Health committee  Yes, I would agree completely. I've spoken publicly on this. I've published in the academic medical literature on this. I think they are underutilized in Canadian settings. There's certainly a much greater role for expanding the use of these tests. They're good. Again, you have to use the right test in the right place and interpret it in the right manner, but of course, I think in general they have been underutilized in Canada.

Health committee  I'd like to thank our friends and colleagues from Slovakia for discussing their tremendous innovation and work. I completely agree with the sentiment that you suggest and with the sentiment brought up by Ms. Michelle Rempel Garner earlier. These are excellent tests that have been underutilized in Canadian settings.

Health committee  Thank you so much. Again, thank you for the invitation to chat today. My name is Isaac Bogoch, and I'm an infectious diseases physician and scientist based out of the Toronto General Hospital and the University of Toronto. I sit on several provincial and federal COVID-19 committees and task forces.

Public Safety committee  Yes. I think that's a fair assessment. There are lots of right approaches to this issue as well.

Public Safety committee  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.

Public Safety committee  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.

Public Safety committee  Thank you for that opportunity. I don't think it's an experiment at all. I think this is what you do in the face of an unknown threat. This is a very reasonable and well-trodden path from a public health standpoint. Of course, it means you learn with time and you pivot when you have appropriate data to pivot, but I don't think it's fair to suggest that anyone would have data at their fingertips to guide an initial decision.

Public Safety committee  I would completely agree with you. We certainly have tightened up the non-essential travel and the risk that that poses in importing COVID-19 and variants of concern into Canada. Of course, there is essential travel. This is low-hanging fruit. We certainly could provide vaccination to the thousands of essential travellers who come over our border every day.

Public Safety committee  I agree.

Public Safety committee  I was not.

Public Safety committee  I'll be brief. Thank you very much. To my knowledge, there has not been a head-to-head comparison. Of course, we can talk about data, but we can also talk about public health practice in a time of great uncertainty with potentially dangerous variants of concern circulating and about precedents set by other countries.

Public Safety committee  I think it is a very reasonable policy to instill during a period of uncertainty. As you point out, we have to take a precautionary approach. I would say that the variants of concern—a few months ago and to a lesser extent now—pose a significant threat. When I say “to a lesser extent”, I meant that because we have a greater understanding of what it is they do and the threat that they pose.

Public Safety committee  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.

Public Safety committee  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.

Public Safety committee  I would love to. Thank you so much. Good evening, everybody. My name is Isaac Bogoch. I'm an infectious diseases physician and I'm a scientist based out of the Toronto General Hospital and the University of Toronto. Thank you very much for inviting me to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.