Industry Committee on Feb. 2nd, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Good morning, everyone. I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 14 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of January 25, 2021. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website.

So that you are aware, the webcast will always show the person speaking rather than the entirety of the committee.

To ensure an orderly meeting, I will outline a few rules to follow.

Members and witnesses may speak in the official language of their choice. Interpretation services are available for this meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of “floor”, “English” or “French”. If the translation is not working, please signal it to me so that we can make sure it gets fixed.

Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. If you are on the video conference, please click on the microphone icon to unmute your mike.

As a reminder, all comments by members and witnesses should be addressed through the chair.

When you are not speaking, your mike should be on mute. For the sake of interpretation, I ask that you please not speak over the witnesses. Wait your turn and then pose your question, so that we can make sure we have translation.

With regard to a speakers list, the committee clerk and I will do our best to maintain the order of speaking for all members, whether you are participating virtually or in person.

As is my normal practice, I will hold up the yellow card for when you have 30 seconds remaining in your intervention and the red card for when your time for questions has expired.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Tuesday, December 1, 2020, the committee is meeting today to commence its study on the domestic manufacturing capacity for COVID-19 vaccine.

I'll now welcome our witnesses.

With us today, we have the Honourable Patty Hajdu, Minister of Health. From the Public Agency of Canada, we have Mr. Iain Stewart, president. From the Department of Health, we have Stephen Lucas, deputy minister.

Each witness will present for up to seven minutes, followed by the rounds of questions.

With that, we will start with Minister Hajdu.

You have the floor for seven minutes.

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Minister of Health]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I do appreciate this opportunity to speak with you and the committee about the Government of Canada's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

While the issue of domestic manufacturing capacity is outside the purview of my role as Minister of Health, I am happy to speak about the work our government is doing to ensure that Canadians have access to safe and effective vaccines.

I will begin with an update on vaccine distribution.

As you know, Pfizer and Moderna's vaccines have been approved in Canada and are now being distributed across the country.

So far, we have secured a total of 80 million doses of these two vaccines, and of these, 1.1 million doses have already been delivered to the provinces and territories.

Although the delays recently announced by Pfizer will have a short-term impact on vaccine rollout, we're still on track to receive the full four million doses we were expecting by the end of March. This would bring the total of doses received, both Pfizer and Moderna, to six million by the end of the first quarter.

Starting in April, the pace will accelerate, with at least 20 million doses delivered between April and June.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

On a point of order, Madam Chair.

There is no interpretation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Please wait one moment. We're just going to double-check. We're having difficulty.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

There is no problem. I'm listening to you attentively.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Is it working?

Sébastien, is it working?

It's working now.

Go ahead, Minister.

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Fine.

It is during this time that mass vaccination campaigns will begin to ramp up around the country. We are working with the provinces, territories and indigenous partners to prepare for this next phase.

Most importantly, we expect to have enough vaccine for every Canadian by the end of September 2021, even if no other vaccine is authorized for use in Canada, but we are expecting other vaccines to be authorized in the months to come, providing, of course, that they meet Health Canada's strictest standards for safety, efficacy and quality.

Given the urgency of the pandemic, we put in place measures to safely expedite the authorization process. We are now accept rolling submissions for vaccines, which means that manufacturers can submit data as it becomes available, instead of having to wait until all clinical studies are completed and then submitting en masse at the end. It was through this expedited process that Pfizer and Moderna vaccinations were authorized. Health Canada is now reviewing vaccines by AstraZeneca and Janssen using the same process.

We expect to receive more submissions in the weeks to come. We are ready should any other vaccine candidates be approved.

We have signed agreements with seven different companies to reserve COVID-19 vaccines, with an option of expanding those orders later, as we did recently with Pfizer.

This approach, which was informed by the advice of the COVID-19 vaccine task force, enabled us to secure a range of vaccine candidates early on, as it was not possible in the beginning to know which vaccine would be the most effective or available first. The signed agreements include up to 76 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech's vaccine, up to 40 million doses of Moderna's vaccine, up to 72 million doses of Sanofi-GlaxoSmithKline's vaccine, up to 38 million doses from Janssen-Johnson & Johnson, up to 76 million doses from Novavax, up to 76 million doses from Medicago, and finally, up to 20 million doses from AstraZeneca.

Today I've mentioned the actions we're taking right now to ensure that Canadians have timely access to a COVID-19 vaccine. At the same time, we are looking to the future.

Early in the pandemic, the Government of Canada recognized how biomanufacturing capabilities are critical to securing access to equipment, supplies, medicines and vaccines. From a health portfolio perspective, a robust domestic biomanufacturing sector is critical for strengthening Canada's position to respond to this and future health crises and to maintain a dependable supply of safe and effective vaccines and therapies in the long term. This is why I give my full support to our government's initiatives to build this capacity, which Minister Champagne will describe when he appears before the committee.

In Canada we are fortunate to have some of the best vaccination programs and regulatory approvals systems in the world. With these systems already in place, we were able to act quickly at the beginning of the pandemic to ensure that when a COVID-19 vaccine was ready, Canada was ready.

These well-established systems, built over many decades, will serve us well as we vaccinate Canadians against COVID-19.

Looking ahead we have an opportunity to build and strengthen this infrastructure so that we can be as prepared as possible for any public health crisis that might arise in the future.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you very much, Minister.

I now turn the floor over to Mr. Stewart.

You have the floor for seven minutes.

[Iain Stewart, President, Public Health Agency of Canada]

Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today.

I have the honour of serving as the president of the Public Health Agency. I started on September 28, 2020. I'm pleased to be here to talk about what we're doing with respect to procuring vaccines and vaccine rollout.

As the Minister of Health noted, domestic manufacturing capacity in Canada is not part of the Public Health Agency's mandate. In my remarks, then, I'll focus on securing safe and effective vaccines for all Canadians in our capacity here.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, there has been extensive engagement with provinces and territories, as well as with indigenous communities, about rolling out the vaccine to coordinate a pan-Canadian response. What we're trying to do, of course, is protect the health and safety of all people in Canada while prioritizing the first, limited number of vaccines to high-risk populations. We've been focused on trying to minimize serious illness and overall mortality while limiting societal disruptions.

With regard to acquiring COVID vaccines, we were guided by the COVID-19 vaccine task force. That task force advice led the Government of Canada to secure enough doses to provide vaccines to all Canadians. Minister Hajdu has just run through the procurements that have been lined up and put under way.

The principles guiding the use of the vaccines have been focusing on science-driven decision-making, transparency, coherence and adaptability, as well as fairness, equity and consistency in reporting. These principles continue to guide us, as does a reliance on science experts and public health expertise, to make sure that Canadians have safe COVID vaccines as they're available.

The vaccine acquisition strategy is intended to mitigate various risks to the vaccine supply. So far, as Minister Hajdu mentioned, we have two vaccines, of which we've procured a total of 80 million doses. These are two-dose vaccines, so these are enough to immunize 40 million people—our entire population. Based on the procurement schedules to date, this should be sufficient to do so this year. These of course are vaccines approved by the Health Canada regulator.

As of January 21, Canada has delivered more than 1.1 million vaccine doses. The provinces are very close now to having administered to Canadians their millionth dose against the schedule.

I think, probably as the committee knows, Pfizer deliveries will slow down for a few weeks, because the manufacturers indicated that they need to do some retooling of their production plant. They will deliver on their commitment to provide four million doses by the end of this first quarter. The Pfizer CEO confirmed to the Prime Minister that they're on track to do so.

Last week, the Prime Minister announced that the latest vaccine shipment from Moderna will also contain fewer doses than expected. Here too the company has reassured him that they will provide the two million doses they're contracted for by the end of March.

In total, we're on track to deliver six million doses of Moderna and Pfizer by the end of March 2021.

In support of enabling the provinces and territories to do their vaccine rollout, we purchased a range of ancillary supplies—needles, syringes, wipes, sharps containers, and so on—sufficient for their immunization efforts. We've distributed to the provinces their supplies in this regard for this quarter.

We also have advance purchase agreements, in addition to those with Pfizer and Moderna, as Minister Hajdu set out, with five other vaccine candidates, three of which are currently now progressing through regulatory trials here in Canada. On Friday, Janssen, AstraZeneca and Novavax began that process. We have agreements with all of these vaccine suppliers and have significant acquisitions lined up.

The vaccine candidates were selected from a number of different companies covering a broad range of technologies. The idea of having different technologies was to minimize risk, as was having a variety of companies, each with its own supply chain. It was also guided by trying to secure the earliest delivery that we could. The idea was that we would have sufficient vaccine available to immunize all Canadians free of charge. This was guided, as I mentioned, by the vaccine task force.

There are a lot of uncertainties. I think Pfizer and Moderna reflect the manufacturing uncertainties that are involved and also at the time of negotiation of the APAs it of course was not clear which ones would have successful clinical trials nor which ones would be approved by the regulator.

We've been relying on an evidence-based supply strategy to ensure we have vaccines in sufficient quantities.

In addition, Health Canada's robust process for regulatory authorization provides Canadians with assurances that the vaccines available to them are safe and effective. Here at the Public Health Agency, along with our partners in the scientific and health community, we will now be continuing to monitor the vaccines as they're rolled out. We have a well-established system for monitoring vaccine safety and we're tracking it closely. As we learn more about COVID every day, we also need to continue to learn more about the vaccines and the transmission of the virus, and so we'll continue to rely on the science community and the medical health community to guide us in that regard.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you very much, Mr. Stewart.

With that, we will start our rounds of questions.

Our first round of questions goes to MP Rempel Garner.

You have the floor for six minutes.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'll direct my questions to Mr. Stewart.

My understanding is that the Novavax purchase agreement was originally announced on August 31, 2020. I'm looking at an email that was produced in documents that were released to the health committee on Friday. The email is between Bryan Blom, who was the director of communications for Public Works, I believe, and Cecely Roy, who is a press secretary at Public Works. It's an email that's going through various iterations of the press release related to the Novavax purchase agreement announcement. Mr. Blom says, “Hi Cecely - Removed reference to NRC component of Novavax MOU.”

I'm just wondering, as you were the head of the NRC at that point in time, why the NRC pulled out of a production deal in August or why that reference was removed.

[Iain Stewart]

The NRC is still in discussions with a number of companies and so I'm not sure that in fact there's been a removal of the relationship. I can't really speak to what was included in a PSPC communications interchange, but I think Mitch Davies, who's the current president, is appearing before your committee tomorrow or Thursday.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Thank you. It's just that there are a lot of questions today in the media because the Novavax contract, or the announcement today, has the NRC facility only producing on best schedule the first dose of that vaccine in late July.

I'm just trying to understand if there was a decision, a conscious decision, made by yourself to not include a production agreement at the time that the purchase agreement was announced last year, because that's a lot of months that we technically could have been producing vaccines, right?

[Iain Stewart]

The production of vaccines requires a facility that is able to manufacture. The NRC is, in fact, building such a facility and Mitch Davies can talk to you about how that's progressing.

The relationship you're referring to with Novavax, you're assuming it's a manufacturing relationship but it could have been other things as well. The NRC, of course, is a research organization and does research contracts with its clients.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

So you don't recall why the reference to the NRC was pulled out of the original announcement with Novavax?

[Iain Stewart]

It's an ongoing discussion with Novavax. Mitch Davies is probably better placed to talk about how that's evolving.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Under your tenure, did you complete negotiations for the production of Novavax at the NRC facility?

[Iain Stewart]

As I just mentioned, the NRC is in the process of building a manufacturing capacity. That's not yet complete.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Do you recall if that happened? I just would like to get a clear answer.

[Iain Stewart]

You're asking me to clarify why PSPC removed something from a communication document based on internal emails and I don't know the answer to that.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

No, I was just asking if under your tenure there was a formal working relationship either for production of vaccine or other developed with Novavax and if you could specify what that was, and if it was under negotiation, why it wasn't included in the August 31 announcement.

[Iain Stewart]

As I've said a few times, there is an ongoing discussion with Novavax, and why it didn't end up in the PSPC press release, I don't know.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

When will the first dose of the Novavax vaccine be produced at the new NRC facility?

[Iain Stewart]

Well, the NRC is in the process of building out their manufacturing capability, and Mitch Davies would be able to speak to whether they're still on track for the timetable—

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

So, as the head of Public Health Agency, you don't know when the first dose of Novavax would be produced at the NRC facility.