Health Committee on Nov. 8th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 88 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, but as of yet, we don't have any hybrid participants.

As agreed on Monday, we are resuming debate on the motion by Dr. Ellis. You will recall that the motion was the subject of an amendment put forward by Dr. Hanley and then a subamendment by Dr. Ellis. Technically, the debate right now is on the subamendment by Dr. Ellis.

This is the motion by Dr. Ellis:

That given recent media reports that the Public Health Agency of Canada lost over $300 million on an unfulfilled contract, the committee undertake a study of the Public Health Agency of Canada losing over $300 million in taxpayers' money for an unfulfilled contract, the committee hold 6 hours of meetings on this matter and that each current meeting of the Health Committee is expanded by one hour, to address this matter and that the committee hear from the Minister of Health, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the President of the Public Health Agency of Canada, the President of the Treasury Board, and officials from the health ministry, and other witnesses deemed relevant by the committee, and that hearings begin at the next available meeting, and the committee produce a report on its findings and report it to the House.

There was then an amendment put forward by Dr. Hanley:

That the motion be amended by replacing the words after the words “unfulfilled contract, the committee” with the following: “hold four hours of meetings on the government's advanced purchase agreement for vaccines with Medicago and invite officials from the Public Health Agency of Canada, Public Services and Procurement Canada, the Auditor General and Medicago.”

There was then a subamendment, which is the subject of our debate this evening. The subamendment is as follows:

That the amendment be amended by adding after the word “hold” the words “up to”, and by adding after the word “invite” the words “the Minister of Health and”.

At the end of the last meeting, Mr. Thériault had the floor, so I now give him the floor.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Mr. Chair, do you have a hard copy of all this?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

We should print out some copies. Would you like me to suspend the meeting so that we can print and distribute the necessary copies?

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Yes, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

We're going to suspend briefly to ensure that everyone has a paper copy of what I just read.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

I call the meeting back to order. The motion, amendment and subamendment have now been distributed in paper form.

Mr. Thériault, you have the floor.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Before the bell rang to call for the vote, at the end of our last meeting, I was saying that I had been very patient. I pointed out that I had signed the request for a meeting under Standing Order 106(4) on November 2, when journalists had already been questioning the Public Health Agency of Canada for a week. I found it curious that just as we were filing this request, the minister, as if by a miracle, started talking.

During our discussions last time, our colleague Mr. Davies said that the role of a parliamentarian was, among other things, to ask questions about governance, but above all to try to control government spending. This is the role assigned to us by our mandates. When a public health agency fails to answer simple questions, it seems to me that it's urgent to intervene.

The last time, the question of urgency was invoked. Now, there was an issue that was becoming increasingly urgent in relation to the management of the pandemic. However, this committee refused an amendment during the study of Bill C‑293 which aimed to establish an independent public inquiry, under which a body could have been set up by a judge which would have had the powers normally attributed to such a commission of inquiry, such as that of subpoenaing witnesses, for example. From the moment the government doesn't want an independent commission of inquiry as the legislation prescribes, and the Public Health Agency of Canada decides not to answer simple questions about contracts, it becomes urgent to intervene.

Is a culture of omerta taking hold at the agency? Do we have to wait for the minister's signal to finally reveal what voters need to know? One hundred and fifty million dollars is not a trivial sum.

I have total respect for institutions, because parliamentary democracy requires respect for institutions. However, Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux said that, in this case, the refusal to disclose any information about a $150 million loss is highly unusual. He would have expected the department to be able to provide at least some details. In his view, if the department can't or won't reveal the name of the company, it should at least explain the circumstances under which it happened. After all, a $150-million loss on a contract deserves some explanation.

For the benefit of those listening tonight, let me remind you that the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer is an institution that is totally independent of the executive.

Kevin Page, the former parliamentary budget officer, said it was a significant total loss. He finds it unacceptable that the Public Health Agency of Canada refuses to answer our questions about how the money was spent or written off.

It seems to me that these opinions should be respected. I'm not motivated by partisanship in saying this.

On the other side of the room, people are implying that there are more urgent things to do and deal with. I'm well aware that the Standing Committee on Health is very busy pursuing its studies and adopting its reports. I myself have waited a long time for the study on breast implants and the creation of a breast implant registry to come to fruition. In fact, we're not far from adopting this report and its recommendations before tabling it in the House.

Our committee is very busy, but that's no reason to overlook an event like this. So I expect we'll agree very quickly that we need to do this study. We can do it as proposed in the subamendment or the amendment; but insofar as possible, I'd like to avoid doing what we did last time—let's not take a whole session to try and convince our colleagues, who still refuse an independent commission of inquiry, that we should go ahead. In fact, we're prepared to rearrange our timetable accordingly, i.e. we can do both: we can spend part of our meetings dealing with routine business, if I can put it that way, and another part dealing with this study. If we could all agree to this, it would be to the benefit of all, and especially the citizens, who are entitled to explanations.

I experienced the management of the pandemic right from the start, during the meetings of the Standing Committee on Health, with Mr. Powlowski and Mr. Davies in particular, if I'm not mistaken. For a week or two, the Standing Committee on Health was the only committee in session. Then the Standing Committee on Finance started sitting too. So it was clear that we were dealing with emergency management. I tried to examine this emergency management and ask questions responsibly. When I agreed to sit on the Standing Committee on Health, the first thing I said was that I would not use health issues to play petty politics, that I would act responsibly. I challenge anyone around the table to find a single statement of mine, after the pandemic happened, that was tinged with partisanship.

Even today, I take the floor not to delay our work, but to try to redirect things a little. It's true that we have our work cut out for us. It's true that we have important matters to deal with. However, it's also true that the Standing Committee on Health must play its role as a check on the executive and question the management of the pandemic, especially since, I repeat, the government doesn't want an independent public commission of inquiry. Yet it could answer questions and shed light on all aspects of the pandemic.

We experienced this situation at the Standing Committee on Health. We told ourselves that it wasn't time to lay blame, but that it was time to succeed in obtaining vaccines and personal protective equipment. Mr. Powlowski was right to say so last time. We were told that the timetable for creating a vaccine, even if we sped things up, even if everyone worked together, would be between two and a half and five years. In the end, it turned out to be much faster. I also remember how, at one point, the opposition parties were urging the government to reserve vaccines. I remember that. We said we should have as wide a range as possible, because we didn't know which vaccines would work. There were various ideas about that.

I don't want to do the job that a commission of inquiry would do. That said, at the start of the pandemic, scientists were telling us how great it was to see information being exchanged and everyone working towards the same goal. Personally, I wondered if it would be like that right to the end. I wondered if, on the day when someone came up with a vaccine, we would continue to exchange all the information and vaccinate the whole planet simultaneously. That's not what happened. Personally, I thought there would be coordination between the World Health Organization and the rich countries, so that what finally happened would not have occurred. In my opinion, in their way of appropriating vaccines, rich countries all over the planet missed the mark.

Of course, there was pressure. The opposition parties were lobbying and asking the government if we were going to come in at the back of the queue. They wondered why the U.S. had received vaccines when we hadn't yet. This led to purchases of vaccines before Christmas, but they cost us much more than they did elsewhere.

You can see that my words are not motivated by partisanship.

I'm only talking about one episode. I remember that all the parties made a joint public statement about temporarily lifting the patents because there was a supply problem. Why were there several variants? Because people did not have access to vaccines in certain parts of the world. Since Canada, as a wealthy country, had access to a variety of vaccines to counter the variants, it began sending vaccines that were almost out of date to other countries. What's more, in these countries, the vaccine deployment chain was not yet organized, not to mention all the constraints this imposed on us. For example, vaccines had to be stored in freezers or kept cold. A lot of resources were wasted, and we couldn't take advantage of the patents to vaccinate the population on the spot. In short, we made a lot of mistakes, all over the planet, during the pandemic.

If we're not willing to rise above partisanship to shed light on the situation we experienced, determine what could have been done better and admit the mistakes we made, how are we going to manage to learn from them? Only a public and independent commission of inquiry could have led to this.

As we know, there was a global information network, which was recognized. How is it that it was ineffective and that some countries on the planet waited for the flag to be raised? Was this the responsibility of a single government, or was it the result of other decisions? A public inquiry would reveal a great deal. Still, we're not going to be able to draw any conclusions, since I don't see any willingness to hold a public, independent inquiry.

As soon as you choose to treat things à la carte, everything becomes urgent. That's effectively what we've decided to do. Because we don't want to create a public and independent inquiry, we'll see the same situation over and over again. Every time a situation arises about which we have questions, and certain government bodies maintain a culture of opacity rather than transparency, we're going to end up with timetables that are upset or mishandled, because we have to shed light on a situation. Now, when you don't want to approve a public inquiry, you can't shed light on a situation 10 years later.

There's one key word to remember from this whole story and from what I've said. When I signed this request for a meeting under Standing Order 106(4), it wasn't because I wanted to filibuster, it was because I wanted us to act with transparency.

The day citizens lose confidence in their institutions, we'll have only ourselves to blame, because we ourselves will have abused our institutions and failed to give them the respect they deserve. We unfortunately experienced this during the pandemic.

Some might consider that my comments are based in political philosophy or a certain conception of the state, and say that the Bloc Québécois, the Conservative Party and the NDP want to delay another very important study, but that's not what's happening. Personally, I'm trying to see if the people on the other side of the table would accept a compromise whereby two subjects would be dealt with at the same time. I'm not going to reveal things that have been said behind closed doors, but could we agree to keep the working arrangement we had behind closed doors the same when the cameras are on? That wasn't the case over the last few weeks, and we've suffered a bit for it. We could establish a work plan that consists of following our schedule while reserving part of our meetings to shed light on this issue, even if it means adding session hours.

I can work hard. I got up at 5 this morning and haven't stopped. I'm here and we're going to finish at 9:30 p.m. That's what people expect of us, to work hard. We worked hard seven days a week during the pandemic and we continue to do so. That's what we're here for and we love it.

So I'd like us to agree to reach our goals by Christmas. We can meet our planned work schedule and still allow ourselves to get to the bottom of this issue by hearing the witnesses who would be subpoenaed pursuant to this motion.

If there were a consensus, and if I understood the suggestions made by Mr. Davies, Mr. Ellis and Mr. Hanley last time, we could hold three-hour sessions. Two hours would be devoted to studying the issues we have agreed to take forward and the reports we have to adopt; the last hour would be devoted to the appearance of a key witness so that we could ask him questions about this unfortunate revelation, and above all, about this attitude we see which consists in saying that nothing will be revealed about it. This attitude is open to criticism, and it's on this that we urgently need to ask questions.

There are people who say we knew very well who it was. In any case, if the Parliamentary Budget Officer didn't know, it wasn't all that clear, even if you can always trace it back and find the information. So it's urgent to ask questions about this culture of opacity and get to the bottom of it.

Mr. Jowhari, last time, was saying that it was wrong to claim that the $150 million had been for nothing, since in the end it had been used to create a vaccine. We're talking about a vaccine that no one will be able to benefit from, but that's a different kettle of fish. It's a matter of interpretation. However, it would be the least we could do to allow us, as parliamentarians, to ask all the questions that need to be asked and to let all the organizations that report to the Minister of Health know that the members of the Standing Committee on Health will not let anything pass. Whenever a problem like the one we've just experienced emerges, we'll set aside time in our work to examine it, because that's our duty. That's what we were elected to do.

I'm going to stop here, because I'm thinking of my colleagues who are listening to me. A consensus seems to be emerging and I want to avoid looking like the one who is unduly delaying the work, which is not my objective. I may speak later in response to an intervention that might inspire me. For now, if my colleagues agree, we could vote on the subamendment, then on the amendment, and finally on the motion. The solution I propose seems to me to correspond to that expressed by Mr. Hanley, Mr. Ellis and Mr. Davies.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Mr. Thériault.

There are no other speakers on the speakers list for the subamendment.

Dr. Ellis has moved that the amendment be amended by adding, after the word “hold”, the words “up to”, and by adding, after the word “invite”, the words “the Minister of Health and”.

(Subamendment agreed to)

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

The debate is now on the amendment as amended.

Go ahead, Mr. Perkins.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for indulging me as an associate member of this committee.

My normal role, besides sitting with Mr. Hanley on fisheries, is as vice-chair of the industry committee. I've had a motion for a study on Medicago on the industry committee since the spring, but legislation takes precedence. We were dealing with Bill C-34 on the Investment Canada Act changes and Bill C-27, the privacy and artificial intelligence bill, so we've not had a chance to get to the motion.

That is why I think the motion here before the committee is so important. The industry committee did an examination, initially—it was tabled in June, since it was started in the last Parliament—of the response to COVID-19 in terms of vaccines, as, I believe, this committee did. I believe there are not only minister of health issues with regard to this study but also a large industry role. Unfortunately, the industry committee doesn't have time to discuss it.

You will note, in the appendix of the report tabled in the House on June 14 by the industry committee, that an agreement with Medicago was signed on October 23, 2020, to purchase up to 76 million doses of the vaccine. This is a vaccine Health Canada had approved and to which the government initially committed. It was up to $223 million through a couple of funds, in order to develop a non-mRNA vaccine, a plant-based vaccine, which they successfully did. I think it got Health Canada approval.

The committee needs to study it for various reasons. It's not clear to us why not a single vaccine was produced, and why that contract was signed for 76 million. A great deal of provincial and federal government money went into creating that vaccine plant in Quebec City 10 years or so ago, in order to produce vaccines. My understanding, from everything I've seen, read and heard, is that, in this case, it was a successful vaccine with a fairly high efficacy rate.

This investment was made and seems to have not gone anywhere, mainly because the World Health Organization has a policy not to endorse products produced by companies that have any kind of tobacco manufacturing involvement. I think Philip Morris had 40% ownership, with Mitsubishi having the remainder. I'd love to ask both the health minister and the industry minister this: Why would you sign such a contract or even invest up to $223 million of taxpayer money to develop a vaccine with a company that you knew the WHO would not endorse for promotion around the world? This would leave it, essentially, a Canadian domestic market vaccine. I think there are a lot of questions to ask around that and the thinking leading up to it.

We know the thinking was about trying to develop, as MP Thériault said, domestic vaccine manufacturing capacity. A lot of money was going into it, at a very intense time in the world and in this country. In choosing to make it with this particular company, it looked to me like it was doomed to failure regarding its ability to, even if successful, be a vaccine acquired by other countries. That would ultimately be the goal in addition to our own use. Without a WHO “good housekeeping” seal of approval, it was unlikely to have any success in its sales.

In business, we call it a “sunk cost”; once it's done, you can't get it back. In this case, the sunk cost is in, so let's buy some of the vaccines and contract with it.

An incredible amount of taxpayer money went into this. Where are the patents? Who owns the patents? Where have they gone?

The inability of this organization, for whatever reason, to produce the vaccines in this plant that was set up, where 400 people worked, looked like it had a ray of light in December last year, when Mitsubishi bought out Philip Morris.

When that happened, I thought, okay, this is good news. Maybe this great taxpayer-funded vaccine can be produced and marketed around the world, now that it no longer has a tobacco company ownership structure. There are rumours out there of what Mitsubishi paid for that. Some have said it's as low as about $14 million, which is incredible, given that it had almost $200 million of federal taxpayer money with patents on a successful vaccine.

Nonetheless, we all lead a public, elected life. We're all optimists by nature, or we wouldn't be doing this job. I think we held out hope that somehow, it would be seen as a step forward.

Lo and behold, what happened six weeks later? Six weeks later, Mitsubishi shut the company down, threw 400 people in Quebec out of work—after all of that taxpayer money—and then started this dance of the questions that we started to ask.

What's happened? There's a contract to produce up to 76 million vaccines. I believe the cost was $20 per vaccine, so what are we on the hook for as a country, to pay for a vaccine that was never produced? Where did all that investment in that IP go?

I suspect we don't know the answers to that or whether or not Mitsubishi has chosen to actually sell the Canadian-financed patents for a plant-based COVID vaccine somewhere in the world. We don't know that. We haven't had it before this committee and we haven't had it before the industry committee. This committee has the opportunity, perhaps, with its agenda to do that, which we don't in the industry committee. I would be urging members to take a look at that, because it seems to me there are at least two flaws in this process.

The first flaw is that there wasn't any protection of Canadian taxpayers when $200 million was committed in a contract to develop the vaccine in the first place. There were no issues around the taxpayers' claim on the patents if something went south.

Somehow, as the financier of this, either through university-owned patents or through the rights of the granting councils through the SIF program—or whichever ISED program paid for this, because I believe the money came out of ISED—we were obviously so poor at negotiating contracts that we didn't get an ownership stake in that or any protection for the taxpayer if, for example.... They must have known going in that it would have had trouble being marketed because of the Philip Morris ownership. There wasn't some protection for the taxpayer from that company in the contract to give us the money back from Philip Morris and Mitsubishi for the investment or, in the case of the situation that arose, the fact that the taxpayer would actually own the patents so that they couldn't leave this country and couldn't be sold by a foreign multinational. However, it appears that's the situation we're in.

If that wasn't bad enough, obviously, the cancellation clauses were non-existent in the contract to buy the 76 million doses of the vaccine that were never produced, because we are now on the hook for another $150 million for something that was never made. It's thin air, it's vapour, it's nothing. It's $150 million for not even an empty vial.

There was $200 million that went into developing the vaccine and $150 million for absolutely nothing. Some 400 people in Quebec City are out of work, and Mitsubishi gets to walk away with all of the patents and all of the potential to sell them for the small price of a few million dollars buying out Philip Morris.

That's the way it appears. Maybe that's not the case. Maybe the witnesses could actually shed some light on these contracts. Maybe officials could explain to us why they signed contracts that appear to leave the Canadian taxpayer with nothing but the bill and leave a Japanese company with an innovative Canadian patented technology.

Again, because we don't have the ability to do this in Industry, we would like to get this committee to examine these things. That's why Dr. Ellis put forward the motion in the first place. I would urge that our committee members not only vote on the amendment as amended. I think that we need not limit ourselves to four meetings or six meetings. I think you have to follow the evidence and then get to the main motion so that the committee gets this on the agenda.

That's my opening. I'll leave it at that for members to consider. The numbers add up to quite a large loss to the Canadian taxpayer. To me, it's a bit of a scandal. I hope it's not. I hope we can actually get those patents back.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Is there any further debate on the subamendment?

The amendment as amended is that the motion be amended by replacing the words after the words “unfulfilled contract, the committee” with “hold up to four hours of meetings on the government's advance purchase agreement for vaccines with Medicago and invite the Minister of Health and officials from the Public Health Agency of Canada, Public Services and Procurement Canada, the Auditor General and Medicago”.

(Subamendment agreed to)

Ms. Sidhu.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Mr. Chair, I have a minor but important amendment to move, which is adding “Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada” after “Public Services and Procurement”.

Adding ISED will allow us to hear from the department that spent money on the R and D research for the vaccine offer Medicago.

Do you want me to read the full text? I just want to add “Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada” as another witness.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Do you mean officials?

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Yes, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

All right, the amendment is in order.

It is to insert after “Public Services and Procurement”, “Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada”.

The debate is now on that amendment.

Dr. Kitchen, please go ahead.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

For clarification, when you're asking for the officials, you're also asking for the minister as well, correct?

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

No, it's just officials, because they can answer any question.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Then I would like to maybe do a subamendment to add the minister there. Ultimately, it's the minister who is responsible for the agency.

I'm okay with what you're proposing, but I think the minister should be there to respond as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

I just want to get advice on whether that is in fact a subamendment or whether we would need to take it on as a separate amendment. Just hold one second there.

Okay, we have a subamendment that is in order, to add to Ms. Sidhu's amendment, “the minister and officials from”.

Dr. Ellis.

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

Thank you very much, Chair.

Hopefully, everybody was paying close attention to the clarity with which Mr. Perkins brought this issue in front of the committee. I think this is very clearly a decision that did require the input of the minister of ISED. I think that having the minister here would be absolutely essential. I would urge this committee to move forward with the business we have at hand.

I also believe, as my Bloc colleague said, that we have multiple things that we need to get to and important studies that need to get done. I propose that we would have some suggestions on how we can do that and deal with this issue in front of us.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

We have Ms. Sidhu.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair, let's start with the Minister of Health, because we have four hours, we have lots of witnesses, ISED officials are coming and we can ask them questions. We can always can decide on that later on.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Is there any further debate on the subamendment?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

To be clear, is the subamendment simply to add “Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada” or “the minister and officials from” ISED?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

The subamendment is to add the words “minister and officials from”. The main amendment is “Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada”.