Health Committee on Nov. 20th, 2020

[Dr. Stephen Lucas]

Mr. Chair, what I would indicate is that the government has committed to working with provinces and territories to develop long-term care standards. There are existing standards, and I think the intent is to work with the provinces and territories to look to where these can be strengthened—

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

Excuse me, Mr. Chair.

Could the deputy table those then with the committee, please?

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

I could answer that question, Mr. Chair, if that's okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Go ahead.

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

I'll just say that the development of long-term care standards would be done in partnership with provinces and territories. This is not something that the Government of Canada would impose on provinces and territories, but rather something it would work to co-develop.

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

Well then, Mr. Chair, has the minister advised her officials to begin drafting national guidelines for managing long-term care facilities during this pandemic?

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Mr. Chair, reviews have been ongoing with regard to how to strengthen protections in long-term care homes for seniors living in those residences, and that work began far in advance of our even talking about a national set of long-term care standards, as we worked to understand how to better protect long-term care homes in provinces and territories, including by providing the money for stronger infectious disease protocols.

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

To the deputy minister then, has your department provided any information to provincial governments on what the federal government's national standards would entail?

[Dr. Stephen Lucas]

Mr. Chair, as Minister Hajdu indicated, the government has clearly signalled that this work will be done in collaboration with the provinces. As Minister Hajdu noted, there was extensive work done to develop infection prevention and control guidelines for long-term care facilities. That was done through experts and with the special advisory committee that Dr. Tam chairs. That was provided to the provinces and territories and posted publicly in the spring.

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

This is for the deputy as well. COVID shone a light on how ill-prepared the long-term care facilities have been for dealing with the pandemic. We have four persons in a room, multiple seniors needing to share washrooms and that sort of thing. We need to modernize the long-term care facilities while protecting them from the outbreaks.

Have you given any advice to the government to suggest that changing federal infrastructure and COVID programs to allow long-term care facilities to apply for these funds could have positive public health outcomes? If you have, I wonder if you could just table that for the committee.

[Dr. Stephen Lucas]

I will respond and then, Mr. Chair, I propose turning to Minister Hajdu as well.

I would indicate that in the safe restart agreement, as part of that contribution provided to the provinces, one of the areas targeted long-term care and support for vulnerable populations. The government invested $740 million, and that included an ability to address a number of the challenges faced in long-term care, from infection prevention and control to the physical set-up of those facilities. That was an investment focused on enabling stronger protection for the residents.

With that, Mr. Chair, I'd like to turn to Minister Hajdu.

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

To finish the answer, because I think it's important, we have also revised some of the infrastructure spending, as you know, to create the COVID resiliency stream, which allows for provinces, territories and municipalities to actually apply to use money to strengthen long-term care homes or to do renovations in those homes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Maguire.

We go now to Mr. Van Bynen.

Mr. Van Bynen, please go ahead for five minutes.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for joining us again today, Minister. It's been a very busy time for you and the health officials who are here today, particularly Dr. Tam. I really appreciate your virtually stopping by York Region recently and for joining us a second time here in committee. I'm thrilled to have this opportunity to ask you the questions that I consider to be important to my constituents.

Minister, we are all aware of the heavy toll that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on Canadians, and especially on their mental health. I'm seriously concerned about this, which is why I introduced a motion for us to study the impacts of COVID-19 on the mental health of Canadians. These are uncertain times, and there's no doubt that many Canadians are facing new and increased concerns with their mental health.

Could you please explain to the committee what your department is doing to help Canadians access mental health services?

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Thank you to the member for the focus on mental health and people who use substances.

We know that this pandemic is creating a high degree of anxiety, loneliness, stress and grief for Canadians as they work through the many aspects of living through a pandemic. In fact, early on, drawing from experiences of countries that were ahead of us, we knew that we needed to rapidly act to put together supports for Canadians, no matter where they lived, no matter what supports they already had in place, because so many Canadians don't have access to mental health services or substance-use services where they live.

That's why we launched the Wellness Together portal this spring. It's completely free. It's completely confidential. It's available in both official languages. In fact, there's translation for folks who don't speak either official language. As of November 17, more than 613,000 Canadians across the country have used this portal, with over 1.7 million distinct web sessions.

The main thing about the portal is it actually connects people to professionals, as well as providing some self-assessments and self-help tools. People can actually get help from professionals through texting, telephone and virtual visits. I know there's more to do, but certainly this can help support people, especially folks who don't have access or trusted providers in other parts of their life.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you, Minister. There's no doubt that COVID-19 has changed our lives. It's increasingly apparent that some groups are feeling the mental health impacts of COVID-19 much harder than others.

There's also an increased awareness of the need to address inequities among Canadians. It's my understanding that you've announced a fund specifically to address mental health among Black Canadians and other racialized groups. Could you please elaborate on that?

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

The member is absolutely right. The impact of the pandemic, although we're all in it together, has different factors for different groups. One thing we have seen is the anti-Black racism that many people from the community have spoken about. It's not just during the context of the pandemic, clearly, but as part of their everyday experience.

Groups that are racialized, stigmatized, as a result of their backgrounds and their experiences.... It is a public health threat. That is why we're investing $10 million through the mental health of Black Canadians fund. This funding will support 16 community-based projects across the country doing very important work to support Black Canadians in these challenging times.

We've also extended applications specifically for projects to support Black LGBTQ2+ Canadians, which is another gap, by the way, that's very specific and very unique. Again, this is really about supporting organizations and community projects that are run by Black Canadians for Black Canadians and of course have the opportunity to help support people who are struggling in this particular time.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you.

Minister, earlier on during these studies we learned a lot about how the pandemic has shone a light on the challenges in our health care system. Particularly, we heard a lot about the information gaps and the data infrastructure challenges across Canada's health systems and how that limits our ability to monitor and respond to COVID-19.

I know that Health Canada has received $303.4 million in funding for the safe restart agreement. Could you provide us with details on how this funding would help modernize and improve our public health and health information systems and close the gaps to help us fight this pandemic?

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Thanks for the question.

There's no doubt that data has been a challenge during this pandemic. Obviously different provinces and territories have vastly different data systems, different ways of collecting data and different kinds of characteristics that they collect. There are huge gaps, for example, in racialized data and knowing exactly how the pandemic is affecting racialized groups, depending on the province or territory and sometimes even the local jurisdictions.

That has made it challenging at the federal level to truly have a concrete picture. In fact, part of the safe restart agreement—over $5 billion—was for testing, contact tracing and data systems that can give all levels of government a more granular understanding of how the pandemic is affecting the various groups that we have responsibility to deliver services to.

The Public Health Agency of Canada is working very closely with the provinces and territories now to get data on patient ethnicity and build out that data set, because we know from other jurisdictions, and even from the limited data that we have, that oftentimes various racialized groups are experiencing COVID-19 in worse ways than other folks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Van Bynen.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

We go now to Ms. Rempel Garner for five minutes, please.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

With regard to the statement that the minister just made, data has been a problem, especially at the federal level. My question is for Mr. Lucas or Mr. Stewart.

Have your departments given the government any advice to use various legislative mechanisms? I know that there are some available under, for example, the Statistics Act, to compel the provinces to provide data to the federal government in a more meaningful way as it comes to collecting information on how COVID is being transmitted and the efficacy of various interventions with regard to preventing the spread.

[Dr. Stephen Lucas]

Mr. Chair, I'd like to turn to Les Linklater to speak to the work with the provinces on data.

[Les Linklater]

We have been taking a very collaborative approach with provinces and territories around the collection and aggregation of data across the country, particularly as it relates to COVID-19, through the special advisory committee that was referenced earlier, which includes public health officials from across the country—