Health Committee on April 12th, 2021

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

The government said it would address the need for increased health and social service funding, but I gather you would like the funding now to ensure the response to the pandemic is sustainable.

Another priority is fixing the problems that had never been fixed. In other words, some 30 years of chronic underfunding had put a significant strain on the system. Fixing that means setting new priorities. The priority right now is health, and it has to be with all the collateral damage that's been done to the economy. Mr. Stanford and I can talk about that later.

Is that what you are asking for?

[Claire MacLean]

Absolutely. I think the funding is urgently needed, and we could use it immediately.

Something to keep in mind as well—as kudos to the economist at the table today, Dr. Stanford—is that in our organization, for example, 80% of the people we employ also live in our community, so investing in social services is also a fantastic way to invest in the economy of local communities as well. We tend to employ a significant portion of women, of working moms. This is something that gives back to local economies as much as it also sustains their social and health infrastructure.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Absolutely. Thank you, Ms. MacLean.

I don't have much time left, so I'm quickly going to move on to Ms. Hunka.

Ms. Hunka, where do you stand on a vaccine passport or an international vaccine certificate? A similar document could be required for attendance at large events.

What is your position on such a document? Do any challenges come to mind? I'd like to hear your views.

[Carmelle Hunka]

Certainly, the airport authorities do support the opening of safe travel corridors and the use of a vaccine passport or some type of notification that could identify vaccines. We feel that vaccine passports, in conjunction with continued testing, would enable the travelling public to gain confidence in us to provide a safe travel experience, so we would support such activity.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Would checking or validating vaccine passports or certificates pose any particular administrative challenges?

[Carmelle Hunka]

That would be an absolutely critical and important piece to the vaccine passport. We have seen that there has been very good enforcement with respect to the pre-departure PCR testing. We would consider that to be very important in order to ensure we have critical alignment with the vaccine passports, perhaps with people's own passports from Canada or elsewhere.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Thériault.

Mr. Davies, please go ahead for six minutes.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

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

Dr. Stanford, I will start with you.

In a January 16 op-ed in the Toronto Star, you wrote the following:

Anyone concerned about the economy should be pleading for fast, powerful lockdowns, not demanding a return to business-as-usual. The correlation between controlling contagion and economic recovery is clear across Canadian provinces: those with fewer COVID cases have achieved the strongest employment results since the pandemic hit.

Could you expand on that? Do you have any specific recommendations to give us, as federal politicians, for how we can implement that concept?

[Dr. Jim Stanford]

In that commentary, I was confronting the argument that has been heard from some provinces and some premiers that we cannot intervene to try to stop the contagion with effective measures because it would be too damaging to the economy. The evidence is clear, both interprovincially in Canada and internationally, that this view has it exactly backwards. The recovery of the economy absolutely depends on a fast and powerful effort to stop contagion, and that is what creates the conditions for a sustained reopening. This idea that we should just tolerate COVID in our communities in order to keep restaurants open and stores open and so on is very short-sighted. Internationally, that evidence is very clear.

I mentioned at the beginning that I do some work in Australia as well, where there has been a very strong and effective COVID response. The Australian economy is largely open now and back to pre-pandemic levels of activity. The same goes for other countries like New Zealand, South Korea and Taiwan.

In Canada's case, there are many different factors that affect the degree of contagion in different locations, but in the places that said, “No, we have to go easy on the shutdowns, because it's bad for the economy”, that approach has not panned out at all. If anything, their economic and employment results have been worse.

The health response is largely a provincial responsibility, so I guess the federal role here would be to support the provinces in trying to take the effective actions that are required, including income support measures and supports for small businesses that are affected and so on. That's how the federal government could facilitate the provinces in taking the stronger actions that are essential, if in fact we're going to protect both public health and the economy.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

In the Public Policy Forum you wrote:

In retrospect, both employers and regulators took the safety of many workers for granted when the pandemic first erupted. There were many occupations — from taxi and ride-share drivers, to meat-packing workers, to workers in crowded oil sands and farm labour camps — for which the risk of infection was obvious, but little was done until devastating outbreaks occurred.

What steps can the federal government take to ensure workers are better protected in the future?

[Dr. Jim Stanford]

Thank you.

First of all, I think it is definitely the case that the health response to the risk of workplace contagion was inadequate from the beginning. There was a considerable attempt initially to minimize the risks.

Perhaps among the worst possible examples is an instance such as that of the Cargill meat facility in Brooks, Alberta, or that of the Amazon warehouse in Brampton, Ontario. You don't need to be an occupational health and safety expert to understand that those were going to be very dangerous places during the pandemic, but regulators either wilfully ignored or soft-pedalled the sorts of steps that would have been required to protect the workers and their families and ultimately whole communities in those places.

The federal government has a limited responsibility for direct health and safety within the federal jurisdiction, so that's important. You can set a role model there with absolutely top-of-the-class workplace health and safety standards around contagion. Then again, you can facilitate the provinces in doing a better job, including through income supports. This will neutralize the false economy-versus-health trade-off that is still circulating.

Now we're in the midst of a third wave that obviously could have been handled much better if we'd been stronger on limiting contagion from the beginning. I think the federal government, by providing income support as well as regulatory guidance, has an important supplementary role to play in that effort.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

You've mentioned comparative examples. You also wrote that “formally structured voice mechanisms are on the wane in Canadian workplaces” and went on:

Elsewhere in the world, providing workers with regular, protected channels for voice and input is considered a basic democratic right, protected by law. In many European countries, for example, firms must establish works councils composed of elected employee representatives, who participate in certain workplace decisions and monitor local conditions and practices.

How does Canada rate in this regard, and do you have any suggestions to give the federal government for how we can improve our record in that regard?

[Dr. Jim Stanford]

This question gets at a remark I made in my opening remarks about the overlap between insecure and precarious forms of employment and enhanced risk of contagion in workplaces. In very insecure jobs, workers come and go. They are not treated as a lasting asset; they are treated as a disposable productive input. They're hired and fired on a just-in-time basis.

In that type of workplace, you do not get the stability, the training, the knowledge and the information flows that are necessary if all members of a workplace are going to respond to a challenge such as this pandemic. In this way, the conditions of precarious work make the problem worse. Even in permanent jobs, however, in Canada we have undeveloped structures for communication, input, guidance and voice between workers and managers and employers.

One exception to this, interestingly enough, is in the workplace health and safety area. All jurisdictions, including the federal jurisdiction, compel employers above a certain size to establish joint health and safety committees in their workplaces, precisely because they recognize that facilitating knowledge and communication is crucial for better safety outcomes. Those lessons could be applied and extended in the case of contagion, and indeed to other pressing workplace topics as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Davies.

We're almost out of time. I think we'll try to shoehorn in a very fast second round. We'll go forward with two minutes for each party.

We'll start with Mr. Barlow, please, for two minutes.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the opportunity.

I want to go back to Ms. Hunka.

You were talking about the success of the pilot program for testing at the Calgary International Airport. My colleague mentioned that the order in council on hotel quarantines is going to be ending on April 21.

I want to give you a chance to explain that a bit more. You could have a massive change in what your airport is going to be asked to do in nine days. Do you not have any information on whether that order in council is going to be extended and whether the pilot testing program will be reinstated?

[Carmelle Hunka]

We are continuing to support the testing program that will be at the airport, and we are actually utilizing the same testing facility that we are using for our employees. We will therefore continue to have that facility available. We have been incredibly resilient in providing for testing and being able to ramp up or ramp down.

We don't have any information as to whether it will be continuing. On the basis that we don't have that information, we are proceeding as if it will be continuing.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Were any concerns raised, Ms. Hunka, prior to the cancellation of the pilot test program? Everything I heard was that it was extremely successful, and you've talked about the test numbers, 0.69% on the second test and 1% on the first test. Everything I've heard of this testing program is that it was extremely successful. Do you see any reason for it to be cancelled? I know that this was a national issue, but were there any concerns raised with that program prior to the cancellation?

[Carmelle Hunka]

All indications were that this pilot program was successful, including the Public Health Agency of Canada's acknowledgement of the success of the program. As far as we were concerned, it was a highly successful program, but for consistency with the rest of the country, it was ended.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

I guess we could have taken that pilot program and put that across the country instead of imposing hotel quarantines, but thank you very much for your time, Ms. Hunka.

[Carmelle Hunka]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Barlow.

We go now to Dr. Powlowski. Please go ahead for two minutes.

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

My questions are for Dr. Stanford.

We talked a bit about Australia and how Australia seems to have done better than Canada. In Ontario, the ICUs are overflowing. We just instituted a stay-at-home order. What did Australia do differently in terms of implementing increased measures requiring social isolation? What did they do that we didn't do?

Second, in Canada, it's obviously a matter of provincial jurisdiction. Is it the same in Australia, with each state having to decide which measures to implement, and was there any federal oversight?

[Dr. Jim Stanford]

Those are great questions, Mr. Powlowski. Thank you.

On the jurisdiction issue, in Australia it's similar to Canada. The main health response was led by state governments, and they were in charge of all of the different features around distancing, lockdowns, testing, etc. The federal government did one thing: They closed the borders quite effectively early in the pandemic. In retrospect, that was a good thing to do. I know it was a hard decision.

Then it was up to the states, and they included border closures within the country that were much stricter than anywhere in Canada, other than in the Atlantic region. They've endured some really serious lockdowns. In Melbourne, Australia, there were 99 days when you were required to stay within five kilometres of your house and only very limited reasons you could leave it. It was stricter than anything we experienced, but it worked. Now they have the benefits of that sacrifice in other states as well. The Australian evidence is very clear: A forceful, powerful response to contagion is the best thing you can do for the economy.

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

Do I have any more time]?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

You have two seconds left. Thank you, Doctor.

Mr. Thériault, it is now over to you for two minutes.