Health Committee on May 7th, 2015

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Okay I'll be fast.

Mr. Kennedy, last year at the Toronto airport I came in one night and there were these advertisements, these big, high signs about eight feet high, in bright colours, you couldn't miss them, and they said, “Humira”. Now, I know disease awareness advertisements are allowed under the current law, but this isn't a disease awareness advertisement, this is a drug advertisement.

It has the name of a very expensive drug that costs about $22,000 a year for treating rheumatoid arthritis, juvenile arthritis, and Crohn's disease. The reason they're not supposed to advertise prescription drugs is that they all have dangers and a doctor should be deciding. No one should make a decision to take a prescription drug without consulting an expert first. The adverse effects from Humira are that it can cause cancer and it can cause tuberculosis. It's definitely not a decision that you want to make while you're walking by with your suitcase in an airport.

What can we do under Vanessa's Law, or what can you do or what do you intend to do to stop drug companies from planting seeds in people's heads to try to get around their doctors so that they decide to take a drug before they know anything about it?

[Simon Kennedy]

Thank you very much for the question.

There's a variety of quite powerful provisions that have come into force under Vanessa's Law, and unfortunately I'm not able to cite the specific one with relation to advertising or how it applies, but I could come back to the committee.

For example, under the rules now we're able to have the courts impose penalties including jail time and fines of up to $5 million per day instead of the current $5,000 per day. Drug companies are compelled to revise labels to reflect new risk information, including updates for health warnings for children. Recalls on unsafe products require stronger surveillance. There's a very wide range. This is a law with very strong teeth.

My apologies, I'm trying to remember but I don't have at my fingertips the specific provisions on advertising. I think the general principle is that we're going to look at being a lot tougher on these kinds of violations in the future.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

Ms. Fry, go ahead.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Thank you.

I actually wanted to go back to the issue of the Inuit and the aboriginal funding.

I can go back into the estimates and show what was there in 2013-14 and then what was in your main estimates and if you spent more in the supplementary estimates. But the point is that I am very concerned that this whole safe water and waste water action plan that is sunsetting in 2016-17 isn't going to be gone. I want you to reassure me that it won't happen, that it is just on paper, and that when the time comes you will not sunset it. Given that there have been 139 boil-water advisories since February, which is only a tiny space of time, it is obvious that this program is needed.

I just wanted to know if I can have any reassurances from you that this is not going to be allowed to sunset.

[Simon Kennedy]

Yes, I can certainly assure the member that the Health Canada funding as regards water and safe water...and in the specific case of Health Canada our role is around testing. There are other elements that belong to Aboriginal Affairs, and so on, but certainly that funding continues and is not lapsing.

If I could just for a moment come back on Vanessa's Law, there is an injunction power under the legislation that would allow us to step in very quickly if there was an issue around advertising. I just wanted to close the loop on that.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

I noticed there was going to be a cut in public health again in the area that deals with disease prevention and health promotion. Why is this specific piece of public health action and the needs of public health being cut?

Now more than ever, given that there are all kinds of pandemics that can affect infectious diseases, that we have a huge amount of obesity and type 2 diabetes, that tuberculosis is out there, all of these kinds of problems we are facing in Canada need to be looked at. Health promotion and disease prevention saves money down the road, so why is that being cut? Can you explain that to me, Ms. Outhwaite?

[Krista Outhwaite]

Thank you, to the member, for this question.

If we're only looking at the main estimates in this case, you're quite right in pointing out that there is a reduction in the funding coming to the Public Health Agency. The reduction is a net reduction. Some increases are coming for things like the Ebola virus preparedness—this was mentioned earlier—a bit of money for the Pan American Games, and some genomics research.

On the other hand we are seeing some decreases and the majority, if not most, of the decreases are due to a sunsetting initiative for the hepatitis C health care services program. You may recall that this relates to the earlier restitution that was provided to hep C individuals in Canada by way of compensation programs, a rather substantive program; and a complementary program of funding went to provinces and territories starting in 2001, I think it was, with payments provided to provinces and territories with the specific purpose of ensuring that hepatitis C sufferers would be able to access health care services correctly across the country in all aspects.

We're seeing a bit of a reduction, again, in the sunsetting initiative for a federal aboriginal health program. That is also part of the initiative that's going forward for renewal on the advice of the public service to the government, as was mentioned by my colleague.

Two other declines relate to completed projects. You may recall that we gave some money to the GSK facility in Sainte-Foy, Quebec, to build a new fill line for pandemic vaccine production capacity; that is done. We've also completed a project for automated external defibrillators with Heart and Stroke.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Thank you very much. That explains it all.

How am I doing, Mr. Lobb?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

You have one minute.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

I have one minute to ask a question on transfers. The idea is that the transfers are going to be brought down to possibly 3% by 2017. The point is that they're not going to be increasing exponentially. The Council of the Federation did some estimates and between 2017 and 2024—obviously to 2024, because a review of the transfers is due then—that will represent a $36-billion cut to the transfers they're currently getting. This is going to be a huge loss. Given the increase in aging, given all the demographic and geographic needs, what's going to happen there?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

Ms. Fry, maybe Mr. Carrie will follow up on that.

Mr. Carrie, go ahead, you have five minutes, sir.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you very much.

I'd like to split my time with Mr. Young. First, I wanted to express my appreciation to Health Canada for all the work you've done over the years for natural health products and the world-class regulatory system.

As you may know, I still work as the minister's...part of the committee for traditional Chinese medicine. With many more Canadians today coming from Asia, looking to have the traditional Chinese medicines they're used to taking, could you explain the work you're doing with traditional Chinese medicine? What approach are you taking with traditional Chinese medicine and what kinds of innovations are you working with to make these products available to Canadians?

[Paul Glover, Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Health]

Thank you for the member's question.

It is absolutely correct that, increasingly, Canadians are turning to alternatives like traditional Chinese medicine. There are a number of steps the department is taking. First and foremost among them is that, under the leadership of the minister and others, an advisory committee provides advice to the department on an ongoing basis with respect to the regulation of traditional Chinese medicines, the challenges the community has faced in terms of bringing these products into the country, the practice of traditional Chinese medicine, some of the issues related to that, claims around the products, and all of those sorts of things.

We've been working closely with the Chinese government. It has been very generous in providing traditional pharmacopoeias about the different herbs and substances, and how they have traditionally been used in China, to make sure that practitioners making claims about those herbs are in line with their historic use and use patterns so there is an alignment between what is happening in this country, where these herbs come from—the medicines—and how they have long been used. Those are some examples of the range of things we are doing to work closely with that community to make sure that they understand their obligations when bringing these medicines and herbs into the country. We have a quick and efficient way to understand what it is they're proposing and see if that aligns with the traditional uses from their origins.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Thank you.

Our work is, by its nature, critical, and that's the way it should be. I don't think we pause often enough to recognize success and celebrate success. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has had a long run of really good success. I'd like to ask Mr. Archibald if you could take maybe a minute and a half.... I mentioned earlier I thought it was good luck and I suppose there's an element of luck, but it's not just luck, you're doing a lot of things right. Maybe you could tell us how you're succeeding.

[Dr. Bruce Archibald]

Thank you very much for the question.

I think there are a number of positive things the agency is proud of. Over the last number of years there have been significant investments in the area of food safety, launches of enhanced oversight programs to deal with fresh fruits and vegetables, the creation of inspection verification teams that ensure the high level of integrity within our system, and the adoption of a science-based approach to how we conduct our work and do our evaluations.

As the minister mentioned, we were very pleased to find that the report from the Conference Board of Canada, ranking us against the 17 other OECD countries, placed us in the number one position. There are always opportunities for improvement. We're always looking for ways to continue to strengthen our systems. As the minister mentioned, there was a significant investment to ensure that various food safety laboratories across the country, provincial and federal, are linked together so we can have real-time data sharing.

I know this committee primarily deals on the health space, but I do want to mention a very successful management of outbreak of avian influenza in Canada that occurred at the end of the last calender year. We've had some cases show up again in Ontario this year. Through good cooperation with the provinces and the excellent biosecurity programs that the government has invested in, as well as good cooperation with various producer groups, if you look at that particular challenge, it's had much greater success in Canada than our colleagues in the U.S. have had. In fact, they've sent in folks from the U.S.A. to look at our systems, to understand them and see how we can help them improve their own system. I think there has been a lot of things to talk about.

The final comment is in terms of our staff. Every year the Government of Canada does a public employee survey. We had participation in excess of 82%, which is the highest of any large federal department or agency. Around 90% of our staff indicated that they were proud of the work that they did at CFIA, and 95% said they were prepared to go the extra mile. To me, those are all indicators of a strong staff that does excellent work every day.

Thank you for the opportunity to talk about them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

Thank you very much.

This is going to conclude the question and answer portion of our meeting. We have one final task that we need to do. We have to vote on the main estimates. We've received unanimous consent among the three parties. What we're going to be able to do is lump our questions all together in one, and that will save us a little time.

Shall votes 1 and 5 under the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, votes 1 and 5 under the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, votes 1, 5, and 10 under Health, and vote 1 under the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board, less the amount approved in interim supply carry?

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Is this a recorded vote?

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

Yes, it's recorded.

CANADIAN FOOD INSPECTION AGENCY

Vote 1—Operating expenditures and contributions..........$537,749,431

Vote 5—Capital expenditures..........$25,783,194

(Votes 1 and 5 agreed to: yeas 5; nays 4)

CANADIAN INSTITUTES OF HEALTH RESEARCH

Vote 1—Operating expenditures..........$47,463,563

Vote 5—The grants listed in the Estimates..........$955,287,128

(Votes 1 and 5 agreed to: yeas 5; nays 4)

HEALTH

Vote 1—Operating expenditures..........$1,777,987,439

Vote 5—Capital expenditures..........$28,035,364

Vote 10—The grants listed in the Estimates and contributions..........$1,678,425,178

(Votes 1, 5, and 10 agreed to: yeas 5; nays 4)

PATENTED MEDICINE PRICES REVIEW BOARD

Vote 1—Program expenditures..........$9,947,595

(Vote 1 agreed to: yeas 5; nays 4)

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

Shall I report votes of the main estimates to the House?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[An hon. member]

On division.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ben Lobb]

We'll table those next week.

If there isn't anything else, I think that's it for today. I would like to thank our officials for taking the time and answering all the questions.

I thank our members for their courteous questions.

The meeting is adjourned.