looked at securing safe and efficacious vaccines for Canadians as soon as possible, it became clear that sourcing international potential candidates was going to be the quickest way. We very much looked at domestic candidates and, as was mentioned earlier, having some of those international companies make some agreements with Canada.

If you look at the worldwide vaccine business, generally speaking, and it's the case with COVID vaccines as well, the drug substance and the bulk manufacturing are easier to scale up—not easier in terms of capability, but in terms of quantity. The shortfall is often in fill and finish, filling and packaging, so the bulk drug substance gets made, but there's a bottleneck in filling and packaging. So we did have discussions, and the Government of Canada had discussions, with companies to try to get them to establish fill-and-finish agreements here in Canada, and one has been announced.

In terms of doing a technology transfer, whether there is a TRIPS agreement or not, the whole process around tech transfer and transferring that to a Canadian entity and scaling that up would be time-consuming. It certainly wouldn't have gotten us vaccines this year, and I don't think it would have gotten us vaccines next year. It is something that is being looked at in, what I might call, a more “medium-term” or “longer-term solution” for supplying Canadians with pandemic vaccines sourced here, but they weren't going to be part of the immediate response. They certainly are being very much looked at, as I said, for the intermediate to longer term.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Were there any domestic producers that had the capability, the facilities, to manufacture the technology that had been released?

[Mark Lievonen]

We have vaccine manufacturing capabilities in Canada. We have Sanofi Pasteur, the former Connaught Labs, which has a significant presence in Toronto. It makes vaccines for tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis, and combines them with polio and haemophilus influenza B, and supplies Canada and exports it to the world.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

If I could interject, would that have been suitable? I'm glad you brought up Connaught, $500-million investment in Connaught.... We're looking at potentially $8 billion in expenditures for our vaccines in this response. Of course, I'm not interested in what the cost per unit price is at the moment, but I'm remiss to note all of the money that's being sunk into the private sector without our having any equity. We don't have any nationalized domestic production timelines on the horizon, and it feels like announcement after announcement is throwing money into the private sector.

If I understand this correctly, sir, I know that you have a past relationship with Sanofi. In your opinion, had we stayed the course with Connaught Labs, is there a scenario in mind—I know this is 2020 now and this is hindsight—where a national producer could have been ahead of the curve, given the amount of money that we've invested in the research and development of a lot of this technology?

[Mark Lievonen]

There would be a lot to unpack in that story. If I could come to the current one, the fact is that we are using mRNA technologies, which, quite frankly, up until the time of this pandemic, lots of time and effort had been put into, but there had not been a product commercialized, so we did not have facilities with large-scale RNA.

I think it's very fortunate for the world that BioNTech and Moderna and then BioNTech with Pfizer were able to have these facilities in place so they could pivot them. In some respects, that's really happenstance—and, as they say, happenstance for the good fortune of the world. There were not facilities sitting idly by ready to do that in the case of our existing facilities, including GSK's flu facility in Quebec. They're making vaccines against existing diseases and would not have been able to pivot quickly.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

You have a medium-term horizon. In your opinion, knowing the story of Connaught.... I'm remiss. If this were World War II, I would think that the government would have nationalized Stelco here in Hamilton. They would have gotten into the business of producing in a war-type effort.

In the medium term, do you think there's a horizon where we do have nationalized public production of life-saving vaccines?

[Mark Lievonen]

I don't know that it's nationalized. What seems to be happening in the way we have addressed this pandemic is that there's been unbelievable and unprecedented co-operation between industry, government, academia and health authorities. We have compressed what would normally be 10-plus years to develop a vaccine. Four to five years was the fastest ever for ebola and mumps...into less than a year. It's unheard of and unprecedented and it's only through that co-operation and collaboration.

Going forward, it's the investments the government is making in these private sector companies and then collaborating and partnering with them, making agreements, and putting in place contract manufacturing organizations. One would presume that those kind of agreements will be put in place. That's how we'll address the demands in the medium and the longer term.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you Mr. Lievonen and Mr. Green,

We've now finished our first round and will go to the second round of questioning, starting with Mr. McCauley for five minutes.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Witnesses, thanks very much.

Mr. Lievonen, you're right: We are very fortunate that those companies came up with those vaccines.

I want to focus on Providence Therapeutics, please. Obviously they've been in the news a lot. Their CEO was commenting about having to leave Canada due to lack of support.

Was this one of the potential vaccines that you examined? If so, how far along are they? Why did they not get the support that they're stating they believe they should be getting?

[Mark Lievonen]

We have met with Providence a couple of times. We've discussed them at a number of our meetings. They made some proposals to us. They have received $5 million of funding from NRC IRAP. They also received some funding from Next Generation.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

We gave Loblaws triple that to buy fridges, so $5 million is not much.

They wrote a letter to the Prime Minister stating they could start doing 50 million doses within a year if they had gotten the proper support. Do you believe that's correct?

[Mark Lievonen]

If I could continue, the $5 million was to help them advance phase 1 clinical trials. I understand they are in phase 1 clinical trial now. When they get results from that, that will be meaningful. The way vaccine development works, you do phase 1 clinical trials for safety.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I am aware of that.

[Mark Lievonen]

The point is, I would think that if they have effective phase 1 results and move into phase 2, they can always come back for funding. The companies we funded and were looking at were in phase 3 and were licensed. If they're in phase 1 clinical—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Where are they down the road compared with Medicago?

[Mark Lievonen]

Medicago, I believe is in phase 2 and about to start phase 3.

Joanne, you could correct me.

[Dr. Joanne Langley]

They're in phase 3 and they're building a plant.

[Mark Lievonen]

Providence is in phase 1.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

What is the difference in timeline? Is it two months or six months, or what's the ballpark?

[Mark Lievonen]

I'll defer to Joanne who's an expert in the field.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Again, a ballpark figure is fine.

[Dr. Joanne Langley]

If they had product they could put into a phase 3 trial—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I mean, how long is it between phase 1 to catch up to phase 3?

[Dr. Joanne Langley]

It does depend on having enough product you can use. Generally, you do need several months. You need a month after your last dose.

I think Mr. Scott-Douglas could speak to the support that was given to Providence.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

No, that's fine. I'm just curious. If they're in phase 1 right now, is it feasible to say how long it would take to get to phase 3 or are there just too many variables involved?