Health Committee on April 15th, 2020

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Can you hear me now?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

All right, everyone can hear Ms. Vignola. The meeting shall continue. Thank you.

Ms. Vignola, please start your question again.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Ms. Liu and Ms. Eaton, at the start of your testimony, I heard a cry of alarm, a cry for help. What can Canada, the territories, Quebec and the other provinces do to ease your tension? To be able to take care of others, you must first take care of yourself.

My question mainly concerns front-line workers, because they too must feel safe to be able to properly help others. What concrete steps can we take to help them?

[Margaret Eaton]

How do we help each other? I think it's very important to think about the landscape of mental health in Canada. We know that mental health has not been funded to the same extent that physical health has been, that there isn't parity. The Mental Health Commission of Canada recommends that 9% of the health budget go towards mental health, and currently it's only about 7%. While there have been big increases from the federal government in the last few years, we're feeling the pinch from that. More and more Canadians are identifying that anxiety and depression are at almost pandemic levels among Canadians, so adding the additional pressure of the pandemic has increased those needs manifold.

We are sounding the alarm that more needs to be done. There needs to be more of an investment at all levels of mental health to ensure that the gaps that already exist can be closed and new needs can be met.

I urge the government to think about keeping in touch. Please speak with your key partners, like CMHA, to help us help you, as we go through this pandemic together, to look for the kinds of reactions that we will have to make investments for. There are choices we're going to have to make over the next year or the next two years, potentially.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mrs. Vignola.

We will now go to Mr. Davies for two and a half minutes, please.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Matthews, about two months ago, members from all parties on this committee expressed grave concerns about the number of ventilators in Canada. At that time, we estimated that we had about 5,000 ventilators across the country. Of course, we were all struck by the tragic images of doctors in Italy and other places having to make terrible decisions about which patient got access to a ventilator. I'm grateful to hear in your statement that orders have been placed for more than 30,000 ventilators from various companies, including some Canadian ones.

We expressed concerns about this a couple of months ago. I'm wondering if you can give us a timeline—at least be as specific as you can—for when those ventilators might be received and put to use in Canada.

[Bill Matthews]

The member has touched on a very important issue in his question.

Ventilators are in short supply worldwide. They're not sitting around on shelves. We are going to see ventilators start arriving in small numbers in the next couple of weeks, and this will ramp up through May.

I think the key to the Canadian strategy on ventilators is the domestic capacity. We've recently put in place three contracts with three different companies in Canada—one's a consortium—to build 10,000 ventilators each. This is a speed buy. We want them up and running very, very quickly because the need is rather urgent.

That's the real endgame here. While we wait for those other ones to be delivered, we will get the domestic capacity up and running because it's an important shortage.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Matthews, could you provide updates to the committee on your receipt and deployment of ventilators over the next few weeks and months? I'm wondering if that's something you could do. It would be helpful to keep us apprised of the progress on that.

[Bill Matthews]

I'm happy to provide the committee with updates of receipts. For distribution, I would encourage you to ask the Public Health Agency of Canada, because they would be the ones who would then distribute those out to the provinces.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

My final question is for Dr. Liu. I know you've seen a lot of pandemics around the world. Yesterday, B.C.'s provincial health officer expressed concern about a COVID-19 outbreak at B.C.'s Mission Institution, a minimum-security federal correctional facility, where 41 people have tested positive for the disease and seven are being treated in hospital. According to data released over the weekend, over 100 inmates and corrections officers working at Canadian federal institutions have tested positive for COVID-19.

I'm wondering whether, through your experience working around the globe, you have any advice to give this committee about how we might best handle COVID-19 among populations such as inmates, who are obviously in extraordinary, exceptional positions.

[Dr. Joanne Liu]

This is a very good question.

We are actually tackling it right now, and we are working in detention centres in different countries as well.

The reality is that the only thing we are working on is to reduce the physical distance; we are trying to enact that as much as we can. It means that we keep everyone in their cells and there are no more community meals and so on. We have to put in a completely different routine, but this is the only thing we've done, the only thing we can do, to prevent it. We need to care for the inmates who are infected and put them in a separate section.

I don't think that detention centres are trained to address that. I think they're going to need extra human resources, public health and IPC, infection prevention and control, to make them able to address the issue.

That certainly is a very good point, and it absolutely should be answered.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Davies. Thank you, everyone. That wraps up our third round.

I'd like to thank all the members of our panel for sharing their time with us today and all their great information. Thank you for having such great answers to our questions.

Thanks to all the members.

Certainly, as well, we thank the House of Commons staff and technical people, as we are all mutually working through the glitches. We're getting there, and we'll get there all together.

Thank you, everybody.

The meeting is now adjourned.