Health Committee on Sept. 28th, 2009

[Hélène Laurendeau, Assistant Deputy Minister, Compensation and Labour Relations, Treasury Board Secretariat]

Back in 2006 when we started the pandemic planning, we actually, at that point, engaged with the bargaining agents at the national joint council, actually had a session with them to discuss what we knew about the evolution of a pandemic, to sensitize them to the scientific aspect of that. Building on that work of 2006, when we faced the outbreak in the spring, we re-engaged with them at the national level to seek agreement on common types of communication to employees, echoing the importance of having the occupational health and safety agenda connected with the broader public health agenda.

At the national level we had a fair amount of support. In fact, we had excellent support. Last week, once again we met with them at the annual conference of the national joint council, and we had an agreement with them that communications would be shared totally with them. Some of them, particularly the big unions, were very proactive in saying they will make their website available to connect with the website of the Treasury Board Secretariat for messages to employees and vice versa.

The notion of interacting with them at the national level is with the view, as Madame Meredith mentioned, of supporting as much as possible departments doing the same thing at the local level. If the stage is well set at the national level, you run a better chance of things going smoothly when you engage on more local issues or more department-specific issues, and it's the responsibility of DMs to do so.

So we set the stage at the national level. We communicate with our colleagues, the ADMs and DMs in the HR field, and they do the work at the local and departmental levels, everybody operating with the same science-based advice and typical messages to employees that have to be adapted in every department. That's pretty much how we operate. So far, we have been able to engage in a good dialogue at the national level, and as far as we know, there is active dialogue within departments and at the local level.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

My next comment is for Mr. Lavoie. Typically, in emergency preparedness, there are levels of training that people undertake. I think there are three or four different levels. Is there special training for people who might end up in leadership roles in the case of a pandemic, or more generally, certainly?

[Daniel Lavoie]

I can speak for my department, about what we're doing at Public Safety. I've talked many times about the Government Operations Centre. This is our critical service. Should everything else fail, we need to maintain this service for the rest of government. We are actually training people. Should we need to beef up our 24/7 capacity, we will need people who have varying skills. A policy analyst can certainly take these skills and move them in an emergency situation and be given a mandate to investigate, look at something, make a written analysis of something, monitor some information, and prepare the information clearly. But they need to be trained in the incident command system to know what their role is. We're doing that in our department, and I know other departments are doing the same thing.

The challenge is, how broadly do you do it? How much do you invest in this ahead of time, and how quickly can you do the training? Sometimes it's a matter of hours. Sometimes it will require longer periods of time. This training is being done not only on ICS but on all sorts of things across government, not with a deadline in mind, but day after day we're reaching a level of preparedness that we did not have before.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you, Monsieur Lavoie.

Monsieur Dufour.

[Nicolas Dufour, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to thank the witnesses for being here.

Earlier, Mr. Lavoie was talking about training and the reassignment of the employees of the public service of Canada. I found this interesting. I would like some information. You were saying that there is no deadline as such.

Could you give us some idea of the date when training might be completed? If there is to be a pandemic, we expect that it will probably occur during the next few weeks or months, before winter begins. Do you think that the departments will be ready to face the pandemic in time and that the training will be completed in time?

[Daniel Lavoie]

I think so. According to what we saw, the deputy ministers worked very hard as early as 2006 to develop plans and these have been in place since the spring of 2008. They were used to deal with the first wave of the virus.

In the month of June, we met and asked ourselves what remained to be done. We developed a work plan and identified certain elements such as essential services. We told the departments and agencies that it would be important that they pay particular attention to that.

Over the past few weeks, we put a number of questions to a large number of agencies and departments. Personally I am satisfied with the replies we received. This will be complete within the next few weeks and we will then be able to share the results.

[Nicolas Dufour, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

The training in view of the reassignments is thus proceeding well.

Earlier, I found the question put by a member of the opposition, Ms. Murray, interesting. We can see that the opposition parties have, generally speaking, the same question in mind: will funds be reassigned for training, and to mitigate the problem?

[Daphne Meredith]

To this point, departments are able to fund such training with the resources they have for their departments, so that's that. They're able to reallocate, if they need to, as circumstances arise. That's where we are right now.

Obviously if the situation becomes extremely serious and there is a need for anything additional, then there are ways in which the government deals with those kinds of pressures. But to date we're not at all in that situation and we've heard of no instance where a department is not able to prepare.

[Daniel Lavoie]

No one has asked about that recently. However, during the first wave, there were a lot of requests on the health care side. All of a sudden, we had to do a number of things that we don't normally have to do when things are normal. Funds were allocated to health.

Departments and agencies already have the obligation to ensure the continuity of operations, they must have plans. In our department, the role of the operations centre is to be actively involved when unusual situations arise. For example, a large forest fire in British Columbia, a train derailment somewhere else; that is our role. For us, the H1N1 virus is the same thing. However, we expect to have more to do if the flu becomes more virulent.

[Nicolas Dufour, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

If I understand correctly, you have no estimate of what this could eventually cost.

[Daniel Lavoie]

In order to be able to provide you with figures, we would have to know...

[Nicolas Dufour, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

... the nature of the problem.

[Daniel Lavoie]

The nature of the problem varies. Our approach allows us to adapt to the situation. With the national emergency response plan, all we have to do is set the machine in motion.

[Nicolas Dufour, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Don't you think that there will nevertheless be some noteworthy differences? I understand that things change, but we still need to know whether the absenteeism rate will be 10%, 20% or 30% in order to have a clear idea and organize things accordingly.

[Daniel Lavoie]

Without wanting to put words into your mouth, I think that we are experiencing a pandemic. The difference is that the scientists say that this virus is not very...

[Nicolas Dufour, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

... virulent.

[Daniel Lavoie]

That's it. If the virus were to change, perhaps then it would be, but at this time, I think it can be said that all of South America and Australia have managed to get through it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you, Mr. Lavoie.

We'll now go to Mr. Uppal.

[Tim Uppal, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for coming here today and answering these questions on this very important issue. It's good to have the minister come in and answer, and other public health officials as well.

First, you mentioned a bit about departments doing exercises. I think you mentioned Export Development Canada doing practical exercises. Do you know of other departments that are doing that, and how do you think it's going?

[Daniel Lavoie]

I know of a few departments that have done it. Frequently when we talk about plans, people say, “Well, you have plans, but what does it mean?” I've brought in the scenario that we prepared. We've put it on a website internal to the government and we've offered it to all departments that want to try it. We know that 40% of the departments that have critical services have done one exercise, and others are planning to do it. This can be as simple as taking about three hours, if you want to do it well; or if you want to do it quickly, you take two hours.

We have this scenario that we've provided to everybody. It is something they can tailor to their own business continuity component, what they want to exercise. Then they sit down and bring in the appropriate officials, and as we bring in the injects, whoops, all of a sudden the dynamic in the room changes and people say, “Oh, I need that from you. You would do this, and no, I wouldn't do this; and he would do this.” That's what happens. About 40% of the departments that have critical services have undertaken an exercise.

In my department, we've done one. We've identified some weaknesses. We will be doing another one in three weeks.

[Tim Uppal, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

So 40% have done it. The idea of it is available to all the other departments, and you feel that more will be conducting these exercises.

[Daniel Lavoie]

Yes, absolutely. The people we target with this are obviously the senior management group. You have a lot of people working, but until the senior managers are seized with the value of doing something like this, until the senior managers see that it leads somewhere and it actually gives them a sense of “Whew, we can go through that”, that's valuable.

In the spring, after or during the first wave in May and June, we had what we called BCP power sessions. We invited the business continuity planners. They came in and we worked on their business continuity plan. We talked about exercises, and now we're delivering a common exercise that they can do. They don't have to reinvent the wheel. It speeds up the learning. That's why we're doing this.

[Tim Uppal, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

In regard to a sense of timelines and just to recognize the severity of the flu, is it likely that 30% of people won't show up tomorrow morning for work? Will they just not show up? What kind of timeline do you realistically see in terms of when it comes?

[Daniel Lavoie]

That's a tough one. In terms of the evolution, what we would do if there's a 30% shortage is one thing, but 30% absenteeism is highly speculative and it would not happen tomorrow.

[Tim Uppal, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

Yes, that's what I mean. So you would see there'd be some time to put in the plan.