Health Committee on Feb. 3rd, 2026

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Winnipeg West, MB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses.

Just as a comment to Dr. Brockhoff, I agree with you. When good things are happening, not just the veterinary community but all of us are not good about getting those.... I didn't know, until we did this study, about the issue of growth promotion. I knew that years ago it was happening. I did not know that in Canada, it was no longer the case. These are things that I think a lot of the public still think happen, so you're right that they need to be broadcast. People need to know, because it's a good thing we're not doing that.

Dr. Nguyen, we talked about how we need new treatments and research into new options. As you know, one problem—we talked about this earlier in the study, and I've known it from my medical practice for years—is that we rely very heavily on the pharmaceutical industry for clinical trials, which are very expensive. The challenge is that they are corporations. They're responsible to their shareholders. Antibiotics are not a terribly profitable line of medications compared with, let's say, statins.

What is the challenge? How do we get around this? This is something we very desperately need, so how do we overcome the fact that we're relying on an industry in which there isn't a great business case for doing the research?

[Dao Nguyen]

That question probably warrants a whole study of its own, so I could not possibly do justice to the possible problems and potential answers.

All I would say is that this is something the Government of Canada has put thought into. It was raised, as part of the pan-Canadian action plan, through the proposal of a pull incentive. That is one of the avenues that are being explored in Canada and elsewhere.

Beyond that, I think there are many other structural barriers, certainly in what the replacements are for pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs and provide clinical trials. There are multinational and international initiatives, such as GARDP or CARB-X, that are trying to stand in lieu of what pharmaceutical companies used to do. The next few years will tell us whether this will be successful or not.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Winnipeg West, MB]

Thank you. That is very helpful.

Dr. Weese, you talked about prescribing guidelines, and we have the same in medicine. One of the problems we have is the dissemination of these guidelines. Being in emergency, I'm in a purely hospital-based practice. We have direct conversations all the time with our ID specialists.

Online, there are the latest guidelines and databases, which are good, but particularly with antibiotics, when we're told, “Here's the latest literature for this infection; give this antibiotic”, there's a little star saying, “Be aware of antibiotic resistance in your community. This may change your patterns.”

We have trouble, when working in an emergency room surrounded by specialists, keeping up with that. Physicians in the community, in their doctors' offices, have an even harder time. Is there a strategy in the veterinary profession to try to get the latest evidence-based guidelines and local resistance patterns?

[Scott Weese]

I think that was mentioned earlier. There are some app-based guidelines now that the CVMA has done, and we have a parallel version for companion animals that are app- and web-based and provide up-to-date information.

There are a couple challenges with them. One is the data that goes into them, because we're lacking a lot of research on really basic things for drugs and duration. The other is the ability to keep them fresh, and updating them. If a guideline was made 10 years ago and not touched, it's not relevant.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have 30 seconds.

[Scott Weese]

The other thing is getting people to adapt them. A large percentage of the antibiotics we use are psychotherapeutics for the prescribers. They make the vet, the physician, the parent or the farmer feel better. Ultimately, I'm not sure if you've talked to social scientists, but we need to. We need to get people to adapt guidelines and adapt change. Just having the information is one step.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Winnipeg West, MB]

I agree completely with that point. Thank you very much. That's my time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I now go to Mr. Mazier for five minutes, please.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

Thank you, Chair.

Dr. Fisher, can you explain how export market conditions influence antimicrobial use in Canadian agriculture and why this factor is important for the committee to recognize in its report?

[Tracy Fisher]

Well, there are a couple of factors to that. Number one is that we need to follow certain guidelines to make our products available to enter certain markets. The European Union has different guidelines.

Also, on that point, if we are not able to access certain medications and.... Here, in Canada, it's not necessarily always antimicrobials; it's vaccines, probiotics and all of those types of things to prevent disease in the first place. We are not competitive with our international partners, and it is more expensive to produce food here. The market is driven mostly by price, and it can definitely hamper our ability to compete on an international level, and unnecessarily so. We're not looking to misuse these medications. In fact, we're looking to reduce our use but have the proper tools available.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

Farmers are telling me that they have fewer tools to treat sick animals because veterinarians are losing access to key drugs because of Health Canada regulations. I think you alluded to the 40% drop. Can you explain what's being lost and what this means to animal health on Canadian farms?

[Tracy Fisher]

It's everything from...really common antimicrobials that were used on a regular basis and were very reliable to treat disease. Because Canada is a small market and there are a lot of regulatory barriers, sometimes those drugs aren't big sellers, which is a good thing, but it also means that there was less motivation for the drug companies to go through another regulatory approval, so they just decided to look elsewhere.

One of the medications we didn't have available for a while was injectable oxytetracycline for dairy cattle. It's very important for treating pneumonia. We finally got it back, but now with reclassification, who knows what's going to happen next? That's extraordinarily frustrating. Things like that are really important drugs to keep our animals healthy with short withdrawal times. It's a drug that is not used in human medicine, and it can be really frustrating.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

Should this be included in our antimicrobial resistance report?

[Tracy Fisher]

I believe so.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

Thank you.

Mr. Wiens, there was a reference to the white paper. I think Dr. Brockhoff mentioned it. Can you table that report? What's the official title of it? How many recommendations were there in it?

Answer briefly, if you have it on you.

[David Wiens]

I could get Scott to speak to that, certainly.

[Scott Ross, Executive Director, Canadian Federation of Agriculture]

I don't have the title or the number of recommendations in front of me, but we can certainly table that report. There's no question.

It's important to recognize that there has been a lot of dialogue with officials and manufacturers since that time. I know that there's been consideration about updating it in light of some of the more recent developments we've seen through the red tape reduction efforts.

There is no question that we can put that forward to the committee.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

I think everybody is getting rather frustrated with the dialogue, though.

There's a lot of concern in public health. It's not only on the agriculture side but also on the public health side. We are losing access to many drugs and we're getting left behind in Canada. That's another thing that's happening. It's government intervention. It's the bureaucracy that's really slowing us down.

Governments need to act here. I can't explain or express enough that agriculture needs to step up, and so does health care. These things are being lost to us. We're going to end up in a big pickle if we don't step up and listen to the people on the ground who it's going to impact. We're talking about food supply and food sovereignty in Canada.

There was an explanation of how the agriculture industry has a drug use policy with various categories, but I have not heard that from the health care industry. What does human health care do? Do they have regimes for antimicrobial resistance? Is it a well-laid-out plan that the public can see, as in agriculture, or do they have some catching up to do?

I guess we'll start with Dr. Weese on that, or whoever would be able to answer it.

[Scott Weese]

I'd say that varies from the hospital to the.... There are good guidelines and increasing guidelines, and there are stewardship practices that are quite rigorous in a lot of situations.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

It's not national.

[Scott Weese]

There are some national guidelines that have been developed or released recently online.

The guideline field is an emerging field. The stewardship practices have been more at the local level or at the level of different organizations.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

Is agriculture leading on that? That's a really good story to tell, if we could tell it.

[Scott Weese]

I'd say there are similarities. There are challenges, too.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

I now go to Ms. Jaczek.

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

We've talked about the need for new antimicrobials, but there are also alternative therapies. As we have learned, antimicrobials are not necessarily being used for the stimulation of growth of food animals, but there are other alternative therapies, such as vaccines, probiotics and immune modulators.

How are these being used? Are there difficulties in terms of red tape? Is the need for regulation causing difficulties with the veterinary profession?

Dr. Fisher, perhaps I will address my question to you.