Health Committee on Jan. 29th, 2020

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

I'm just trying to figure out the situation we have here. I have residents reaching out to me, including another family with a little baby, Grace Tan. She is one and a half years old and she went to Enshi with her grandma. She has no other family there and she is a Canadian.

We're trying to figure out how she can come home with her grandma, because her grandma is Chinese. She is not a Canadian citizen. We're trying to figure out, if a plane gets there and there are children who are minors, how we can get minor Canadians on a plane if we don't even know details like whether a permanent resident can go with them.

These are all very urgent questions, and I'm not sure how we're going to get that communicated.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

May I suggest that these are questions for Global Affairs? These people aren't able to speak to that. We will be inviting someone from Global Affairs, I believe, next week.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

The challenge I have with that is that I believe the plane will be leaving before that, so how do I help my constituents and residents understand? Can a permanent resident go on the plane? How do you get a child, a minor, onto a plane without a guardian? What are we going to do for these people?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

That's your question. I don't think they can answer, but....

[Tina Namiesniowski]

Maybe I could just note with regard to our colleagues at Global Affairs that there's been quite a bit of publicity about consular services. For those feeling they're in need of support from the Canadian government, our colleagues at Global Affairs have very much counselled individuals to reach out to consular services so that the officials will know and have a good understanding of what the need might be and the different individuals who are looking for support. Again, that's not something that falls within the purview of the Public Health Agency of Canada.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Again, my challenge is that these people are sending me these questions. Obviously, they know. They've even registered and so forth, and yet somehow they're asking me, “Can a permanent resident go? How am I going to do this with a minor child”, and so forth.

There's a lack of communication. Wires aren't crossing, or they are crossing and it's extremely urgent. That plane, from what I understand, is going to be there soon. We need to make sure that we have good answers for these people.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Did the witnesses—

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

I can pass the rest over to my colleague. Is that all right?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Sure.

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

I still have some time here.

Very quickly, Ms. Tam, you talked about the international, global collaborative efforts with regard to developing a vaccine and, of course, exploring candidate vaccines. There are apparently scientists here in Canada who are working on this right now, along with scientists around the world. Has there been more focus on getting more scientists here to work on developing a vaccine, or are you relying on global efforts? Is there more money being put in here into getting scientists to work?

[Dr. Theresa Tam]

I think this is part of the collaboration we're trying to pull together. At the Public Health Agency we are contacting other departments. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research, which is part of our health portfolio, is also part of this effort. They are looking at the researchers we have here, but we do have to link with the global effort. The response, of course, is mainly focused in one area of the world. To be really, really fast you have to pull everybody together.

I know there are a number of candidates, and there's a whole list of those that WHO is developing. We expect to link them into that global effort.

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Do we have more time, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

You have 40 seconds.

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Mr. Kitchen, go ahead.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

I'll just ask a quick question. In the report “Learning from SARS”, one of the recommendations was that the Government of Canada “should ensure that an adequate complement of quarantine officers is maintained at airports and other ports of entry, as required.” That's the procedure we put forward. Is that procedure in place? If so, have these been updated and increased at this point in time?

[Tina Namiesniowski]

Mr. Chair, in terms of the question of procedures and protocols, we committed to provide information back to the committee, if that's what I understand the question to be.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Have we increased the number of quarantine officers since this outbreak?

[Tina Namiesniowski]

Do you mean, in terms of just now?

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Yes.

[Tina Namiesniowski]

We have a complement of quarantine officers and are thinking to the future. We're in the process of ensuring that, from a contingency plan point of view, we're training additional staff in the event they would be necessary. Right now the complement of our quarantine officers is able to support the measures we have in place and the level of effort that's been made with the border measures that have been described.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Kitchen.

We go now to Mr. Van Bynen.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Being new to this, I'd be interested in knowing what would happen if the World Health Organization does declare a public health emergency. What does that mean, and how does Canada respond?

[Dr. Theresa Tam]

That's a very good question. WHO, of course, will have recommendations for countries that have the actual epidemic, and then others. It has already given some advice ahead of this. For example, for other countries, not China, the advice is to be vigilant and to prepare to respond to contain any imported cases.

In fact, Canada has already been doing all of these and has looked at the advice that was provided. Even though an emergency wasn't declared, there was some advice from WHO, and we are already meeting some of those recommendations. Really it's about preparedness. As the president just said, we started alerting the jurisdictions as soon as we heard about this virus. We have all these protocols and capacities so that hospitals are on alert. I think that's essentially what the expectations would be. I'm not sure that there would be anything more that we would do, but we'll certainly be looking closely at what comes out of that meeting to see if anything additional needs to be done. As far as I am concerned, we've actually been preparing for about a month now.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

As a former municipal officer, I can say that when we had SARS there was an important engagement at the provincial, regional and municipal levels. If I recall correctly, we had to designate a local arena for people to get vaccinations once a vaccine was defined. To what level are those discussions going on, so that as soon as we discover that there is a vaccine or something that can be done, people are able to mobilize?

[Dr. Theresa Tam]

Since SARS, certainly learning from the pandemic of H1N1 but also with our existing vaccination programs, we have a lot of capacity and protocols already in place. This is what public health is every day. In our pandemic preparedness plans and our national federal-provincial-territorial response plans, the vaccine response is a major piece of the response, which goes all the way down from the acquisition of a vaccine. For example, for a pandemic of influenza, we actually have contracts and everything in place. There isn't a vaccine available, unfortunately, for this novel virus. Should there be, all of the experiences and processes and infrastructures that we use to get ourselves prepared for an influenza pandemic will be brought to bear on how we do this.

In the last pandemic, H1N1, Canada had the highest vaccination rate globally. We have the ability. Essentially our aim is, should anybody in Canada want a vaccine at the time, to be able to deliver it to them. Unfortunately, right now that is not an option.