Industry Committee on June 5th, 2020

[Isabelle Des Chênes]

One of which may be a prohibition.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thanks very much.

My other question is for Logan Caragata from Roche. Serology testing is critical as we move forward. We've seen the Elecsys anti-SARS-CoV-2. It is approved in the EU, approved in the U.S. and approved in the U.K.

Is there availability in these jurisdictions today?

[Logan Caragata]

Yes, they're available in those jurisdictions.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Can you remind me of the accuracy?

[Logan Caragata]

I don't have the exact numbers, Nathaniel. I can check for that and get that to the committee.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I had 99.8%. If it's something otherwise, I would like to know.

Is it available in Canada?

[Logan Caragata]

We're waiting on the licence from Health Canada that we submitted about three weeks ago. We've seen that in other jurisdictions it's typically taken about a month. We expect we will get it sooner rather than later, so we'll—

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

You haven't seen processes in Canada being particularly slow in comparison to other countries.

[Logan Caragata]

No. What we saw with the molecular testing was that it moved very quickly. That one was approved on March 16, and it was very fast. With the serology tests, there's been a little bit more of a delay. I wouldn't say “delay”: I think they're doing their due diligence on these ones. There's nothing unusual we've seen in Canada versus other jurisdictions at this point.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Do you foresee any supply chain challenges with ensuring that there is great availability of these serology tests?

[Logan Caragata]

We don't foresee any supply chain challenges with the serology tests at this time.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Fanny, you've spoken about the importance of data. If you were to grade Canada and provinces in sharing data, what grade would we have to date, dealing with the greatest threat to health in my lifetime?

[Fanny Sie]

If I were to do a scale of one to 10, I would love to say that we were on the upper edge of that. Unfortunately, I have to be honest, so I'll say a six.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Okay, so it's a barely passing grade. To fix the data sharing, which is critical.... You talked about surveillance testing, strategic testing. Data's critical for doing that. B.C.'s been successful because of that, not just the capacity to test but also to test smartly. What are your recommendations for improving the use of data with respect to testing and tracing?

[Fanny Sie]

As I noted in my initial comments, I think it's important to do a combination of both. It would be nice if we could test every single person every single day, but that's not going to happen. It's like taking what we can from our capacity and then complementing it with data, and doing that in an intelligent way as we gradually open up the markets. We open up to one level, and then we do monitoring or testing. We open up to the next level, and then we monitor. That level of combination analysis would be optimal, in my eyes.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thanks very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you so much.

We will now start the next round of questions.

Mr. Savard-Tremblay, you have two and a half minutes. You may go ahead.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

My question is for the Montreal Port Authority representative. Clearly, every dollar invested in the Port of Montreal directly benefits partners in the supply chain by helping them do business more efficiently and bringing down operating costs.

Mr. Dagenais, can you tell us how money invested in the national trade corridors fund as well as federal technology and innovation programs could also impact the supply chain in Quebec?

[Daniel Dagenais]

Thank you for your question.

The national trade corridors fund has indeed financed projects at the Port of Montreal, and so has Scale AI. You're referring to investments linked to what's called the innovation and artificial intelligence supercluster. In both cases, the Port of Montreal has undertaken projects. One that's currently being fast-tracked focuses on identifying necessities and essential medical supplies.

Another project being fast-tracked supports a more coordinated and better-equipped decision-making process for supply chains in Quebec. It involves grouping and digitizing the flow of incoming goods from Europe more than 25 days before they arrive in Canada so supply chains can adapt and be ready to make weather-based decisions. As you can well imagine, crossing the Atlantic remains a rather perilous and unpredictable undertaking to this day.

Projects funded through the trade corridors program include infrastructure upgrades, an intermodal yard and the construction of a road link. We also received funding for container terminals.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you very much.

The next round of questions goes to MP Masse.

You have two and a half minutes.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

With regard to the Montreal port, I am interested in the high lake levels in the southern part and how that's affecting operations in your area. Have there been increased complications managing that because of COVID? We have a lot of work that needs to be done on docks and in a number of different areas—even prior to this. I'm curious as to what's happening in your region.

[Daniel Dagenais]

Thank you for your question.

We are carrying out infrastructure projects to improve our berths as well. The high water levels complicate underwater work, of course. In some cases, the work was put on hold during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic response. Construction in Quebec was disrupted between March and April, which delayed the beginning of work in the spring.

I did visit our construction sites yesterday, however, and they are fully up and running. The projects are under way, and we will make up the time we lost in the first few months. As for the high water levels, our users—shipowners—make full use of the water column allocated to them.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Do you have any projects that have partnerships with infrastructure programs? We've faced this in the past, when some of those programs' deadlines needed to be extended or couldn't get extended and they ran over them, causing complications for those projects' completion. I'm wondering if you have any of those challenges. That's one of the things I worry about with some of the infrastructure projects that might be rolled out with municipalities, provinces, and the federal government—the date and time. In the past when we've had some building programs, they've run into problems later on because they couldn't even procure the proper equipment and in the contracting.

I'm curious if you're running into that now. You may not be.

[Daniel Dagenais]

Yes, actually this week we had a conference call—I don't know whether you were made aware of it or not—with Infrastructure Canada exactly about that project, which has not yet started and will now be delayed somewhat. We've somewhat lost the opportunity of this entire construction season. We often jokingly say that Canada is a country of two seasons, winter and construction.

This spring, this delay has brought on some insecurity for some of our vendors and suppliers. They can't really guarantee whether or not they can start their work this year, so we've asked for a postponement.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you very much, Monsieur Dagenais.

We now move to the third round of questions.

Our first round of questions goes to MP Rempel Garner. You have the floor for five minutes.