Evidence of meeting #15 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was vaccines.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Simon Kennedy  Deputy Minister, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, Department of Industry
Bill Matthews  Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Mitch Davies  President, National Research Council of Canada

12:20 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Sherry Romanado

Thank you very much.

That finishes our second round. We'll start our third round.

The next round goes to MP Cumming.

You have the floor for five minutes.

12:20 p.m.

Conservative

James Cumming Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB

Thank you.

Minister Champagne, a lot of different companies have come to light, including Precision NanoSystems, Providence, and Entos. Several companies have talked about their capacity and ability to provide vaccines. Recently we've seen that they've received funding. Why was that not earlier? Why was that not back in May? Why is there such a lag to actually getting behind some of these entities?

12:20 p.m.

Liberal

François-Philippe Champagne Liberal Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC

First of all, let me just say that we're willing and very happy to work with everyone who has raised their hand. If you look at Entos, which you mentioned, in Edmonton, on May 1 they concluded an IRAP agreement of $100,000, and on May 25 they received about $4.2 million. In September, they received another $5 million. If you look at a small company like that, which received almost $10 million, my message to you, but also to all of them and other companies.... We talked about Providence, which also received $10 million. This is good. I want more of these companies across Canada to be helping us to find the next vaccine, and we will be with them every step of the way.

But for people at home to understand what we've been doing.... Some of them, as you know, Mr. Cumming, are in clinical trials, so we provide them funding to accelerate the clinical trials and we will be with them with the SIF when it comes to biomanufacturing, if they get there, because as Mr. Kennedy said based on the question before, we have a very wide portfolio.

12:20 p.m.

Conservative

James Cumming Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB

I understand—

12:20 p.m.

Liberal

François-Philippe Champagne Liberal Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC

I could go through the various investments we made to make sure we would be well positioned.

Sorry, I interrupted you.

12:20 p.m.

Conservative

James Cumming Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB

I understand, but in a $400-billion package that's been dealing with this, those are relatively small dollars in the overall scope of things.

I was taken by Mr. Kennedy's...and maybe Mr. Champagne can speak to this. The U.K. recognized in 2017 they had to get on with providing some of this domestic manufacturing. The government has been in place for five years now. What on earth was your predecessor doing? There doesn't seem to be.... Now we're reacting, but even on a small scale, we haven't proceeded with any kind of domestic manufacturing.

I know you're new to it, and I appreciate the work you're doing today, but where have we been?

12:20 p.m.

Liberal

François-Philippe Champagne Liberal Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC

First, to your other points, Mr. Cumming, I just want to clarify that, for example, the investments that were made to IRAP are through the National Research Council. The amounts that you were referring to have been determined with experts and leading scientists in Canada. Those are scientific decisions. They're not political decisions as to the level of funding. I want to be clear that these decisions were taken by experts who said, “This is the type of funding you need for that type of clinical trial.”

I want to be clear with you and all members. If you have companies that want to help, please send them to me and we'll see and we'll provide them to the task force that is giving the expert advice.

When it comes to the pandemic, again, we just have to go back a year. The pandemic was declared on March 11, and 12 days afterwards, we were already there to invest significantly—as I said, $192 million. Within a month, we had put close to one billion dollars to scale. I think what you're saying, Mr. Cumming, is that we have these different companies in Canada, and I have a full list of vaccine companies across Canada. What we've been trying to do to react quickly, with the deputy minister and the whole team, was to scale very quickly to make sure that, based on advice, we would select the best one that could be safe and effective and could be available quickly to Canadians.

I think if you look at the record, we acted as quickly as possible to make sure that.... The investments like Novavax—you would agree with me—are the type of thing I want to see. That's the type of thing I'm looking for, to make sure we accelerate and expand.

To Mr. Erskine-Smith's point before, we will be resilient whatever comes next. Whatever that may be, we'll be resilient.

12:25 p.m.

Conservative

James Cumming Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB

Okay. I want to be able to carry on. I still believe it's been five years late to the game.

Minister Anand, I want to be able to get to you. It's clear that in the vaccines the numbers are large—13 million, 36 million. Do you not see why it would be important to lay that out in a detailed plan so the provinces can properly react to those kinds of volumes? Going from six million to 36 million is a hell of an effort that they're going to have to make. They need to see a plan.

12:25 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Sherry Romanado

Unfortunately, MP Cumming, you're way over time. I'm going to have to stop you there, because we want to make sure everyone has a chance to ask their questions.

I'm going to turn it over to MP Ehsassi for five minutes.

February 4th, 2021 / 12:25 p.m.

Liberal

Ali Ehsassi Liberal Willowdale, ON

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the ministers for being with us today. A lot of the information out there has been misleading, but you have provided us detailed responses.

Minister Champagne, the previous member, my Conservative friend, was talking about Canada's capacity. In your assessment, the hollowing out of vaccine manufacturing that occurred in Canada between 2007, beginning with AstraZeneca, all the way to 2014, when four vaccine manufacturing companies withdrew from our country, did that undermine our capacity to develop vaccines in this country?

12:25 p.m.

Liberal

François-Philippe Champagne Liberal Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC

First of all, let me thank you for your work as parliamentary secretary in helping, like all members have, to make sure we have the best strategy and policies to protect Canadians. If you would allow me, I will go back to Mr. Cumming's previous question, when he was talking about the level of preparedness.

Mr. Cumming, I apologize I didn't have enough time to be fulsome in my answer, but I want to say that we reopened the strategic innovation fund to biomanufacturing when we formed the government.

To your point, I think what all of us need to look at now is that we are building the pillars of our future resilience, so we invested in Medicago in Quebec City, and it is a significant investment, close to $173 million. We then made a significant investment in VIDO in Saskatchewan, and one in AbCellera. This week we were able to attract—and I want to emphasize for members—Novavax to Canada, because, let's be clear, every country would like to have Novavax manufacturing in their country. They chose Canada, and there's a reason why.

I also want to be fulsome with Mr. Cumming, because I did speak to the CEO of the company. Our policies, when it comes to science, investments, and ease of doing business, were key in his decision. You don't need to take it from me. You can listen to the interviews he gave in Canada.

What we will be doing together—and we're trying to accelerate this as quickly as possible—is investing in small and medium-size businesses as well. Mr. Ehsassi, and all of us members, have SMEs that want to help in our regions, in our provinces and in our towns, and I greatly welcome that. That's why we supported them with the National Research Council. We supported those that were at a stage that was, I would say, more advanced. We couldn't, for example, in terms of biomanufacturing, give them the resources to do that.

Deputy Minister Kennedy explained we did that because there are also different types of vaccines. When we look at our vaccination procurement, we see there are about 234 vaccine candidates in the world. We selected seven of the most promising based on the advice of the task force. Two of them have been approved in Canada and in most G7 countries, and deliveries are now in Canada.

When we look at the big picture, we see it in terms of both procurement and domestic scale-up of biomanufacturing. We did what we needed to do first to ensure that we were protecting the health and safety of Canadians, and at the same time, that we would be very resilient.

We're not going to stop there. I want to reassure you, Mr. Ehsassi, and other members of the committee, I'm talking to different companies. We are going to make our country resilient. We will be well prepared for whatever may come next. We will try to accelerate all these manufacturing projects to be produced safely, because I think Canadians want speed, but they also want something safe. We will do this as safely and as quickly as possible to protect the health and safety of Canadians.

12:30 p.m.

Liberal

Ali Ehsassi Liberal Willowdale, ON

Thank you very much for that, Minister.

Canadians have heard by now that the vaccine task force has done a tremendous job. They had to choose among 234 vaccine candidates, and they did a magnificent job.

One of the committees we haven't heard a lot about is the Joint Biomanufacturing Subcommittee. Would you be kind enough to explain to us the tremendous work that subcommittee has been undertaking for many months?

12:30 p.m.

Liberal

François-Philippe Champagne Liberal Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC

I think we should all be grateful, as parliamentarians on behalf of Canadians. Just as you said, they looked at many proposals. They are experts. I have been told some stories of the members of that task force. Some are doctors who were on the front line, and at the same time they're taking their phones and trying to provide advice.

I want to emphasize that those decisions are scientific decisions. They are not political decisions as to where we are going to invest. The members of the committee made the screening. They decided which ones would be safe, effective and available quickly to protect Canadians. Those were the parameters under which they operated.

Now the chair is smiling and waving at me, which means I will have to stop here.

12:30 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Sherry Romanado

Thank you very much.

We will go next to Mr. Lemire.

You have the floor for two and a half minutes.

12:30 p.m.

Bloc

Sébastien Lemire Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Minister Champagne, we feel that you are making your mark as Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry. A number of your answers indicate that you are in favour of Canadian industry autonomy and much stronger economic sovereignty.

However, the government has not specified what measures it will take to increase Canada's overall science capacity and guarantee our research. This is directly within your purview. I am talking about both basic research and applied research. Canadian scientists must have access to funding to help them use their talents.

What will the government do to both invest in the next generation of scientists and provide ongoing support to them, so that they can meet the challenges of the next crisis?

12:30 p.m.

Liberal

François-Philippe Champagne Liberal Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC

Thank you, Mr. Lemire.

I'm glad you raised the issue of science because, before the biomanufacturing stage, there is science. Science gets us there.

I think we have shown the importance of science. As I often say, the pandemic was declared on March 11, and 12 days later, on March 23, we were already investing $275 million in what we called Canada's plan to mobilize science to fight COVID-19. The goal of those investments was to ensure to give us the necessary means. That was on top of what the National Research Council of Canada was already doing.

We will continue to invest in science. Everyone must learn lessons from this pandemic. A century has passed since something like this occurred. We have never experienced such a pandemic. Of course, we must learn from it.

That said, we reacted quickly. You can definitely count on me, as Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, to work with you and your colleagues, listen to the ideas that will be proposed and see how we can better support basic science and applied science. Those people enable us to make progress.

I was looking at various vaccine candidates. There is a vaccine from Medicago, but there are also vaccines from smaller companies, such as Variation Biotechnologies, Precision NanoSystems, IMV, Entos Pharmaceuticals and Providence Therapeutics. There is also a vaccine from Biodextris, in Laval, and from Glycovax Pharma, in Montreal. We have a lot of them. I am pleased, as this will help create quality jobs and keep our researchers in the country. Moreover, our universities will be even more attractive if our manufacturing base provides students with good opportunities.

12:35 p.m.

Bloc

Sébastien Lemire Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC

I have a question you can answer with a yes or a no, out of respect for the time Madam Chair has given me.

Are you committing to invest more in research than your government has done over the past five years?

12:35 p.m.

Liberal

François-Philippe Champagne Liberal Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC

Our government has made record investments in science, and we will certainly continue to support our researchers and our scientists because they are the reason our country is in a good position today.

12:35 p.m.

Bloc

Sébastien Lemire Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC

Thank you.

12:35 p.m.

Liberal

François-Philippe Champagne Liberal Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC

Thank you.

12:35 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Sherry Romanado

Thank you very much.

We'll now go to MP Davies.

You have the floor for two and a half minutes.

12:35 p.m.

NDP

Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC

Thank you.

Minister Anand, we know that the EU, the United States and Brazil have released contracts that they've signed with vaccine manufacturers, although some of it's redacted. I'd like to know who made the decision in the Canadian government not to release a single word of any of our contracts, and why.

12:35 p.m.

Liberal

Anita Anand Liberal Oakville, ON

I want to start by saying that every country is different—given their domestic capacity, for example—and therefore the negotiations with countries and the resulting contracts are not identical.

In terms of Canada's bilateral contracts with vaccine producers, there are a number of clauses that we as the Government of Canada, as one of two contracting parties, need to respect as a matter of law. More importantly, perhaps, we don't want to put our vaccine procurements at risk. We all need vaccines. If we were to disclose these contracts, we would risk receiving those vaccines, because we would be in a potential breach of contract.

12:35 p.m.

NDP

Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC

Minister, I'm a lawyer myself. I've read my share of contracts. Are you saying that the confidentiality clauses in our contracts prohibit the release and disclosure of the entirety of the contracts, or just parts of them?

12:35 p.m.

Liberal

Anita Anand Liberal Oakville, ON

The confidentiality clauses apply to the contracts as a whole. I have gone back to the vaccine manufacturers to discuss this issue with them. They are, as one of the contracting parties, very concerned to ensure that Canada respects its contractual obligations.