Evidence of meeting #20 for Health in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was nrc.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:40 a.m.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
That's interesting. I'd like to see the minutes of that meeting. Do you think the minutes should be made public?
11:40 a.m.
Professor, Université Laval, As an Individual
It's not up to me. You would have to ask, but I think it would be normal, yes.
11:40 a.m.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
The person who would be in charge of that is here today.
Mr. Davies, since the NRC is in charge of the vaccine task force, can you please table all the minutes of the vaccine task force with the committee by the end of this week?
11:40 a.m.
President, National Research Council of Canada
I believe the vaccine task force is coming before this committee later in the week—
11:40 a.m.
President, National Research Council of Canada
—along with the secretariat. That would be a question you best address to them. As president of the NRC, I don't have any role or direct involvement in supporting the task force. It's operated at arm's length from me, with the secretary, and of course, supporting the task force members, who are all volunteers.
11:40 a.m.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
What role do you have with the vaccine task force then?
11:40 a.m.
President, National Research Council of Canada
From the perspective of the president of the NRC, obviously, our role is to provide administrative support for the committee, but it operates in accordance with its co-chairs and its members. That's how they proceed.
11:40 a.m.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
With regard to administrative support, would you take minutes of the meetings?
11:40 a.m.
President, National Research Council of Canada
The secretary of the vaccine task force would take minutes of the meetings, record all the deliberations, the outcomes, the advice letters to ministers, all the indications of conflict of interest and declaration of interest, and provide administrative support.
11:40 a.m.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Mr. Davies, will you commit to tabling the minutes of the vaccine task force with this committee by the end of this week?
11:40 a.m.
President, National Research Council of Canada
I'm not in a position to make that commitment, obviously. That would be a question that's best addressed to the vaccine task force in terms of what it would be prepared to share. Of course, given that it has a lot of confidential information that's been provided to it by vaccine makers, that's an important matter it has to take at its discretion.
11:40 a.m.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Dr. Kobinger, you can imagine my frustration in this situation.
Do you think that it's reasonable that the head of the NRC would perhaps provide parliamentarians with minutes of the committee that was making decisions on the vaccine for COVID?
11:40 a.m.
Professor, Université Laval, As an Individual
I would answer this way. I advised the committee to not only be very transparent with everything that touches the vaccine, which is the vaccine task force, but even to include a person from the media to record the meetings from the beginning.
This did not happen, of course. I was not necessarily expecting it, although it was—
11:40 a.m.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
So you did advise the government to release the minutes of the vaccine task force and/or have a journalist....Did the government tell you why it wouldn't do that?
11:40 a.m.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Do you think that perhaps Mr. Davies is in a position to provide these minutes to the committee?
11:40 a.m.
Professor, Université Laval, As an Individual
I'm sorry, I don't know the exact structure past the chair and co-chair, unfortunately. I don't exactly know how it works.
11:40 a.m.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Dr. Kobinger, do you think there's anything else that needs to be made public that came out of your time at the vaccine task force that parliamentarians on this committee should be reviewing?
11:40 a.m.
Professor, Université Laval, As an Individual
Initially, the first priority was to have access to vaccines from big pharma, which was done. The Canadian federal government did very well there by signing seven contracts.
The second priority was to build up from day one, not to wait to build up capacity in Canada. This meant that, from the beginning, there was a need to increase the volume of vaccine and manufacturing, knowing very well that PPEs had been an issue and would continue to be an issue.
11:40 a.m.
Liberal
Marcus Powlowski Liberal Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON
My questions are to Mr. Davies, at least to begin with. I'm interested in your existing capacity to manufacture vaccines.
The other Mr. Davies stated that the Prime Minister or you have said that we have the capacity to make 200,000 doses per month, and it could be ramped up by the end of 2020, the last year, to two million doses per month.
In your reply to Mr. Davies, you seemed to suggest that you could make an AstraZeneca kind of vaccine. I would assume, similarly, you could do the same thing for Johnson & Johnson, because again, its an adenovirus-based vaccine. However, you said AstraZeneca didn't seem interested in contracting with you.
If you were to have either a voluntary license to produce one of these adenovirus-based vaccines, or contract with one of those companies, or if you were to receive a compulsory license, say via the government, could your facility start producing vaccines? How fast could you start, and how many could you make?
11:45 a.m.
President, National Research Council of Canada
I just want to clarify that the two million doses per month that has been referenced by the honourable member and in the previous question relates to the Biologics Manufacturing Centre, which is now under way. Construction is going well. It will be completed by the end of July. Then we will begin a technology transfer process to position us to have engineering runs in production by the end of this calendar year. That is the facility on which we're working with Novavax under an MOU to pursue production at that facility.
Again, I think the distinction to be made here is that with that scale of production with the capability of our scientists at the Human Health Therapeutics Research Centre, Novavax was willing to embark because that was going to serve its commercial purposes, and, obviously, support making Canadian vaccine and its product in this country.
The question of the pilot plant is very different, and I think that's where there's a limitation in terms of what any large global manufacturer would do at that level of production with Canada. I think that opportunity has not presented itself, and I think there's good reason to explain why not, but, again, we're pleased that the large-scale Biologics Manufacturing Centre has made some progress with the recent MOU.
11:45 a.m.
Liberal
Marcus Powlowski Liberal Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON
So if you had a contract with someone like AstraZeneca, with the pilot plant, how many doses could you make per month at the pilot plant?
11:45 a.m.
President, National Research Council of Canada
Mr. Chair, the goal with the pilot plant would have been to be able to produce, for emergency use under emergency use authorization, something in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 doses per month if that could have been pursued. Obviously, that wasn't the position we were in last November, so obviously we will have that capacity and capability on an ongoing basis, but I can't reverse how the course of events occurred over the summer and into the fall. Again, there are certainly some very clear reasons as to why that was not necessarily the kind of opportunity that was going to attract one of the larger global-scale vaccine producers.
