Evidence of meeting #21 for Health in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was research.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Chief Public Health Officer, Public Health Agency of Canada
At the time, the concept—and the global concept—was containment at source, which meant to control as much as possible the outbreak at the source in China. That was critical, so the federal government did make a donation at the time.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
I'm just wondering what sort of data she was using to decide there would be no compromise to the Canadian supply.
Chief Public Health Officer, Public Health Agency of Canada
I'm not sure I can speak to that. All I can say is that particular set of PPE was probably not going to be usable, as it were, based on the standards at the time, in a very short time frame.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
But the email makes it sound like we had stuff that was expiring, and we had plenty enough besides that. Anyway, let's move on.
We can see in her email that she was in a rush to get those supplies to the Red Cross in time for a repatriation plane that was departing for China. She mentions formal signatures, stating that we could get them later and not to worry about it. Is it possible that her rush to make the flight played a role in such a serious error?
Chief Public Health Officer, Public Health Agency of Canada
I don't think that was necessarily the case, but, as we said, expired stock and near-expired stock normally would not have been used in the Canadian context. Going forward—
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
But we did actually need that expired stock here in Canada already, unfortunately.
Anyway, okay. Let's—
Chief Public Health Officer, Public Health Agency of Canada
Going forward, though, we are doing everything we can, including Health Canada providing instructions on expired stock, and even resterilizing certain equipment as well. So we're pulling out all the stops on that.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
I'm going to go on.
On January 25, the WHO assessed the risk of a COVID-19 event to be moderate at the global level, while PHAC assessed the risk for Canada as low. That was actually the same day the first case of COVID-19 was identified in Ontario. On February 2, the WHO changed that threat level to high.
On February 17, the cabinet passed an order in council that read, and I'm quoting here, “the introduction or spread of [COVID-19] would pose an imminent and severe risk to public health in Canada”. Yet after that date, you continued to insist the risk to Canada was low.
Why did you disregard the official conclusion that there was “an imminent and severe risk”? What do you think are the consequences of leading Canadians to believe the risk was low?
Chief Public Health Officer, Public Health Agency of Canada
Right from the start, from when we knew about the cluster in Wuhan, we had been escalating the Canadian preparedness because we didn't.... There was an uncertainty as to what was going to happen.
Conservative
Chief Public Health Officer, Public Health Agency of Canada
The risk assessment at the time—
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
What was the difference between what you said and what everybody else was saying?
Chief Public Health Officer, Public Health Agency of Canada
The risk assessment at the time, in terms of the domestic transmission, was low because we actually didn't have many cases in Canada at the time. So that was not the global—
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
And yet cabinet called it “imminent and severe”.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
On a point of order, Mr. Chair, she asked the question. Let this witness answer the question, please.
Chief Public Health Officer, Public Health Agency of Canada
I think we were all aware of the potential introduction of risk, but at that time if you were in Canada, given that we didn't have community transmission to any extent, the risk, if you were in Canada, was going to be low.
We also had a much more granular assessment of risk as well, which means that—
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
Sorry. My apologies, I'm just wondering why would cabinet have called it “imminent and severe” and you did not? That's the question I have. I don't understand the difference.
Chief Public Health Officer, Public Health Agency of Canada
I think throughout I've actually said that this is a serious situation and we need to prepare. I got the whole system going in the public health system ever since we heard about the virus. We needed to prepare for the potential that this was going to be an extremely severe situation.
At that time, the domestic transmission was not.... That was the risk we were trying to assess. It would have been different if you had been going to Wuhan or some other place. Those are different levels of risk assessment.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
Up until early April you stated that asymptomatic persons shouldn't wear a mask as it didn't work or was harmful, and then on April 6 you changed your mind and said a mask was good for additional protection. You insisted to Canadians, time and again, that COVID-19 didn't transfer from human to human, but Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove of the WHO admitted in April 13 that, and I'm quoting, “Right from the start, from the first notification we received on the 31st of December, given that this was a cluster of pneumonia...immediately thought, given that this is a respiratory pathogen, that of course there [may] be human-to-human transmission.”
Canadians are confused. Why had we been told that science has the answers? Canadians are looking to you as a top science official in the country. They don't understand why your message changed so much. Why did you lead Canadians so far from the known scientific fact that masks do work?
Chief Public Health Officer, Public Health Agency of Canada
There were a lot of different points made. Human-to-human transmission was always a possibility. At the beginning we just didn't know whether it was a zoonotic event, but it was soon apparent that there was human-to-human transmission, and the extent of which was—
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, Ms. Jansen. Your time is up, but I'll let the witness respond to your question.
Chief Public Health Officer, Public Health Agency of Canada
In terms of mask use, as I just said, the recommendations are made collaboratively with other chief medical officers and the special advisory committee. We reviewed the evolving evidence.
I think it is very reasonable, and I'm sure all the research scientists will agree, that we have to incorporate information as we go along. We incorporated the studies, which were actually not that many but we incorporated them, on asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic transmission, but also the potential for the added layer of protection. I think it's reasonable to bring Canadians along to the latest recommendation.
Recommendations will evolve again, as we know more.
Liberal
Liberal
Sonia Sidhu Liberal Brampton South, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to all the witnesses. Dr. Tam and your team, we do appreciate the work you are doing. Thank you very much.
My first question is to Dr. Tam. The Province of British Columbia has implemented an online serology survey to seek more information on how the disease has impacted citizens. What value is there in having a survey like this? Do you think more provinces should consider implementing that?