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.
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
Thank you.
Both of you have commented on the profound and corrosive impact of entrenched racial wealth inequality and structural racism. I'm curious what the trend is. Is it staying flat? Are we getting better? Is it getting worse?
Second, in my limited time, I'd like to ask each of you this: If you were Prime Minister, Dr. Siddiqi, and if you were Minister of Finance, Dr. McKenzie, what would be your top two priorities for the federal government to start addressing this?
Chief Executive Officer, Wellesley Institute
We start with the Prime Minister, don't we?
Associate Professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, As an Individual
Thanks very much, both of you.
In terms of wealth inequity, it's very difficult to say, because we don't have good data. In the U.S., I could answer that question for you. In Canada, it's very difficult to say.
Generally speaking, on economic inequity, I can tell you, for example, that income inequality is rising. It's getting worse, and we think that for wealth inequality, only more so.... In fact, we have some evidence that it's the case. The racial divide is very difficult to calculate, because we don't have a lot of data.
If I were to suggest the top two things that we could do in our society, the first would be that we do something to close this wealth gap and to figure out ways in which families can have the economic security and the economic means to generate education, income, etc. To me, wealth inequality would be paramount. The second would be a tie between income inequality and the universalization of many of the services and the programs that we know help, such as access to education, including post-secondary education, and access at the other end to early childhood education and child care and so on.
Let me just say one thing about the basic—
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
Dr. Siddiqi, I'm sorry. I want Dr. McKenzie to have a crack at his two priorities.
Associate Professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, As an Individual
Sure. I'm sorry.
Chief Executive Officer, Wellesley Institute
To start off with, it's just to say if you look from the first generation to the second generation to the third generation, the rate of poverty for the black population of Canada increases. It's the only part of Canada where the poverty rate increases from people who are immigrants to their grandchildren, and that is a problem.
I believe that there are a lot of things we can do, but one of the things we have to do is that we have to raise the floor. One of the reasons why I was interested in social assistance and the basic income and other things like that is to raise the floor so that the gaps between rich and poor are decreased, and that will help racialized populations significantly.
I also think that we probably do need to start looking to a sort of more enforceable legislation, a sort of legislation with more teeth, that starts looking at racial equity. If you look in the Toronto area, the truth is, from studies from the United Way, that the racialized population has not had a pay increase in real terms in the last 30 years, and the gaps between them and other groups have increased over that time.
Chief Executive Officer, Wellesley Institute
Oh, yes. It's good to say that. I could have gone on forever.
The gaps increased over that time, so we have to decide what we need to put in place to stop that from happening.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, Mr. Davies, and thanks to all of you.
In particular, thank you to the witnesses, who have given us such great information. Thank you for sharing your time with us today.
With that, we will suspend and bring in a second panel. Thank you very much.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
The meeting is now resumed.
Welcome back to meeting number 32 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health. We're operating pursuant to the order of reference of March 26, 2020. The committee is resuming its briefing on the Canadian response to the outbreak of the coronavirus.
I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of the new witnesses. Before speaking, please wait until recognized. When you are ready to speak you can click on the microphone icon to activate your mike. I remind you that all comments should be addressed through the chair. Interpretation in this video conference will work very much like in a regular committee meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of either floor, English or French. If you plan to alternate from one language to the other, you will need to switch the interpretation channel so that it aligns with the language you are speaking. You may want to allow for a very short pause when switching languages. When you are not speaking, your mike should be on mute.
I would like to welcome our witnesses.
We have, from the Canadian Institute for Health Information, CIHI, Ms. Kathleen Morris, vice-president, research and analysis, and Ms. Mélanie Josée Davidson, director, health system performance. From the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, we have Ms. Colleen Merchant, director general of national cybersecurity, national and cybersecurity branch. We have Mr. Scott Jones from CSE, head of the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security. We have Chief Superintendent Mark Flynn from the RCMP, director general of financial crime and cybercrime, federal policing criminal operations. From Statistics Canada, we have Ms. Karen Mihorean, director general, social data insights, integration and innovation; Mr. Marc Lachance, acting director general, diversity and populations; and Mr. Jeff Latimer, director general and strategic adviser for health data.
Thank you all for being here. We will start with our statements from witnesses. We will start with the Canadian Institute for Health Information.
Please go ahead. You have 10 minutes.
Kathleen Morris Vice-President, Research and Analysis, Canadian Institute for Health Information
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
On behalf of the Canadian Institute for Health Information, thank you for the opportunity to appear before the standing committee.
I am speaking to you today from the traditional territory of the Wendat, the Anishinabek first nation, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the Mississaugas of the New Credit. I recognize that this land is now the home of many first nations, Inuit and Métis people.
Since 1994, CIHI, as we're usually called, has been a leader in health data and information. CIHI is a not-for-profit independent body funded by the federal government and all provinces and territories. Our board of directors is made up of deputy ministers of health and other health system leaders, representing all regions of the country. CIHI has signed data-sharing agreements with every province and territory and several federal organizations.
Pan-Canadian health data is a shared responsibility between us and our partners at Statistics Canada, Health Canada and the Public Health Agency. Each organization has a defined role within the health ecosystem, with CIHI's focus on health care systems and their functioning.
For example, CIHI oversees data on hospitals and long-term care, health spending and workforce, and information on health system performance. Data is provided to us voluntarily by the provinces and territories. This allows the data to be aggregated and compared and for health systems to learn from each other. We also work closely with organizations that are international, such as the OECD and the Commonwealth Fund, which enables us to learn from other countries.
CIHI makes the data and information available to policy-makers, health system leaders, researchers and the public. Although we play an integral role in providing relevant and reliable data and analysis to policy-makers, we are neutral and objective in fulfilling our mandate. We neither create policy nor take positions on it. Ultimately, we work to help improve the health care system and the health of Canadians. Maintaining public trust is critical to our success. We're committed to protecting the privacy of Canadians and ensuring the security of their personal health information.
During COVID-19, CIHI's work has focused on three main priorities: first, maintaining the current data supply and looking for opportunities to improve; second, developing analytical products or services that assist with the COVID response; and third, to provide data and information quickly to those who need it.
Let me share one or two examples in each of those three priority areas.
In terms of maintaining and enhancing the data supply, we work closely with our data suppliers to mitigate disruptions to the data. We are pleased to report that hospitals and the majority of long-term care homes were able to complete data collection for the 2019-20 fiscal year within the normal deadlines. We also shared new standards to capture confirmed and suspected COVID cases in care facilities. This information will be critical as we look back at how our hospitals responded to the pandemic. We also created guidelines for race-based data collection in health in an effort to facilitate the collection of high-quality data, which I know was a focus of your earlier discussions.
The second goal is around providing analysis to support decision-making. During the early phases of the pandemic, we received many requests from those who were trying to project the need for hospital beds, for staff and for supplies such as ventilators and personal protective equipment. In response, we developed a tool to help those who are modelling to be able to deliver results at a local level. We also provided advice and facilitated the exchange of information among modelling teams working in different parts of the country. Most recently, we released a report that looked at Canada's pandemic experience in long-term care compared to that of other countries. The report found that early adoption of strict public health measures in long-term care was associated with fewer cases of COVID-19 and lower death rates.
Finally, our third initiative was around responding to requests. In addition, over the past few months CIHI has responded to more than 500 requests for information and data. The topics of these requests have changed over the weeks. Initially, they were very focused on describing the situation: how many cases, how many patients and how many hospitalizations. As time went on, we had more questions around long-term care. Most recently, the questions have focused on the reopening of the health system and ensuring that's done safely, and on the potential consequences of the shutdown on issues such as mental health, substance use and planned surgeries.
As we navigated the pandemic, working closely with our federal partners, it became apparent that there were several gaps in important data flows within and among health care systems in Canada. COVID-19 has highlighted some of these gaps, and we see them falling into one or more of three categories.
The first is gaps in data availability. These are real gaps. The data simply doesn't exist, as the panellists in the first half of this session may have highlighted. The gaps here could include information on supplies and equipment available in the system, or they could be gaps around the characteristics of long-term care homes, such as the number of patients to a room, the ownership models and the staffing ratios. We also saw significant gaps when we tried to examine some parts of the health workforce, such as the number of personal support workers and where they worked.
The second gap involves data that exists but that can't be accessed quickly enough to support decision-making. For example, we needed more timely hospital and emergency room data. This data is collected from hospitals across the country but does not flow in quickly enough to support pandemic-type decisions. To temporarily fill this gap and help the federal government understand whether hospitals were becoming overwhelmed with COVID cases, we created a dashboard report on the supply and use of hospital beds, ICU beds and ventilators. This report is updated manually on a daily basis by key contacts in the provinces and territories as well as CIHI staff.
Finally, some gaps exist because we can't integrate data. Information systems often can't speak to each other, sometimes because they use different standards, but sometimes the data doesn't include personal identifiers that allow this connection. For example, right now we can't follow a patient's full COVID experience from testing through to treatment and, hopefully, to recovery, because public health electronic medical records and health system records are fragmented.
CIHI is always working to enhance the scope and availability of Canada's health system data for analysis and decision-making. While there are many gaps, we recommend focusing on three.
First is comprehensive, timely and integrated health workforce data to support planning and policy.
The collection and analysis of health workforce data is fragmented and incomplete today. We need to capture additional professions in our current systems, such as respiratory technicians and personal support workers, to better understand both the mix of staff who provide front-line care and where they work. We also need to make sure that this data is linkable to data on the use of health services and to financial data systems. This could help identify infection rates in the health workforce, the use of overtime and the longer-term effects of COVID-19 on front-line workers.
The second gap is in the need for more complete and timely data on long-term care homes: the residents, the workforce and the facilities.
While there's excellent information on the clinical profiles of long-term care residents in most parts of the country, there are some significant gaps. We have little information about the residents' quality of life and care experiences before COVID, or how these might have changed during the pandemic. We also have limited information about the facilities themselves, the mix of staff who provide care, and the way infectious outbreaks are dealt with. It's important to recognize that while long-term care treats our most vulnerable seniors, many older Canadians live in a variety of different group care settings for which we have very little information.
The final area is a need for more timely and comprehensive data on hospital-based care and clinic services, both for COVID patients and for patients with other health conditions.
CIHI's hospital data provides deep insight into the number of Canadians treated and the type of care they receive, but this high-quality data is assembled by health information specialists after a patient is discharged from the hospital. To better manage our systems when they're facing emerging issues like COVID-19, but also the seasonal flu or the opioid crisis, we need to automate the flow of hospital data in real or near real time and have more information on patients when they're admitted.
Discussions around these actionable solutions are under way. The groundwork is there, but these solutions require the engagement of health system managers and health care providers, leadership from policy-makers and funding for the development and implementation of information systems.
Today we ask for your commitment and support. Better data allows for better decisions and, ultimately, healthier Canadians.
Thank you for the opportunity to present. I'd be pleased to answer any questions.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you.
We go now to the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, the RCMP and the Communications Security Establishment.
I believe Mr. Jones is going to start. Please go ahead for a 10-minute statement.
Scott Jones Head, Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, Communications Security Establishment
Good afternoon and thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members, for the invitation to appear today to discuss cybersecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic.
As mentioned, I'm Scott Jones and I am the head of the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security at the Communications Security Establishment. I'm very pleased to be joined by my colleagues: Chief Superintendent Mark Flynn, director general of financial crime and cybercrime from the RCMP, and Colleen Merchant, director general of national cyber security from the Department of Public Safety.
Our departments have distinct but complementary mandates as they relate to cybersecurity.
The CSE, reporting to the Minister of National Defence, is one of Canada's key intelligence agencies and the country's lead technical authority for cybersecurity. The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, or as I will refer to it from now on, the cyber centre, is a branch within the CSE. We defend the Government of Canada, we share best practices to prevent compromises, we manage and coordinate incidents of national importance and we work to secure a digital Canada.
Public Safety leads the Government of Canada's cybersecurity policy work. This involves the implementation of the 2018 national cybersecurity strategy and the coordination of government-wide efforts to help secure digital and cyber-assets through strategic-level initiatives. Public Safety also supports critical infrastructure protection and offers assessment tools to provide expert advice to owners and operators on how to improve their cybersecurity and cyber-resilience posture.
RCMP federal policing is responsible for the investigation of attacks against Canada's critical infrastructure—which includes the health care sector—in collaboration with the police of local jurisdiction. Additionally, the RCMP has its national cybercrime coordination unit, which is a national police service that coordinates the response of Canadian police agencies to cybercrime incidents. Together our three departments work with the greater Canadian cybersecurity community to protect Canada and Canadians from potential cyber-threats.
Today I would like to provide an update on what the current cyber-threat environment looks like in the COVID-19 pandemic and also highlight the important work that the CSE, the RCMP and Public Safety are doing to protect the Government of Canada and Canadians specifically in the context of the health sector.
Cyber-threat actors are attempting to take advantage of Canadians' heightened levels of concerns around COVID-19. Prior to, and amplified by, the pandemic, our lives are becoming increasingly reliant on digital communication. Cybercriminals are aware of this digital reliance and are seeking to take advantage of the current situation. More than ever, collaboration for cybersecurity is critical, whether it is for the cyber-infrastructure underlying the Internet of things, connected devices or for the applications supporting digital exposure notification. Designing solutions with cybersecurity in mind is a condition for long-term success.
From a government perspective, the underlying objective must be to protect Canadians online. These efforts are under way and they are significant, with the cyber centre as the lead for the federal government. Among these efforts, cybersecurity and cybercrime remain interconnected and remind us of the importance of pursuing those responsible through the criminal justice system.
Law enforcement remains a critical element of cybersecurity. As such, the RCMP federal policing program investigates the most significant threats to Canada's political, economic and social integrity, including cybercrime that targets the federal government, threatens Canada's critical infrastructure and the health care sector, involves the use of cyber-systems to facilitate or support terrorist activities and threatens key business assets with high economic impact.
The RCMP works with domestic and international law enforcement partners and with other Government of Canada agencies to ensure that the wide array of cyber-threats is not treated in isolation. Appropriate and timely information sharing is essential for investigation, which in turn contributes to improved cybersecurity for Canadians. For example, the cyber centre and the RCMP work together by sharing information about scams to warn Canadians and share indicators of compromise so they can be blocked and prevented. From a public safety perspective, they tackle these questions by engaging with stakeholders and fostering good discussions to identify problems and propose policy solutions.
The cyber centre is working tirelessly to raise public awareness of cyber-threats to health organizations by proactively issuing cyber-threat alerts and providing tailored advice to the health sector, government partners and industry stakeholders. Throughout COVID-19, the cyber centre has worked closely with industry and commercial partners to facilitate the removal of malicious websites, including those that have spoofed Canadian government departments and agencies. The cyber centre has also helped monitor and protect important Government of Canada programs against cyber-threats, including the Canada emergency response benefit web application. We have continued to evaluate cloud applications, including for the Public Health Agency, and enabled cybersecurity monitoring and defence for cloud usage across the government.
Individual Canadians, however, are also at risk. As people and organizations shift to working and learning from home, personal devices and home networks have become attractive targets. In response, the cyber centre has partnered with the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, CIRA, to create and launch the CIRA Canadian shield, a free DNS firewall service, which provides online privacy and security to all Canadians for free.
The cyber centre has also collaborated with the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. It is operated by the RCMP, the Ontario Provincial Police and the Competition Bureau, which are are Canada's trusted sources for reporting and mitigating mass-marketing fraud.
The Anti-Fraud Centre's primary goals are prevention through education awareness, the disruption of criminal activities and the dissemination of intelligence that enables law enforcement to identify organized crime involvement in fraud schemes.
Through targeted advice and guidance, the cyber centre is helping to protect Canadians' cybersecurity interests. I encourage all Canadians to visit getcybersafe.gc.ca and all businesses to visit cyber.gc.ca to learn more about our best practices that can be applied to protect you and all Canadians from cyber-threats.
Finally, the cyber centre has assessed that the COVID-19 pandemic presents an elevated level of risk to the cybersecurity of Canadian health organizations involved in the response to the pandemic. Cyber-threat actors know that the health sector is under intense pressure to slow the spread of COVID-19 and to produce medical treatments to prevent new infections and their spread. Hospitals and other front-line medical services are often vulnerable to malicious cyber-threat activity due to limited cybersecurity capacity.
We continue to recommend that Canadian health organizations remain extra vigilant and take the time to ensure they are applying cyber-defence best practices, including increased monitoring of network logs, reminding employees to be alert to suspicious emails and to use secure teleworking practices where applicable, and ensuring that servers in critical systems are patched for all known security vulnerabilities.
To further protect the health sector, Public Safety, in close collaboration with the cyber centre, is developing a Canadian cyber-survey tool to provide health sector organizations such as hospitals, doctors' offices and long-term care facilities, among others, with an easy-to-use tool to assess the cybersecurity of their organization. The survey can be completed in less than an hour and is completely voluntary. It will be used for two main purposes.
The first is to provide the organization with a report detailing any technical and cybersecurity program-related findings that could and should be addressed to enhance their cybersecurity. The second is to identify cybersecurity trends and common challenges in the health sector to help tailor cybersecurity engagements by the Government of Canada to strengthen the cybersecurity posture of the health sector as a whole. Public Safety is aiming to launch this survey tool in the coming weeks and will broaden the application of this tool to all 10 critical infrastructure sectors to examine the cybersecurity of all aspects of supply chains.
It should also be noted that the RCMP's national critical infrastructure team has worked with the Public Health Agency of Canada to share awareness material within the health sector. In addition, they have divisions across the country to continue to develop new partnerships within the health sector, increasing those organizations' situational awareness of the potential threat landscape.
Together, our three departments would like to note that even when all of the possible precautions are taken, if a compromise occurs, it is critical that organizations inform us of any cyber-incident they experience. Cybersecurity is everyone's responsibility, and it will take all of our expertise and collaboration to protect Canada and Canadians. The more we share, the better protected we will all be. If we don't share, then the next person who gets hit will be the next victim.
Thank you for the invitation to appear before you today. We will be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
StatsCan, please go ahead. You have 10 minutes for an opening statement.
Jeff Latimer Director General and Strategic Advisor for Health Data, Statistics Canada
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to appear before your committee as a representative of Statistics Canada. As a public servant, I am always grateful for these opportunities. I'm here with my colleagues Karen Mihorean and Marc Lachance. They will answer questions within their areas of expertise if required.
It's clear to us that the pandemic has raised significant concerns about the disproportionate impacts across Canada based upon socio-economic differences. Not all groups have been equally affected, and we have observed such impacts within our data, particularly among seniors living in long-term care facilities, health care workers, racialized communities, indigenous communities and those living in low-income households.
Before presenting a few key examples, it's important to highlight the data collection accountabilities related to COVID-19.
As you probably know, the provincial and territorial public health authorities are responsible for collecting and reporting within their jurisdictions on COVID-19 cases. The Public Health Agency of Canada is responsible for receiving this data from the provinces and territories and reporting at the national level. While Statistics Canada does not collect COVID-19 data directly, we do provide expertise and advice on gaps in existing data and on potential strategies to address such gaps, as well as data collection and data exchange standards.
I'd like to make one last point related to data collection before I provide examples. There are generally two methods: survey data, from a sample the population, and administrative data, typically from a census of all cases. COVID-19 data is collected through administrative data, which often has a number of limitations. In Canada, it is clear these data limitations are creating significant challenges.
First, there is a lack of common data standards and data exchange standards across the country, along with inefficient data processing and data quality concerns. Second, the lack of granularity in the data that is collected related to COVID-19 makes it difficult to answer key policy questions. For example, there is no data collected on such demographic characteristics as race, ethnicity or income, and no data on an individual's underlying health status. In addition, detailed geospatial data is not available to better understand the spread of COVID-19. Finally, and I think most importantly, the data submitted to the federal government does not include identifiers that could facilitate safe and appropriate record linkage with existing Statistics Canada datasets that could potentially fill these gaps.
That said, we have been actively collecting new survey data and analyzing our existing data to shed some light on the potential indirect impacts of COVID-19. During this time of social distancing, for example, 64% of youth are reporting substantial declines in their mental health status, compared with only 35% of seniors. The unemployment rate for students in May of this year was 40%, which is triple the rate reported last year in the same month. A similar pattern was evident among non-student youth as well. More than 70% of seniors in Canada over the age of 80 report at least one pre-existing chronic condition related to severe symptoms of COVID-19, which is more than double the rate among adults under 60.
If we look at the immigrant population, we see that employment losses during COVID-19 have been more than double compared with the Canadian-born population. We also know that before COVID-19, black Canadians were already experiencing unemployment rates twice that of the general population. The wage gap between these groups has been widening in recent years. Among black youth, almost twice as many report experiencing food insecurity as compared with other young Canadians. Visible minority populations, such as Chinese and Korean Canadians, have reported increases in race-based negative incidents over the last few months. One in ten women have reported being concerned about violence in their home during the pandemic.
If we examine the socio-demographic characteristics of long-term care workers, who are currently facing some of the most difficult challenges, we see that they are more likely to be immigrants, they are less likely to work full time, and they are more likely to earn less than the average Canadian. Indigenous men are two and a half times more likely to be unemployed. They earn, on average, 23% less than their non-indigenous counterparts. In almost all indicators, including health status and life expectancy, the indigenous population lags well behind Canadian averages.
The pandemic has shone a glaring light on many of these pre-existing social inequities that Statistics Canada has been tracking for decades. In order to respond to the need for more data, we have launched a number of rapid data collection vehicles, such as web panels and crowdsourcing surveys. The topics have included the impacts of COVID-19 on labour, food insecurity, mental health, perceptions of safety, trust in others and parenting concerns. Statistics Canada finished collection just yesterday, using our crowdsourcing surveys, to better understand the impact on persons with long-term disabilities. This data will be available in early August. It will include information on visible minority status as well as such other demographic markers as gender, immigrant status and indigenous identity. More data on mental health issues will also be made available in the coming weeks. It will provide breakdowns by gender diversity, immigrant status and ethnocultural groups.
In partnership with the provinces and territories, we have also significantly increased the timeliness of death data in Canada so that a clear picture of excess deaths during the pandemic can be estimated. We will be releasing this data publicly next month.
We are also partnering with the Canadian Institute for Health Information to examine in greater detail the issues among health care workers and long-term care facilities.
Finally, we are working with the Public Health Agency of Canada to make detailed preliminary data on the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases available to Canadians and researchers.
I'd like to thank you very much for your time. My colleagues and I are available to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you. Thank you to all the witnesses for their statements.
We will start our rounds of questioning and we will undertake to do two rounds. However, we are going to be short on time, so we're going to cut it down. In the first round, we're going to do five-minute time slots instead of six, and we'll start with Ms. Jansen.
Ms. Jansen, please go ahead for five minutes.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
Thank you very much.
I wonder if I might be able to begin my questions with Ms. Merchant. I have a question in regard to an issue that has had a bit of news.
On March 31, 2019, Canada's National Microbiology Lab sent 15 strains of Ebola and henipavirus to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for the purpose of gain-of-function experiments. In gain-of-function experiments, a pathogen is intentionally mutated for the purpose of seeing if it's more deadly or infectious. An ATIP was recently released that gave us some of the details of that transfer of those viruses to the Wuhan lab, but most of the important information was missing.
Since the government has stated repeatedly how it is committed to a whole-of-government approach to pathogen security, can you explain what part your department played in the investigation of this breach?
Colleen Merchant Director General, National Cyber Security, National and Cyber Security Branch, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness
Was that question directed to me?
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
Yes, Ms. Merchant. I'm wondering about the whole-of-government approach to pathogen security. Can you explain what part your department would have played in investigating this breach?
Director General, National Cyber Security, National and Cyber Security Branch, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness
That's something that I would not be able to answer. It sounds like it was not a cybersecurity issue. I would be happy to go back and see if someone else in the department would be able to answer that question.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
Is there possibly anybody else on the panel who might have some information in regard to that breach?
Director General, National Cyber Security, National and Cyber Security Branch, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness
I don't think so. Scott and Mark from the RCMP would not have information on that either.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
Okay.
We know that in 2014 China conducted a significant cyber-attack against the NRC and, despite this history, the NRC has partnered with a company connected to the Chinese regime, CanSino, to produce a vaccine in Canada. Are you concerned about this at all?
Director General, National Cyber Security, National and Cyber Security Branch, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness
From a cybersecurity standpoint, we're very concerned whenever there's an issue with the vulnerabilities in any of the information that may be transferred between organizations. From a telecommunications or a computer security aspect, we're always concerned, whether it's from here to another country or even within Canada.
To secure the infrastructure is where Scott Jones and his organization, the cyber centre, come in to provide the best advice and guidance to organizations such as the NRC.