Health Committee on Feb. 12th, 2008

[Grant Malkoske]

If the inference is that we did not go to other suppliers because of the cost of those isotopes, that is not true. Price was not a factor in trying to obtain additional supply.

Secondly, we are not the only supplier of radioisotopes. As Dr. Abrams has mentioned, there is another supplier, Covidien, who obtains medical isotopes from the Petten reactor in the Netherlands.

Frankly, it is untrue that price was a factor.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you, Mr. Malkoske, for your insightful replies.

Ms. Wasylycia-Leis.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thank you, Madame Chairperson, and thanks to all of you for appearing before us today.

The reason we're here is to try to avoid a repeat of this whole sad and sorry state of affairs that led to Parliament being put into the terrible position of making a very difficult choice without all the facts; and to try to avoid in the future any possibility of the supply of isotopes—which is so vital for medical treatments and therapies—being hindered again; and to avoid members of Parliament having to sit down and choose between the advice of a nuclear safety commissioner, who talks about safety on the basis of expertise and knowledge, and people going without something that may be life-saving.

I'm not sure, after all the hearings before the natural resources committee and the presentations today, that we're much closer to knowing what caused this and how we could have avoided it. I think we need to get just a little bit of clarification about the timelines, as there is ongoing confusion, and no one has really given us the proper timeframe.

You say, Mr. Malkoske, that it was on November 22 that you heard, through a Department of Natural Resources official. Is that correct?

[Grant Malkoske]

What I mentioned was that it was on November 21 we were first advised by AECL that the NRU would not be restarted. There was a lot of uncertainty about the timeline.

We met with AECL on the morning of November 22, when we were formally informed by them of the situation, and we in turn informed them of the global supply outage this would create. Then on the afternoon of November 22 AECL convened a meeting with Natural Resources Canada and Nordion. We were at that meeting, and we reiterated those points.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

The ministers of both departments suggested that they didn't really know until a full week or more after that. Do you find that hard to believe? Or do you have any sense that they may have known and didn't either connect with the information or chose not to convey it to Canadians?

[Grant Malkoske]

We're really not privy to the government communications, so we don't know what might have transpired or actually did transpire in that area.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Were you, or anyone from MDS, in touch with the ministers' offices, either Natural Resources or Health Canada, about this problem?

[Grant Malkoske]

We thought we had taken our steps to inform government through the meeting with Natural Resources Canada. Again, not being privy to the communications, we did not go beyond that at that point in time. However, on December 5 we did receive calls from several government departments, NRCan, Industry Canada, Foreign Affairs, and Health Canada, to develop further understanding of what really was taking place.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

So you, or anyone from MDS, never initiated a contact with the ministers' offices?

[Grant Malkoske]

No, we did not.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

What about with the Prime Minister's Office?

[Grant Malkoske]

Not in those early days. No, we did not.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

So you contacted the ministers' offices at another time?

[David McInnes, Vice-President, International Relations, MDS Nordion]

We were contacted by a variety of officials, as Grant Malkoske mentioned, starting on December 5. That started a series of discussions with officials throughout the balance of the time until the legislation was passed, and frankly after that, because that's when we started to have conversations around the communication protocol.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Let me ask you, Mr. Abrams, about your sense of the timelines. When did you first find out that there was a problem?

[Douglas Abrams]

I think it was November 27. We were contacted by BMS and Covidien that there were some problems with supply.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

So you also learned this apparently before the ministers involved did. Do you find that hard to believe?

[Douglas Abrams]

I didn't think much about it.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Would you not think that if this was such a critical situation involving supply of isotopes, which is essential for life and death situations, that the Minister of Health would at least have been informed?

[Douglas Abrams]

The situation with radioisotopes is maybe a bit more unique than other pharmaceuticals, in that we are often subject to delays, as has been mentioned. The radioisotopes actually go out of Canada to the United States and then back into Canada, which is another discussion all by itself.

Because they're dangerous goods, getting these isotopes back into Canada often results in customs delays. We may have production delays of a day. Frankly, we deal with this on a bi-weekly basis, maybe even more often, depending on what's going on. Seeing a communiqué that says there's going to be a disruption in generator supply puts us into a mode of how we're going to handle it, and then we start asking how long it's going to be.

So I was not very excited by our first communications. I just said, “Here we go again; I'm going to have to look after this.” As it started to become clear that it was going to be longer, I think then it became important that other people got involved.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

I think you've tried to answer this already, but if you'd had earlier notification, would that have made the situation easier in terms of dealing with the lack of isotopes? It seems to me that you were informed a bit late in the process, given your role as physicians of nuclear medicine.

[Douglas Abrams]

In general, everything is easier the sooner you get the information, because then you can contact your clients and they can make arrangements. There are actually two aspects to it. Number one is to inform all of our physicians to make sure they know that there is going to be a problem, and the second one is to make sure the distribution of supply is made as efficiently as possible.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Fair enough. I appreciate that.

I keep asking these questions because when we're talking about a crisis of this nature, communication is essential. We have all these gaps in timelines, and not one of you has really expressed outrage at the failure of government or the bureaucracy to inform you on an expeditious basis when the pump was shut down at Chalk River. I just find that a bit hard to believe.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

I am sorry, Mrs. Wasylycia-Leis, you are over your time now.

Dr. Abrams, if you wouldn't mind just quickly summing up Mrs. Wasylycia-Leis's statement, that would be great.

[Douglas Abrams]

With respect to outrage, most professionals don't run around yelling at people, because it doesn't help at all.