Industry Committee on Feb. 18th, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you very much.

Our next round of questions goes to MP Dreeshen. You have the floor for five minutes.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for being here today.

We are talking about cabinet confidentiality and so on. I just want to take you back to a point here in this committee when the minister testified that the Liberal government's decision to partner with the Chinese was based on recommendations from the vaccine task force. Of course, that was done earlier. June 23 is when I first heard that you had said that you started your committee up. There's some confusion there.

I have heard some description of the time frame, which is great. I guess my first question is whether you were made aware that the government knew that their agreement with the Chinese was doomed to failure just a few weeks after it was signed, based on the things that we've heard throughout the media.

[Roger Scott-Douglas]

Maybe I could answer, Madam Chair.

CanSino did come before the committee to make representation in the context of support for clinical trials and for advance purchase agreement. This happened later than what NRC's relationship with CanSino was. In the early indications, you will remember that CanSino was among the very leading companies at that point. It was one of the very few that was entering phase three clinical trials, which put it almost at the top of the pack. That was subsequently proven to be problematic. The government then received advice to no longer support the CanSino.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

I think that becomes the point because it seemed as though we put all our eggs in that particular basket, which may not be fair. However, there was this great time lag between when they realized it wasn't going to work and we started to talk to other groups.

I know that a lot of that discussion would have been going on anyway, but that's really the major frustration. Of course, when people look at a three- to four-month time lag, you start to say that this is where our economy then is suffering because we haven't been able to get to that.

I want to talk, too, about the secrecy side of it and the extent of contracts and things that we've signed. There doesn't seem to be a problem with every one of these companies and other countries. You have indicated that there are some that treat these non-disclosure agreements in the same way that we do.

The reason I ask that question is that right now we've got provinces that are saying they can't wait. They need to find how they can start ramping up their own production and their own rollout plans. How can the provinces really put an effective plan in place when they aren't getting information from the federal government and such through your organization?

[Roger Scott-Douglas]

Madam Chair, the question, although terribly important, really has no bearing on the vaccine task force. The vaccine task force—Joanne and Mark—did meet with the federal and provincial ministers of health. Joanne and Mark have also met with the deputy ministers of health. They've been fully transparent about the work of the task force. For those two bodies, that relationship is there, but the vaccine task force has no relationship with the vaccine rollout.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Thank you.

Could you answer this question then? We are talking about the licensing in Canada, and that becomes the holdup that we have right now. We have the EU. They know what they're doing. We have the U.S. We have other countries around the world. It always seems as though there's a roadblock for us to be able to make those kinds of decisions.

Is there any thought about whether the vaccine task force would start taking a look at those agreements and approvals that are taken outside of Canada and make it a priority, so we can speed up some of these applications?

[Dr. Joanne Langley]

Mark, do you want to handle that?

[Mark Lievonen]

Sure.

If we're talking about the approvals of the licences for products that are licensed in different places around the world, one of the things Joanne talked about and that has been paramount to everything we've done is that science should rule the day. While great progress has been made in compressing regulatory approval timelines from 10-plus years to four to five years to 12 to 18 months, none of the steps have been skipped. They've been done in parallel. Science rules the day means that when Health Canada approves these products, that's when they should be approved. They are going through their own governance process, and we support that science rules the day and that Health Canada has a mechanism for deciding when and when not to approve products.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

I see my time is up.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Our next round of questions goes to MP Jowhari. You have the floor for five minutes.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all of the witnesses. Thank you for your volunteerism, your expertise, passion and the commitment that you have to make sure that you provide the best advice to the government to keep us safe.

I'm going to split my time between Madam Langley and Mr. Lievonen. Let me start with Mr. Lievonen.

Can you, based on your experience, give us an understanding of, from a manufacturing process as well as a biomanufacturing set-up, the difference between the mRNA and the traditional vaccine, and whether any of our domestic candidates were suitable to be able to ramp up an mRNA model in a very short time?

[Mark Lievonen]

The mRNA technology is new. It's been around for 10 years in terms of the science, but there's never, until now, been a product commercialized using RNA technology, so this is a great breakthrough. As a world, I think we're very fortunate that the RNA technology was there and we could take advantage of that. It's been able to come on stream very quickly, much more quickly than the traditional vaccines. You'll see that some of the other groups of the seven APAs we recommended are further along; protein subunit vaccines, for example, which are Novavax and Sanofi-GSK, are taking longer, and would take a longer time to get up and running—

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

I apologize for interrupting. What needed to change in Connaught for us to be able to start manufacturing an mRNA-based solution, from a manufacturing and ISO standard, let's say?

[Mark Lievonen]

Right now, Connaught/Sanofi Pasteur does not have RNA technology in place for their manufacturing, so they would have to gear that up and start to build a facility that could do that manufacturing.

To your earlier point, there are other candidate vaccines in Canada that are working with RNA technology, and they're at an earlier stage.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Uniqueness about the manufacturing process is what makes those domestic candidates suitable for mRNA manufacturing.

[Mark Lievonen]

Well, it's different bulk manufacturing equipment. It's a different way of utilizing it, so it's a different manufacturing technique for the bulk product.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Could they co-exist in the same facility as the traditional vaccine manufacturing?

[Mark Lievonen]

You could put RNA technology into an existing manufacturing site. It would likely be a new building, new equipment, renovating a new room. It would be different equipment.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

You've highlighted the timeline for that. I thank you for that.

I'm going to move to Madam Langley. I'm going to follow up on the response that I was hoping to get from the question of my colleague, MP Helena Jaczek. Can you tell us what criteria the task force used to be able to shortlist the 300 vaccine candidates to seven? How did you decide on the diversity of it? You now have two minutes to respond to that.

[Dr. Joanne Langley]

All right.

Ultimately, we came up with three platforms. There are about five or six that are out there being explored: the adenovirus vector, the protein, the virus-like particle and the mRNA.

What we did was look at each stage that you would consider in clinical development. So, in testing in animals, was an immune response elicited? Did the animals survive? Were they protected when you challenged them? Then you look at the purity of the product, then the ability to manufacture. How close were they to testing in humans? You have to be able to test in humans to be able to see if it even produces an immune response in humans.

Then they go through phase one, two, three testing, ramping up to this phase three trial. This is the first time in history.... For the Moderna vaccine, the phase three trials started in July; that was absolutely marvellous. They were so far ahead of any other candidate, with the mRNA and their ability to ramp up that. That gave them evidence so that we could say they would likely be a successful candidate.

Then there's all the manufacturing expertise, which Mark has spoken of.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

With 30 seconds to go, I'm going to get down to the bottom line. Did our task force produce any recommendations that are not consistent with those of task forces in other countries?

[Dr. Joanne Langley]

That's a very interesting question, because they are very similar across countries. We chose these similar platforms and they are the successful ones. It's absolutely amazing that there are at least six vaccines now that are safe and effective in humans. The Canadian ones are among the leaders, so that's just wonderful.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you so much. That finishes our second round. We will start our third round. I'm going to try my best to see if we can get everyone in, but I know time is pressing.

Our first round of questions goes to MP Poilievre. You have the floor for five minutes.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Thank you.

In the finance committee, we don't use Zoom. We use pigeons to send messages back and forth. I'm just adapting to all of the technology here at industry.

My question is about the rate of vaccination in Canada. There are various measurements to determine the per capita rate of vaccination in comparable countries, but all of them show that there are at least 30 and perhaps as many as 50 countries that have vaccinated at much higher per capita rates than we have here in Canada. To what do you attribute this failure?