Health Committee on April 6th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Your time's up.

Dr. Eyolfson.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Thank you. I'll be sharing my time with Ms. Sidhu.

With the 2017-2018 departmental plan, one of the priorities is an initiative relating to the action plan on opioid misuse. It emphasizes harm reduction and public health, including consideration of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The amount is going to be just under $89 million for 2017-18.

Can you comment on what aspects of the action plan the spending increase will be used to implement? It's an increase of 1.3%.

[Simon Kennedy]

There's a lot of work on opioids under way in the health portfolio right now. I could give you a catalogue of the areas that we're working on, the priorities.

With regard to the money in the budget, the government has not to date come out and publicly said this is the specific breakdown of how the new funds will be spent, but my understanding is that will be happening shortly. I wouldn't want to pre-empt the minister or the government in that regard.

Some areas are priorities for us. For example, we have laboratories across the country that do analysis of drug samples seized in raids by the police and that sort of thing. Obviously, because of the rise of synthetic opioids, the demand for those laboratory services has gone up significantly. The provinces have asked for additional assistance from our laboratories. So one area of priority for us going forward with some of the resources we received is going to be a substantial increase in the ability of our labs to respond to the opioid crisis, as well as an ability to analyze substances more quickly, and perhaps more public reporting, better assistance to provinces, and so on. That would be one example.

When Bill C-37 goes through, we want to be able to more expeditiously process requests for things like supervised consumption facilities. That's an area we want to beef up.

We have been doing a lot of work on the regulatory side to try to support provinces in enabling access to new therapies as an example. That's another area that we've been prioritizing.

I know the Public Health Agency has been doing a lot of work as well. I'm sure it could speak to some of the things it's doing. There's a long catalogue of initiatives we're working on. We would use the new resources to support those kinds of activities.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Thank you.

[Simon Kennedy]

I have one more example, and I think it's powerful. We have been working with an expert panel over the last number of months, and one of the things we're looking at is the monographs for all opioid drugs right now. As you would know, these are the labels that effectively tell practitioners what a drug can and can't be used for.

We're looking at whether it would be wise to add additional contraindications to monographs, which obviously would cause physicians, even for off-label use, to think twice about whether to use an opioid where doing so is definitely contraindicated. We'll be getting that expert advice shortly.

If we were to update product monographs for a large number of opioids, that obviously would involve a lot of work and a lot of expense, so again this is an area in which we might want to prioritize some of the funds the federal government receives for our regulatory system to actually have better labelling and better guidance to practitioners.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

All right.

Do you anticipate that these funds will be sufficient to fully implement that plan, or do you anticipate that we might need more funds for this than what have been allocated in the increase?

[Simon Kennedy]

I wouldn't want to prejudge what we may advise the minister for the next budget round and so on. We think that the resources that have been provided are substantial and are going to be very helpful in our ability to advance the priorities that the government set out.

This is a top priority, so where we may feel additional resources are needed, we will do our best to reallocate internally. I think we're pretty comfortable that we're seeing a significant increase in funding.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

All right, thank you.

I'll hand the floor over to Ms. Sidhu.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Thank you.

My questions are to the Public Health Agency of Canada.

In 2017-18, I know that $2 million is being transferred to CIHR to support the Canadian Immunization Research Network. What steps is the Public Health Agency of Canada taking to improve immunization coverage to reduce vaccine-preventable disease rates?

[Dr. Theresa Tam]

We have received $25 million over five years to improve vaccine coverage rates. There are several different components to that. One is to reset those targets to make sure they are still where we want to hit, have better ways of methodology for estimating vaccine coverage. We're also supporting up to $1.2 million, up to six research teams for two years, to look at identifying where those underimmunized populations are and why they are underimmunized, the reasons behind that.

We are transferring $2 million to partner with the CIHR to leverage on an existing network, the Canadian Immunization Research Network. That research network has a lot of great scientists collaborating across Canada. It already exists. They will look, from a scientific evidence perspective, at behavioural characteristics of vaccine acceptance and methodologies to improve uptake.

Finally, we will have an immunization partnership fund. That fund will leverage provinces, NGOs, and other stakeholders to look at implementing interventions that would work to increase immunization coverage rates.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Also, can you explain the action to address antimicrobial resistance in Canada? What role does the Public Health Agency of Canada play in both the development and implementation of this framework? Can you explain the action plan, what steps you are taking?

[Dr. Theresa Tam]

We already have in place a federal framework and action plan. I've been playing some leadership role in putting together a cross-sectoral agriculture, animal health, human health, pan-Canadian framework. That involves all of the people, the health portfolios sitting here—CIHR, Health Canada, CFIA—as well as other government departments that will come up with the pan-Canadian framework. We're targeting that to be ready around May, which is our commitment to the World Health Assembly to deliver that.

After that, we will have a more precise look at specific actions. They are in the areas of better data and surveillance on the agriculture and human health side, looking at how we improve the appropriate use of this very important resource, what we call stewardship. It's to improve infection control practices, and also research and innovation, looking at diagnostics, at new tools to combat antimicrobial resistance.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Okay, thank you. The time is up.

That concludes our questions. We want to thank the witnesses for their attendance today and their patience with us. I want to thank the members of the committee for their questions.

I have a couple of little committee issues....

Yes?

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Just very quickly, there were a number of questions asked today to our guests regarding follow-up. I'm wondering if we can agree on an appropriate time for that to come back to us, and to have it come through you, Mr. Chair, so you can get it to us.

I know that in the past it's taken quite long to get information on questions we've asked. We're hoping to get at least something decent in a time frame.... Perhaps in two weeks you can come back to us with the question and the figures that we've asked for, specifically on Lyme disease.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Is two weeks a reasonable deadline? We've recorded all the questions and all the information that's required.

[Simon Kennedy]

Our suggestion, from conferring with colleagues, is that there's a lot of material. Certainly in my area we could do this in two weeks, I think, fairly easily. Dr. Mithani was saying that there may be some data that might take a little longer to get.

We could commit to trying to get everything in two weeks, and if not, to deliver what we can and then do a second follow-up tranche if that's acceptable to the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Is that acceptable?

That works.

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Should there be a motion put down with regard to times?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

That's all right. We have a commitment, and we'll follow up on it.

Thanks very much again.

On committee business, we have cancelled our meeting for April 13—I want to make sure everybody knows that—but we need a deadline for witness lists for the thalidomide study, which is on May 9 and 11. I'm going to propose that we make that deadline as of next Thursday. That's the last sitting day of next week before the two-week break.

Could I have a motion that April 13 be the deadline for the thalidomide study witnesses?

[An hon. member]

I so move.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])

That's it. Thanks very much, everybody.

The meeting is adjourned.