Evidence of meeting #17 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.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
Helena Jaczek Liberal Markham—Stouffville, ON
You didn't receive any funding from the strategic innovation fund.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
Helena Jaczek Liberal Markham—Stouffville, ON
I have some information that apparently you received some $4.7 million at some point.
12:20 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Providence Therapeutics
That is a commitment through the National Research Council. I just articulated how much we have received of that commitment to date.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
12:20 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Providence Therapeutics
That was committed through the National Research Council. That is correct.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
Helena Jaczek Liberal Markham—Stouffville, ON
Following that commitment, what sort of data have you been required to submit to the National Research Council?
12:25 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Providence Therapeutics
We provide the National Research Council regular updates on our progress with regard to the phase one clinical trial. We provided them the full package that was also submitted to Health Canada, in which we received our authorization to proceed, and we provided them full access to all our preclinical data.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Helena Jaczek Liberal Markham—Stouffville, ON
As you progress through the various clinical trials, potentially or whatever, will you be submitting data as it comes in?
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Helena Jaczek Liberal Markham—Stouffville, ON
Would you anticipate, then, further funding from the federal government?
12:25 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Providence Therapeutics
It is our intention to proceed with the National Research Council and with the strategic innovation fund to invite them to participate in sponsorships of phase two and phase three clinical trials. However, that is not necessary for us to proceed.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Helena Jaczek Liberal Markham—Stouffville, ON
It seems like a responsible process to me. In other words, you submit data and then there is a further commitment of funding. It seems to be decision-making based on science, which I am sure is music to Professor Attaran's ears.
I would like now to turn to Dr. Lexchin.
Dr. Lexchin, you mentioned compulsory licensing. Could you please explain exactly what you mean by that and how it would work?
12:25 p.m.
Associate Professor, Department of Family and Community Medicine, Emergency Medicine Division, University of Toronto, As an Individual
First of all, let me point out that back in the early days of the pandemic, Parliament passed Bill C-13, which allowed compulsory licensing for a period of time. However, that expired at the end of September 2020.
Compulsory licensing, in essence, means that the government can issue a licence to another company to make a product that is still under patent. In that way you can expand the production capability and you also perhaps can get competition in terms of price.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Helena Jaczek Liberal Markham—Stouffville, ON
Thank you for that.
Mr. Casey, perhaps you could give us your opinion on compulsory licensing. I presume this has been a discussion with the many members of your organization.
12:25 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, BIOTECanada
It has. I think Canada has to recognize that it's in a globally competitive industry, so it has to adopt policies that are actually going to allow the industry to compete globally and to also participate here.
It's part of why we have seen a little bit of the industry disappear in Canada. We have adopted pricing policies that make it somewhat inhospitable for a lot of those companies to be here. If we think about going forward, we have to figure out how to get through the immediate period ahead with some of the challenges that are coming with the variants and mutations.
Looking ahead, I think the large multinationals are going to be an absolutely critical part of partnering with companies like VIDO-InterVac, Medicago and other Canadian entities that are here in this country. That partnership is going to be absolutely critical going forward.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
Helena Jaczek Liberal Markham—Stouffville, ON
I'll go back to Dr. Lexchin.
I just want to confirm with you. When you were calling for domestic, publicly owned manufacturing facilities, would the biologic manufacturing plant being built by NRC in Montreal fit the bill for you?
12:25 p.m.
Associate Professor, Department of Family and Community Medicine, Emergency Medicine Division, University of Toronto, As an Individual
I'm sorry. I don't have enough details to say whether or not it would fit the bill.
12:25 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sherry Romanado
Thank you very much.
We will now start our third round of questions.
With that, I'll turn to MP Baldinelli.
Welcome to INDU. You have the floor for five minutes.
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
Tony Baldinelli Conservative Niagara Falls, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for appearing today. It's my pleasure to be on the committee for my first day.
I'd like to pose a question quickly to Mr. Sorenson.
You've already announced plans to produce 50 million doses of your vaccine by the end of 2021. You just mentioned you have the ability to produce up to 120 million doses. If you had received significant federal support earlier, is it reasonable to assume that you would have been able to produce enough doses for most Canadians even earlier in 2021?
12:25 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Providence Therapeutics
Thank you for the question.
With the Northern RNA and the Emergent BioSolutions facilities, we have the capacity, beginning in July, to produce 50,000 vials a day. Each vial contains 10 doses of the vaccine. That is half a million doses per day beginning in July.
The total capacity that we could produce in 2021 would be 50 million doses. We are now receiving orders from provinces. We are going to set that production limit. We are going to produce what has been ordered.
If you include necessary downtime on the facilities, on a full-year basis we have the ability to produce up to 120 million annually with the current infrastructure.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Tony Baldinelli Conservative Niagara Falls, ON
I'll follow up on a question that was asked by one of my colleagues on the amount of money that was provided. In terms of federal support to date, is it the provincial funding—in terms of contracts—that is taking you through those stage two and stage three clinical trials?
You indicated you no longer need federal support. Is it because of the provincial funding?
12:30 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Providence Therapeutics
We would welcome the federal support, but being at the point of being able to do the production and have the offtake agreements with the provinces, we now have the ability to go to the capital markets and to raise sufficient capital funds to carry forward our plan, regardless of whether or not we have support from the federal government.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative