Health Committee on March 26th, 2026

[Dr. Martyn Judson]

Diversion is a significant problem in my own town of London. I've witnessed it myself.

When patients have been given a daily dose of their medication in the pharmacy, they take it out and then are swarmed immediately by people on the street. They sell what they're meant to be taking for the balance of the day. Increasingly, there are a lot of younger people coming into the clinic seeking treatment for the management of their opioid dependence. This invariably started as a result of accessing street drugs in the form of hydromorphone, which had obviously been diverted.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

Thank you.

I have another question, Dr. Judson. Over the past decade, federal policy has moved toward decriminalization, government-funded drug supply and opioid vending machines. Many Canadians would call this a “normalization” of hard drug use. From a clinical standpoint, what impact does normalization have on addiction rates and treatment uptake?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Once again, I caution Mr. Mazier that we're not discussing addiction therapy. We're discussing pharmaceutical sovereignty. I'd like him to keep to the agenda.

Thank you.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

Okay.

I have another question for you, Dr. Judson. This one is on sovereignty. The most commonly used drugs at supervised consumption sites are fentanyl and meth. As a physician, can you tell us what happens to the human body when somebody perpetually uses hard drugs with no exception of treatment or recovery?

[Dr. Martyn Judson]

The cycle of addiction continues. The patient administers the fentanyl. They have a few minutes of contentment. Then the drug is metabolized. They go into withdrawal, only to have to come and repeat the process. They go and get more drugs, bring those drugs in and inject them. It would be much better, when they attended safe injection sites, if there was a greater emphasis on trying to encourage people to seek long-term recovery.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

Would you say that the policies built around drug enablement are holding people with addiction hostage?

[Dr. Martyn Judson]

Yes.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Riding Mountain, MB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Mr. Mazier.

Mr. Eyolfson, you have five minutes, please.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Winnipeg West, MB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to thank all the witnesses for coming. This has been very useful testimony.

We've heard a lot of testimony about how we need to improve our own manufacturing capacity. It's not the be-all and end-all—every nation has to rely on other nations for some—but we have severely limited capacity. One thing we learned during the pandemic was that we didn't have the ability to make our own vaccines.

Now, I'm going a little far through the mists of time, but some of us may remember Connaught Labs. This was a publicly owned laboratory. It produced a large portion of Canada's vaccines. It was sold in the 1980s by the federal government of the day to private industry, to a private company. This company decided that the best business case for them was to close the Canadian branch, formerly Connaught Labs, leaving us without any vaccine capacity.

Dr. Tadrous and then Dr. Faisal, does this occurrence, as long ago as it was, make a case for publicly owned pharmaceutical manufacturing that would not be at risk for being sold out of country due to a business case?

[Dr. Mina Tadrous]

Thank you very much. That's a really interesting question on the balance of this. It speaks to what I'm trying to present to the committee, which is the need to be targeted. We should be bolstering domestic production in some way.

Let's say we went to a company today, told them we'd give them money to make a drug and allowed them to pick whatever they wanted. They would pick the thing that's most profitable. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but as Canadians, we should be selecting on this, or at least working hand in hand: We want to pick a drug that's critical to us and important to Canadians, whether it's vaccines or drug products. We may also want to lean into how we can be valuable to the global economy and where Canada can lead. There are drugs that the United States is unable to produce. They've made this a national security process. There's a really good opportunity in working with other allies. These are the things we can make.

On the public space, there is a really great opportunity to be thinking about some public-private partnerships and different models in which we produce certain products. We've seen this in Alberta. There's a manufacturing site called API that's being produced. There need to be supports in what they can make and how they make it, but there is an opportunity to be thinking creatively about how we can both bolster domestic production and be very pointed on what we make and what Canada needs.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Winnipeg West, MB]

Thank you.

Dr. Faisal, would you care to add to that?

[Dr. Sadaf Faisal]

Yes. Just to pick up on what Mina was talking about, there is an opportunity, but whomever we partner up with in a public-private partnership, we need to make sure that we include some expedited regulatory review processes for these drugs. One of the issues is that a lot of the time, we do not get drugs in time. We also need to make sure that if we are asking them to produce something domestically, they get some incentives so that Canada can be a better market for them. Why would someone invest in Canada if they don't see that we are giving them some kind of incentive?

We could be leading. We are the ones who produced insulin. There is a big opportunity over here in which we can work together—maybe not as a whole public company; maybe a public-private partnership would be a better option.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Winnipeg West, MB]

Thank you.

My final question, I'll put to both Dr. Tadrous and Dr. Faisal.

In regard to this, you mentioned that you had to have your top 50 be domestic and then the next top 50 be from a friendly ally. I'm not asking you to answer this right now. That would be absurd. Would either or both of you be among the sources who could help to tell us the top 50 and the next 50?

Dr. Tadrous, I'll start with you.

[Dr. Mina Tadrous]

That's exactly what we've been doing in our work. We've developed frameworks and mechanisms to do that. I want to point out that Health Canada has been leading a proposal to develop a critical vulnerable drug list. It's related to bolstering the supply that would be held inside of Canada, to increasing the amount that should be held.

There's a lot of work happening in this space and a lot of really smart people working towards it. We need to have the vision whereby all of this work is linked with policy. That's where the people on this committee can really play a leadership role.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Winnipeg West, MB]

Thank you very much.

Dr. Faisal is next.

[Dr. Sadaf Faisal]

Mina just mentioned the critical and vulnerable drug list. Health Canada is working on it. We are working very closely with them. It's a great opportunity for us to collaborate on that. We really hope that this committee can move the work forward.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Winnipeg West, MB]

Thank you.

I have no further questions.

That's my time. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Do you have anything else to say, Mr. Eyolfson?

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Winnipeg West, MB]

No. Those are all the questions I had.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I thought you told me that you had a question to put to the committee.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Winnipeg West, MB]

Oh, yes. I'm sorry. I have no more questions, but I have a motion that I would like to bring up at this point.

This is a routine motion regarding the distribution and access to documents to three associate members per recognized party, adopted by various committees in November. This expired on January 26. There's agreement among whips for committees to adopt a new routine motion extending the provisions of this motion until September.

The following motion is available, printed in English and French. It reads:

That, notwithstanding the usual practices of the committee concerning access to and distribution of documents,

1. up to three associate members of the committee per party be authorized to receive the notices of meetings and notices of motion and be granted access to the digital binder;

2. the associate members be designated by the offices of the whips of each recognized party and sent to the committee clerk; and

3. the provisions of this motion expire as of September 25, 2026, unless otherwise ordered.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Is there anyone disagreeing? I gather that all the party whips have agreed to this.

We have unanimous consent on this.

(Motion agreed to)

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Mr. Eyolfson.

I now want to thank our witnesses, Dr. Faisal, Dr. Judson and Dr. Tadrous, for sharing their expertise on an extremely important issue.

I adjourn the meeting.