Public Accounts Committee on Feb. 6th, 2023

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thank you, Chair. I'd like to make that request, please.

If you look at it, you see there are seven APAs, with 20 million doses per agreement, so that's $30 a dose on average. Wow. That's a lot of money we're going to be out, given the uptake for this thing.

I'll probably come back to this in my next round of questioning, but CanSino obviously is a significant failure of this Liberal government. How much was paid to CanSino in the contracts?

[Arianne Reza]

PSPC cannot speak to CanSino. It was not part of the seven APAs we negotiated. It would have to be redirected, I believe, to ISED.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Mr. Chair, what you're telling me here is we're doing a review on vaccines. We have a Liberal government that failed to procure vaccines early for Canadians, because it put all its proverbial eggs in one basket with respect to CanSino, which delayed getting vaccines to Canadians by at least three months and probably cost the economy $80 billion. Nobody knows the answer here, at this very esteemed panel, as to how much we paid CanSino.

Perhaps, Dr. Lucas, you could answer that.

[Dr. Stephen Lucas]

Mr. Chair, what I would indicate is that the advance purchase agreements with the seven manufacturers were concluded between the summer and fall of 2020. The first vaccine authorized, the Pfizer vaccine, in early December 2020, was within days of the initial authorization. In the United Kingdom, when vaccine doses were delivered in December 2020—

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Sorry, just to interrupt, I asked about CanSino.

[Dr. Stephen Lucas]

In regard to early access to vaccines by Canadians, there was not an advance purchase agreement with CanSino, and further questions, as Ms. Reza from PSPC indicated, could be directed to officials from Innovation, Science and Economic Development pertaining to that.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much. That is time.

We're turning now to Ms. Bradford for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our many witnesses today.

This committee has looked at a number of issues revolving around COVID and the government response to it at the time. This far away from the initial crisis, we tend to forget what an uncertain time that was, how little we understood what we were dealing with, what the disease was, and how to effectively treat and conquer it. I think it's important to go back to that.

It's good that without knowing who the winners would be—because nobody knew what the effective vaccines were—you did not put all our eggs in one basket. We had seven different vaccines that we were investigating.

By the end of May 2022, the Public Health Agency reported that 82% of eligible people had received at least two doses. I think that's quite remarkable under the circumstances, but it's always good to compare.

Is there any one of you who could address—I don't know if it's Mr. Lucas—how that uptake compares with the uptake in similar countries, like the U.S., the U.K. or Germany?

[Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar]

Mr. Chair, I'll probably try to answer that question.

Canada, among the G7 countries, had the highest rate of the primary vaccination, and that continues to be the case. As of today, we have 80.7% of primary series coverage as of January 29. Again, I'll just remind you that we moved from 12 years old to five to 12 years and then pediatrics, and the uptake has been calculated.

We are also among the top two who have delivered booster vaccinations—44% for Japan and 26% for Canada—so we are amongst the leaders in terms of early vaccination and completion of the primary doses, as well as boosters that were administered to the Canadian population.

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

Thank you for that. I think Canadians should be congratulated for taking care of themselves and their neighbours and protecting each other, because that's what you have to do with a global pandemic.

I want to turn my questions now to looking at the lack of sharing of data, how that's being addressed and how critical that is. As we see in the report, the pandemic highlighted issues that made it a challenge to collect, share and use health data. We know that good health data is crucial in public health emergencies. It leads to improvement in health outcomes for Canadians in the long term.

I'm not sure who would know this, probably Health Canada or maybe PHAC. What's the status of the development of a pan-Canadian health data strategy? It's referred to several times in the report. What's the Government of Canada doing to expedite its work with the provinces and territories to complete the pan-Canadian health data strategy?

[Dr. Stephen Lucas]

As was noted, the critical importance of health data in informing both public health and health care responses was highlighted in the pandemic, as well as in the report of the Auditor General.

During the course of the pandemic, the Public Health Agency and Health Canada worked extensively with provinces and territories to support and facilitate data information sharing, including working with them towards common interoperability standards so that data systems can communicate with each other in the country.

We have been working with provinces, territories and other stakeholders, informed by advice from an expert advisory group chaired by Dr. Vivek Goel, on developing a pan-Canadian health data strategy to facilitate the collection, sharing, use and public reporting of health data.

This work has continued with health officials, and elements of the strategy will be discussed tomorrow at the working meeting of the Prime Minister with premiers.

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

That's great.

What are some of the key barriers to information sharing between the jurisdictions, and how important is federal-provincial-territorial collaboration to overcoming these barriers?

I'm glad it is going to be on the table for discussion tomorrow.

What seems to be the problem with getting all the players to share the data?

[Dr. Stephen Lucas]

Mr. Chair, as I noted, there are technical barriers in terms of systems being able to connect, but work is advancing on that, looking to align with international standards, working with Canada Health Infoway, provinces, territories and other key stakeholders.

It's important, of course, to protect the privacy of Canadians in terms of health data, and work is under way to ensure that while enabling the safe stewardship of that information to support public health response or health care response, such as sharing health information between GPs and specialists to support the care of patients.

In addition, we see the importance of enabling common definitions of the data through data content standards, and the Canadian Institute for Health Information has been supporting work on this.

In specific areas such as vaccination data, extensive work was done, as was highlighted by Dr. Kochhar, to enable further steps that are required, again looking to support aligning standards, policies and commitments to share that data to support the health of Canadians.

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

That's great.

Ms. Reza, can you maybe explain how you were able to meet the moment in the face of the tremendous urgency, while still ensuring that the proper due diligence was in place so that these things were going to be safe and effective?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Ms. Reza, you just have time for a brief answer, but I will allow you to answer.

[Arianne Reza]

We took the lessons that we learned from the pandemic PPE buy. We really focused on due diligence, understanding and being informed buyers, spending as much time as we could in the planning phases, working with the provinces and territories to look at their ancillary vaccine needs, building a logistics supply chain, being resilient and bringing the whole of government, interdepartmentally, ready to make sure that we could access those supplies or those vaccines as early as possible.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Perron, you have the floor for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank the committee members for welcoming me. I also thank the witnesses for making themselves available to answer our questions today.

Ms. Hogan, in your report, you noted persistent problems with data sharing. That was the issue raised with Ms. Bradford a few minutes ago.

To what extent do you think that these data sharing problems, IT problems, caused $1 billion worth of vaccine doses to be wasted? That’s not acceptable. We have to find a solution.

I’d like your opinion on that.

[Karen Hogan]

It is difficult to assess to what extent the lack of a system caused vaccines to go unused and then expire, but it certainly did not improve the process.

Some of the VaccineConnect functionalities weren’t implemented and we used files, which led to human error, but also a lack of information. Information was also lost once the vaccines were delivered to the provinces and territories. A system really would have helped reduce waste.

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

We can’t establish a direct link, but we can agree that, if we don’t know the expiry date, it’s hard to manage them properly.

What is upsetting is that Canada also committed to providing vaccine doses to other countries, and these doses were simply thrown out. In a context where new variants were appearing all the time, participating in worldwide vaccination was a way to limit consequences. I say this because it’s important for it to be included in the official record. That type of thing must never happen again. I find it inconceivable that, in a G‑7 country, we are unable to share information effectively.

I would now like to address the representatives of the Public Health Agency of Canada.

Regarding waste and the IT system, what is being done now? A few minutes ago, you said you had an action plan, but has there been any progress with it?

If a new event like this were to happen in six months, a year or two years, would we be better prepared to face it?

[Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will pass it on to Luc, but I will just mention that VaccineConnect was launched in 2021. It is an agile modular digital platform that was developed to address these urgent data needs.

Luc, if I could, I'll pass it on to you, please.

[Luc Gagnon, Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Digital Transformation Officer, Digital Transformation Branch, Public Health Agency of Canada]

I thank the member for his question.

Indeed, the platform is evolving. The choices made to develop its functionality at the beginning of the pandemic were based on the need to deliver vaccines as quickly as possible, from coast to coast, and that’s what we did.

One of the big reasons we didn’t have the expiration dates is that the provinces and territories were busy delivering vaccines. There were deploying new and innovative techniques to administer vaccines to Canadians. That meant they didn’t always have the computer systems or the staff to enter data into the VaccineConnect platform.

To improve the situation, we’ve developed a new deliverable, and work should be done by the end of March. In fact, there was another deliverable in November. It was made possible because we are using agile methodology. The program will facilitate information sharing. That’s what we’re doing on the level of information technology.

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

Thank you, Mr. Gagnon.

I understand that progress is happening. However, reports from the Office of the Auditor General often raised problems in the area of data sharing. Reports mentioned it in 1999, in 2002, in 2008 and in 2021. You told me about a program you’re working on, and that’s perfect. But why did it have to be created after such a massive loss, rather than in response to recommendations by the Office of the Auditor General? The OAG’s mandate is to find problems. I don’t understand why the department did not act faster.

Do you have any comments on that?

[Luc Gagnon]

I thank the member for his question.

Again, information technology can be useful. Automating the process of data sharing leads to faster data management. We also were in a situation where vaccines had to be delivered, in a context where they had been developed with new technology. That included a lot of new data, and everything had to be created at the same time. That’s why we experienced certain difficulties at the outset.

The issue of interoperability is important. I think I heard earlier that people are working on it. Work is ongoing and we will finish in March, as I said. We will then have a more integrated system to manage vaccine data.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Gagnon, I also see that you retained the services of Deloitte to solve IT issues. I’d like to ask you two brief questions on that.

First, don’t you have the internal resources needed to manage IT problems?

Second, can we get an idea of the costs associated this agreement?