Health Committee on Nov. 15th, 2022

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

That's troubling. I'm five hours away from the closest children's hospital, so it's not even a situation of saying we'll just tough it out. If something goes wrong in a northern and isolated community, it requires airlifting children. This is an exorbitant cost to provinces.

Would you agree that perhaps the drugs, the acetaminophen and Tylenol that have been procured by the government, should be prioritized to go into northern, isolated, rural and indigenous communities to ensure that the most underserved are having access to them?

[Emily Gruenwoldt]

I think we need to make sure that every child, youth and family has access to safe and effective medications for sick children, regardless of where they're located in Canada.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Absolutely, but given a lack of supply, would you agree that perhaps a prioritization should be placed on families in isolated, rural and northern communities?

[Emily Gruenwoldt]

I think we need to make sure that we have access to these medications in rural communities and retail pharmacies, as well as in our community hospitals, our children's hospitals, and wherever we're seeing children and youth across the country. This is an essential medicine that every child, youth and family needs to have access to.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

All right. I'll pass it to Dr. Ellis.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thank you. Through you, Chair, to Mr. Harrington, can you tell us when you were first made aware of this critical shortage of acetaminophen and ibuprofen for children?

[Gerry Harrington]

The association did not become involved until the summer, but we know that our individual manufacturer members were contacted by Health Canada in advance of that, and there were discussions going on at that point.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thank you very much for that, sir.

Mr. Chair, I'd like to move a motion that we've had some discussion on here previously. I apologize to the witnesses for this but I think it is critical. The motion has been sent to the clerk in both official languages. The motion reads as follows:

That for the next twelve months Health Canada table with the committee on a weekly basis the number of infant and children's acetaminophen and ibuprofen doses that arrived in Canada that week, the number of doses anticipated to arrive the following week; and, that this information be provided in both official languages, and the clerk post this information on the committee's website immediately.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Dr. Ellis.

The motion is in order, so the debate is now on the motion. The floor is open.

Go ahead, Mr. van Koeverden.

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Milton, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First, I think the timing of the motion is.... It's always up to members when they move motions, but we haven't had an opportunity to ask our witnesses any questions on this side yet. I would like that opportunity before we suspend, because I think we have to suspend in order to see the motion to deal with the motion effectively. I haven't seen a copy of it.

I think out of respect for the witnesses, I reluctantly would suggest that we adjourn debate if necessary so that we can have a conversation about that, unless the mover of the motion is willing to allow us to continue the questioning round so that we can more fully take advantage of the situation today. I think this is a really important conversation that we asked for last week. Ms. Goodridge raised an important motion last week to bring witnesses to our committee, and I have questions for them, so before I make a motion to adjourn debate or even suspend.... I think this could have happened in 20 minutes.

Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Dr. Ellis is next, please.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think that this is a pretty straightforward motion, and certainly I'm not entirely sure what was added by the intervention that just happened. We know we can vote on this very quickly. Why would we not want to be transparent to Canadians and say “Let's post the information” and move on? I don't see what's so difficult about that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Mr. Doherty is next.

Mr. Doherty, we can't hear you. It's been suggested that your microphone is muted at the source. Do you want to try it there now?

We can hear you now. You have the floor.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Chair, thank you for that.

Thank you to our colleagues who are there.

We've heard some staggering testimony today. This is obviously an issue that has gripped our nation. I would say that as long as we have 10 minutes at the end of this session, we can have a thorough debate on this.

I think all colleagues can see that this is a non-partisan issue. We have some excellent subject matter experts on all sides of the House who can actually speak about this. I would agree with our colleagues: If we can agree through you, Mr. Chair, that we'll have at least 10 minutes at the end of this meeting to discuss this motion, I think that we should move forward with that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Go ahead, Dr. Powlowski.

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

I concur with that. If you want to postpone the debate and go on with another round of questioning, I'm happy to do that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Go ahead, Mr. van Koeverden.

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Milton, ON]

I think we should adjourn debate. I think that's the only way to deal with this. We should deal with it right now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

A motion to adjourn debate is not debatable. All those in favour of adjourning debate on the motion, please raise your right hand.

Debate on the motion is adjourned. We are going to return to rounds of questions.

Next up is Mr. Jowhari for six minutes.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Okay, thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome to our witnesses. Thank you for your testimony. Some of you are back for the second or third time, so welcome again.

I'm going to start with Mr. Harrington, and then I'm going to go to Ms. Gruenwoldt.

Mr. Harrington, in your opening remarks you talked about the fact that the number of children we see with the respiratory virus has increased dramatically, as well as that it is out of season. Can you expand on that one a bit?

[Gerry Harrington]

I'm not a public health doctor, but what we have seen and what has been reported back to us is that things like the RSV virus were appearing earlier in the season than expected. We've also seen that the uptick in flu infections was also earlier than expected, and the impact that has is called “demand shift”, so at the time when the industry was trying to rebuild inventories during the summer in anticipation of the flu season, inventories are being drained, and that's what landed us in this position.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

You made another comment that is really concerning. You said that there's—and I quote—“no clear line of sight” into when this might end. If I'm paraphrasing, I apologize, but I think that gives you the genesis. I understand the genesis of what you were trying to say.

What indicators are you using to say that there's no clear line of sight?

[Gerry Harrington]

That is the rate of infections in children.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

I'm now going to Ms. Gruenwoldt.

Welcome back to the committee again, on a different topic. I think you're becoming an honorary member of this committee.

I want to go back to the saying “the driver of the demand”, because the previous panel talked about how we realize there's a shortage and we have addressed that and we are trying to expedite that and we have looked at the domestic and the international sources. We looked at the driver of the demand, and now we have heard that the cases have gone up and also that it has come out of season.

Can you share your point of view as to why this respiratory virus is happening to the children and why it is out of season?

[Emily Gruenwoldt]

My perspective is quite consistent with Mr. Harrington's.

What we have also learned from speaking with international experts, particularly those leading children's hospitals in Australia, is that their experience largely mirrored what we're seeing now in terms of a larger than predicted number of children becoming infected and requiring hospital-based care or hospital admission. In fact, the experience in Australia was twice as bad as their worst model had predicted.

Our concerns are that we have not seen the worst yet and that the peak is still to come, so that's concerning when we look at the volumes of patients that our children's hospitals are experiencing today and we think about how we would manage additional numbers of very sick children.