Health Committee on Feb. 22nd, 2021

[Marcus Powlowski, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

We have been much criticized for the fact that we don't have the capacity, that we don't have anyone here in Canada manufacturing one of the vaccines.

In your opinion, is there any facility in Canada that, if it had the secret formula and the co-operation of one of the manufacturers that have come out with a vaccine that has been successful through phase three trials, and we were to give it that secret formula through voluntary licensing, contracting or compulsory licensing, would have the capacity to start producing vaccines faster than we can get them in from other countries through contracting as we're doing now?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I'm sorry, Doctor. Your time is up. We're really short of time.

[Marcus Powlowski, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

You had the yellow card up. I wouldn't mind an answer to it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

We could have a very quick answer. I was using my cards for a five-minute slot, but we're on a four-minute slot, so I apologize.

Could we have a quick answer, if you please?

[Mitch Davies]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think I would refer to the vaccine task force and the position it took in terms of what was the fastest path to getting large-scale numbers of doses into Canada, and that was to acquire them. Those are the doses now coming into Canada. They have been coming in since December, and, of course, will be ramping up. Obviously, they can't come fast enough. There's not a Canadian who wouldn't want those doses to be here more quickly, but that was the strategy it recommended the government adopt, and the government pursued that strategy through the APAs it signed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you.

We now go back to Mr. d'Entremont for four minutes.

Go ahead, please.

[Chris d'Entremont, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Davies, when it comes to the construction, you're saying the construction's going to be ready by July 2021. When did construction begin, and when could the Royalmount facility conceivably be constructing or getting vaccines out the door?

[Mitch Davies]

The construction at the Royalmount site started last summer. I assure you that it has been proceeding at a very rapid pace under circumstances that are very unique. We're building a building under COVID-19 health protocols. We have to have due regard for the health and safety of the workers, and I think they have made astonishing progress to date. Again, we're very hopeful to be on track and to have construction complete by the end of July.

There will be 250-odd pieces of unique equipment purchased, which will have to be installed in that building. It's quite a massive undertaking in terms of scope.

[Chris d'Entremont, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Pfizer was able to upgrade their facility in just a few months.

I know you're saying they're going at a fast pace, but quite honestly, why can Pfizer do it so quickly whereas NRC/Canada cannot?

[Mitch Davies]

Mr. Chair, in our case our facility started with a green field of grass, and that explains the scale and scope of what we're undertaking. The fact that it is now a completely enclosed building with HVAC systems and walls, and equipment being procured, stored in facilities and ready to be installed is actually quite a solid accomplishment under the circumstances. Again, we don't take any of this for granted. It's a very complex undertaking.

Biomanufacturing is a very exacting business. Ultimately, we're going to need Health Canada's approval and certification of that facility, and then certification subsequently of the production process of any given vaccine in Canada. We don't take any of those things for granted. There's no pass with Health Canada. The bar doesn't change.

[Chris d'Entremont, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Very quickly, on that issue, if your construction is done in July, how long would it take—I'm sure you have a ballpark figure—for Health Canada to approve that?

[Mitch Davies]

Of course, Mr. Chair, I can't speak for Health Canada and I'll be very careful not to do anything to suggest that I do.

Obviously, we'll be working towards having engineering runs at the facility by the end of the year that then would be available for evaluation. This facility will be very important as we work towards the scenarios that we face with COVID-19, potentially having to provide an annual vaccination to deal with the variants that are emerging, and obviously to provide a long-term biomanufacturing capability for Canada that's available in the circumstances that we've faced over the last year.

[Chris d'Entremont, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

My next question is to Dr. Lewis.

I know I'm running out of time.

You talked about more resources, and you have three particular recommendations on how to do this better.

Is NRC involved in the work that you might want to see happen? Do they play a part in that, or is there a bigger player that we need to engage in this?

[Dr. John Lewis]

Absolutely. We've been engaged, as has been mentioned, over the timeline. The vaccine task force did select six companies to be supported by NRC IRAP. Entos Pharmaceuticals was one of those companies. We have been working closely with some fantastic people at NRC to help us with our clinical program for bringing our vaccines to phase one clinical trials. We've received commitments of support up to $5 million to do that. Obviously, all the people working on this task are extremely dedicated, and we have gratitude for that support.

Again, and we're going to get there, we're going to get through phase one. We're talking with NRC about funding the phase two part of it. However, in the interest of speed, this needed to happen at the outset, from the very beginning, to fund the full process from beginning to end so that we could take that risk and move quicker.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. d'Entremont.

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

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Doctor Kobinger, you recently said: “Canada's approach is we're going to let others develop and we're going to buy cheap. It's a developing country approach.”

I guess the fact that Canada is the only G7 country to take doses from COVAX is an illustration of this.

This approach is not new. As in many other areas, especially basic research, the pandemic has shown us that chronic underfunding over the past several decades and under several governments has caused the current situation.

Can you tell us more about the effects of this underfunding of basic research on the ability to deal with COVID-19 and to produce vaccines that match the expertise of our researchers?

[Dr. Gary Kobinger]

Thank you for your question.

There have, however, been some major investments, notably in AbCellera. The National Research Council of Canada, NRC, received $56 million for the vaccine from CanSino Biologics, which went nowhere. There have been other major investments.

One of the main challenges is not the investment itself, but rather how investments are sent to the right places and how they are monitored.

There's a lot of talk about NRC having to build capacity. This model does not exist in any other country. One federal department waits for approval from another federal department to produce vaccines that, in very few cases, cause serious side effects. There needs to be compensation for people who have these side effects. To my knowledge, the federal government cannot be sued.

I don't know how this model will work. However, it didn't work for ZMapp, by the way.

I hope it will work this time, but we seem, once again, to have put all our eggs in one basket to solve the current crisis.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Thériault.

I apologize to Mr. Fisher. I jumped right over him.

We'll go back to Mr. Fisher now for four minutes, please.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. It's always great to hear Mr. Thériault.

I want to thank the witnesses for being here.

Dr. Lewis, I want to thank you as well for all the work you've done on cancer research. I've read up a bit on you, and it's quite astounding what you've accomplished. Thank you for that.

Mr. Davies, I know there have been significant investments in domestic vaccine production, whether we're talking about the National Research Centre's $170 million, the Novavax partnership project at the University of Saskatchewan, Precision, Medicago, AbCellera or Entos, all the different groups that we've invested in. Maybe you can expand on that, but also talk about the importance of those investments and what they might yield down the road.

[Mitch Davies]

I can highlight three of those investments because they're each very interesting in terms of capability that's possible for Canada in the future.

For example, Medicago is working on a unique virus-like platform based in plants. Obviously it has been supported to build out its productive capacity, which, when it comes online—and obviously presuming there's a successful process to approve the vaccine—would provide a very considerable amount of future biomanufacturing capability for Canada, based on the novel vaccine platform technology that Medicago has been developing for many years.

PNI was mentioned as well as a leader in terms of the lipid nanoparticles, the new type of mRNA vaccine, in an area where there's significant Canadian leadership, in fact, and a long-standing leadership of companies in Canada in this space. It is new and it obviously has been the news of COVID-19 in terms of technological development that these new types of vaccines are very important in terms of responsiveness. That capability will be there in the future for Canada.

VBI Vaccines is working on a platform that they're intending to address a broader spectrum of coronavirus as well, including SARS and MERS. Again, it's another very important Canadian technology developed in Ottawa at their research centre and will be able to be advanced for the future.

These do obviously give a sense of the capability in Canada and, of course, the funding that has been provided will allow those capabilities to be advanced considerably in this time.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you for that.

A lot of people will ask why we will need this in the future and why we need this first of all. We want to return to a time where we have domestic capacity to develop and manufacture vaccines for future viruses, but also for COVID in the future.

In my remaining time, could you touch on the value of that and the understanding that it's not just that we're going to have Canadians vaccinated by September so we won't need anything else? Could you also talk a bit about the potential future need for Canadians for vaccines and the ability to manufacture them domestically being of the utmost importance?

[Mitch Davies]

Mr. Chair, I'm not sure if that question is directed to me, but I would say that the biologics market and global outlook are very strong. I think the RNA/DNA medicine area, which has been mentioned by Dr. Lewis, is obviously an area of high potential, not only for treating viruses of the kind like COVID-19, but for a range of diseases.

I think this platform is very powerful for the future, and obviously these investments now in supporting Canadian companies to realize their objectives will set us up well across a whole broad spectrum of products that the world will need and that Canadians will need. It's actually quite encouraging that we have such strong capabilities in our country, and obviously we're pleased to support those companies.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

We'll go now to Mr. Davies.

Mr. Davies, please go ahead for two minutes.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

Dr. Kobinger, drawing on the advice of the vaccine task force last September, the federal government pre-ordered 72 million doses of the vaccine candidate developed jointly by GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi. That represents Canada's second-largest vaccine supply agreement. Of course, that vaccine development has suffered from significant delays after failing to produce a strong immune response in trials.

Dr. Joanne Langley, one of the task force's co-chairs, holds a $700,000 research chair at Dalhousie partly funded by GlaxoSmithKline, and she has worked with Sanofi on research and as a consultant. According to the task force's website, there were no “direct, material linkages”, no conflict of interest and no need for her to recuse herself from discussing the company's product.

At the same time, in February we received evidence that the federal vaccine task force determined that co-chair Mark Lievonen, who was the CEO of Sanofi Canada for 17 years until 2016, who still owns shares in Sanofi, who is consulting with drug companies and who remains the director of two other drug companies, also had no direct, material conflict of interest in assessing the Sanofi vaccine.

Is it possible to say with certainty that conflicted members did not provide biased advice with respect to vaccine procurement in these circumstances?