Mr. Speaker, in response to a) The international health regulations, IHR 2005, require that state parties, by June 15, 2009, assess the ability of existing national structures and resources to meet the minimum core capacity requirements for surveillance and response. As a result of such assessments, state parties are expected to develop a plan of action to ensure those core capacities are present and functioning by June 15, 2012. Through a network of IHR champions, drawn from each province/territory and federal department or agency, Canada completed an assessment exercise in May 2009. The results of this assessment exercise were reviewed by the IHR champions at a national IHR roundtable in June 2009. It was concluded that Canada met the minimum core capacity requirements, but there were areas that required strengthening from a national perspective, including information sharing, mortality surveillance and detection of severe respiratory illness of unknown cause. At the last meeting of IHR champions on April 21-22, 2010, a plan of action was developed to address these areas, and work is underway to implement those actions. Provinces and territories, as well as federal departments and agencies, are responsible for developing action plans addressing any issues specific to their jurisdiction. A report describing the capacity assessment process, its findings and the plan of action, will be published before the fall of 2010.
In response to b) A number of notable actions are underway to work towards a 'national health surveillance system', NHSS: i) The Public Health Agency of Canada, PHAC, has laid down, and continues to develop, corporate building blocks--frameworks, policies and tools--that are essential to relationship and trust-building across jurisdictions, in order for an NHSS to take shape and be successful. These include the development and implementation of an integrated framework for surveillance; a data quality framework; a draft privacy management framework; a PHAC policy on the collection, use and dissemination of public health data; a web-based tool for privacy impact assessments; and, a PHAC risk management standard and tools to support implementation. ii) PHAC is currently developing a business plan to modernize the Canadian Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System. This is a significant undertaking to ensure the alignment of notifiable disease surveillance elements, from data collection to reporting, across all jurisdictions. iii) PHAC officials are involved in pan-Canadian data standards work and will increasingly be taking a leadership role to promote the jurisdictional consistency in the use of data standards that will be necessary in the adoption of electronic health records, EHR. iv) Through the surveillance and information expert group of the pan-Canadian public health network, the agency is leading the development of the multilateral information sharing agreement, on which there has been recent progress. Details follow in response to the next question.
In response to c) In September 2009, federal/provincial/territorial ministers of health signed a memorandum of understanding, MOU, on information sharing during a public health emergency. The MOU establishes a framework for the sharing of information between jurisdictions. A formal FPT multi-lateral information sharing agreement is now being developed and will include the details of what information will be shared with whom, when and/or how. Detailed negotiations are underway through the pan-Canadian public health network and conference of deputy ministers of health.
In response to d) Currently, work associated with the multi-lateral information sharing agreement is being integrated within the workplans of the relevant expert groups of the pan-Canadian public health network and the pan-Canadian international health regulations action plan. Canada is required to demonstrate that the core components and functions to support the obligation to report internationally are in place by June 2012. Work on the multi-lateral information sharing agreement will play a key role in assuring that the necessary information for monitoring IHR compliance is available from the provinces and territories. While this work will contribute to the relevance and success of the agreement, detailed negotiations through the pan-Canadian public health network and conference of deputy ministers of health are still required to complete the agreement. Given the complexity of this process it is difficult to determine an exact date for when the agreement will be available for signature by ministers.