Public Accounts Committee on Feb. 6th, 2023

[Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar]

Mr. Chair, when we signed the seven APAs, that was the component where we actually locked in most of the vaccine manufacturers who could really produce a safe and effective vaccine.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Right, but that's signing. That's not acquiring. I think, again, that it almost feels like we're pushing a false narrative with the study of how successful the government was, ignoring the fact that we were late to the game in acquiring.

In this country we like to put up our noses at how the Americans do, but they had almost five times the number vaccinated compared to us in February. The Brits had seven times more, yet we're claiming that because we signed something—even though we didn't actually have vaccines in the arms of Canadians—the intent was there. I don't think it's an adequate description to say we were an advanced leader. I'll leave it at that.

Auditor General, you talked about the data sharing. It goes back to 1999. Thinking about 1999, we were singing the Prince song, yet here we are 24 years later and we still do not have that.

What's lacking? Is it the provinces just saying they're not interested? Is it a lack of will of the federal government? You've brought it up four times. Surely you'd think the government would have reacted by now.

[Karen Hogan]

I don't know if I can speak to the reasons. If I had identified them, I would have put them in the report.

I guess I offer up that I'm not sure how many more health crises we need to live through before we realize the importance of needing to share this information across the country. Some of these are H1N1, SARS and now COVID, and this has always been the same issue.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Do you get a sense of déjà vu all over again with your reports?

[Karen Hogan]

I do on this issue, for sure. It would be great for the country to resolve the pan-Canadian health data sharing agreement and to have a system in place to help support the country to better respond to a health crisis in the future.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Could I ask why you didn't address the CanSino delay in your report? Who decided that we were only going to study the acquisition of these seven chosen ones?

[Karen Hogan]

As I mentioned earlier on, it was a decision we made in the scoping in order to keep our audit focused on the advance purchase agreements that were actually going to bring vaccines that would be able to vaccinate Canadians.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Okay. I have about 45 seconds. I'm going to ask kind of an open question.

On the advance purchase, can someone provide to this committee how much we've spent so far, what we've purchased physically, what we have in inventory, what we've thrown out and also what we are on the hook for going forward?

One of the witnesses was talking about the new bivalent. Are we on the hook for these booster shots, or are they covered if we preagree on 50 million from Pfizer? Are the new booster shots on top of those 50 million for our obligation?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. McCauley, instead of making it open, could I ask you to direct it to someone, please? Unless someone has an answer, I think that would be helpful.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Whoever would have that information, raise your hand and consider it directed.

Perfect. We'll go to you....

We're out of time. Can you get back to us with all that, please?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I will allow a brief answer.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

We're 0.5 seconds over, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Well, I stop the time when I talk. I will allow a brief answer.

Go ahead, please.

[Arianne Reza]

Very briefly, we have received 164 million doses in Canada. Our agreements do give us access to the latest and greatest formulations in pediatrics—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

What are we obligated to buy, though? How many shots do we—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Now I have to cut it off.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Perhaps they could get back to us, please.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

You'll have to ask for that information, I think.

Mr. Dong, you have the floor for five minutes, please.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I would like to thank the AG for doing the report. I would also like to thank all the public service. I can only imagine how difficult it was at those times, when every country was fighting to access even APAs and to access those vaccines.

First of all, I find it a little hilarious, listening to the questions today. First, it sounds like we bought too many vaccines and we were wasting the vaccines. Then we're hearing that we didn't secure enough early on. Usually we get that from two different parties. Usually the Conservatives talk about how the Liberal government hasn't done enough, and the NDP...or vice versa, but today we're hearing it from the same source. I find it a little hilarious.

I can't help but think that perhaps we as Canadians, in terms of the way we think, are a bit spoiled. We take it for granted. On a regular basis, we as Canadians can access pretty much everything—all the technologies available to humankind. In the situation of a world pandemic, this time we did struggle a little, knowing that we didn't have the capacity to produce the vaccines and knowing that every country around the world was competing to access those vaccines early on.

Under those circumstances, I'm very thankful, actually, to go through the report and to read the details about how those vaccines were acquired and what could be done better to prepare us in the future.

Perhaps I can ask the staff to explain the logistics behind how the vaccines that were obtained by the federal government were distributed to the provinces and communities. We also saw the provincial AG's report, at least in Ontario, talking about how some of those vaccines were not distributed fast enough, which contributed to the fact that many of those vaccines expired.

What was the thinking behind that? What was the logistical arrangement on that? What happened at the time? What was the decision or what happened when vaccines were close to expiry and there was no way for municipalities or provinces to distribute them fast enough? What was the plan at the time?

[Stephen Bent]

Mr. Chair, perhaps I'll take a moment to explain how we worked throughout the pandemic with provinces and territories on vaccine distribution.

We work as an intermediary between, obviously, the provinces and territories and then down to the local level and the vaccine companies. Some provinces and territories have fairly robust logistics systems and capacity. They have warehousing capacity that they use, and in some cases can take delivery directly to other jurisdictions. In other cases, we hold it centrally and then distribute it to the provinces and territories as they require it.

We've put a lot of effort, over the last two-plus years, into having very strong relationships with the logistics teams in each of the jurisdictions, to have a good line of sight on exactly what their needs are. It has evolved over time, and I think the audit has highlighted that in the early days a lot of effort had to go into building the systems. My colleague Luc Gagnon has explained that we are now working on the technological platforms and evolving them so that we can do that more efficiently.

I think, in the context of the ability to use doses, one of the things we are very keen to work on with the provinces and territories is real-time data sharing, so that we can reallocate doses quickly if there are jurisdictions that cannot use them. We have done that on many occasions. When we've polled and canvassed jurisdictions to ask them if they have additional need, we've reallocated between jurisdictions, working collaboratively with provinces and territories.

One point I would make is that when you think about the full vaccine rollout, thousands of points of distribution and administration occurred across Canada. That was one of the challenges we faced. We're continuing to learn from the lessons on how we can be better prepared for the next pandemic in terms of being able to have data right down to the local level.

Thank you.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

I want to ask a question of Health Canada.

Health Canada decided to grant an expedited approval process. First of all, can you explain to the committee the difference between a regular process and an expedited process? Also, at any point was the safety of the public or safety of these vaccines compromised due to the expedited process?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Give a brief response, please.

[Dr. Stephen Lucas]

We'll turn to Dr. Sharma.

[Dr. Supriya Sharma, Chief Medical Advisor and Senior Medical Advisor, Health Products and Food Branch, Department of Health]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

When we were preparing for the receipt of the submissions, there were a lot of discussions that happened before we received them in terms of the requirements. For the safety, efficacy and quality of the vaccines, it was decided very early that we were not going to make any changes to those requirements, maintaining the same rigorous standards that we would for all vaccines.

What we did was find efficiencies in terms of the review processes. It still took the same number of hours to do the reviews, but there was less downtime and there were flexibilities on the administrative side provided to the company so they could provide, for example, what we call a rolling submission. As data became available, they could provide that data to us. We compressed the normal time for the review into a very short period of time.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you. I know there's more to that question. I hope you'll have an opportunity to come back to it.

Mr. Perron, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.