Evidence of meeting #29 for Health in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was vaccines.
A video is available from Parliament.
3:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, Mr. Davies.
That brings round three to a close. We'll start round four with Mr. d'Entremont.
Mr. d'Entremont, please go ahead for five minutes.
3:10 p.m.
Conservative
Chris d'Entremont Conservative West Nova, NS
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I might as well kick off where my colleague finished up, which was looking at a fourth wave. We're out of control right now in the third wave, by the look of it. The second wave wasn't done before we hit the third wave. What does the modelling say on when the fourth wave might hit?
That is for Dr. Tam.
3:10 p.m.
Chief Public Health Officer, Public Health Agency of Canada
That's a great question.
The focus of everyone right now should be getting that third wave all the way down. You've seen, with the second wave, what happens when you're two-thirds of the way down and relax things. You can imagine the same thing happening on the way down; if you relax before you get to the bottom, that's what's going to happen.
3:10 p.m.
Conservative
Chris d'Entremont Conservative West Nova, NS
Do we qualify ourselves as being out of control right now? Ontario is projecting somewhere close to 15,000 people. I would suggest that it sounds a little out of control. We're great here in eastern Canada, but if Ontario loses track of things, I think we're in a bit of trouble here.
3:10 p.m.
Chief Public Health Officer, Public Health Agency of Canada
The situation right now is very concerning, and some of the key indicators are not just that the case rate is escalating so fast with Rt, which another member has already flagged, but also the hospitalizations and ICUs and the fact that the Ontario modelling alone is projecting an overflow of that capacity soon. That is extremely concerning, and jurisdictions need to apply those public health measures fast, as we previously talked about in our modelling.
3:10 p.m.
Conservative
Chris d'Entremont Conservative West Nova, NS
If we talk about variants for a second, we're tracking—give or take—three variants right now in Canada. Because of this uncertainty, because of the distance between the vaccinations and the possibility of a third booster shot, what are the chances of another variant showing up and causing us even more grief?
3:10 p.m.
Chief Public Health Officer, Public Health Agency of Canada
The virus is always undergoing evolution, and we're monitoring this not just in Canada but around the world. There is a distinct possibility for other variants to occur, although the virus seems to be homing in on a couple of very key mutations that are common to a number of these variants, so we might be seeing the virus settling down on some of those mutations. We just have to keep track, and we are doing all the mutation analysis, the screening and the genomics analysis. We may have to modify the vaccines accordingly. We will have to see about that.
3:10 p.m.
Conservative
Chris d'Entremont Conservative West Nova, NS
As we talk about vaccine supply and vaccines being available, I know, Minister Anand, that you are going to have to be very busy in keeping track of the second dose and the third dose and all that stuff. When are we going to be seeing a domestically produced vaccine available here in Canada?
3:10 p.m.
Liberal
Anita Anand Liberal Oakville, ON
The Government of Canada has put $126 million into the NRC facility in Montreal and has an MOU with Novavax. If all goes well and materializes, there will be domestic production, hopefully, later this year.
3:15 p.m.
Conservative
3:15 p.m.
Liberal
Anita Anand Liberal Oakville, ON
This is not my portfolio, however. It's François-Philippe Champagne's, so I defer to him in terms of the status of the negotiations on that front.
3:15 p.m.
Conservative
Chris d'Entremont Conservative West Nova, NS
My final question is for Minister Hajdu.
When it comes to the issue of the other pandemic that's going around, we had the radiologists in here last week, talking about deferred tests and surgeries, with almost 380,000 Canadians waiting for some kind of treatment. How are you dealing with the provinces and your colleagues? Is it a Canadian problem or is it going to be pushed back onto the provinces?
3:15 p.m.
Liberal
Anita Anand Liberal Oakville, ON
Mr. Chair, I'm going to have to step away. Thank you so much for the opportunity to take the members' questions. I really appreciate it. Take care.
3:15 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, Minister. I appreciate your time here.
I understand that Minister Hajdu has to leave as well, so I would like to thank her as well for her time. We appreciate it.
3:15 p.m.
Conservative
Chris d'Entremont Conservative West Nova, NS
Can we have a quick answer there, just a little answer?
3:15 p.m.
Liberal
Patty Hajdu Liberal Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON
I'll give you a quick answer, absolutely, MP. Thank you very much. I'll just say that when you mentioned the other pandemic I thought for a moment that you would be talking about the drug overdoses and the crisis that has been going on in this country for so long.
3:15 p.m.
Liberal
Patty Hajdu Liberal Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON
We are working on that as well.
Thank you very much, everyone. Have a great evening.
3:15 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, Ministers.
Mr. d'Entremont, your time is up, although I gave you a little extra time. If you can get an answer to that question, I'll certainly invite anyone who wishes to answer to do so.
3:15 p.m.
Conservative
Chris d'Entremont Conservative West Nova, NS
Does someone have an answer for that?
All right. Thanks, folks.
3:15 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, Mr. d'Entremont.
We'll go now to Mr. Kelloway.
Mr. Kelloway, please go ahead for five minutes.
3:15 p.m.
Liberal
Mike Kelloway Liberal Cape Breton—Canso, NS
Thank you, Chair.
My questions will be for Dr. Tam. I had several questions, but I think I'll just focus on one or two.
Early on, Dr. Tam, when you started doing projections, you talked about some of the limitations of the data, because the federal government wouldn't have the same kind of data that the provinces would. Have you been able to address some of the data gaps with the provinces and territories? That's question number one. Also, if not, why are these national modelling projections important?
3:15 p.m.
Chief Public Health Officer, Public Health Agency of Canada
The whole public health system and other systems need to work together to get the data from the bottom up.
More than $4 billion was provided to the provinces. I was very happy about that, because it's not just about asking for the data. You need the capacity on the ground to do that. Through these investments, if you like, we have been able to get more information to fill in some of the gaps, but doing so requires collaboration across not just public health data but other research.
The modellers have been supported now by another huge investment in the modelling—the academic modelling that works. They thus have to do a lot of research to gather the parameters to fill in their models.
As you've seen, for those models there's collaboration with, for example, McMaster University and Simon Fraser. I believe those models are becoming increasingly robust, although very complex.
3:15 p.m.
Liberal
Mike Kelloway Liberal Cape Breton—Canso, NS
One of the benefits of asking questions later on in the session is that you get to hear a lot of great questions from a variety of folks on this panel to our witnesses. One thing that struck me was around vaccines. I'm wondering whether you or other witnesses can chime in on this.
By the way, my mother is receiving her first vaccine today, at the age of 80, and I have to check on her in a few moments.
We talked about how important vaccines are, and there are words such as “panacea” thrown out and things of that nature. Can you walk through for the Canadian public the importance of the vaccines and then the importance of the other measures? I think this is really important. One of my first questions was around how we approached in Atlantic Canada—and thank goodness it has worked to date—the importance of vaccines and also the importance of measures. Could you walk through that whole process of the importance of vaccine and what it means and the importance of the measures in collaboration with the vaccine?
3:20 p.m.
Chief Public Health Officer, Public Health Agency of Canada
Mr. Chair, I think the member hit the nail on the head, which is that these are layers of protection. If you think of all of these as layers that you put on to protect yourself and those around you, that's how we look at both public health measures and the vaccines.
Let's go to vaccines first. We have been incredibly fortunate in that we have a suite of vaccines, which we would never have imagined arriving so fast, and that they're safe. The vaccine effectiveness has been great. For our parents and grandparents, the vaccines have been very effective for this part of the population at the outset.
For those in long-term care facilities in particular, it's been very effective in reducing cases, reducing severity of illness and reducing the number of outbreaks in long-term care. That's the population that was most impacted at the start of this pandemic, and we're seeing the vaccines at work right there.
The provinces and territories are now readjusting their measures at those long-term care facilities, still with layers of protection, with the masking, hand hygiene and testing and screening as needed, and people are able to have more visitors, to see more of their family members. That's what vaccines are doing right now.
Health care workers, based on some data from our provinces, are well protected even after that very important first dose. Vaccines are thus definitely at work and are doing well.
As everybody has articulated, we need to ensure that people roll up their sleeves when their turn comes. Particularly at the moment, when the population in that protective layer of vaccines is escalating, public health measures are extremely important when variants are around. They mean that we need to get the cases down in your communities in order to protect everybody. Vaccines alone are not going to be able to do it, but they play a really key part.
I have to say that there are some very good early signals that not only do vaccines protect you against serious illness and death, but particularly some of the mRNA vaccines are demonstrating that you can probably cut down on the onward transmission as well.
We are, then, continually analyzing the data, but it's all really great news.