Health Committee on July 6th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Monsieur Desilets.

We will go now to Mr. Davies.

You also have two and a half minutes. If you can make it shorter, that would be most helpful. Thank you.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thanks.

Mr. Possamai, some of the things we're talking about are water under the bridge, but we're still currently in a health crisis and we have decisions to make now. I want to put a current situation to you and get your advice.

Recently, Dr. Theresa Tam advised Canadians to avoid the three Cs: closed spaces with poor ventilation, crowded places with large numbers of people, and close contact where you can't maintain optimal physical distancing from others. However, on July 1 we heard that Air Canada and WestJet are going to full cabins, where obviously you can't have physical distancing. Transport Canada is thus far refusing to enforce physical distancing rules on the airlines, as is the case with many of the businesses.

What would be your advice to the government on that? Should we be mandating physical distancing rules on airlines as a precautionary principle?

[Mario Possamai]

I think we should. I think it's very risky to do otherwise. I think the physical distancing approach that we take anywhere should also be occurring on planes. I don't see why they should be exempt.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thanks.

I also have been on this committee for a number of years and from the beginning of COVID-19, and I remember that back in January, February and March, two things were going on. One was that we clearly had a shortage of personal protective equipment in this country. You've spoken of the expired masks, the destruction of two million N95 masks and the clear shortage. At the same time, our chief public health officer, Dr. Tam, was advising Canadians that masks would be harmful, never mind not recommending them. As well, clearly a number of health care workers were not getting the PPE they needed.

Do you think there was a connection between those two things? Do you think the reason the government was not recommending masks to the Canadian public in the early stages of this pandemic and was not providing them to front-line health care workers was because we had a national shortage?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Give a 10-second response, please, or as quick a response as you can make it.

[Mario Possamai]

Sorry, I can't answer that quickly.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Davies.

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

I have a point of order.

Can we not give him a few more minutes? I'm sure the cleaning people can hold.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

How about 30 seconds to answer?

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

I think that was a go-ahead, but you're—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Sorry. Use 30 seconds if you can do it.

[Mario Possamai]

Thank you.

I think shortages were probably part of the thinking, and that's the wrong kind of thinking.

For example, if you run out of a certain antibiotic, you don't say that the disease has gone away. You might find an alternative type of antibiotic so that you can keep treating that disease. The same thing happened here in Ontario. The ONA brought a court case in which a medical expert said that yes, they went away from a precautionary approach because of shortages.

That is just unconscionable. If you have a shortage, you find a substitute or you find another way, but you keep protecting workers. You don't lie to people about what the science says.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you.

That winds up round two. I thank everybody for their participation and their time, and certainly the witnesses for their time and expertise.

I apologize to the crew who have to turn this room around. We're a little over our time, but thank you for all your hard work, everybody.

With that, we are adjourned.