Public Accounts Committee on Feb. 6th, 2023

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

I'll request a written submission.

On page 15, exhibit 9.3 gives a nice breakdown of what happened to all the vaccines.

Could we get a similar breakdown by advance purchase agreement or by company, so we can see which advance purchase agreements bore more fruit than others, so to speak?

[Arianne Reza]

Certainly.

I think we can do it as part of the follow-up [Inaudible—Editor].

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Thank you.

One question that I've had brought to my attention a number of times is whether there was any difference with these vaccines with respect to protection from liability compared to any other vaccine or medication on the market.

[Arianne Reza]

As part of the APA, we negotiated different clauses of liability. They were done in consultation with Public Health.

In terms of comparing it with other types of vaccine, I'm afraid I can't answer that question.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Okay. Also, on page 13 it says, “The agency contracted logistics providers FedEx Express Canada...and Innomar Strategies Inc. for vaccine delivery and storage.”

Why not go with Canada Post?

[Arianne Reza]

We had an open competition for that, and I think we received several bidders. They were the ones that had the best-value bids.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

You have 10 seconds.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

I have 10 seconds. Okay.

I don't think I have time to get it off my chest, so thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Ms. Bradford, you have the floor for three minutes, please.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think all of us agree that none of us like wastage, especially of valuable vaccines, but I think it's far better that we err on the side of purchasing too many than not having enough. It's the unnecessary wastage that we want to look at, because I believe Dr. Kochhar indicated that with any vaccination program, because of the process, there is always wastage of vaccines.

We've heard from procurement services what they would do differently and the lessons learned. In all of these report processes, that's always the most important thing: What have we learned going forward?

I'd be interested in hearing from both Dr. Lucas and Dr. Kochhar what their departments have learned from this process and how they'd handle things differently going forward to avoid some of the pitfalls we experienced.

[Dr. Stephen Lucas]

Mr. Chair, I'll highlight two points.

One, with regard to the regulatory efficiencies we put in place and the dedicated teams that allowed for the expedited approval while maintaining safety standards, we have put forward for consultation now an agile regulation package that takes the best of the lessons from that experience and proposes to adopt those in our food and drug regulations.

The second point, as we've discussed, is securing the commitment to collect, share and use, with the appropriate privacy protections, health data to support the needs of Canadians, both in public health emergencies and in the health care system. We are resolute on advancing on that point.

[Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar]

Mr. Chair, I'll add, just in terms of our own management of the supply, that we are very committed to doing work with PTs on the forward supply planning, informed by science and expert advice.

We are also looking, as our colleagues from PSPC said, to adjust the delivery schedules and also collaborate with Gavi and COVAX for any donations we can make.

Again, we also encourage the boosters when the NACI recommends or when the advisory committee recommends.

We also believe in a couple of other things, like domestic capacity to produce these vaccines, making sure we have the involvement of all PT and I partners—provincial, territorial and indigenous—just to make sure we have the right kind of formulation that we can provide to the Canadian population.

Those are the things that we've learned over time and that we will try to introduce into our planning further.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

You, too, have 10 seconds for a comment.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Oh, that's fine. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you. I'm trying to keep us on the clock.

Mr. Perron you have just a minute and a half.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I will try to be brief.

Ms. Hogan, I would like to pick up on what we were talking about earlier.

I was asking if we could have access to secret contracts, even if it means discussing them in a sub-committee meeting in camera. I would like you to explore that request with your lawyers, as you said, so you can tell the committee whether that is possible.

Next, I want to get back to the computer-related problems. Perhaps the officials from the Public Health Agency of Canada can answer this.

A private company was hired to fix a computer-related problem that apparently dates back twenty years. I do not want to sensationalize this, but this is rather surprising all the same.

Are you sure that this problem can be fixed? We need to know.

Were other private companies consulted during the pandemic?

We mentioned McKinsey earlier.

Are there any other companies or individuals to whom sub-contracts were awarded without calling on the expertise of our public servants?

[Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar]

Mr. Chair, I'll start and then pass to Luc.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

You have 30 seconds.

[Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar]

One of the things to start is that Deloitte was contracted specifically for VaccineConnect and not in general for the health data component, which was a part of our strategy in the pan-Canadian health data strategy.

Luc, if you can elaborate a little on that....

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Please answer briefly, Mr. Gagnon.

[Luc Gagnon]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank the member for his question. I will be brief.

I would like to add that Deloitte was responsible for developing the platform. The products and specifications were managed by a team at the Public Health Agency of Canada, using all the internal expertise available.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Gagnon.

Mr. Desjarlais, you have the floor for 90 seconds, please.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'd now like to turn to my original question in relation to exhibit 9.3, about how most unused doses in Canada will expire by the end of 2022.

There were 21.7 million doses offered by Canada that were awaiting donation. The AG, in that questioning, offered that by December, only one million of those doses had been successfully donated and eight million had expired.

Can Dr. Kochhar confirm that the Public Health Agency of Canada was able to successfully donate the remainder, or were they all expired?

[Karen Hogan]

If I may, Mr. Chair, it was the opposite: Eight million doses were donated, and one million expired by early December.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Oh, I see. Of the one million then, what happened to that one million?