Health Committee on Feb. 22nd, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome, everyone, to meeting number 20 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health.

The committee is meeting today to study the emergency situation facing Canadians in light of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Before we get going, I wish to emphasize that everyone has the right to participate fully in these proceedings in the official language of their choice. If, at any time, there is an interruption or problem with the translation services, I urge affected members to advise the chair or the clerk without delay. We will do our best to correct the situation.

At this time, I'd like to welcome our witnesses.

We have, as an individual, Dr. Gary Kobinger, professor, Université Laval. From the National Research Council of Canada, we have Mr. Mitch Davies, president. From the University of Alberta and Entos Pharmaceuticals, we have Dr. John Lewis, professor.

With that, I will invite the witnesses to make a six-minute statement.

Dr. Kobinger, please go ahead for six minutes, please.

[Dr. Gary Kobinger, Professor, Université Laval, As an Individual]

Good morning, everyone.

I was not expecting to start with a six-minute statement, so I will start by telling you that I'm a professor at Université Laval. Before that, I was in Winnipeg as the chief of the special pathogens program at the National Microbiology Laboratory, NML, which I headed for eight years. My expertise is in vaccine development.

Being from the NML, I led the group that developed the VSV vaccine the year after Heinz Feldmann left. The vaccine has now been licensed by the FDA and the EMA in Europe.

I believe I'm here to talk about vaccine manufacturing. I'm actually not too sure; I'm so sorry. I did agree to this with having little information, but I'm pleased to be with you. I'd be very happy to answer your questions.

Since I'm probably still within my six minutes, I will say that we have been facing many challenges, which I, personally, have seen on the international level. In full disclosure, I'm also a member of the advisory group STAG-IH. It is the main advisory group that advises the WHO at the executive director level in emergency operations. At that level, I have seen that there are challenges for many regions in the world, starting with southeast Asia when the first report of the virus emerged December 31, and then going throughout the world with all the different challenges that were faced and are still being faced at the world level.

In Canada, I was part of the vaccine task force, which I stepped out of voluntarily due to concern over transparency. I think it was, more widely, a public decision at the end. Most recently, following a discussion with journalists, I made a few public statements indicating my position that I strongly believe in Canadian capacity—as much in intellectual capacity as in manufacturing capacity. It's not like everything is available, but everything can be built. We have the knowledge here in Canada to develop those vaccines and bring them all the way to a completed phase three and licensure, and, ultimately, in good time, with improved manufacturing in Canada as well.

Part of my expertise also is in the development of therapeutics mainly based on medical antibodies, which touches a bit on the same technology as that of AbCellera, which you may have heard of, as well, as it received important funding from the Canadian government.

I think that will be it. I'm happy to talk about any of those subjects at the more regional, national or international levels.

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Doctor.

We will go now to the National Research Council of Canada and Mr. Mitch Davies, president.

Please go ahead, Mr. Davies, for six minutes.

[Mitch Davies, President, National Research Council of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the invitation to speak to you today about the National Research Council's role as part of the Government of Canada's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

I'd like to begin by acknowledging that NRC facilities are on the traditional unceded territories of many first nations, Inuit and Métis people. Their ancestral footsteps and rights extend beyond the boundaries that exist today, and we respectfully honour these peoples' rights, history and relationships with this land.

On the specific topic that's the subject of the committee's current study, I would like to address the NRC's role in the government's efforts to develop vaccines and therapeutics for Canadians, and to increase our country's domestic biomanufacturing capacity in the near and medium term.

The NRC is working with partners across government to advance research and development for vaccines and therapies to prevent and treat the spread of COVID-19 in line with the best advice provided by the Government of Canada's vaccine and therapeutics task forces. This includes the NRC's collaboration with VBI Vaccines, first announced in March 2020, to develop a vaccine targeting COVID-19 and related respiratory viruses.

The NRC is also supporting VIDO-InterVac at the University of Saskatchewan in the development and production of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate. Canada's support for VIDO-InterVac was among the first decisions made to support made-in-Canada vaccine projects.

Through the National Research Council's industrial research assistance program, we are working closely with made-in-Canada vaccine and therapeutics developers and providing more than $32 million to finance six of the most promising domestic vaccine candidates and four domestic therapeutics candidates to prevent and treat COVID-19.

In support of the government's effort to expand Canada's biomanufacturing capacity, the NRC is preparing to manufacture COVID-19 vaccines through the construction of a new "good manufacturing practices compliant" biologics manufacturing centre at our Royalmount site in Montreal. Once complete, the new biologics manufacturing centre will be capable of large quantity end-to-end production of vaccines, approximately two million doses per month, depending on the vaccine candidate.

I'm pleased to report construction of the new facility is on track for completion by the end of July 2021. The completion of technology transfer for specific vaccine and Health Canada approvals of both the facility and the vaccine and related manufacturing processes will then be the steps remaining to achieve production for use in Canada. To this end on February 2, the Prime Minister announced the signing of an MOU with Novavax to pursue the production of its COVID-19 vaccine at the NRC's biologics manufacturing centre. This is a significant milestone in this project, to be working with a vaccine producer with a product well advanced in the development process.

Finally, in support of Canada's biologics manufacturing capacity for research, the NRC is also building a permanent clinical trial material facility at our Royalmount site in Montreal. Once complete, this facility will be able to produce 500 litres of clinical trial materials per month to support future vaccine research and development in Canada.

Further to the work under way to assist in bringing vaccines and therapeutics to Canadians, I'd like to share specifics about the broader NRC contribution to deliver many other measures as part of the science, innovation and industry response to COVID-19, supported by close to $800 million in new funding.

Significant among these measures was doubling funding available to Canada's innovative companies through NRC's industrial research assistance program. This increased funding supported jobs and preserved value through the business and operational challenges caused by the COVID-19 economic downturn. In addition, the NRC leveraged its experience to build a made-in-Canada system to test lots of new-to-market critical PPE, representing over 120 million products that were made available to the Canadian marketplace to meet the needs of frontline health workers. We provided over 3,000 COVID-related advisory services to innovative firms, created close to 900 youth job placements and post-graduate employment opportunities, and supported over 2,200 firms and more than 26,000 jobs through the innovation assistance program.

In closing, I want to assure Canadians that the NRC has pursued many avenues to secure solutions to the many challenges brought on by COVID-19. We leveraged our long-standing relationships from labs to factory floors. I want to recognize the work of NRC employees across the entire organization who have worked tirelessly to deliver so many critical initiatives to support Canadians during this challenging time.

I thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today and I would be pleased to take your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you.

We'll go now to Dr. John Lewis, professor, from the University of Alberta, Entos Pharmaceuticals.

Please go ahead, Doctor, for six minutes.

[Dr. John Lewis, Professor, University of Alberta, Entos Pharmaceuticals]

Thank you, Chair. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I appreciate the opportunity to share our perspective today.

My name is John Lewis. I'm the founder and CEO of a Canadian company called Entos Pharmaceuticals. It's located in Edmonton, Alberta. I'm also a professor at the faculty of medicine and dentistry at the University of Alberta.

I've worked for many years as both an academic scientist and an entrepreneur, developing novel diagnostics for treatments for cancer, age-related diseases, and now COVID-19.

Entos Pharmaceuticals is an innovative Alberta-based biotechnology company with a track record in the development of state-of-the-art treatments for a wide range of diseases, using a platform we call “fusogenix”. It's a genetic medicines platform. Entos, in the context of the current pandemic, has developed a single-dose, fridge-stable, pan-coronavirus vaccine against COVID-19 that is about to start human clinical trials.

The fusogenix platform that underpins our COVID vaccine candidates was developed as a result of years of Canadian academic research, and our COVID-19 vaccine is manufactured in Canada for the benefit of Canadians and hopefully, potentially, the world.

We are rapidly approaching one year since the coronavirus outbreak was declared a pandemic. It's taken an incredible toll, domestically and worldwide, in terms of mortality and death, as well as having a staggering economic impact. Having access to a safe and effective vaccine remains our best hope for returning to normal, and I'm happy to say that the biopharma industry has risen to the occasion. Companies from around the world have worked faster than we ever thought possible on the development, evaluation, manufacture and deployment of COVID-19 vaccines. Remarkably, today there are two highly effective vaccines rolling out globally, with emergency use authorization in Canada, and there are several more under consideration. I'll repeat. This is astonishing speed, and I think the reason for this astonishing speed is twofold.

First, we've recently seen key innovations in genetic medicines. It's not by luck that the first two approved vaccines are both genetic-based, and genetic vaccines use RNA or DNA to safely teach our immune system to recognize and effectively defend against the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

These new-generation vaccines are much faster to develop, test and manufacture compared to traditional vaccines. They're also more effective. We've also learned that traditional vaccine development and manufacturing has moved at a significantly slower pace. Vaccines developed using traditional technologies haven't performed as well as the genetic-based vaccine against COVID-19, although obviously there's a lot of research and clinical trials yet to complete.

Importantly—and I'll come back to this—genetic vaccines can quickly adapt to a changing virus and its new, more dangerous variants.

I think the second reason that effective vaccines are available within a year was the rapid, decisive and significant upfront investment in vaccine development and manufacturing made by countries such as the U.S. and the U.K. This approach of investing substantially in multiple vaccine platforms and efforts really recognizes the risk in pharmaceutical development that only some efforts will be successful. Most importantly, it allowed these companies to move quickly and boldly without financial risk. This is a key difference between these efforts and Canada's domestic vaccine response. It's one that I'm going to be talking about because it directly impacted Entos.

This brings me to the question on many people's minds. Why has Canada lagged behind other countries such as the United States and how do we get back on track?

From my vantage point as a small but dedicated biopharma company working literally 24 hours a day, seven days a week since last March on a COVID-19 vaccine, the answer is pretty obvious. Canada was slow to make the initial decisions for domestic vaccine development and manufacturing. Despite having internationally recognized expertise in vaccine development and manufacturing in Canada's innovative companies—we have Nobel prizewinners in infectious disease, we have vaccine pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity—we took a careful, risk-averse and committee-based decision approach that led to a relatively modest amount of scattered funding for companies in Canada to develop domestic vaccine. This put the financial risk of vaccine development and our country's national security on them, which I think was a mistake.

When the pandemic hit, we at Entos recognized that our fusogenix DNA technology could address key limitations in genetic RNA vaccines, namely the limitations in storage and stability, and rapidly scalable manufacturing. We completely pivoted our research and development operations, from developing gene therapies for cancers and rare childhood disease to developing COVID-19 vaccines.

Using our own internal funds, and at considerable financial risk, we developed a couple of lead COVID-19 vaccine candidates that, on the science side, induced strong, neutralizing antibody response and durable, cell-based T cell response against the COVID-19 virus in animal models. We've invested heavily over the past year in good, clinical manufacturing, established a clinical production pipeline, and performed all the clinical, regulatory and toxicology assessments that we needed.

Unfortunately, this pandemic is not ending anytime soon. Vaccine manufacturing and deployment is going slower than expected, and not just in Canada. I think Canada missed the opportunity to get on top of the first wave, but there is still time to act and catch the second wave. I think with bold leadership and a swift commitment on the vaccine manufacturing industry to bring it up to world-leading standards right now, we can still make a difference to Canadians in this pandemic and we can prepare for the next pandemic. I think the time to do this is now. It's not too late for Canada to invest in the development and manufacture of Canadian-based genetic vaccine technologies.

I have three recommendations I'd like to put forward to the committee.

First, provide substantially increased funding for private Canadian biotechnology companies to remove the financial risk to rapidly develop and manufacture made-in-Canada COVID-19 vaccines. Second, financially support the expansion of genetic vaccine manufacturing capacity across Canada. Third, support an innovative procurement agreement for Canadian pharmaceutical companies that will make these innovations available to Canadians.

I hope these recommendations will provide an opportunity for the Canadian biopharma industry to raise more capital and take their successful Canadian products through the clinical trials, positioning Canada as a world leader in biological and genetic-based medicines.

Thank you so much for your attention, and I'm happy to answer questions over the hour.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Doctor.

We will start our round of questions. We'll start with Mr. Maguire, I believe.

Mr. Maguire, please go ahead for six minutes.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses.

Mr. Kobinger, you quit the vaccine task force for lack of transparency. Did you ever raise these concerns with anyone in Mr. Bains' office, or with anyone within the government, and if you did, what did they say?

[Dr. Gary Kobinger]

I did have many discussions with Roger, who was acting as the secretary, the coordinator, of that committee. That was mainly over the phone. I did communicate my concern also in several emails.

I'll go back to my concerns. The task force was formed in June 2020, but was not known publicly until weeks had passed. After that, the members of the committee did not want it to be made public. After that—and this is from internal discussion—they refused to make their conflicts of interest public. This was going against every community advisory group I had been on, and I did communicate those concerns to Roger—and that's it.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Thank you.

There are a lot of billions of dollars being lost in Canada, and a lot of people still losing their lives. We're way behind almost any comparable country, and every day we keep losing dollars, but more particularly, the lives of individuals.

The Liberals kept touting a robust vaccine portfolio, but to date there hasn't been a large number of needles being put in arms. We're getting another 400,000 or 500,000 today for this week, which gives us about 1.6 million to two million vaccines in the next month. The Americans are doing 1.6 million arms per day.

I'm just wondering if you can talk to that part about the portfolio being big, but there is nothing being developed, nothing going into arms.

[Dr. Gary Kobinger]

Yes, I will add that actually I did appreciate everything that Dr. Lewis said. I think he's spot on.

What you can see after just a few minutes in this discussion is that there is a disconnect between, for example, what was stated by NRC, that everything is done and that the best six vaccines are advancing, and the reality that the vaccines are not being made available to Canadians.

Just to add to this, we are the first and only team as of now that has brought the vaccine from the lab all the way to licensure. Of course, Merck did help, of course Merck did a lot of projects, but this vaccine was born here in Canada. We have the experience in how to do this. We have prepared for this. We had a Zika vaccine in six months in the clinic, using a DNA platform. This was published. This was public.

Before that we did others, and we got to COVID and we had a vaccine against COVID, which is the same platform that we knew worked against SARS. In early 2001, I was at NML. It was ready in mid-February 2020, and we couldn't find funding.

It was my fault also because I did participate in the task force, and that was excluding me from the only real funding track that could have brought this vaccine to the clinic. I did it knowing that it would hamper my team, and it would be an end to that, but I was really hoping that, above all, these people would find a solution that—

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Therefore, it has never been developed by Health Canada.

[Dr. Gary Kobinger]

It has never been funded at all. We received $1 million to do the pre-clinical study. The only track we had then to go and get money was the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, CIHR. We applied first and they said there was not enough preliminary data. We got back with all the preliminary data.

By the way, our vaccine has the same potency as one of the commercial mRNA vaccines, which I don't want to name, in pre-clinical data in animal models.

We went back to CIHR and we were told two things. We were told we were too late, because the mRNA vaccines are working and no other vaccines are needed. The second thing we were told was that we didn't have experience in phase three clinical trials, which by the way, nobody has in Canada but Medicago, so if that was the requirement, then nobody should be funded now.

Therefore, here we are.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Thanks for your time.

Mr. Lewis, do you ever get a chance with anyone in either the minister's office or the Prime Minister's Office to stress the importance of getting the funding out the door to Canadian pharmaceutical companies?

[Dr. John Lewis]

Obviously we've been busy developing a vaccine and getting our manufacturing up to speed, but absolutely, we've exhausted pretty much every connection that we had to try to reach members of the government, including a letter directly to the Prime Minister's Office.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

If that funding was made available to Canadian pharmaceutical companies right at the very beginning of the pandemic, how much further ahead would we be in getting the Health Canada approvals now?

[Dr. John Lewis]

I'd love to put that in perspective. It's estimated at between $350 million to $600 million to bring a vaccine all the way from discovery to the end of phase three and licensure. A small smattering of this funding was offered to companies throughout Canada—through the NRC, for instance, a maximum of $5 million to get to the end of phase one. That really put the major part of the burden of development on the companies themselves.

To finish your question, yes, I think if we had received upfront funding at the beginning—and Gary sounds as though he has a fantastic solution as well—we'd be well into phase three toward licensure by now.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Thanks.

Last Friday, the committee passed a motion to review the various vaccine contracts that the Liberals have signed. There has been a huge lack of transparency in those contracts right to this date, and that's why we're pleased that the committee passed the motion.

As someone developing a vaccine and just as a Canadian yourself, what do you think we as parliamentarians should be looking for in those contracts to determine if the government's vaccine strategy was a success or a failure?

[Dr. John Lewis]

I can't answer, as I'm not a vaccine procurement specialist, but I would say it's more a question of logistics. Expecting other countries to develop and manufacture vaccines and not prioritize their own population over other countries was a little misguided.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Maguire.

We will go now to Mr. Kelloway.

Mr. Kelloway, you have six minutes, please.

[Mike Kelloway, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair; and thank you to the witnesses for being here today.

Folks, access to vaccines is top of mind for all Canadians. I believe in our strategy when it comes to domestic vaccines and therapies and our decision-making process and the supports that have been put in place to help Canadian companies working to find solutions to COVID-19.

Our government's objectives from the early days of the pandemic were actually threefold: to secure access to the leading international vaccine candidates; to invest in the most promising Canadian vaccine and therapies; and to make strategic investments to rebuild Canada's domestic biomanufacturing capacity.

Mr. Mitch Davies, my questions will be directed to you.

Our government invested over $23 million through the NRC industrial research assistance program to support Canadian companies responding to COVID-19. The NRC indicated that it was using this funding to provide advisory services and research and development funding to six companies for their COVID-19 vaccine candidates.

I have three questions, and please feel free to do a deep dive on the three of them. Number one, can you comment on the development status of any of these vaccine candidates? Number two, can you describe Canada's past and present pharmaceutical and bioproduction landscape? Number three, in your opinion, what does Canada need to do to rebuild, or build up, its pharmaceutical sector and bioproduction capacity to manage future variants and pathogens?

[Mitch Davies]

I'll start with the question of the long-term biomanufacturing capacity in Canada. It's a matter of great importance, and in fact, the government recognized in the fall economic statement that a full plan and full engagement with Canadians, which is now under way under the leadership of Innovation, Science and Economic Development to build that capability out in terms of productive capacities, was necessary. In fact, it's necessary because we have all of the intellectual leadership, the scientific leadership and the capability in terms of research and breakthroughs, which is demonstrated by the candidates that we're supporting through NRC IRAP and other vaccine projects that are under way in Canada, that we can deliver the end-to-end solution to Canadians.

Certainly it's something that this COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated for us, the need to catch up and make significant investments, which, of course, the government has indicated it's prepared to follow through on and is doing. For example, the biologics manufacturing centre the NRC is currently constructing will be a long-term facility that will be available for pandemic use and be a reserve capacity for the country.

I would say that, concerning the vaccine candidates that we're working with through the NRC IRAP, we're in close contact with each of them, following their clinical progress and following their pursuit of their study, and again, we'll be prepared to follow up and work with them on an ongoing basis to support their needs going forward as they have success in their development programs. Obviously, this will establish a strong group of made-in-Canada candidates with Canadian IP with the ability to pursue those projects for Canadians.

[Mike Kelloway, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Thank you so much.

Mr. Chair, I can yield the floor. I had three questions and I appreciate the answers to those questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Kelloway.

We go, then, to Monsieur Thériault.

Mr. Thériault, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I thank the witnesses for coming to enlighten us today.

The important thing in the crisis we are going through is not to make the same mistakes again. It's not a question of pointing out mistakes complacently, but rather of pointing them out so that we can improve and ensure that we can get through this crisis and never find ourselves in such a situation again—which I anticipate, by the way.

Dr. Kobinger and Dr. Lewis, in connection with what you said, I deduced that this situation could have been very different in terms of research and life sciences. We were talking about a $23-million investment. Is that enough to deal with a pandemic like the one we're experiencing? In my opinion, to ask the question is to answer it.

Dr. Lewis, you were talking about substantial investments. In order to really have a strike force to deal with such a pandemic and to work with the dynamic forces in the field, how large should these investments be?