Yes, that's fine.
First of all, I'd like to thank the committee for allowing me this opportunity to give some feedback on the bill. What I'm really going to be talking about is what's written in the bill here and my interpretation of it.
Just to give you a bit of background, I'm the chairman of the department of microbiology at McGill University. I teach microbiology and immunology, but more important for this committee, I also do research, and I practise microbiology and immunology. My research has contributed to over 90 publications. I also sit on advisory committees for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research; the National Institutes of Health, in the United States; the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, in the United States; the World Health Organization, in Geneva; the United Nations; and Médecins Sans Frontières.
I have sat on these committees to deal with infectious diseases and microbiology over the years, and I continue to sit. So I feel competent in addressing the people here concerning this bill.
Like the Public Health Agency of Canada and the people on this committee, my concern is for health and the protection of people from infectious diseases. Because of that, I am largely in agreement with this bill, but there are some modifications that have to be made before it is passed. So I am only going to focus on that aspect and give you my reasons for that. I'm not being overly negative. I just want to focus on what needs to be changed.
The best thing to do to change this bill is to remove level 2 pathogens from this bill. They should not be linked. This is the same point Marc just made. Level 2 pathogens should not be linked with level 3 and level 4 pathogens.
Let me explain. Level 2 pathogens generally pose a low risk to public health. They are unlikely to cause serious disease, and the risk of spread is low. Completely different are level 3 and level 4 pathogens, which pose a high risk and are likely to cause serious disease. The risk of spread for level 4 pathogens is high. Therefore, the way you work with these pathogens is very different.
With level 2 pathogens, you work one way. You work with a biological safety cabinet, in which air can't get in or out, and you work with your hands like this. With level 3 and level 4 pathogens, you need a completely different infrastructure, which is a multi-million-dollar infrastructure, with a completely different negative pressure room and so forth.
So to work with these pathogens, you have to work under very different conditions. Therefore, the administrative and security levels also have to be different. This bill links them together. The administrative and security issues link level 2 and level 3 and level 4 together. That cannot work. You have to separate them just the way you separate working with these pathogens. You can't have them linked together. If you link them together, the consequences are enormous for this country.
For example, from a scientific point of view, a lot of research on level 3 and level 4 pathogens, the most dangerous pathogens, is actually performed using level 2 pathogens as a model system. For example, mycobacterium tuberculosis, which is passed through aerosol, is a pathogen that gets into the lungs, survives in the lungs, and causes tuberculosis. It's a fatal infection. Mycobacterium smegmatis is a very similar organism. It looks the same under the microscope. It has the same genes, or virtually the same. It has the same biochemical pathway. But it has evolved slightly differently to survive only in the soil, and there's very low risk of it infecting people. It is a level 2 pathogen because of its low risk of infecting people.
Drugs that kill mycobacterium smegmatis will also kill mycobacterium tuberculosis, so working with a level 2 pathogen reduces the risk and, as important, reduces the cost as well. So if this bill is passed the way it's written, it will link level 2 and level 3 together in an administrative way, and you'll lose that advantage. Working with the level 2 and level 3 pathogens will become equally administratively difficult and you will lose that ability, that advantage, of working on a level 2 pathogen.
That's a very important point to take away. Marc gave a very good overview of the administrative point of view, so I won't go into that. I'll just give one example. If I had a sample of mycobacterium smegmatis--a very safe organism to work with in a laboratory--and I gave it to my colleague next door, I couldn't do that with this bill. I would have to get a permit from Ottawa first, which would take an enormous amount of time.
I'm not sure if I understood correctly, but according to this bill, if I did do it, I would be criminally responsible and could be fined $250,000 and put in jail for three months. And that has really scared my colleagues across the country. My colleagues across the country have been calling me and asking me to clarify whether in fact this is what is true within the bill.
Another point is that Canada has to be able to compete globally on a scientific level. Something very good that's occurring in Montreal is that Merck Pharmaceuticals, which is one of the major pharmaceutical companies in the world, has recently developed a very good vaccine against the human papilloma virus.
They're relocating their research in infectious disease from the United States to the facility in Montreal. This will be a multi-million-dollar research facility. They will have to be supported by Canadian science in microbiology and immunology. We will have to be able to train students and graduate students to be able to support a facility like this. I've spoken to them already, and they want to be able to work with McGill University, the University of Laval, and the University of Montreal, because they want that academic interaction.
The way Bill C-11 is written it will slow our ability to conduct this research and our ability to interact with companies like Merck. If Merck can't survive in Montreal because of the effect this bill could have on research in Canada, other companies may not come in. I think it will really hurt us economically as well as scientifically if our ability to interact scientifically is impaired.
Marc brought up the important point that we have to be able to teach our students. We have 350 undergraduate students in microbiology and immunology at McGill. We teach them how to use level 2 pathogens. The way this bill is written we couldn't teach them any longer. We would no longer be able to train the students because they wouldn't have the proper security clearance. That has to be changed within the bill.
Another point is that in Canada, most professors' offices are in the laboratory. If I give a lecture in the morning, a student could not come to ask me a question in my office because the office is in the laboratory and the student wouldn't have the proper clearance. That's a problem with the bill.
We have visiting scientists coming into McGill University every week, and we like to talk science with them. They would not be allowed in my laboratory. We couldn't actually get into the lab and discuss results there the way the bill is now.
I'd like to finish by saying something that I think is quite important that I'm quite passionate about. Doing research in Canada has been wonderful. The Canadian Institutes of Health is as good an institution as there is anywhere in the world. They funded my research on Leishmania for over 15 or 20 years.
Leishmania is a level 2 pathogen. It's transmitted by sand flies, so it can't cause disease in Canada, but it does cause disease in the developing world, particularly in Peru, where it causes a severe form of leprosy. With the support of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research we've developed new treatments for this infection. We've taken it from the laboratory and we're now doing clinical trials in Peru. We're able to actually treat people before they get that form of leprosy. This is supported by the World Health Organization and Médecins Sans Frontières. It's because of the wonderful research environment we've had in this country that we can actually do this kind of research.
I can honestly say that if Bill C-11 had been passed the way it's written here to include pathogen level 2 organisms, we would not have been able to make that progress. We would not have been able to make those contributions and compete on an international level.
I think there are many positive things about this bill, but the thing that worries the Canadian scientific group is that linking level 2 pathogens with level 3 and level 4 pathogens is a mistake. It can be easily rectified by just removing level 2 pathogens and focusing on level 3 and level 4 pathogens. This should focus only on level 3 and level 4 pathogens. That's the message I'd like to put across today.
Thank you very much for your patience in listening to me.