Health Committee on March 3rd, 2009

[Dr. Frank Plummer, Scientific Director General, National Microbiology Laboratory, Public Health Agency of Canada]

Thanks for the question.

I think Canada is one of the better-prepared countries in the world to deal with emerging infectious diseases. It's partly because of the laboratory in Winnipeg, but also because of the Public Health Agency in general and our international connections.

For instance, we have a mobile lab system that we make available to the World Health Organization to respond to outbreaks in any part of the world, but also to respond to bioterrorism threats domestically. This is a unique capability in the world. Nobody else has it. We work very closely with the WHO in supporting them in response to outbreaks anywhere in the world. We've been deployed to Angola, to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to Iran, and to Bangladesh.

Canada is a leader in this field, and I believe that while we can always be better prepared, we do have a high level of preparedness.

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

Some have said that we have a hodge-podge of emergency preparedness systems in this country--there's a piece here in Health Canada; there's a piece in Public Safety. It's spread all over the place, and we really aren't coordinated enough to actually respond in the event of a bioterrorist attack.

I wonder if maybe you and Dr. Tam could respond to that in terms of what we can do to ensure that there is that kind of central coordination and so on that happens at all levels. We recently had here some paramedics from rural Ontario who said that they don't feel in the loop at all. I wonder what we're doing to coordinate and ensure that there is overall emergency preparedness.

[Dr. Frank Plummer]

Maybe I'll start and just tell you about some of the things we're doing at the federal level to coordinate response capability across departments.

The Public Health Agency, through the National Microbiology Laboratory, provides biological support to the national nuclear, biological, and chemical defence response team. We exercise with the army and the RCMP on a regular basis so we can deploy, under their command, during terrorist events of many different kinds. We do that in exercises as practice. We also do it in fixed deployments for special events, such as the G8 summit, such as the 2010 Olympics, such as leaders summits. I think we have a very sophisticated capability that satisfies the requirements of the U.S. government, for instance. We have very, very high expectations of what kind of security, related to terrorist events, we can provide.

Maybe I'll ask Theresa to--

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

While you're doing that, Theresa, is there one minister who is responsible for it all coming together? What's the central focal point in the federal government for all of this?

[Theresa Tam]

Public Safety Canada has the key role in terms of coordination of emergencies. Health is only one type of emergency, and both Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada together respond as a health portfolio to health-related emergencies.

Emergency response in Canada is from the local level up to the provinces and from the provinces to the federal government. Through the Pan-Canadian Public Health Network, one of the expert groups, we have been pulling together a pan-Canadian health emergency management system. To operate that and to interconnect, we've essentially been looking at protocols and at the operationalization of an incident management system.

What we've discovered is that emergency management in each of the provinces and territories has progressed in recent years. All of them have emergency management systems. Our role, actually, is to link with all of them and ensure interoperability and communication among them. The concept of a pan-Canadian health emergency management system is as interoperable, connected 13 jurisdictions connected with the federal level. They all sort of function together. It's a separate system, but connected together.

We have done quite a bit of work in recent years to make that happen. We're testing 24/7 contact points, for example, in the provinces and territories. That is a lot more systematic than what the previous state was, which was that we all knew each other, so we knew how to phone someone else, such as another chief medical officer, while he was skiing in Whistler or something. Now we have a 24/7...[Inaudible--Editor]...contact mechanism.

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

Let me go back to the coordination in terms of the health area and reference previous concerns of the Auditor General about a number of issues concerning surveillance of drugs and foods. She has commented a couple of times, at least, that Health Canada and the Public Health Agency don't seem to always be talking to each other, that there isn't some kind of overall coordination when it comes to surveillance in this area. In fact, the listeriosis crisis sort of brought some of that to the fore. The Canadian Medical Association actually said--

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Ms. Wasylycia-Leis, you're over time.

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

--that Canada is less prepared now for epidemics than it was in the past.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Can someone quickly give an answer, as best you can, to Ms. Wasylycia-Leis's question?

[Theresa Tam]

As a health portfolio at the Public Health Agency of Canada, we have one health portfolio emergency response plan, so we function together in that plan. There are also specific protocols, such as the food-borne infectious outbreak response protocol, which is actually going to be updated to incorporate lessons learned from listeriosis. We have to work with the CFIA and other agencies to get those things updated as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you very much.

We'll now go to Dr. Carrie. I understand you're sharing your time with Mr. Brown.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

With Ms. McLeod.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

With Ms. McLeod. Okay, thank you.

Please would you start, Dr. Carrie.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you very much, and thank you very much to the witnesses.

For a couple of years I spent some time at Industry Canada, and I recognize the need to encourage the research and innovation. I was wondering how you can assure the committee that the proposed legislation establishes an appropriate balance between the need for biosafety and the need for support for important research activities right here in Canada.

[Dr. Frank Plummer]

I'll try that one first. The legislation concerning level 3 and level 4 pathogens is absolutely required. And if people are not meeting the standards there, they shouldn't be working on those organisms because of the risk to the laboratory workers and also because of the risk to the public.

For the level 2 organisms, they can also cause laboratory-acquired infections, so it's important that workers know how to safely handle them and have the appropriate equipment and training in order to do that, so they are less of a threat to public health overall.

I was initially concerned about the fact that the bill encompassed level 2 pathogens, but in discussions within the agency I've satisfied myself that this will have minimal impact on the ability for university research labs to do the work that we want to see them doing. And that can be accomplished through regulations, and the regulations around class 2 pathogens are going to be really quite minimal.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Ms. McLeod is next.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My question relates to your phased-in approach. You mentioned that you'd give stakeholders some time to become compliant with any new requirements under the act and the subsequent program and regulatory framework. Obviously we're in very tough economic times right now, and I think it's important that we allow laboratories to have flexibility and that we really aim to minimize the costs.

You talked about your phases one, two, and three. I wonder if you could go into some more details about how you are planning to implement this legislation, and especially with regard to minimizing the burden on laboratories.

[Theresa Tam]

I could go over this quickly, and then if there's any specific questions I can also address them.

In phase one, which is the first phase that would come into force on royal assent, it will cover essentially three prohibitions in the legislation. The first is banning activities with certain human pathogen toxins such as smallpox. Smallpox is the key one we want to ban. A second prohibition is intentionally releasing a human pathogen or toxin that's causing risk to the health or safety of the public—so, intentional harm. The third prohibition is failure to take reasonable precautions, which is a duty of care. So these come into force upon royal assent and will also bring into force offences related to those prohibitions.

Also in phase one, we are asking labs to give us some very basic information: the name of the lab, the address, someone we can contact to discuss the implementation of the rest of the different phases. Certainly having the contact point is very key, because we actually don't necessarily know all the labs out there. We know there are currently 3,500 labs under the human pathogens importation regulations, and we have already made some assumptions and calculated that there are probably another 4,000 labs out there that we haven't heard from. They need to contact us for us to be able to continue the dialogue, etc.

In that phase, we are needing to communicate very rapidly, so everybody knows about this particular act and so they can satisfy the phase one requirement.

In phase two, which we suspect will take a number of years, is the actual development of the program and regulatory framework. There will be a lot of consultations required, and this is where we will address some of the concerns and the details of implementation the labs are going to be discussing and have already voiced. So with the extensive consultations, we will be drafting the program and regulatory framework and addressing things like security screening for risk groups and for pathogens, etc.

The final phase is the bringing into force of the rest of the legislation and the associated regulatory framework. That will contain mandatory requirements, such as you now need to obtain a licence and report on inventories. We will still give stakeholders a period of time to comply from the date of the regulations coming into force.

The timeframe itself can also be discussed with stakeholders to see how much time is needed for them to adjust and then be able to comply. After that, the legislative and regulatory framework will be entirely in force.

We would think the second phase in particular is the longest one and it will take a number of years, a minimum of two years.

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

So in actual fact, the initial phase will not create much in terms of expense to the specific laboratories. Perhaps there will be some things incurred down the road, but through your consultation you are intending to try to minimize, to paraphrase the rule.

[Theresa Tam]

Exactly. I think most concerns do come from the risk group 2 labs, the labs that work with the slightly less pathogenic organisms, and for that we're trying to be less stringent in terms of requirements. For example, we don't want to require security clearance for people working with risk group 2 pathogens. The inventorying of those labs will be less stringent. We just need to know they are not possessing risk group 3 and 4 pathogens, inadvertently or otherwise, and need a higher safety level for their work.

Mostly it is really to promote our safety guidance across the board in the whole country, so there is no two-tier system like we have now, where those who import are regulated and those who don't import but acquire the pathogens domestically are not regulated.

Really the biosafety piece is not addressed in the provincial legislation. Inspections will be required of laboratories in risk groups 3 and 4, and that is generally not part of provincial legislations either. As for level 2 risk groups, we are not asking for regular inspections of those labs either. If an incident occurs in a level 2 lab, we may need to then inspect them or do some spot checks every so often. But again, we focus on risk groups 3 and 4. All those risk group 3 and 4 labs already import pathogens, which means they should already be compliant.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you, Ms. Tam.

We are going to suspend the meeting right now just to finish off some business. We have some budgets to pass and a few things like that, which are very necessary, but it's my understanding that you could return for the second hour on Thursday. We really look forward to hearing you once again.

Again, my profound apologies to you for having to wait. We have no control over parliamentary votes.

We'll just suspend for one minute and get right back to business.

Thank you again. We look forward to seeing you on Thursday.

[Proceedings continue in camera]