Evidence of meeting #32 for Health in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was information.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Arjumand Siddiqi  Associate Professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, As an Individual
Kwame McKenzie  Chief Executive Officer, Wellesley Institute
Clerk of the Committee  Ms. Erica Pereira
Kathleen Morris  Vice-President, Research and Analysis, Canadian Institute for Health Information
Scott Jones  Head, Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, Communications Security Establishment
Jeff Latimer  Director General and Strategic Advisor for Health Data, Statistics Canada
Colleen Merchant  Director General, National Cyber Security, National and Cyber Security Branch, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness
Marc Lachance  Acting Director General, Diversity and Populations, Statistics Canada
Superintendent Mark Flynn  Director General, Financial Crime and Cybercrime, Federal Policing Criminal Operations, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Karen Mihorean  Director General, Social Data Insights, Integration and Innovation, Statistics Canada

1:35 p.m.

Conservative

Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC

Is your department monitoring the situation right now in regard to the work that's being done with CanSino?

1:35 p.m.

Director General, National Cyber Security, National and Cyber Security Branch, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness

Colleen Merchant

Public Safety would not be monitoring that. That would more likely be monitored, I would say, from a cybersecurity perspective, by the cyber centre or some of our security and intelligence colleagues, but from a strategic policy point of view, which is where Public Safety fits in, it's not something that we're monitoring closely.

1:35 p.m.

Conservative

Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC

It would not be your department that would discover whether inappropriate cyber interactions were happening between, say, that doctor—Dr. Qiu—and the team at the Wuhan Institute of Virology?

1:35 p.m.

Director General, National Cyber Security, National and Cyber Security Branch, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness

Colleen Merchant

No, it would not be. That's more in the security and intelligence area.

July 7th, 2020 / 1:35 p.m.

Conservative

Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC

Okay. Then I think I'll move on to Statistics Canada.

Mr. Latimer, following the SARS break in early 2003, IBM produced an IT system for the Public Health Agency of Canada called Panorama. It was meant to ensure we had a comprehensive national communicable disease outbreak management system. This program was developed by IBM, the creator of our infamous Phoenix pay system, and in August 2015 the Auditor General of B.C., where I'm from, found that the program was prone to errors, slow to function and susceptible to unsuspected system outages. It was basically a complete disaster that cost B.C. taxpayers alone the ridiculous sum of $113 million, which was 420% more than originally quoted.

Are you familiar with this program and how it functioned?

1:35 p.m.

Director General and Strategic Advisor for Health Data, Statistics Canada

Jeff Latimer

Thank you for the question.

I am not familiar with this program, as it's a Public Health Agency accountability, so I would not be able to comment on it. I can comment on the current data situation in Canada, but not on that system.

1:35 p.m.

Conservative

Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC

Okay.

1:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon

You have 18 seconds, please.

1:35 p.m.

Conservative

Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC

I was wondering about the problem of getting national data collection programs together. Is it because we're unable to get provincial buy-in? I was told that in two weeks, StatsCan could come up with a live system that could be used for this purpose.

1:35 p.m.

Director General and Strategic Advisor for Health Data, Statistics Canada

Jeff Latimer

I'm not convinced that two weeks would be appropriate, but I do think that we have the expertise and the experience to help the country develop national data standards and data exchange standards, yes.

1:35 p.m.

Conservative

Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC

So you could come up with something like that—

1:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon

Thank you, Ms. Jansen. We'll go now to Mr. Fisher.

Mr. Fisher, please go ahead. You have five minutes.

1:35 p.m.

Liberal

Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to all of you for being here today. My first question would be for the Communications Security Establishment folks.

We're hearing about coronavirus scams and phishing. Just this week, we're hearing about seniors who are getting calls about the top-up to COVID-19 assistance from the government on OAS and GIS, calls that are asking for information to access their bank accounts in order to deposit this money, when of course they don't have to apply for this money.

How does your organization work with the local RCMP or with local police forces, I guess, to investigate something like this? Also, how do you work to ensure that the public is aware of these scams? We put it on our Facebook today, and it's been shared over 300 times.

1:35 p.m.

Head, Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, Communications Security Establishment

Scott Jones

Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair.

There are actually many different ways we're working on to deal with this. Maybe Chief Superintendent Flynn would like to jump in as well, from the RCMP perspective.

The first thing is that for anything that looks like it's impersonating the Government of Canada, we've been very active in trying to make sure that we are protecting both the brand and the integrity, so we're taking those offline very quickly, to the point where a lot of times that's happening before Canadians can fall victim to it. The second thing, though, is that we also are sharing a lot of information so that these are blocked. For email-based scams that you click on and it gets you to do something, the CIRA Canadian Shield actually has those blocked. Canadians would be protected if they were to use this free service that has been stood up.

In the third way, we are working with the RCMP's Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, to also get information out there so that Canadians are aware. Unfortunately, COVID-19 is a particularly good lure to get people to click and to share information. That's why we've been putting out a lot of information and threat assessments and threat bulletins, etc., as well.

1:35 p.m.

Liberal

Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS

Thank you for that.

For the folks at CIHI, we were all shocked at this committee—we have heard a lot about this, and Nova Scotia has been hit just as hard—to find out that four of every five deaths from coronavirus were those of residents in long-term care.

What kinds of measures do you believe the provinces and territories should implement in long-term care? I know that you folks touched on this a bit during your opening remarks, but how are other countries tackling this problem?

1:40 p.m.

Vice-President, Research and Analysis, Canadian Institute for Health Information

Kathleen Morris

Thank you very much for the question, Mr. Chair.

You're correct. CIHI did actually share some information quite recently about how the long-term care sector in the country had been quite hard hit.

Overall, looking across all age groups, Canada's death rate from COVID has actually been lower than an international average, but the incidents in long-term care have definitely stood out as one of the highest. One of the things we learned from this was that countries that implemented some specific measures targeted at the long-term care sector at the same time as they put in their broader shutdown measures really had many fewer COVID infections and deaths in long-term care. Some of the things that might be included in specific long-term care measures would be around broad testing for residents of long-term care facilities, and repeated testing. There would be isolation wards, potentially, to make sure that if one of the residents becomes ill, there's a way to separate that resident from others to reduce infection.

As well, one of the important parts is is to have the right kinds of supports for long-term care workers, such as being able to use surge staffing, for example, when the caseload became greater. In Canada's case, the army was involved in some provinces. Others were having specialized trained teams and were making personal protective equipment freely available so that all of the long-term care workers felt secure.

Those are some of the measures we've seen in other countries that had lower death rates in long-term care.

1:40 p.m.

Liberal

Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS

They had higher death rates possibly across the board, but they were lower in long-term care.

1:40 p.m.

Vice-President, Research and Analysis, Canadian Institute for Health Information

Kathleen Morris

That's correct.

1:40 p.m.

Liberal

Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS

To the StatsCan folks, thank you for being here.

Tell me a little bit about how StatsCan is changing from what they normally would do and going above and beyond because of this new normal and the impacts we're facing with COVID-19.

1:40 p.m.

Director General and Strategic Advisor for Health Data, Statistics Canada

Jeff Latimer

I think in my opening remarks I highlighted a few things. I'll repeat them and add a few that I think are important.

First and foremost, we have been implementing significantly new data collection methods that are quite rapid. For example, our web panels and our crowdsourcing surveys, while they're not the same as our full representative surveys across the country, are providing significant and new information in a very rapid time frame. I think that's a critical step forward. We're still relying, and we need to rely, on our national statistics program, but these are interesting and important additions.

We've also been working with the provinces to speed up the collection and reporting of death data in Canada. That's a critical piece. It used to be two years, almost, between the fact of the death and the reporting, and we are now planning on releasing monthly reports. We are working with the provinces and territories and we are hoping to have as much coverage as we can on a monthly basis. Those reports will be starting next month. It's a massive increase, and I think an important one for Canada, to start to see the death data and to move forward with that data. Those are two that I think are really important.

We are working in a number of other areas. Disaggregation of data is a critical piece. We're really working hard to try to make the data available at the level that's required to make significant policy decisions.

Those are three that I would highlight.

1:40 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon

Thank you, Mr. Fisher.

It is now Mr. Desilets' turn.

Mr. Desilets, you have the floor for five minutes.

1:40 p.m.

Bloc

Luc Desilets Bloc Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My thanks to all the witnesses for joining us. I also thank them for agreeing to provide us with their expertise and their knowledge.

My first question goes to Mr. Latimer.

Here on the Standing Committee on Health, we have heard, on several occasions, a good number of participants talk to us about all the major difficulties, that happen everywhere and in different ways, in circulating information and data, in collecting those data, and in exchanging data between the provinces and the federal level.

Today, just now, we heard the representative from the Canadian Institute for Health Information tell us about those same concerns. An hour earlier, it was Dr. McKenzie. In short, a number of witnesses have brought up the matter.

Mr. Latimer, do you agree with the statement I am making?

1:45 p.m.

Director General and Strategic Advisor for Health Data, Statistics Canada

Jeff Latimer

Thank you very much for your question, Mr. Desilets.

I would agree that there are significant issues in the way in which COVID-19 data is collected in the jurisdictions and reported federally. I highlighted a couple in my opening remarks.

There really are no common data standards and data exchange standards across the country. I think that is a significant issue. The level of detail that is collected does not provide the important demographic breakdowns that would be required. As well, personal identifiers at the federal level are also not available. That linkage would be a significant savings and a way in which we can fill in data gaps through record linkage with our existing data holdings.

Therefore yes, I would agree with that statement.

1:45 p.m.

Bloc

Luc Desilets Bloc Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC

In a developed country like ours, how do you explain the fact that we do not have a master plan, an integrated plan, although we are well aware that, in the case of a pandemic such as the one we are experiencing, information is critical?

South Korea managed to establish a system that gave very precise guidelines in 24 hours. This is your area: perhaps you can understand it. Frankly, I cannot.

How is it that we have no integrated plan to transmit critical information?

1:45 p.m.

Director General and Strategic Advisor for Health Data, Statistics Canada

Jeff Latimer

Thank you for the question.

I do not want to speak on behalf of my colleagues at the Public Health Agency of Canada, but I will say that they are working on a strategy. We are collaborating with them every single day and working closely to help develop a national strategy that would address all of the issues I've highlighted.