Evidence of meeting #12 for Health in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was regulations.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Colin Carrie Conservative Oshawa, ON
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I wanted some clarification, Dr. Butler-Jones, on the university laboratories in Canada. Do most already import, to your knowledge?
5:10 p.m.
Chief Public Health Officer, Public Health Agency of Canada
It will vary. I think many university labs do not. Again, it depends on the kind of work they're doing. But if they do, then they're already there.
My anticipation, from talking with biosafety officers and others in academics, is that they have their own biosafety officers for universities. They have laboratory standards and so on. They say that, for universities in particular, this should not be a burden, whether they're importing or not.
All we're asking people to do is to follow the national biosafety guidelines, basically. That's what biosafety officers expect of their academic labs.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Colin Carrie Conservative Oshawa, ON
Okay.
I also wanted some clarification from Dr. Tam. This is something that Dr. Singer might want to comment on as well.
When we're talking about level 2s, Dr. Singer's word is “biosecurity”. When you are talking about this actual bill, Dr. Tam, you're talking more about “biosafety”. I'm wondering if you could give me a little bit on the difference between the two, and the intent of this bill with level 2s.
5:10 p.m.
Director General, Centre for Emergency Preparedness and Response, Infectious Disease and Emergency Preparedness Branch, Public Health Agency of Canada
Yes, as I said, we're mainly promoting a uniform standard across the country in terms of good biosafety practices. We still believe that is absolutely important for level 2 pathogens. We do not believe that they are of the biosecurity risk--i.e. the use of them for bioterrorism acts or security breaches--as select level 3 and level 4 pathogens.
It has always been the intent of the program that we treat risk group 2 less stringently but still recognize that they're dangerous organisms. I think Canadians feel we should know who possesses dangerous bacteria and viruses. We should know who has them, we should know that they are contained in the right environment, that there are good biosafety practices around them, and how they're transferred domestically.
Our European colleagues, who had an incident where a research lab disseminated, inadvertently, a rather nasty influenza virus, the H5N1, along with one of the H3N2 viruses, asked us whether, if this happened domestically and things were transferred from one province into another province, we would have any authority or be able to handle that situation. Right now we're not able to do that. Knowing who has what and who is transferring which organisms will allow us to rapidly handle a situation like that as well.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Colin Carrie Conservative Oshawa, ON
Okay. There still seem to be concerns about the timelines considered for the development of regulations. What timeline are we looking at to develop the regulations?
5:10 p.m.
Director General, Centre for Emergency Preparedness and Response, Infectious Disease and Emergency Preparedness Branch, Public Health Agency of Canada
Given the process that Jane has outlined, we wanted to initially farm out our consultation strategy for people to provide comments on it. We believe it would take about two years. We don't take the making of regulations lightly; we want something that would actually work in Canada. I think that would be about two years. In terms of then trying to implement the program and look at the feasibility of implementation, we believe we're about five years out from when the regulations will come into force. And then we'll proceed to the third phase of implementation. The initial phase, as I said, upon royal assent, is relatively light in terms of requirements.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
Colin Carrie Conservative Oshawa, ON
In your view, that gives us a good amount of time to explain and consult with the different stakeholders.
5:15 p.m.
Director General, Centre for Emergency Preparedness and Response, Infectious Disease and Emergency Preparedness Branch, Public Health Agency of Canada
Yes, it will be two years of consultations.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
Colin Carrie Conservative Oshawa, ON
Did you have discussions with the Privacy Commissioner? What were the results of those?
5:15 p.m.
Director General, Centre for Emergency Preparedness and Response, Infectious Disease and Emergency Preparedness Branch, Public Health Agency of Canada
Yes, I did. I think the Privacy Commissioner was obviously also asked to comment on this bill under short notice. So we did explain to the Privacy Commissioner that we are interested in the pathogens and how they're handled and contained. We're not interested in personal information to do with the patients that the samples have come from, for instance.
They were also interested in, say, if the SARS virus escaped from a lab, infected a lab worker, and then infected the family members, whether we would then know personal information about family members, etc. I think from our perspective we're interested only in what happened in the lab that resulted in an infection and how we could actually do that better, as opposed to the public health domain, which will take care of the patients who are ill and the family members. So there is no need for us to have that kind of personal information.
They were also interested in our security clearance and what we are proposing. We are not proposing anything different from security clearance practices and how we hold information along the lines of other government departments that demand security clearance for other purposes.
They were satisfied with that explanation, and we reiterated that we will be doing privacy impact assessment on the program during the regulation development and as we are moving into that with them, and they were very satisfied with that.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joy Smith
I'm sorry, Dr. Carrie, time is up now.
I would like to thank the witnesses.
I do think that we, as a committee, need five minutes or so to have this discussion within our committee. We have some things to consider about the bill, and we need to have some dialogue.
You have been so wonderful and so patient in coming back and answering our questions over and over again. I can't thank you enough.
Dr. Singer, I understand that you just ran off the plane and got here barely on time.
Dr. David Butler-Jones and your team, Dr. Tam and Ms. Allain, I know that you have been back numerous times as well, as have the other three. We appreciate all your input and take it very seriously.
If you wouldn't mind, I would like to go in camera for a little while to have a discussion with my committee on how we should proceed from here on in. Would everybody who is not supposed to be in the in camera session mind leaving the room? I would really appreciate it, because we just have a few short minutes left.
We'll suspend for one minute.
Thank you.
[Proceedings continue in camera]