Evidence of meeting #19 for Public Safety and National Security in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was chair.
A video is available from Parliament.
7:35 p.m.
Liberal
Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON
Why don't we divide up the time slots accordingly? If originally it was six, make it four.
7:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
Just four minutes for each party? Is that good? Does that make everybody happy? Well I won't go that far.
7:35 p.m.
Conservative
Damien Kurek Conservative Battle River—Crowfoot, AB
I think we can default to the first round style. I think there's precedent for that.
7:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
Then I'm going beyond the time because the first is 20 minutes.
I'm simply going to go to four minutes because the more we talk about it, the less time we will have.
With that, the Conservatives have four minutes. Who is going to be up?
7:35 p.m.
Conservative
Tako Van Popta Conservative Langley—Aldergrove, BC
Thank you again.
For one of the officials, when did planning for hotel quarantining start? We're about a year into the pandemic now, and the rules were implemented a couple of weeks ago. It all seemed to have been done very much in a rush, at least to the casual observer.
7:35 p.m.
Associate Deputy Minister, Public Health Agency of Canada
Mr. Chair, I can start, and I will invite colleagues to pitch in.
In reality what we have been seeing over time is that as COVID-19 progressed, we also came across one of the bigger threats, which was the COVID-19 variants. Those variants were really of concern because of increased transmissibility.
Also at that time, we were still gathering information about what would happen in our testing, our ability to have medical countermeasures.
The gradual approach was first of all, Mr. Chair, the flights from the U.K. were stopped. This was the first time we heard of a U.K. variant. Over time when we started to look around, there were experiences of other countries like Australia and New Zealand. We were informed of the results from the pilot projects we had been doing at various airports, for example, Alberta, where there were some data that people were coming in with infection.
That was a prompt for us to look at what more we could do to stop the importation of COVID-19 and specifically stop the importation of the COVID variants.
That's the frame we were working off.
7:35 p.m.
Conservative
Tako Van Popta Conservative Langley—Aldergrove, BC
That's fair enough. It's the introduction of variants into the equation that caused us to want to look at yet another tool, hotel quarantining in this case.
When did other countries start hotel quarantining?
7:40 p.m.
Vice President, Health Security Infrastructure Branch, Public Health Agency of Canada
There are different ways when we talk about hotel quarantining. Australia or the U.K. use the hotels for the entire quarantine period. In Canada, we prefer people quarantining at home for the 14 days being the best situation.
However the variants and how to prevent the potential spread of those variants led us to examine the quarantine hotel for a short period of time with the introduction of testing on arrival.
7:40 p.m.
Conservative
Tako Van Popta Conservative Langley—Aldergrove, BC
Okay. That's good.
I hesitate to use the word experiment because Dr. Bogoch has corrected that, but we are testing new evidence. We're exploring. We are looking into new ways as to whether there are additional tools that can help us keep Canadians safe.
Is that right?
7:40 p.m.
Physician and Scientist, Toronto General Hospital and University of Toronto, As an Individual
Yes. I think that's a fair assessment. There are lots of right approaches to this issue as well.
7:40 p.m.
Conservative
Tako Van Popta Conservative Langley—Aldergrove, BC
How will we know when we can stop this program? Will we know that before or after there's herd immunity from vaccines?
7:40 p.m.
Physician and Scientist, Toronto General Hospital and University of Toronto, As an Individual
Yes, we will. It's an arbitrary decision on when this program can be stopped. There's no hard and fast rule.
I think you can look at the data of the degree of protection that the quarantine hotels have provided, and you can certainly look at the degree of immunity in the population and travel patterns. There are a lot of metrics you can use. Ultimately it will be value judgment, hopefully driven by data.
7:40 p.m.
Liberal
Joël Lightbound Liberal Louis-Hébert, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I don't think I'll use my four minutes. I would just like to ask a question that I did not get a chance to ask at the end of the last round of questions. It is for Mr. Kochhar.
The Public Health Agency of Canada announced on 24 February that it would investigate the incidents in Montreal and Oakville.
What is the status of this investigation into practices to prevent this from happening again?
7:40 p.m.
Vice President, Health Security Infrastructure Branch, Public Health Agency of Canada
I can answer this question.
What I can tell you is that the agency's safety division did an internal review to see what lessons were learned and how we responded to what happened. Following the exercise, a report will be completed. Some measures have already been put in place, including increased surveillance of hotel entrances.
7:40 p.m.
Liberal
Joël Lightbound Liberal Louis-Hébert, QC
Okay.
That concludes my questions. I do not need more time.
But I will take this opportunity to thank you for all the work you have done over the past year. Public servants have worked very hard, and we thank them on behalf of Canadians. It has been a trying time for everyone.
Ms. Lambropoulos, I will stop here and give you the rest of my speaking time.
7:40 p.m.
Liberal
Emmanuella Lambropoulos Liberal Saint-Laurent, QC
Thank you, Mr. Lightbound.
My question is for Mr. Bogoch.
What do you recommend going forward? What does the future look like for travel for Canadians going forward?
7:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
She was a little faint there. The question is, what do you see as the future for Canadians travelling?
7:40 p.m.
Liberal
7:40 p.m.
Physician and Scientist, Toronto General Hospital and University of Toronto, As an Individual
This is going to evolve with time. I think we will certainly reach a period of time when we can travel freely, like we did before. I certainly foresee vaccine passports in the future, whether we like it or not. However we debate it, this is probably going to be for a significant portion of travel, be it in Canada or elsewhere in the world. I think that will be a significant component, because COVID-19 is not going anywhere. This is going to be around on planet Earth for years and years to come. I do see enough of us vaccinated such that we can travel. I see border restrictions lifting, and I see vaccine passports in our future.