Transport Committee on Dec. 1st, 2020

[Maninder Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Yes, I do understand the importance, but I also understand the importance of the witnesses being here. We're ready to ask them the questions that we have. There's a lot of important information. I know my constituents are waiting on answers in terms of rapid testing and a lot of other important matters.

With respect to our witnesses, we need to hear from them. They took the time; we prepared our questions. I think that's what we need to do here.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Sidhu.

I have Mrs. Kusie, Mr. El-Khoury and Ms. Jaczek.

Mrs. Kusie, the floor is yours.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

I support what Mr. Sidhu said, in particular, in the light that the witnesses from the first hour were.... When I say were not prepared, I mean did not feel comfortable responding to questions better directed to the Department of Health and the Public Health Agency.

I would ask that we return to the witnesses at this time. As well, I would ask the clerk if he could possibly redistribute the motion, if he has not done so already. I am attempting to locate it within my documents, and I'm struggling to do that. I would go out on a limb and say that I'm not alone.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mrs. Kusie.

I have Mr. Bittle, followed by Mr. El-Khoury, Ms. Jaczek and Mr. Bachrach.

Mr. Bittle, the floor is yours.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

I thank Mrs. Kusie, and I agree with her sentiment. I move that debate now be adjourned.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Bittle.

With no questions or no debate on that motion, Mr. Clerk, perhaps you can do roll call.

(Motion agreed to: yeas 9; nays 2)

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Mr. Clerk, and thank you, members.

We're now going to move on to our next session.

Mr. Clerk, I believe all witnesses are on board.

While we're waiting, the next round is going to start with the Conservatives with Mrs. Kusie for six minutes, followed by Ms. Jaczek for six minutes for the Liberal Party, followed by the Bloc and Mr. Barsalou-Duval for six minutes and Mr. Bachrach of the NDP for six minutes as well.

Once we get the witnesses on board and the sound checks done, we'll be ready to go.

Mr. Clerk, I'll leave it to you.

I will suspend for three minutes.

We are now going to be entering the second part of our session.

From the Department of Health we have Ms. Frison, the acting assistant deputy minister, programs and implementation. From the Public Health Agency of Canada we have Ms. Diogo, vice president, health security infrastructure branch.

I'm going to ask both witnesses to be brief because we only have half an hour and I'm being told by the House that we have until 5:30 because we have 6:30 committees and we don't want to take away the resources from them. If you can be as brief as possible that will allow for more questions from members and that would be wonderful.

Ms. Frison, go ahead. The floor is yours.

[Monique Frison, Acting Assistant Deputy Minister, Programs and Implementation, Department of Health]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to begin by thanking the committee for the opportunity to speak to you today.

I work at Health Canada in the testing, contact tracing and data management secretariat. We know that COVID-19 has had devastating impacts right across the country, and the aviation sector is no exception. I'm sure the efforts of this committee to examine the consequences of this pandemic will undoubtedly shape the efforts to strengthen that sector, which is so vital to the Canadian economy and the lives of Canadians.

The efforts of the health portfolio are focused on protecting public health and looking at the ways that testing can contribute to that effort and can help social and economic activity. Testing is one of a number of risk mitigation measures that we've employed. We've secured and distributed over 5.7 million tests to the provinces and territories over the last several weeks.

I'm pleased to note in particular that we are getting closer to a national target of administering 200,000 of what are called PCR tests, which is the gold standard in COVID-19 testing—and that's 200,000 tests per day. We've also released guidance on rapid testing developed in consultation with provincial and territorial health authorities, rapid tests that have the potential for faster turnaround times, lower costs, and administration on a more frequent basis.

We're looking at how best to use testing technologies individually or in combination with other public health measures to stop transmission, protect individuals and detect the virus early. For example, in October Health Canada launched the Industry Advisory Round Table on COVID-19 Testing , Screening, Tracing and Data Management, co-chaired by Health Canada and by Catherine Luelo, senior vice-president and chief information officer at Air Canada. The round table enables the federal government to hear directly from leaders in Canadian industry from across the country in a variety of sectors on public health measures, and including activity like testing in the workplace.

On borders, we're looking at border pilot projects and how they can help us acquire science-based evidence to inform how best to reopen our borders. In partnership with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, we supported McMaster HealthLabs' international border surveillance study, which occurred at Pearson Airport earlier this fall. The interim results from the McMaster pilot showed a COVID-19 importation rate from international travellers at approximately 1%, which is fairly high. We look forward to receiving the final report in the coming weeks.

Our partners at the Public Health Agency of Canada have also worked very closely with the Government of Alberta on a program to examine whether quarantine could be reduced for international travellers without compromising public health and safety. The pilot started on November 2 and we're actively monitoring the results in close collaboration with the provincial government.

We continue to engage with stakeholders, including air carriers, airport authorities, and with other departments including Transport Canada, on border measures. An effective response to the pandemic cannot succeed without the strong partnerships that exist at all levels of government, across jurisdictions, and with key stakeholders who are all equally invested in protecting the health and safety of Canadians.

With our partners we will be looking at, for example, the recently released International Civil Aviation Organization's guidance to see how we can apply it in a Canadian context. We also have to bear in mind that travellers from Canada are having to meet testing entry requirements of other countries that they decide to visit. We will need to balance that demand for screening of those coming into Canada with broader screening needs to protect public health, and factor in, for example, the health human resources that may be required to conduct that kind of screening.

In closing, testing is one important aspect of protecting public health, alongside contact tracing and other preventative measures. How testing applies in the travel context will need to be studied. At the same time, we need to ensure traveller vigilance, not just to protect travellers, but also any aviation worker they come in contact with.

I thank you for the opportunity to make these short remarks, and I will be pleased to answer any questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Ms. Frison.

I'll now go over to Ms. Diogo for five minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good afternoon.

I would like to thank the committee and colleagues for being here today, and for being able to answer your questions this afternoon.

My name is Brigitte Diogo, and I am the vice-president of the health security infrastructure branch.

I will start by saying that the border measures that we currently have in place to support public health are ones that we had found to be effective. We are working with all stakeholders and all other departments such as Transport Canada to continue to look at what are the options to ease the border restrictions going forward. The points that my colleagues have made in terms of testing are ones we are paying a lot of attention to.

Given the short time that you have, Mr. Chair, I propose to go to the questions, if you agree.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Thank you, Ms. Diogo. I appreciate that.

We're going to start with our first round of six minutes each.

We have Ms. Kusie from the Conservatives, Ms. Jaczek from the Liberals, Mr. Barsalou-Duval from the Bloc and Mr. Bachrach from the NDP.

Ms. Kusie, the floor is yours.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much to both our witnesses for being here today.

I'm going to back to the YYC pilot as mentioned by Ms. Frison. I attempted to ask our witnesses in the first round for more information about this, but I'm hopeful that Ms. Frison will be able to respond to my questions.

Ms. Frison, can you tell me how long it took Transport Canada and the other government departments to get this pilot project under way?

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Ms. Frison.

[Monique Frison]

The Public Health Agency of Canada and Health Canada worked quite closely with the provincial government to launch the pilot that started on November 2. A lot of work went into the launch.

We had to discuss and articulate the measures to protect public health from those who would be released from quarantine. All of us wanted to make sure there would be sufficient testing and contact tracing capacity available for the participants in the pilot. We wanted to make sure that the instructions for participants and for border agents were very clear so that implementation would be smooth. Then there were the legal regimes that exist both federally and provincially for managing quarantine.

It took a lot of effort for both the federal and the provincial government to launch the pilot. I'm not sure exactly how long it took, but I can come back with an estimate of the amount of time.

Now that we have the sample of the pilot with Alberta, it will be a bit easier to talk to other jurisdictions about similar kinds of models because we have worked out some of those details, including things like the collection of data and what information we want to get from the pilot to improve the evidence base for making decisions going forward.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Can you confirm that other airports are being looked at to implement this program as well, and what sort of timeline could we expect to see for the implementation of this program at other airport authorities?

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Ms. Frison.

[Monique Frison]

Thank you, Chair.

I can confirm that we have talked to provinces and territories about the Alberta pilot and a framework for a pilot going forward and the possibility of having similar arrangements with the provinces, with other jurisdictions.

Although it's not necessarily exactly the same, we'd have to work very collaboratively with each jurisdiction to get a sense of what kind of conditions they would want to pilot.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

You wouldn't be able to provide a timeline per airport; what you're saying is that it would be independent to each authority.

[Monique Frison]

Yes, it would. Again, we would work very closely with provinces and territories to determine a timeline.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you for that.

You mentioned the McMaster data, and in reviewing the data and having conversations with them, I see that the results show that after the seven-day quarantine period, it is less than 0.1%. So approximately one in 10,000 individuals would test positive after the seven-day quarantine, based on the data.

Is the department using this data to look at reducing quarantine times for international arrivals who have been tested?

[Monique Frison]

The MHL study tested the participants on arrival, at day seven and then again at day 14. They had positive and negative rates at each of those days. When we see the final report in the next several weeks, we'll be able to look at the final data for the testing at each of those stages.

Yes, absolutely, we're finding that the study that was done in Toronto was quite informative on what the testing rates and importation rates might be from travellers.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you.

It did seem very interesting to me that it was the 0.7% upon arrival, the 0.3% at the seventh day and less than the 0.1%.... They even thought the 0.1% might perhaps be attributed to those who did guard quarantine. I do hope the department will consider that as we move forward in an effort to relieve the airline sector.

I'm now going to move to another question about the government having deemed airline pilots as essential workers, but because there is a limitation imposed by the definition of aircrew found in OIC 2020-0175, which minimizes the risk of exposure to COVID-19 in Canada—order of prohibition of entry into Canada from the United States—pilots travelling to and from the U.S. as a requirement of their employment, deadheading or training, were having to quarantine for 14 days upon their return to Canada.

Is your department aware of this issue, and is your department working to fix this issue?

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Go ahead, Ms. Frison.

[Monique Frison]

I would turn to my colleague vice president Diogo to address that question because it is about compliance and enforcement.

[The Chair, Liberal, Vance Badawey]

Absolutely.

Go ahead, Ms. Diogo.