Public Safety Committee on March 10th, 2021

[Sorab Rupa]

Mr. Chair, as far as I know, we were not involved in the selection of any of these sites, either the DQFs or the government-approved accommodations.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Do you know who does do the security standards and risk assessments?

[Sorab Rupa]

I do not, Mr. Chair. That is an aspect that we were not involved with.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Are you aware of any more allegations of sexual assaults or other criminal behaviour in the federally mandated quarantine facilities or at homes, and has the public safety minister asked the RCMP to investigate or get involved following the public reports?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Answer very briefly, please.

[Sorab Rupa]

Mr. Chair, of course there were two very horrible incidents that occurred in non-RCMP areas where we are not the police of jurisdiction.

Where we are the police of jurisdiction for the designated quarantine facility or the government-approved accommodation in the Vancouver area, we are very much in contact with PHAC, and on a daily basis we do attend those sites. We have had some investigations. Those investigations are ongoing, but they are very minor in nature compared to the two horrific and horrible acts that occurred in other POJs.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

We're going to have to leave it there.

Thank you.

Madame Damoff, you have six minutes, please.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all our witnesses for being here today.

Dr. Bogoch, I have a question for you. The government's been saying almost for a year without exception not to travel, yet we still have people who are travelling, and they're looking for exemptions.

Then we have these variants start popping up. These variants are extremely serious, and I'm wondering what you would say to people who still think that they need to travel for non-essential reasons. How important is it also that the government be able to adapt and react quickly to change whatever measures they're putting in place in order to keep Canadians safe?

[Dr. Isaac Bogoch]

Of course, we heard from the Public Health Agency of Canada about a year ago to avoid all unnecessary travel. It does not get clearer than that. Avoid all unnecessary travel. It's about as obvious as it gets, yet people still chose to travel.

Certainly the variants of concern got in, and certainly they did escape the measures that were taken in place. I still firmly believe that the 14-day quarantine period cushioned us significantly from importing these. We really did get very good—of course not perfect—protection with that policy.

Of course, in the context of an unknown threat, which are the variants of concern.... I can't look anyone in the eye and tell them with a straight face even now exactly what they mean. We're still learning a lot about them. It's important to proceed with the precautionary principle, meaning take it seriously because we don't know how deadly or not these could be. We may as well play it safe. That, of course, means being able to rapidly adapt your policy to an emerging global health threat.

You certainly need that capacity to be swift and nimble to stay two steps ahead of the virus, because we've already seen what happens when you don't.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

That could be not necessarily having a binder full of data to confirm what you're doing. I know countries like Australia and New Zealand—and those are just two examples—have used hotels for quarantine sites.

[Dr. Isaac Bogoch]

I completely agree. I would imagine that there would be no binder full of data because those data either do not exist or are in the process of being collected, but it would adhere to the standard of what other successful nations have done. It also adheres to the precautionary principle, which many people might remember was written all over the SARS write-ups after the SARS epidemic in 2003-04, because that is the smart and careful approach that we can take to protect Canadians.

You don't need binders of data to drive this because, quite frankly, they don't exist. You adhere to the precautionary principle to protect Canadians.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you, Dr. Bogoch.

I have a question, and I'm not sure who the ideal person is at PHAC to answer this.

All of us agree that sexual violence is unacceptable. It bothers me a great deal to hear the Conservative Party making it a partisan issue somehow because it's not. We all find it abhorrent. One of these did not occur in a hotel. It occurred in my community of Oakville, and the Halton Regional Police Service is investigating, as it should be.

What is PHAC doing in light of these assaults, as well as in light of comments that were made about locks and not telling people where these women are staying? What are you doing to respond to those concerns to ensure that whatever policies are in place are adapted to keep people safe when they're in hotels or in quarantine?

[Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar]

May I, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Yes.

[Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar]

One of the things we mentioned earlier very much is that there are certain criteria that the hotels need to fulfill, which include the security, the care and nurturing, as well as the other components, which they really need to provide. One of them is to make sure that there is proper security in place so that these events don't happen.

It is very unfortunate that that thing happened.

Also, I want to come back to the point that you mentioned earlier in terms of other situations, like when we have contractors go in and actually do the spot checks. As a part of the contract with PHAC, all the employees of the security companies who are employed, working on this contract, must have a security guard licence—that is important— and a valid police background check, and must sign a non-disclosure agreement. Pursuant to this contract amendment that we had, they must also receive a reliability status clearance within 90 days of the contract agreement.

These are a few of those things that we are trying to really focus on so that these events don't happen at all or have a minimized risk of ever happening again—by making sure that these things are in place.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

I only have 30 seconds left.

Have you been in touch with the hotels to make sure that the security requirements are clear in terms of locking doors and those types of requirements?

[Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar]

Absolutely.

Mr. Chair, what I want to reiterate is that we work very closely with the Hotel Association of Canada, with regular communication and reminding them of the guidelines and the procedures that they should have in place.

We also do the check-ins to make sure that those things are happening, and that is very much happening in real time.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Ms. Michaud, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I've solved my technical problems.

I thank the witnesses for being here and answering our questions.

I assume the reason the government mandated hotel quarantine is that the Public Health Agency felt that it was more effective than home quarantine in preventing the spread of the virus. Now we realize that people have found a way to get around this rule by going across the land border. That is a fact. The number of travellers at the land border has increased by 11% in the last two weeks. That's what Radio-Canada reported in the last few days.

Why don't we also subject people coming through the land border to the same rule that people coming through the border by air have to follow? I think they are just as likely to spread the virus. I'm not talking about workers. Earlier, the minister talked about workers coming across the border, and they are the majority, that's true. However, people coming back from non-essential travel are coming across the land border. Why aren't they subject to mandatory hotel quarantine as well?

I don't know who is best able to answer that question.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Is that a Canada Border Services question?

It seems like it's equal treatment between the land borders and the air borders. That's probably the thrust of the question.

[Brigitte Diogo, Vice President, Health Security Infrastructure Branch, Public Health Agency of Canada]

Is Mr. Vinette going to answer the question?

[Denis Vinette]

I can certainly answer.

Mr. Chair, I would like to briefly clarify the data and I will let Ms. Diogo explain the difference between the two models.

Only 7% of people who enter Canada by land are directed to quarantine. Since the coming into force of the new controls, which now require testing and quarantine, the number of people entering the country by land each day who are directed to quarantine has decreased from approximately 1,200 to 1,500 people to only 650 to 800 people. The number is higher for those entering the country by air. Actually, almost 91% of them are directed to quarantine.

The number of people crossing the border by land is increasing. They are mostly truckers transporting goods, which has had no impact on the number of people entering the country by land. In summary, about half of the people crossing the border by land are being directed to quarantine, unlike the number coming into the country by air.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you. It's a change to get a real answer to a question.

Do I have any time left, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

You have a little less than three minutes.

Mr. Vinette's sound quality is not ideal. I'm open to any suggestions for the interpretation.