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.
Prof. Amir Attaran
I do not think there's a chance. Providence has been through a bad experience. I do not think there is a snowball's chance they'll have a vaccine commercialized by the end of the year. That's a separate discussion.
The other thing I would change is this: Why must we review everything for safety ourselves at Health Canada? The European Union has one regulatory agency for 27 countries. I would be fine almost automatically approving any vaccine that the European Union does or that the U.S.A. does, because—
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
The subamendment to what I was suggesting was to also look at ways in the certification process to import data from other jurisdictions that—
Prof. Amir Attaran
That's a great idea. I'd go a step further. Just grant automatic recognition to what the Europeans approve and register or what the Americans approve and register. They are technically competent—more competent than Health Canada. There's no need to reinvent the wheel. If we're trying to save time, just recognize their approval as good enough.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Thank you.
To anyone else who's here, did I miss anything? I'm so tired of us sitting here finger pointing. We need a way forward. Is there anything else that we need to do?
Director and Chief Executive Officer, VIDO-InterVac
I have two comments.
I would also recommend not focusing only on mRNA vaccines. We see a huge amount of vaccine hesitancy right now. Forty per cent of Canadians do not want to get vaccinated right now, and that is because everything, including your strategy, is focusing on a new vaccine, on a new technology—
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
We need education on vaccines as well for the Canadian public. That's excellent.
Director and Chief Executive Officer, VIDO-InterVac
That's right. We need to have multiple technologies and better education, and we also need to have, which we didn't have, research capacity. You can't just start vaccinating or manufacturing a vaccine without understanding the disease, so we need that research capacity. At the moment, we're relying on other countries. We need to have that in Canada too.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sherry Romanado
Thank you very much.
Our next round of questions will go to MP Lambropoulos.
You have the floor.
Liberal
Emmanuella Lambropoulos Liberal Saint-Laurent, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'd like to begin by thanking all the witnesses for being here today to answer our questions.
I think, Mr. Gerdts, you hit the nail on the head with regard to vaccine hesitancy. I think we speak a lot about production and about procurement, but we are not talking enough about the people who refuse to get a vaccine and who will continue to spread the virus as we go on. Education is key there.
With regard to what Mr. Attaran said, I agree. We can't bet on only one type of vaccine and hope that it is more effective than anything else, considering we're so early on in the game.
Mr. Sorenson, I know you recently wrote to the federal government for extra support—I believe the ask was for $150 million—in order to help with the vaccine production and in order to quicken things up, but would you not agree that with regard to such things and with regard to the fact that we have to procure enough vaccines to get us through the current wave that we're in and also invest in research, that it would be unwise of us to just give a lump sum in one shot?
I know that we've already invested $4.7 million, as my colleague Ms. Jaczek mentioned, and I know that our government also, through the NGen supercluster, in order to scale up manufacturing capacity, committed to another $5 million. What are your thoughts on this?
Chief Executive Officer, Providence Therapeutics
We were not seeking a $150-million grant. We were seeking a $150-million deposit so that we could engage our manufacturing plant and purchase the required raw materials in order to make 50 million doses of vaccines in 2021. The Canadian government chose not to respond to that, so we are now doing that with the provinces.
Liberal
Emmanuella Lambropoulos Liberal Saint-Laurent, QC
I believe you wrote to them on February 5, 2021. Is that correct?
Chief Executive Officer, Providence Therapeutics
I received a phone call from Minister Champagne on Saturday, and that was the first contact we received. We did not discuss that particular letter. We discussed other infrastructure dialogue.
Liberal
Emmanuella Lambropoulos Liberal Saint-Laurent, QC
Thank you very much.
Mr. Attaran, you made reference to a national vaccination campaign, so my question is for you. Currently provinces and territories are in charge of managing their own vaccination rollouts, as we know. However, some Canadians are preoccupied about this, worried about some of the decisions being made by certain provinces.
How do you think the federal government can work with the provinces and territories, considering that it's their jurisdiction, to help with this type of national vaccine rollout?
Prof. Amir Attaran
First of all, your question has an incorrect prima facie. Health is a shared jurisdiction under the Constitution, both federal and provincial. With continued sedulous attention to the myth that it's provincial only, simply, you are getting off on the wrong foot as a government with that.
What we should be doing is using a campaign-style model to administer the vaccines that will come and that are not quite as thermo unstable as the mRNA ones. That will allow us to take vaccines wherever you can take a cooler of beer. That's what you can do with the adenovirus ones. It's what you can do with the Moderna ones to some extent too—the Novavax. When we get to that point, we should be having vaccination clinics across this country, in schools, recreation centres, churches, mosques, city halls, what have you, and those should be organized with very strong federal and provincial co-operation.
I would recommend working with the Canadian Red Cross on that, which is a national organization with provincial presence. It has experience in hundreds—perhaps several hundreds—of vaccine campaigns around the world that have been highly successful. Where are they on this? Why aren't they being used? Why can't we use them to coordinate this, and by the way, also the Canadian Forces? Vaccine campaign administration is what we need.
Liberal
Emmanuella Lambropoulos Liberal Saint-Laurent, QC
All right. Thank you very much.
I have no further questions.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sherry Romanado
Thank you very much.
That wraps up our time for today.
I'd like to thank the witnesses for being here. I found today's testimony very helpful, and I appreciate your time.
With that, I'll remind the members that we will have the vaccine task force with us this Thursday. I'm sure that some of the questions that came up today we can make use of on Thursday.
I'd like to thank everyone again for their time.
Thank you very much to the interpreters, the technicians, the analysts and the clerk.
Thank you so much. I call this meeting adjourned.