Science and Research Committee on Dec. 5th, 2022

[Dr. Anya Waite]

Yes.

Thanks for the reminder of the great funding that the Ocean Frontier Institute received. I have to say that the scale of funding is transformative. Our community is completely different now from what it was in 2016. It's absolutely exploding here in terms of the intellectual intensity and the connectivity with industry and government.

We are becoming a big international hub for graduate student training. I want to endorse and support my colleague Dr. Gaffield with his comments on graduate student training being so critical.

The deep sea is a huge unknown. It is absolutely the place where most of the carbon in the world sits, and that means technologies can pull more carbon there. They can do that by sinking things like kelp and plankton down into the deep sea. They can chemically change the ocean so that it absorbs more carbon. They can do that by putting what they call alkalinity—the opposite of acidity—into the ocean and then sinking that water.

These technologies are under way. They're being tested here in Halifax. They're being tested in teacups, in tanks and in embayments now, and what we need is regulatory movement so that we can start to test these technologies broadly and scientifically in a really robust way. We had a philanthropist say to us a couple of months ago, “I have $923 million to put into buying carbon credits.” We want blue-chip credits and that means a scientifically robust measurement of carbon sinks in the ocean.

We are revving this up. Research is relatively slow, and we need to be fast because the industry is moving super quickly. Regulation is moving a little more slowly than that, so we have people working on the London protocol. We are working provincially and federally to see what we can do in terms of regulation, and then we need the research to be revved up as quickly as it can be to support these massive venture capitalists. I note that at Economist Impact's world ocean tech summit in Halifax a couple of months ago, we were flooded in our offices with venture capitalists coming in and saying, “Where can we invest? Build these blue-chip carbon futures and we will come.”

We're super excited, but this would not be possible without that investment in the Ocean Frontier Institute that started in 2016. When the Government of Canada invests intensively in one sector, you get a lift in that sector that can be globally transformative. We can do this in the ocean. We need more.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Regarding the types of spinoffs you've been talking about, aside from the potential climate spinoffs, what other spinoffs are there? I'm thinking about aquaculture and fishing. Can you comment on those?

[Dr. Anya Waite]

They are huge. First of all, with quantum, we're seeing big shifts in the use of moving—

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Dr. Waite, I'm sorry to do this. I have the worst job. I hear this great testimony, and I'm the one who has to interrupt.

Ms. Diab, would you like a written answer from Dr. Waite?

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Yes, please. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you both for being so gracious.

We will now go to Mr. Blanchette-Joncas for two and a half minutes, please.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Dr. Gaffield, in a previous committee study, we learned that around 15 universities share about 72% of public research funding. We know that ambitious projects require massive investments. I'm trying to explore with you what impact this might have on the balanced distribution of funding among small, medium and large universities.

[Dr. Chad Gaffield]

There's no question that we need strong universities across the country. However, there's also no doubt that we need pillars in order to advance research. In my view, we need both.

The problem is quite simply the size of investments. Ideally, we would have enough money to develop the research sector across Canada.

In fact, one of the strengths of Canada is that we have really strong universities across the country. However, at the level of financing we currently have, there's no doubt that access to it is going to be limited.

It seems to me that the key is what our leading universities do, as in the case of Dalhousie's leadership on our oceans: They involve other universities in the region. Ideally what we would be moving toward is clusters across the country. This is increasingly the case, so we can have good connections and good collaborations between smaller, mid-sized and larger universities, all of which are optimizing their own strengths to make an even greater collective effort.

My sense is that inevitably we need leading universities at the same time as we need diversity. Certainly 15 members is not enough for a country like Canada. We need, in fact, 15 hubs or regions to which all of our universities are actively contributing. That is going to take a much larger investment.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you, Dr. Gaffield. I know that—

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

I'm sorry, but your time is up, Mr. Blanchette‑Joncas.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

In my opinion, I had a few seconds left.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Do you want to come and check?

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

I'm very careful. I want to treat everyone carefully and honestly.

Thank you, Mr. Blanchette-Joncas.

Now we'll go to Mr. Cannings for two and a half minutes, please.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you.

I'm going to continue with Dr. Gaffield.

You were talking about global research networks and how moon shots are necessarily international in scope. I'm just wondering if you want to expand on that and maybe use our experience with vaccine production as an example.

Canada didn't have any domestic production. How did we change that, and how can we perhaps make that even better so that we have adequate domestic production? How does that whole international ecosystem work in science.

[Dr. Chad Gaffield]

That's such an important question.

As a historian, I always try to understand these things historically. I focused on the debate in the mid-1990s because they asked that question. They said Canada was a small country and that we were obviously not going to be self-sufficient in everything, so they asked, “What do we do?” The solution, the answer to that question, was to ensure that we were domestically self-sufficient in certain areas and to work hard such that we had access to and were connected to everything else internationally so we could call upon it. I think it's access to that international pool of expertise, capacity and so on that requires people who are actively part of these global networks. So much of this is an effort to tap into a global network of people.

In the case of vaccine production and the immediate need, there were two questions.

On the one hand, we needed to buy a lot of vaccines and acquire a lot of vaccines, but we didn't know what to buy. At that time it was not obvious. There were dozens of potential candidates, so you had to have experts who were able to look at the global possibilities. I think with the way it worked, the committee chose six vaccines, and then five of the six ended up being the top ones that in fact saved Canada and saved countries around the world. You therefore needed the first level of these networks to pay off.

The second thing was the actual production that led to Canada's attraction of Moderna. We said—

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Dr. Gaffield, I'm sorry, but I have to be fair to everyone.

I want to thank Dr. Waite and Dr. Gaffield for coming here and sharing their time and expertise, and I want to thank our committee for a really interesting discussion. I also thank Sir Jeremy Farrar, who tried very hard to join us.

To our witnesses, we hope it has been a good experience for you and we hope you'll come back.

[Dr. Chad Gaffield]

This is the best time I've experienced this year.

Thank you very much. I really appreciate it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you.

Dear colleagues, we are suspended.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Dear colleagues, I'll call us back to order.

We're so pleased to welcome a new set of witnesses.

I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of the new witnesses.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by videoconference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mike and please mute yourself when you are not speaking.

Regarding interpretation for those on Zoom—you have the choice, at the bottom of your screen, of either Floor, English or French. For those in the room, you can use the earpiece and select the desired channel.

I would now like to welcome our witnesses.

As an individual, we have Dr. Guy Rouleau, director of the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital.

Welcome. We're delighted to have you.

From BioCanRx, we have Dr. Stéphanie Michaud, president and chief executive officer, and Dr. John Bell, scientific director. Welcome to you both.

Coming back to us again, we're so pleased to have Joseph McBrearty, president and chief executive officer of Canadian Nuclear Laboratories.

I'd like to welcome all the witnesses. Each group will have five minutes to present. At the four-and-a-half-minute mark, I will hold up a yellow card to let you know that you have 30 seconds left and I hope you'll wrap up. We aim to be fair.

With that, let's start with Dr. Rouleau. The floor is yours for five minutes.

[Guy Rouleau, Director, Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, As an Individual]

Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to present to your committee.

I'm going to talk about the brain, and I'm going to make the argument that our brains are our greatest wealth and Canada's greatest wealth because brains are what allow us to do everything.

There are many diseases of the brain, and I think that interests all Canadians. Just to be clear, all neurodevelopmental diseases, including intellectual disability and autism, which affect 5% to 7% of the population of Canada; all neurodegenerative diseases, including dementia, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's; all psychiatric diseases; and all mental illnesses come from the brain. It's quite clear that there's no Canadian who is not affected, directly or indirectly, by brain diseases.

I've been in this field for a long time. Cardiologists have been doing a great job, and heart disease is declining. Survival is increasing, and I think that's great. Oncologists are also doing a great job, but oncology is complicated, with many different diseases. There are also many cancers that can be either controlled or cured, although there is still work to do, I admit. However, for one organ we've really not done very well, and that is the brain.

There is no drug that reliably slows down the progress of dementia. There are virtually no drugs that we can use to treat the core problems of autism, intellectual disability and so on. The drugs we use in psychiatric illnesses are blunt instruments.

Why is this? Really, the problem is that the brain is very complicated. This is why we haven't been doing so well. You need to understand the system to be able to design smart treatments, and we don't know the system well enough. The good news, though, is that there are revolutionary methods that I could go into detail about, such as single-cell sequencing, imaging, AI and iPSC, and these many different methods and techniques have now made studying the brain much easier and much more possible.

In Canada, there is a very large, very vibrant and very strong neuroscience community, and we punch well above our weight in the world. Not only that, the neuroscience community in Canada is quite unified. In Canada, there's a lot of collaboration and a lot of people working together, and I think that it is exactly the kind of condition you should have for what you call a moon shot. You want a large-scale collaboration. You want a strong cadre of experts and people who are opening up the field.

I heard a little earlier about the brain drain to the United States. I can tell you that in the neurosciences, the brain drain is going in the other direction. We've just hired a few superstars from the United States who have come to Canada because Canada is a good place to work and collaborate, and people work together.

My message is that the brain is super important. It's an area where we are very strong in Canada, and we could make a big difference in understanding the brain and finding treatments for it.

If I do less than five minutes, do I get the extra time later?

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you, Dr. Rouleau, for joining us this evening.

We will now go to BioCanRx.

The floor is yours for five minutes.

[Dr. Stéphanie Michaud, President and Chief Executive Officer, BioCanRx]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

It's a pleasure to be back with the committee this evening.

My name is Stéphanie Michaud. I'm joined by our scientific director, Dr. John Bell, an internationally recognized research scientist in the development of immunotherapies as cancer treatments. Together, we work closely with partners from multiple sectors, all aligned with our ambitious vision: to make all cancers curable diseases.

When we hear the word “moon shot”, it is often prefaced by the word “cancer”, reflecting the indisputable reach of this disease, which affects one in two Canadians and leads to the death of one-quarter of our population. That number is increasing as we speak due to pandemic-related delays.

There is also a cost, which was $26.2 billion in 2021 alone, with $4.8 billion of that amount representing the direct out-of-pocket costs that are borne by cancer patients and their families. Cancer is a grand challenge for Canadians, anchored in unaddressed real-world needs. This fits the Brookfield Institute's definition, which is laid out in “Canada's Moonshot”, as previously noted by other witnesses at this committee.

The U.S. and the EU are treating cancer as a moon shot by investing significant sums of money and setting ambitious goals to move the needle. Canada has also invested in a mission-oriented type of approach—albeit at a much smaller scale—with BioCanRx. With Canada's support, BioCanRx is tackling one of Canada's wicked problems: the lack of coordination and support for translational research and biomanufacturing. In so doing, Canada's investment has allowed BioCanRx to achieve remarkable success in the development of novel immunotherapies and deliver results for Canadian patients today.

[Dr. John Bell, Scientific Director, BioCanRx]

As I am sure you can appreciate from the work your committee has already done to date, the hallmarks of a successful moon shot program include building cross-disciplinary teams of thought leaders, creating a nimble, independent decision-making body that manages a portfolio of innovative projects with clearly defined deliverables, and providing transformative and multi-year funding.

With these concepts in mind, in 2015 we created BioCanRx, a network of centres of excellence to develop, test and provide Canadian cancer patients novel and effective treatments for cancer. Our focus was on the burgeoning field of immunotherapy, which uses strategies to train a patient's own immune system to recognize the cancerous form and destroy cancers within their body. We built upon the world-class science being developed in Canada and the existing Canadian infrastructure to build an innovative research program, moving a portfolio of Canadian discoveries into products that can be provided to Canadian patients in need.

The BioCanRx translational research engine is nimble and able to respond to discoveries made around the world in the fast-moving field of cancer immunotherapy. One example is the development of personalized engineered immune cells, or so-called CAR T cells. In 2017, BioCanRx started a cross-country, made-in-Canada CAR T program. By 2019, we were treating Canadian cancer patients who otherwise would have no access to this innovative cancer treatment.

With her permission, I want to tell you the story of Camille Leahy, a 37-year-old single mother in Newmarket, Ontario. She was diagnosed with leukemia at the beginning of the pandemic. She received an aggressive chemotherapy regimen that failed her, followed by a gruelling stem cell transplant that also failed her. She was essentially at the end of life with no other therapeutic options available to her. Camille enrolled in our BioCanRx-sponsored, made-in-Canada CAR T trial and is alive and well today and able to enjoy life with her 14-year-old daughter.

There are many more Canadians like Camille who are thankfully to still be with us today because of the transformative work BioCanRx has done.

With the sunsetting of the networks of centres of excellence program and the rapidly approaching end of our runway in March 2023, we are extremely concerned that we will no longer be able to support the preclinical to clinical development at the pace and cost required to rapidly advance technologies for those who need them the most—Canadian cancer patients. We urge the government to consider funding organizations that have a demonstrated track record in addressing an unmet, real-world need in Canada. BioCanRx is a current-day successful implementation of the government's biomanufacturing and life sciences strategy for the development of cancer immunotherapies. I would argue it is a great model for building a Canadian moon shot program.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.