Health Committee on Dec. 4th, 2025

[Helena Konanz, Conservative, Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

I have a question for both witnesses, if you could answer quickly.

I asked a question at the beginning about the regional differences in antimicrobial resistance. It would be really important to know what part of the country needs to be focused on. I also asked whether it is young or old, rural or urban, that we need to focus on most with this very serious.... I got an answer that there is no data on this at all. That concerns me a lot, but maybe I misunderstood.

Do either of you have an answer? If you don't know the answer to this demographic or regional difference, where would someone get this, or is this data absolutely not available?

[Judith Fafard]

Thank you for your question.

There are several monitoring systems, but there are gaps. The best monitoring systems are those that focus on resistant bacteria in hospitals. They do not necessarily cover rural communities, healthy people and young people. That does not mean that it does not exist, but there are certainly improvements to be made to monitoring systems to get a better picture of what is happening in communities.

[Helena Konanz, Conservative, Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Ms. Buckley.

[Jennifer Buckley]

I wouldn't be able to answer that. I would defer to my epidemiological colleagues.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I think we may need to get an epidemiologist to answer those questions, Ms. Konanz.

[Helena Konanz, Conservative, Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Yes, but I think my main question was whether this data is even available. I had heard, probably mistakenly, that this data is not available. I'm hoping that it is.

I have a follow-up question.

I live in a more rural community, and we've been talking a lot about the lack of medical workers, doctors and nurses. We have hospital closures. We have backups in waiting rooms. I know there are backups in rural waiting rooms throughout the country, but with the hospital closures in rural communities, is that going to cause even more heightened problems with antimicrobial resistance?

Ms. Buckley.

[Jennifer Buckley]

I'm not sure that I could answer that because I'm not a practising clinician. That might be something that Dr. Fafard would be able to address.

[Helena Konanz, Conservative, Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you.

Dr. Fafard.

[Judith Fafard]

It is difficult to answer that question. Certainly, when people have less access to care and they have an infection, it may become more complicated before they have the opportunity to see a doctor. However, I do not have any data on that.

If I may return to your question about rural areas, I invite you to consult the FoodNet Canada program, which studies pathogens present in agricultural environments and their link to human infections.

[Helena Konanz, Conservative, Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Oh, that's great. Thank you.

Dr. Fafard, my daughter went to the hospital last year. She knew she had strep throat; she's had it a lot. Everyone in our family has had it many times, so we know what the symptoms are. Last Christmas, she went to the hospital. She was in a lot of pain, and she doesn't have a doctor. There's no walk-in clinic, so she had to go to the hospital. She waited between four and five hours to see the doctor, even though she knew it was strep throat. He took a swab. He said that he knew it was strep throat but that the results weren't going to come, so he was going to give her some antibiotics.

Is that something that you're worried about—that antibiotics are being given because the hospitals are over...and we have somebody sick who has been sitting in the waiting room for a long time? Is that one of the issues that you're concerned about?

[Judith Fafard]

You're right. It is worrying, given that the symptoms you describe could also be caused by viral infections. There are rapid tests specifically for streptococcal infections. It's a shame that rapid tests for this type of infection are not more widely available in the community.

[Helena Konanz, Conservative, Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Yes. There were no rapid tests available. The results were not going to come for a couple of days, but he gave her the prescription for antibiotics anyway, knowing that this was strep throat.

Those are some of the issues we need to solve—backups in the hospitals and the lack of medical professionals.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you.

I'll now go to Mr. Eyolfson for five minutes, please.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Winnipeg West, MB]

Thank you, Chair.

I'd like to say that I do appreciate Ms. Konanz's intervention on that. As someone who works in emergency, we have that problem all the time. Different departments have very different accessibility to these rapid tests. Yes, mononucleosis can look a lot like strep throat. At the same time, for the person with a high fever, toxic..., you're not going to wait 48 hours for that swab. It is a problem. We're looking forward to more widespread introduction of these rapid tests.

Dr. Fafard, I have a question regarding some vaccines that have been developed over the last few years. We know that most vaccines are against viruses, but many of them are against bacteria. I'm thinking particularly of the Haemophilus influenzae vaccine, or what they call “Hib”, and the pneumococcal vaccine. Have either of those made a dent in antibiotic resistance patterns of those organisms?

[Judith Fafard]

Thank you for your question.

I will need to check our monitoring reports. I can send them to you after the meeting. In Quebec, descriptions of serogroups have been established over the years, as well as antimicrobial resistance profiles.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Winnipeg West, MB]

All right. Thank you.

Dr. Fafard, we talked about how there is surveillance in the hospitals. It's very hard to get surveillance in the communities, because not every primary care office, of course, will be doing cultures in a doctor's office. One problem we found—this came from a number of witnesses—was that there was no reporting in a number of jurisdictions from personal care homes. We have a lot of people coming into hospital from personal care homes with infections, but we don't have mandatory surveillance of these facilities.

Is there such a system in Quebec in terms of mandatory surveillance of personal care homes? Are you aware of any in Canada?

[Judith Fafard]

Outbreaks are reported in some private facilities, but infections, strictly speaking, are not. Studies on infections and treatments are being conducted based on doctors' billing data, but for now, these are pilot projects, research projects. There is no established system.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Winnipeg West, MB]

Thank you. I think that's something we need to be pushing forward on. Again, the hospital that I see gets a lot of elderly patients, many of them from personal care homes. I think that's an environment where we can make a big difference in this issue in the community.

How much time do I have left, Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have one minute and 18 seconds.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Winnipeg West, MB]

Thank you, Chair.

Ms. Buckley, we've talked about domestic production or the lack thereof. We used to have antibiotic and vaccine production in Canada. There was a federally owned lab, Connaught Labs. It's a bit of history lesson there, because it goes back quite a ways. This was a government laboratory. It was sold to a private interest that had subsidiaries in the States. It was closed, of course, to consolidate production in the United States.

Do you know what would be needed from provincial and federal governments and how we could re-establish that kind of manufacturing base in Canada?

[Jennifer Buckley]

I actually can't answer that with any authority, but I can certainly circle back and provide some information around that.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Winnipeg West, MB]

Thank you very much.

I believe that's my time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

With it being 10 minutes before one, we could go for one truncated, shortened round.

However, I think we have some problems that I would like the clerk to discuss with regard to getting witnesses, getting witnesses the right equipment and what witnesses are going to be here next Tuesday. Some of that information might be helpful. I hope you think it might be.

Go ahead, Clerk, and tell us your problems.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Catherine Ngando Edimo]

On the next meeting, we have confirmation for the first hour for this study. It's going to be PHAC, CIHR and possibly NML for the first hour. This is for the study we have now. We have no confirmation from the minister for the supplementary estimates (B).

On the second hour, I invited some witnesses, but I'm still waiting for confirmation. Sometimes we don't receive the answer on time because of the short notice. Sometimes the contact information we have is not good, so we have to search for the contact.

When we invite witnesses 48 hours before, we cannot send the right headset. We have to ask them to purchase one. Sometimes they don't purchase the right equipment.

We are just trying to get as many witnesses as we can.

Thank you.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

I imagine committee members will have lots of questions for the minister.

This is about supplementary estimates and about spending taxpayers' dollars. We have $800 million spent on the interim federal health program. We have a licensing announcement that has no outcomes. We can't get any answers on how many doctors are going to be licensed in Canada. We have an update. We haven't heard anything about the vaccine injury support program, with $54 million gone to a consulting firm and 1,700 people still waiting for some kind of compensation from the program.

We have lots of questions for the minister. I would encourage her to please come to that meeting on Tuesday, because Canadians deserve to know the answers to these questions.