Health Committee on Dec. 6th, 2023

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

Do you know what? In two years, Minister, you can have your chance to ask some questions. When you're sitting on the other side, you can have your chance.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

I've been on the other side and—

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

When I have the opportunity to sit there, then you can ask the questions—

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

Mr. Chair, I don't know. What do you want here?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Go ahead, Dr. Ellis. You have the floor.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Very clearly, two million Canadians are visiting food banks, and your government lost another $323 million without any accountability. The answer, really, is that you don't care.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

I would characterize it this way: If we didn't take a bet on all seven, then we wouldn't have been able to save those 800,000 lives.

I don't know what kind of price you put on 800,000 lives. I put a pretty high price on 800,000 lives.

The reality is that we didn't have clairvoyance. I don't know what psychic abilities you had, but neither I nor the department had the psychic ability to know which vaccine would work out, so we had to take a bet on all seven.

We knew when we took those advance purchase agreements that not all of them would work out and that, yes, that would cost some money, but that's what we did to make sure that we saved 800,000 lives. That's what we did to make sure that we avoided 1.9 million hospitalizations.

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

Thank you very much, Minister.

Mr. Chair, we're clearly not getting answers from the minister.

Mitsubishi is the largest company in Japan. Health Canada, your department, entered into a contract with the largest company in Japan—and, if I'm not mistaken, the 45th-largest company in the world—and you gave them another $323 million, with no protection for Canadians. You also gave them the intellectual property. You received no vaccines, and you lost 400 jobs in Quebec.

Tell me: Is that value for money? Tell Canadians it's value for money.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

What I think, Dr. Ellis, is that if Canada had not entered into any advance purchase agreements for vaccines—you're right—we would have saved a little bit of money. However, that would have meant that we didn't have vaccines for the Canadian population. It would have meant—

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

You're saying that $323 million is a little bit of money.

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

—that 800,000 people would have died. It would have meant tens of billions of dollars of lost economic activity. It would have meant millions more people in hospitals, with hospitals being shut and people dying from other preventable illnesses.

Sir, if we didn't make those investments, it would have been a catastrophe.

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

Thank you very much, Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Dr. Ellis and Minister Holland.

Next we have Mr. Jowhari, please, for six minutes.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome, Minister, to the committee.

Let's start bringing facts to the table. There is a $172-million investment, and there's a $150-million investment.

Can you briefly tell us what the $172-million investment was, and what was the result of it?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

That is with respect to ISED. That's with respect to the development of the actual intellectual property itself.

The $150 million had to do with the vaccines and the distribution of the vaccines.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Had Canada and Medicago been in a position to be able to launch this product, not only within Canada but also internationally, what would that $150 million go toward? The $172 million, naturally, went to ensuring that we did the R and D, set up the facility and made sure we were ready to produce.

We have now an approved product, which faced some challenges—and we'll get to that—but what was the $150 million specifically earmarked for?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

This is the point that I'm making. I wish we were clairvoyant. If we were clairvoyant, then we wouldn't have had to make the decision that we did, but of course, we were not.

There were seven options that were deemed to be technically feasible on a science-based basis of having the potential to produce a vaccine. The advance purchase agreements that were entered into in all seven instances made sure that no matter which one hit, no matter which one won, Canada was ready to have the vaccines it needed.

It's very easy, in hindsight, to say that we should have just picked the one that won. That's a little like saying that you should have just bought the lottery ticket that won. If you knew which lottery ticket was going to win, why would you bother buying the other ones?

The reality is that we were in a circumstance at that moment in time where we didn't know what would succeed, so that $150 million was a down payment to ensure that the vaccines would be delivered and that they'd be available to Canadians.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Minister, I'm really glad that you used the concept of a down payment.

However, before we get to that, I want to go back and try to deal with another piece of misinformation that's going around: that Canada violated the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

Specifically in this case as it relates to securing vaccines, do you believe this applies to that circumstance or not?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

No, I do not. I think the minority position that Philip Morris held in Medicago....

Let me put it to you this way—and it is a question that the Conservatives didn't want to let me ask, but I'll pose it because I think that, as a hypothetical, it's a really valuable question to ask: If Medicago had developed the only successful vaccine—and that's a very real probability, because we didn't know—are the Conservatives saying that they would not have allowed Canada to use that vaccine to save hundreds of thousands of lives because Philip Morris had a minority position that didn't advance the interests of either nicotine or tobacco? Of course they wouldn't. Of course they absolutely would have made sure that vaccine.... It would have been reprehensible to do otherwise.

We were in a circumstance where we needed to look at which options were technically viable. The minority position that was held in Medicago did not advance the interests of either nicotine or tobacco.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

I'm glad you used the terminology “down payment”. We made a $150-million down payment to Medicago for production of vaccines upon approval, which happens in Canada and in the federal government.

Did we make such an allowance...? The terminology “at-risk manufacturing” has been thrown around. I asked Ms. Andrachuk on Monday what that term means. I assume that's the down payment, and it's almost like a down payment on an insurance policy that we are getting.

Did the other seven advance purchase agreements have such a clause as well?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

Yes, they did. That's right.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Okay. Great.

We made the down payment. Again, I'm a layman. We want to buy a house and we put in the down payment. At some point, we decide that we don't want to buy that house, for whatever reason, and we mutually walk away. I lose my down payment. Can I simplify it to that level?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

I think you can put it better this way. If you went out and bought an insurance policy and then didn't need the insurance policy, you don't go back to the insurance company and ask for your premiums back.

The reality is that you make a bet because you're trying to protect yourself, and that's what Canada did. We bet on seven different options and that bet—of course, without knowing which one would materialize—ensured we had the vaccines that Canadians needed.

By putting an investment in each and every one, we were guaranteeing that Canada would have the vaccines that it needed. If we bet on one or two—as it seems the Conservatives are suggesting we should have done—then it would have been highly likely that we would have missed the one that was successful, which would have seen the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives in this country.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Out of the seven, I understand that three or four got approval from the World Health Organization. All of the seven had this at-risk manufacturing clause in them. We are not talking about the others, yet we're talking about Medicago.

You just confirmed the fact that, under this circumstance, Canada would not have violated any World Health Organization framework mentioned. Why do you think we are having this conversation?

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

I think it's easy to create misinformation in this space.

Let's contemplate a world where Medicago was the vaccine that was first and ended up being the one that Canadians took. Instead, we would be here potentially getting questions about why we made investments in Pfizer or why we made investments in AstraZeneca. That's exactly what they're saying. They're saying that any one that wasn't successful was a waste of money, as if somehow the government could have known which one would be successful.

If there's an alternative universe in which Medicago was the successful vaccine, we'd instead be sitting in this committee being attacked for having made investments in Pfizer or AstraZeneca or Moderna.