Health Committee on May 12th, 2009

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

I'm struggling to understand the 76% increase. Is compliance driving it? Are there other factors you can point to that would alleviate concerns about the size of the increase?

[Dr. Brien Benoit]

Compliance is one of the reasons our budget increase was necessary, but we are also, as I've said several times, just completing a very long and complicated guidelines review process, which has involved not only public hearings but the issuance of notices of hearings and the evaluation of comments.

We have had meetings with the Canadian generic drug association, BIOTECanada, and Rx&D. We have a committee. We have had five meetings with Rx&D, which is the main innovative organization. All of this is coming to an end in June, so that part of our excessive workload is hopefully going to stop.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you, Mr. Benoit.

We'll now go to Monsieur Dufour.

[Nicolas Dufour, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

First of all, I would like to welcome the witnesses, thank them for being here today, and tell them that I sympathize with them because the government has, unfortunately, cut $160 million from the science sector. I realize that the cuts will probably affect them.

I would like to begin with Ms. Wilson. We began a conversation in February, and I would like to pick up where we left off. To my great surprise, not much has changed since February. We met during the committee's initial meetings. Assisted Human Reproduction Canada was still in court against the Government of Quebec, which was challenging the organization's constitutionality. The organization is still mired in that same legal process.

Ms. Wilson, I think it is strange that, during your opening statement, you said that you consulted stakeholder organizations and individuals. You also said that, when you took the job in February 2007, you made it a priority to meet with various individuals and organizations from across the country who represented the interests of parties governed by the Assisted Human Reproduction Act. You also said that you wanted to work with both Canadian and international organizations.

Unfortunately, Quebec has once again been forgotten. The proof is that the Province is challenging the federal government's decision and the constitutionality of your organization in court. You said that you consulted interested individuals and organizations, but did you consult Quebec before setting your priorities and getting started? It does cost $10 million per year, after all. Right now, you are setting priorities and you have 44 employees. I see here that you are thinking of setting the agency up in Vancouver, transferring the head office there, but you are still where you were in February. The case with the Government of Quebec is still before the court. You are still spending $10 million per year, and everything is going well, you have no problems, you have 44 employees. Yet, you have no idea whether the Supreme Court will rule in your favour or in favour of the Government of Quebec, which has a strong position. In my opinion, which is also the opinion of the Province of Quebec and its ministry of health, your organization's activities encroach on Quebec's jurisdiction.

We started talking about this last time, but we did not have time to finish our conversation. I would like to know how you see things working out given that the case with Quebec is not yet resolved. Do you have a plan B in case the Supreme Court does not rule in your favour? What will you do with the money that will have been spent? Have you come up with a way to compensate Quebec if the court does not rule in your favour?

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Dr. Wilson.

[Dr. Elinor Wilson]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much for the question. Perhaps I could start with some of the factual information.

We are not moving our office to Vancouver. It was situated in Vancouver by Governor in Council and that was done before the agency was brought into being and before the board was appointed. And yes, when fully staffed we have a complement of 45. At the moment we have 22 people; 15 are civil servants and the rest are consultants or part-time through temporary help services. We are staffing to correspond to the regulations coming into force.

The third factual piece that might be helpful is that, yes, our budget is $10.2 million, but since the beginning of the agency, last year, for example, we spent $5.7 million of that $10.2 million.

In terms of the federal government and the Supreme Court, I would ask, with all due respect, that this question be addressed to the department, because it is the Government of Canada's and the department's question in terms of the Supreme Court and its ruling. We are all awaiting with great interest the decision of the court. Once that decision comes, then the Government of Canada will take it under advisement and make decisions from there as to progress.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you, Ms. Wilson.

Ms. Davidson.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thanks to our panel with us this afternoon.

I'm going to ask my first question to Ms. Watts, please.

In your presentation to us, you talked about 2007-2008 being a year of change and transition. And then you also talked about the claims processing backlog of approximately two years and the 95% non-compliance issue and all those issues. Then you talked about your determination to eliminate the backlog over the three-year period. You went on to say you had received the transfer of funds from Health Canada and you were pleased to say you were on target. And it's great that you are on target.

What are the key changes to the claim process that are going to allow you to keep this backlog at bay? What's going to allow you to keep things caught up?

[Sharon Watts]

Thank you for the question.

That's an excellent question, one that I can assure you our stakeholders have posed several times. Certainly one key factor in tackling this backlog situation has been the core, labour-intensive part of that work, which is the people. In terms of recruiting and retaining the calibre of people who can tackle this work and get it out the door quickly, that was our number one priority.

The number two priority was getting those people up to speed, because I'm sure everyone is aware that you can bring someone in on day one, and depending on the job, it can take up to a year to get that person up to speed and productive. We put our minds to making sure that wasn't going to happen. From our own staff, we produced a training and orientation program, from the grassroots, which ended up cutting our training time from about nine months down to two months. So when we get a scientific evaluator on staff now, as we did when we first received this funding, we have them up to speed and producing advice documents to our screening officers within two months. That's something that will grow with us. That's something that, as we experience turnover, as all agencies do—and certainly in small agencies it's far more disruptive—we can now live with and ensure that the turnover and the productivity we've seen will continue with us.

The other thing I'd like to mention in the context of the backlog—and I talked about compliance, I talked about risk—is that there are a couple of risk mitigation measures we've taken to make sure that.... Notwithstanding our great productivity rates, there are still claims coming in the door that may have highly hazardous substances in them that are incorrectly identified. So we have a prioritization scheme at the commission that weeds out those high-hazard claims immediately upon receipt and puts them to the front, even if there are other claims in the backlog that we've committed to eliminating. Those high-hazard claims are always done first and foremost, and that information is expedited back to the claimant and eventually back to the worker.

Another means by which we're trying to manage the backlog is in doing some voluntary compliance work. That's a term that's maybe overused. We're starting to see some actual results, where we've put together a checklist for our claimants that tells them those kinds of errors we often see and they can easily correct without having us go through and send out an order. So when their claim comes in, if they haven't already used the checklist, we'll send it right back with the checklist and say, “Have a quick look at this. Look at what you can do before we start to review this.” About 70% of the cases are using the checklist. It's coming back, so that should be diminishing the number of errors we see and therefore diminishing the amount of time it would take us to work on that backlog.

The last thing we're doing is something we're quite proud of: we're getting with the program in terms of electronic data management. One might think maybe we should have done that long ago, but we work with confidential information and we're very concerned about ensuring the confidentiality. So it was with reticence that we embarked on an electronic data management system. We have that, and we're just in the process of implementing it. This will allow our evaluators and our screening officers to have access to documents literally at the push of a button without poring through literature studies and CAS files and toxicity profile summaries that are piled up on people's desks. This is going to make their jobs go a lot faster.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you, Ms. Watts.

I will now go to Ms. Murray.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Roberge and Mr. Tibelius, I want to understand a bit more. You gave us some answers, and I just need to be able to picture what is happening with the CIHR. You mentioned a couple of projects that won't be funded any more: the open team grant program, and the intellectual property mobilization program. Can you describe the kind of research that we will not be funding because of the cuts, which, if I factor in inflation, are more like $22 million than $4 million? Clearly this is significant. What kinds of work that would have been done aren't being done?

[Karl Tibelius, Director, Targeted Initiatives, Research Portfolio, Canadian Institutes of Health Research]

The open team grants could cover almost any type of research. It's an open competition, so it could be in any area you can think of--cardiovascular or genetics or cancer or whatever. But those areas could still be covered by our strategic team grant program, so it doesn't mean that there won't be continued team grants in those areas.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

So “team grant” means it's crossing disciplines, or there a few people who are applying?

[Karl Tibelius]

Yes, exactly. It's a group of researchers, often from different areas. It's interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary researchers coming together to work on a single project.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Okay, so the whole basket of team grants programs has shrunk, but the strategic ones are where the money is focused and the open ones are not.

[Karl Tibelius]

That's right. So now our institutes decide what the priorities should be for research, and they fund team grants in those areas.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Are you aware of research teams, like the one that was in the media a week or two ago, that are now eyeing that huge funding increase for research in the United States? Are we at risk of losing more of those teams?

[Karl Tibelius]

The teams that would have been funded under the open grants program could still apply for the strategic ones, if they're in the right areas.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Yes, but there are fewer altogether, so presumably compared with last year, some teams will get a no that last year would have gotten a yes.

[Karl Tibelius]

A few of these teams are rolling off their grants each year, so it's not as if it's one mass of 200 researchers all at once. There are just a few each year coming off their grants, and they will probably be able to find opportunities either in the strategic team grants or in what we call our main operating grant program, which is our biggest program and which can also fund teams of individuals.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

So if the criteria as set in Treasury Board are whether something is relevant, efficient, effective, and meets the mandate of the organization, do the cuts you are applying affect research that, if you had more money, you would fund? Or do they involve research that was simply not effective or poorly done or whatever?

[James Roberge]

In terms of the IPM program, that was viewed as a program that was no longer effective. It was intended originally to be a catalyst program to encourage universities, particularly smaller universities, to establish tech-transfer offices.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

I don't know what an IPM program is.

[James Roberge]

Sorry, it's the intellectual property mobilization program.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

So can you just explain what that is?