Health Committee on April 20th, 2023

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

I'd like to use my remaining minute to reflect a little bit on the pandemic that we have been living through.

If we just go back a couple of years, you and I were in very different roles. I was a regionally based CMOH for the Yukon Territory and relying certainly on federal support through the Public Health Agency for coordination of the response. You were an MP. I'm just wondering what you were observing as a sitting MP. Are there some key words in terms of what motivated you—i.e., that this was really important—given your experience as an MP during the pandemic?

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

We witnessed the world fall apart. I don't want to ever see the world fall apart again.

It's pretty much as simple as that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Mr. Erskine-Smith.

Now it's the Bloc Québécois' turn.

Mr. Thériault, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome, Mr. Erskine‑Smith.

I have read your bill and I understand its intent. However, while the intent is very commendable and you seem to have done a certain amount of research, I currently feel, as a legislator, that you are putting the cart before the horse.

I will give you a specific example. You were talking earlier in your opening remarks about the concept of one health. In fact, the director of the POPCORN collaborative research platform came to discuss this with us during our study on children's health. You are aware of the POPCORN research project, which will continue for two years and which is based on this one health approach. But we don't know what the findings are yet. We don't even have an outline of the research that these people are doing. I am talking about a simple aspect that you raised that I think is very relevant within what you called your architecture.

As a legislator, I don't have what it takes today, and I won't have it tomorrow or in two weeks, to do serious work to propose amendments and improve your bill. Why is that? Because an independent public inquiry is needed to highlight all the failures we have had. The idea is not to find fault, but to understand why all the things that were in place—and there were plenty of them—were not sufficient to properly prepare us for the pandemic. We need to understand the context in which all the reports and plans that existed since the SARS crisis were not sufficient.

There are indeed plans, aren't there? For example, a planning guide for the health sector has been published since 2004. The last update to this document was in 2018. The deputy ministers from each of the provinces have collaborated on and agreed to this plan. So this collaboration that you're talking about is already in place. So what is it about this planning guide and so on that has not been able to be implemented? I also want to understand why the National Emergency Strategic Stockpile was empty.

There are plenty of things that we need to put in place, independently, as far as the facts are concerned. I understand your legislative intent. I'm sure that what you want is to make sure that everybody is better equipped next time, but also that there is accountability. But I'm wondering what would lead one to believe that there wasn't an accountability capacity, given the structure and the measures that were in place. At this point, I do not have the answer to that question.

I can let you respond to my opening remarks.

I think your intent is good and your bill could become very interesting as a result of an independent investigative process where we can get real facts and understand why things did not work.

I'll let you respond to that.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I have a few different things, and I appreciate that.

In terms of a one health approach, the evidence is in. I mentioned the United Nations Environment Programme. I mentioned the independent panel. I mentioned the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystems. I could have mentioned the Royal Society of Canada, which in June 2022 had a report, “Strengthening a One Health Approach to Emerging Zoonoses”. It said, “A resilient and sustainable structure for a One Health approach must be tied to function and a clear One Health agenda for Canada, accompanied by established tasks, timelines, milestones, and support for execution.”

This is not a debate about whether a one health approach is necessary, so there's no cart and horse when it comes to one health. We absolutely need a one health approach. It's a question of execution.

On the question of why we were unable to deliver on the plan that existed, we as parliamentarians are asking questions after the fact. The goal of this legislation is to ensure that as parliamentarians we turn our minds to asking questions and to bringing out the accountability function that we ought to be playing on a regular basis and in a number of different spheres to pandemic prevention and preparedness, and that we ensure we're doing our job and asking questions before the next pandemic. If this legislation is in place, that's exactly what's going to happen.

On the question of whether we wait for a review first, no, because a review is secondary to the architecture of this bill. In fact, a review wasn't even part of this bill when I initially drafted it. A review came about because the researchers at the independent panel said that what would be really great would be if we had a review that informed the plan. I thought, okay, let's do that. A review would be a great idea.

At the end of the day, we don't wait on some searching review of the impacts of climate change and what the best steps are of preventing climate change. There are already a number of reports out. Let's get the climate accountability law in place and make sure there's action. The same principles apply here. Do we need a searching review? Sure, of course we do. I'm not opposed to that. I agree with that, but that's neither here nor there.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

You talk about accountability. Don't you think we need an independent inquiry, instead of an advisory committee?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

You have run out of time for another question. Your six minutes are up.

Mr. Davies, go ahead, please, for six minutes.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Erskine-Smith, for appearing before the committee.

It's quite clear that there are two major parts to this bill. The first part is a cultural review of the government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the second part deals with the creation of a pandemic prevention and preparedness plan.

I'm going to congratulate you on half of it. I totally support the pandemic prevention preparedness plan and couldn't be more opposed to the review provision of the bill. I can tell you that I will be supporting the bill if the review portion of the bill is completely excised from the bill, which you and I talked about in the past.

I want to start by saying that, Mr. Erskine-Smith, you were quite correct that in 2004 the Public Health Agency of Canada was set up following SARS. It was specifically mandated to be Canada's lead organization for planning and coordinating a national response to infectious diseases that pose a risk to public health. That's exactly why PHAC was set up. Of course, Canadians expected that the federal government would build and maintain the capacity to protect them from future pandemic threats from that point on.

I think it's quite clear that this capacity mandate was replete with successes and failures during the COVID pandemic. I'll touch on a few of them.

The agency underestimated the potential danger of COVID, and they continued to assess the risk as low until a week after the WHO had declared a global pandemic. A scathing internal PHAC audit released in January of 2021 found limited public health expertise at the agency and a lack of epidemiologists. They found a lack of emergency response management expertise and capacity within the agency. Communications were identified as terrible. PHAC was missing sufficient skills and capacity for risk communications. Dr. Tam said that she received information in the wrong format with inaccuracies.

There were problems with Canada's emergency stockpile. The Auditor General confirmed that negligent mismanagement of Canada's emergency stockpile resulted in shortages of PPE for essential workers when COVID-19 hit. We had to throw out millions of expired PPE. There were problems verifying compliance with quarantine orders and, of course, the scandalous problem in Canada's long-term care homes showed a shocking failure in that regime.

The pandemic prevention preparedness plan is excellent. I want to stop there and talk about the review, though.

This bill would have the Minister of Health, who is in charge of PHAC, appoint an advisory committee—not even an independent committee with any real power but an advisory committee—to assess his or her performance and the performance of PHAC, which is under the aegis of the health minister. That is like the defendant appointing the judge. It is completely unacceptable on its own.

From the beginning, the NDP has wanted the federal government to launch an independent public inquiry under the Inquiries Act. We've passed the third-year anniversary of COVID. Rather than providing a transparent, independent and comprehensive review of Canada's COVID-19 response, this bill would not do that. The measures don't meet that standard. The legislation does not provide any powers of subpoena of documents or of people. It's not independent, it's not transparent, and it's not resourced.

I notice that a number of civil society actors have agreed with the NDP. Dr. David Naylor, who is chair of the federal COVID-19 immunity task force and former chair of the federal review of the SARS epidemic, has called for an independent review. Richard Fadden, former national security adviser to the Prime Minister, has called for an independent review. Dr. Adrian Levy, Dr. David Walker and Dr. David Butler-Jones have all called for such an inquiry.

My question to you is this: Are you okay with and will you support the NDP's motion when we move to excise clause 3 and paragraph 4(2)(e) of the bill to remove all parts of this bill that would have the government set up a review structure of its own and keep the part of the bill that establishes a pandemic prevention preparedness plan?

Will you agree with that amendment?

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

In short, yes.

Don, I appreciate the proposal. Let me say that the intention was never to oust any kind of independent review. If you remember SARS in Ontario, we had an independent commission and then a properly independent judicial commission. We also had, at the federal level, a national advisory committee on SARS and public health, which was more what I was imagining. That was chaired by David Naylor.

I consulted with David Naylor, by the way, in the course of putting this bill together. At no point had I intended to oust some parallel, independent track. It was really to ask how we invest, form a plan and make sure a review is a component of that. I don't want any distraction. I don't want this to be a bill to point to and say that a review is happening so we don't need another more searching review.

To return to the short answer, yes, I completely support your proposal. Let's keep the core of the bill the core of the bill, which is the architecture of accountability.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you for that. I really appreciate that honesty.

The problem is that, when I asked the health minister when he was at this committee if the federal government is prepared to launch an independent public inquiry, he said this: “We are currently discussing a bill in the House that is also pointing to the importance of having a review of COVID-19.”

The danger here and the NDP's concern is that we don't want the government to view this as the independent inquiry. In our view that would constitute a whitewash. We think it's very critically important that we have an independent review as well as your preparedness plan. That's how we'll be proceeding with this bill.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I never considered, Don, that this would oust any kind of independent and more searching review. I don't think the government ought to be able to point to this bill and say, “This bill is happening so we're not going to do a more searching review.”

My conversations with the government—similar to the conversations I've had with you—have been around making sure we focus this legislative effort specifically around the pandemic prevention plan and coordinator and that accountability to Parliament, and that we leave the review out of this bill and leave it to another process.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

The problem is that the government has not called such an independent review to date. That's the problem.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, both.

Mrs. Goodridge, go ahead, please, for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for your presentation here today.

It's rather challenging when we find out that we're basically only talking about half of the bill. If you've already agreed and there's some kind of deal on the books to get rid of half of the bill, it would have been nice to just have that up front.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I did mention, in the House at second reading, that I was open to that change as well. It's not news.

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

No, but saying that you're open to it and the deal has already been done is a little different.

That's fair enough. Thank you for that clarification.

I think one of the challenges I have with this is that, from my read, and as Dr. Kitchen laid out, PHAC already has this plan. The only real difference is that there is no requirement to report to Parliament. In my experience, I'm not sure what the requirement to report to Parliament would do if the plan isn't actually being done and listened to. You can have a brilliant plan. You can have an absolutely stunningly brilliant plan, but if you don't actually follow it, then what is the point?

I think this is part of where Conservatives agree with the NDP. We need to have an open public inquiry into this, so that we can actually look at what happened when, what worked and what didn't, how it worked, how we didn't apply our plan and what parts of our plan we ignored. Not every part of a plan will actually come to fruition or make sense, because technology is changing so quickly. Things that could have been best practices two years ago are no longer best practices. If we look at the three years since the pandemic started, our information as to how to best prepare and protect ourselves against this infectious disease changed dramatically. I think that is critical.

I'm just curious. What piece of just having the reporting to Parliament do you think will make, somehow, a big difference in the lives of Canadians?

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

In part, you just answered your own question when you said that the science changes on a regular basis and there ought to be recurring updated reports. At the moment, there's no obligation to say there ought to be those recurring updated reports. This imposes that kind of an obligation.

The second thing to say is that Mr. Kitchen listed off a series of measures that are in the mandate letter for PHAC. Some of them overlap with the bill, but not all of them overlap with the legislation. I point you to the responsibilities on the Minister of Industry, for example, in this legislation, including that the minister assess and improve the manufacturing capacity in Canada with respect to vaccines. We've had at my industry committee a really serious examination of the vaccine manufacturing capacity in this country and the need to make sure we have that kind of national security focus on vaccines.

That's not in the mandate of PHAC. To suggest that some things are in the mandate of PHAC so this legislation is unnecessary ignores the fact that there are many things in this legislation that are not housed within the mandate of PHAC.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

We have Mr. Jeneroux, please.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll just be brief.

Nate, it's good to see you, even though it's virtual.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

It's good to see you too.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

It's funny that you're here at this committee with this, because during the pandemic Don, Luc, me, Robert Kitchen, Darren Fisher, Sonia, Marcus and a lot of us had meetings every single day, I think, at the very beginning. We got to know each other really well, which was the bonus of it, but it was a real drag of information that we were trying to get out. We were looking for the solutions—like some of the stuff that Don indicated were surprises to the committee and a surprise to the minister.

Here, at that committee, for a good six to eight months—I think we might have been the only committee meeting for a while—it was always that we could collectively come together and say that eventually there would be an independent review of everything. Whatever information someone was not sharing, whatever information might be for whatever political purposes, or if it was for privacy purposes and they wanted it to remain confidential, again, we could say that this would eventually come out, so we'd keep going and pushing forward.

What I really worry about with your bill—and I don't think it's intended in this way whatsoever—is that I fear the government has the opportunity to use it in this way and say just exactly what Don indicated. The minister's response at our committee when we go and ask when this is going to happen, because we've been talking about this for so long.... They use your bill as a shield right now to say that it's already something that's being talked about.

You've answered a little bit, but I don't even know if I necessarily need a comment from you. I think it's more of a caution to it.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I have that answer for you, though, Matt, which is—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

I hope the answer is short, because we're out of time.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Sure.

The last time I checked the Liberals don't have a majority. If you want this bill to deliver an independent review, you can amend the bill accordingly. You can either delete it, as Don is asking, or you can work with Don and make it independent. It's up to you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, both.

Mr. van Koeverden, you have five minutes, please.