Industry Committee on Feb. 18th, 2021

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

So, the public doesn't have any access to those other conflicts.

I only have two minutes left, and I just want to ask this: In the United States, they're webcasting and providing much more robust access to the public. Why aren't we doing that here in our country, especially given the fact that we have, virtually, integrated economies? Where I sit right now, I can get in my car and, if I could cross the border, get a vaccine at a Meijer department store in 10 minutes. We're quite integrated, so why aren't we webcasting?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Answer very quickly because you're out of time.

[Roger Scott-Douglas]

We looked at all the other task forces, including Warp Speed. What Canada is doing is largely equivalent to what everybody else is doing. There's a great deal of confidential business information, and that necessitates that meetings be held in confidence, the same as almost every other task force.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you very much.

Our next round of questions goes to MP Paul-Hus.

You have the floor for five minutes.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good morning to all the witnesses.

We are trying to establish the chronology of the facts at the moment. We know that, on May 12, a partnership was announced between CanSino Biologics and Dalhousie University where Dr. Langley works.

Dr. Langley, as a professor and a researcher at Dalhousie University, you had to find that CanSino Biologics was a good source for vaccines. However, Mr. Douglas just mentioned that CanSino Biologics was not kept on. So we are having trouble understanding.

Moreover, on May 19, CanSino Biologics withdrew and put an end to the agreement. Your COVID-19 vaccine task force was formed and began to meet on June 16. On August 5, the creation of your task force was announced at the same time as the announcement of an agreement with Pfizer and Moderna. At the moment, there are a number of grey areas in this entire situation. The first is the agreement between CanSino Biologics and Dalhousie University.

Dr. Langley, if you were there and were involved with the agreement, why did Mr. Douglas say that the vaccine was not effective?

[Dr. Joanne Langley]

Thank you for the opportunity to clarify that.

I would separate quite clearly clinical development and research from choosing vaccines to buy for Canada. We do here at the Canadian Center for Vaccinology at Dalhousie a number of very early vaccine studies. Most of those never make it forward to be manufactured or scaled up or used. It's very early clinical research, and that was the relationship with this adenovector virus vaccine platform that CanSino had. We were to do the phase one trial. We were all ready to do that and to enrol people and were just waiting for the arrival of the vaccine.

That's quite different from the task force as a whole, considering it as a potential candidate that might make it through the whole clinical development program to be a safe and effective vaccine.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you, Madam. I apologize for interrupting you, but our time is very limited.

I would like to have more clarity on the period from June 16, the date of the first meeting, to August 5, the date when the formation of the group was announced. With the answers I've heard to the questions my colleagues have been asking, it's still not clear whether or not there was a conflict of interest.

Here is my first question. What is the date of the conflict of interest declaration protocol for the COVID-19 vaccine task force? Is it June 16 or August 5?

Dr. Langley, would you like to answer my question?

[Roger Scott-Douglas]

The conflict of interest protocols went into effect at the very first meeting on June 16. Everybody was bound by them in all of the deliberations between June 16 and the August 5 announcement. They were being adhered to rigorously.

The announcements on August 5 for Pfizer and Moderna do include declarations of interest, but there were no conflicts.

There's an important distinction between when an interest is declared in the way that Joanne described and the relationship that the Canadian Center For Vaccinology has with CanSinoBIO and many others. It's a research centre of international repute, so there are very many companies that deal with it. To work with it is a declaration of an interest.

It's very important, but it's not a conflict in the sense that Joanne personally benefits in any way from the relationship that her institute and university have with the client. That would be well accepted everywhere.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Douglas.

This morning, Le Devoir published an article saying that Canada is lagging behind in the vaccination race and that Canadians are right to wonder whether decisions on vaccines were taken in the public interest or were influenced by the private sector. Your meetings took 114 hours in total. Were minutes kept? Were the names of the people you met with also documented somewhere?

[Roger Scott-Douglas]

Yes, indeed. Everything is documented. All of the minutes of the meetings are kept, and letters are sent to ministers, initially Hajdu and Bains, now Hajdu and Champagne.

There's full transparency of the decisions the government takes. The task force drew an important distinction between providing advice, and actually making a decision on something. The task force only provides advice. It is appropriate for the government to be held to account for its decisions.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Great.

So I would like those documents to be submitted for consultation by the members of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology.

I can't have much time left.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

I am sorry, your time is up.

The next round goes to Ms. Jaczek, for five minutes.

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all three of our witnesses, specifically, Dr. Langley and Mr. Lievonen for your many hours of volunteer work. All Canadians should be most grateful for your expertise.

My first question is for Mr. Lievonen. I first met you when you were president of Sanofi Pasteur and had the opportunity to visit your manufacturing facility on Steeles in Toronto. In fact, I think I first visited when it was Connaught.

Could you explain for the committee exactly what goes into building a biomanufacturing facility? There seems to be some sort of idea that you snap your fingers, you put up a building, and you're ready to go.

Could you explain the complexity in putting together such a biomanufacturing facility?

[Mark Lievonen]

I was with Connaught and Sanofi Pasteur for 33 years. I retired from that organization in December 2016, having served the last 17 years as president. The campus that you're referring to is over 50 acres at Dufferin and Steeles. It has over a million square feet of space. It is still alive and well, manufacturing diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus and polio vaccines in combination for Canada and the world.

Typically speaking, it would take four to five years to put a building there, to qualify it and to begin production. That would be the same for manufacturing processes. We are talking about traditional vaccine manufacturing processes, so there were no mRNA vaccines manufactured there. They are the typical inactivated and protein-based vaccines.

It would typically take four to five years to get something up and running to be able to produce product there.

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

Does that relate to the security, biosecurity—some of the features of the building that are required?

[Mark Lievonen]

Yes. Over the years, the quality assurance, the desire to assure vaccine quality as opposed to the testing, has risen dramatically. There are all sorts of efforts around not just getting regulatory approval for the vaccines but also for the site itself, for all the compliance procedures. There are more people involved now in testing and making sure the vaccines have quality assurance and compliance than there are in actually making the bulk product.

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

To follow up on my colleague Mr. Erskine-Smith's comments related to the U.K., apparently they were able to be ahead of the game and put their manufacturing facility in action within the last year. I have heard some evidence that in fact they started a little sooner, even pre-pandemic. There was a feeling within the U.K. that there was a need for such a facility. Are you aware of the timelines related to the facility in the U.K.?

[Mark Lievonen]

My understanding is that they had considered making some investments before the pandemic. This is something they had thought about and had plans in place for and designs under way for. They were able to hit the ground floor running, so to speak, in making those investments. They were fortunate that they had some domestic candidates available and ready to go. They were able to move it along quite quickly, which is remarkable when you think that it was not even a year ago when we were really first starting to deal with this and they were first starting to think about it.

They had a number of advantages that went their way. The timing was very fortuitous and they're benefiting from that.

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

Thank you.

Dr. Langley, I want to pursue the issue of some of the Canadian or domestic vaccine candidates you assessed. We heard on Tuesday from Providence, as you may well know. They certainly expressed considerable dissatisfaction and disappointment in the type of grant they received through the National Research Council.

Could you just go through some of the thinking that went on, the kind of data that you required at each step of the way, in terms of assessing domestic vaccines, and perhaps particularly Providence itself?

[Dr. Joanne Langley]

Providence would have been considered along with all the domestic candidates. A very systematic and similar process was considered for each one. They submitted an application, so we had the application to look at. We had interviews where they came before the committee and made presentations. There was an opportunity for every task force member to ask them questions. In some instances, we actually did video walkthroughs of offices and had follow-up meetings where things were unclear, just to give every domestic proponent a chance to fully present their case.

I think that would describe our process. Some were ready to—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

My apologies. Unfortunately, your time is up. Maybe you'll be able to answer that in a subsequent round.

[Dr. Joanne Langley]

Okay. I'm so sorry.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

No problem.

Mr. Simard, the floor is yours for two and a half minutes.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Dr. Langley, I'm sure you are familiar with what is called “the English model”, the partnership formed with AstraZeneca and Oxford.

Did your group study the possibility of creating a Canadian partnership that could have used your expertise, together with Medicago's and Mr. Kobinger's? McMaster University is quite advanced as well.

Did your group study the possibility of creating a Canadian partnership?

[Dr. Joanne Langley]

I think you're asking whether in my work at the Canadian Center for Vaccinology we had discussions with AstraZeneca. We are certainly very aware of the group at Oxford and collaborate with them, but they were not looking for a partnership with us to do studies—