Health Committee on March 10th, 2009

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I want to thank each and every one of you for being here today.

What I'm hearing from you is a little frustration about how this has been rolled out. I do understand that PHAC did hand out the regulatory framework at the consultations. It's a public document. It's the same framework that was sent out to the members. You did receive it today, because it was mentioned I think by previous witnesses that this was an issue.

You mentioned, Dr. Hynes, that you liked the regulations, or you accepted them, but that they're filled with all of these “mights” and “mays”. You've come up with some points that I actually brought up in the briefings. I'm not a drafter of regulations and I don't know why they think of things in certain ways, but I do believe that the reason they put the “mights” and “mays” in is that they do want to negotiate and consult to make sure they get it right.

One of the points I wanted to bring up, because there does seem to be some confusion perhaps that the department didn't make this evident, is that there are certain regulations put on the laboratories who import. When they import into this country—and I'm not sure if you're aware of this—there is a different regulatory framework than when one is just a domestic lab.

So the idea of this legislation is to bring the domestic labs up to that level, because you could potentially have a lab that takes in Ebola. This would be an extreme situation, and it might not exactly be relevant, but when labs transfer it domestically amongst the labs, there's no regulatory framework letting the government track where the bad ones are. So that is the rationale given to me for why we need to bring this up to a level playing field.

You also mentioned the language of E. coli, how there's pathogenic E. coli and then there's non-pathogenic E. coli. When talking to the drafters, I brought that up, and they said to me that by definition, it was an act to promote safety and security with respect to human pathogens. So if one strain of E. coli is not pathogenic, it wouldn't be caught under this act. Okay?

So, curiously, regarding some of the problems or concerns that you're bringing forward, it appears they might be laid to rest somewhat if we had really good explanation for them.

But I do want to ask, if we were able to make amendments or clarify, for example, the E. coli, would that start to alleviate some of your concerns? If we said non-pathogenic E. coli is over here, instead of here, would that alleviate some concerns?

[Dr. Michael Hynes]

Right now, it reads:

“human pathogen” means a micro-organism, nucleic acid or protein that

(a) is listed in any of the Schedules

And one of those schedules includes E. coli.

If you interpret that literally without recourse to a set of regulations that explain things otherwise, it says E. coli is a pathogen. It doesn't matter which one.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

I get exactly what you're saying, but I'm trying to explain where they're coming from here.

Would you be supportive then if the Public Health Agency established an expert advisory group to review the schedules as needed, based on the scientific evidence, and to advise the Minister of Health on any changes that should be made to those schedules, by adding or removing or reclassifying a human pathogen or a toxin? Would you be supportive of that?

[Dr. Michael Hynes]

I think it would be great to have such an advisory committee. I'm sure the regulations will come out fine after PHAC goes through them and consults with people. It's just that there's an issue, especially among the more vocal members of my society, that they do not like being asked to accept on faith an act that has definitions that go one way, with the promise that the regulations will make those definitions less draconian in the future. We don't know what's going to happen in the future that might make the regulations not come out the way they're being promised in these preliminary documents, in which case we would be faced with severe problems, as Dr. Descoteaux has outlined, in terms of costs and people leaving the field.

So accepting something on faith is not something that everybody is willing to do.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

That may be a very wise way of thinking, I think.

Would you be supportive of a phased-in approach, with the regulatory changes?

[Dr. Michael Hynes]

I think so, yes. We'd deal with the severe issues of levels 3 and 4 first in an act, and then clean up the other stuff afterwards. That would make sense to me.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Okay.

Dr. Descoteaux, you mentioned that you're someone who does work with Leishmania. Originally, with Bill C-54, I guess it was in risk group 3, but with some consultation they moved it down to level 2.

How did that process go? Was it onerous, or did you find that they weren't listening to you, or was it a pretty good process?

[Dr. Albert Descoteaux]

The classification to schedule 3 was a big surprise to all of us working on Leishmania in the country. There was a big mobilization. There were just about 12 labs in the country working on Leishmania. After our contact with Health Canada and Mr. Hynes, whom I just met here today, they went back to their papers and found that there was no reason to classify Leishmania as a level 3 pathogen. That's something we had told them before, but they had to do the search and they realized it.

You wonder why they classified that pathogen as level 3. What was the reason?

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

But they did listen to you and changed it, right?

[Dr. Albert Descoteaux]

Yes, they did, which is a good thing. We are very happy that they listened. But then you wonder about the other pathogens. I don't know; I did not do the work for the other people.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Could I ask all of you for an opinion here? You talk about risk level 2, and when you're talking about it to the committee you make it sound as though these pathogens are not “dangerous” or may not cause problems and that they should be removed; there were some who brought that out. But a while back in the States somebody took a pathogenic type of E. coli and sprinkled it on a salad, and a lot of people got sick. I believe C. difficile is classified as risk 2, and we hear that people are dying of C. difficile.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

I'm sorry, Dr. Carrie, your time is up.

Who would like to answer that question?

Dr. Low.

[Dr. Don Low]

In those examples, it's the host, not the lab, that is the risk. We all carry those organisms to some extent on our bodies, and it's when the wrong set of circumstances occur that it's allowed to cause disease, whether it's from taking an antibiotic and getting C. difficile colitis, or whether it's from a urinary tract infection due to E. coli. Those originate in the host, not in the laboratory.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

We're about to go into the second round now. If it's the will of the committee, I would like to ask a question.

Is it okay if I do that?

Do provincial occupational health and safety laws make it mandatory for those using risk group 2 pathogens to comply with the laboratory biosafety guidelines? Could anyone answer that for me?

Professor Hynes.

[Dr. Michael Hynes]

I don't think I can answer that question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Dr. Goel.

[Dr. Vivek Goel]

I can't speak to the specifics, but I would expect it's going to vary by province. In Ontario the Occupational Health and Safety Act already provides for some of these provisions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Are there any other comments on this? Is there any other knowledge?

Thank you.

We'll now go to round two, and we have five minutes per person.

Dr. Bennett is first.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

I must say that I, like my colleagues, find this pretty depressing. If I were the minister, I'd be furious that you hadn't been consulted and listened to. This idea that “we'll fix it in the regulations” is just not good enough. Tough cases make bad law. Every one of you, as Luc has said, is concerned that either you weren't consulted or were not listened to. Certainly, when you have both Ontario and B.C. asking “What are you doing?” and you're hearing stories that harmonizing with the United States means that big universities decide not to investigate things, this is very worrying.

There is something in the bill that's important about intentional release, I guess. There's probably something in the bill about our knowing where the bad stuff is and being able to track it. But other than that, in terms of what Joyce has said, I wonder whether the government should be asked to do the consultation first and then come back with government amendments to see whether or not this is workable, including taking out the level 2s and any of the important suggestions that should have been made at the consultations and should have been reflected in the bill to begin with.

David Butler-Jones himself has one of the most important phrases: “Oh, my God! We have to do something. This is something. Let's do that.” This is a “this will do” kind of bill. I feel embarrassed personally that after the briefing I had from the department I spoke in favour of this bill. It makes us all look like fools. I wrote “citizen engagement” into the job description of the Chief Public Health Officer. What happened? We haven't had one witness say this is a good bill.

I think Joyce's question about the problem we're trying to fix is very narrow. We have this big fire hose going at it, which has all these unintended consequences we didn't know about until we heard from the witnesses. The discussion paper that you find reassuring concerning the possible regulations is a good sign, but I guess I would like....

We have a dinner with the minister tonight as a committee. I don't think she'll be very happy with the way this bill is going. I'm sure it's something she had been persuaded was a no-brainer and would just go through. But now we have all of this. I think the minister has been seriously let down.

I would hope that the government would decide to do something itself. I don't think we as the opposition should be fooling around with amendments in some sort of patchwork quilt to try to fix this sow's ear. I don't think that's our job, frankly. We have some amendments about the regulations coming back and some amendments about advisory committees, but what I think we are taking from this afternoon is that it's a mess. Even the schedules are a mess.

I don't know what to say, other than that if you were consulted—

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

You only have ten seconds to say it, Dr. Bennett.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Were you consulted, or did the government not listen to what you said?

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

We only have about 30 seconds left.

Would someone like to make a comment?

Dr. Goel.

[Dr. Vivek Goel]

I think the Public Health Agency of Canada characterized them as information sessions. There were a number of them held across the country with Bill C-54, and then in late January or early February there were three meetings across the country prior to the re-introduction as Bill C-11. Certainly this document was tabled, many of the issues you heard about today and last week were raised, and the response was almost always that it will be dealt with in the regulations.

So I would characterize those, as they have, as information sessions. They were not consultations.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you, Dr. Goel.

Ms. McLeod.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

With all due respect, I disagree with my colleague. Most of the witnesses we've heard believe that this bill is an important one, that we should be moving forward, and that there are some issues they would like to see addressed where they have concerns. To characterize it as a mess is perhaps overstating some issues that could perhaps be worked out through the committee process.

We've heard one suggestion from Mrs. Wasylycia-Leis about risk level 2 pathogens. We heard from the health agency that they were really only looking at an inventory and general safety necessities around those risk level 2s. So if you had something like that written around risk level 2 that was very specific about what it would entail in the act--that it was very different from levels 3 and 4--would that not be a good approach? As you said earlier, we have many different types of labs in many different provinces with different things happening. Would that be an approach to take with risk level 2, clearly defining their interests around inventory and a few other more generic things?

I'd like feedback from everyone.

Thanks.