Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Many thanks to the committee for the opportunity to present to you today. I'm joined by my colleague, Dr. Brad Wouters of UHN, who can take part of any detailed questions you may have during the question and answer period. I would like to start with the

Health committee  I think that it would be important to do that, but I think before actually establishing a company you would have to have a national drug strategy, to which all of the parties would be—and I'm not saying political parties, but all of the players involved in this—at the table. I th

Health committee  They would have to look at the picture at this moment in terms of surge capacity, because we are lacking. We had problems in the area of surge capacity even before COVID-19. The federal government, with the provincial government, would have to look at that carefully and say, what

Health committee  Good question, and I'm sorry we missed our meeting on the 13th. First, you have to start by saying to yourself that at this moment the Public Health Agency of Canada is often considered the poor cousin of Health Canada. It has very little money; it has very little influence. If

Health committee  I made reference in my article that there was a report in 2006 that outlined a number of recommendations. If you look at the list of recommendations that were made and how many of them were implemented, you'll see that many of them have not been implemented. That's why I said t

Health committee  One was funding and one was better coordination between the provincial governments and the federal government. Those are the only two I have at this moment, but I could get back to you with the list and say which ones we thought could be done better.

Health committee  I think they're managing it with a lot of challenges and difficulty. I think they're trying to get help through other health care providers within their own community. I know for a fact that within hospitals, staff who were assigned to a particular floor were reassigned to anothe

Health committee  Within each of the provinces, there are a lot of communications and meetings that are happening among these various hospitals to discuss PPE, ventilators and how best to deal with some of the patients who have come through the hospital. That's done at the provincial level, and it

Health committee  It certainly has an impact, and especially an impact on patients who are either vulnerable or older. It also has an impact on our ability to introduce new technologies within our hospital sector. I'm always reminded that one of the hospitals which I visited was receiving a gamma

Health committee  Yes, it would be something our organization would endorse. I find that the long-term care organizations have been left behind. They should be enshrined in the Canada Health Act. I think that would be a first step. They need to be a partner in the delivery of health care. They can

Health committee  Mr. Thériault, I find your question very relevant. I would just like to add a new dimension to it, without, however, contradicting what you said. Today in Canada, most of our hospitals are operating at a capacity beyond what should be the norm. Often hospitals are operating at 1

Health committee  Thank you very much for that very important question. I certainly would hope that, as I wrote in my article, SARS was really a wake-up call, and I think that COVID-19 is now seen as a clarion call. I think what you have to look at is the power that's given to the Public Health A

Health committee  You may recall that a few years back we did have a minister of state for public health. We no longer have a minister of state for public health. At one point, the level of delegation and reporting authority that person would have had were much higher than it is at this moment. I

Health committee  Last Friday, Dr. Kevin Smith, the CEO of UHN in Toronto, testified to the Standing Committee on Government Operations—

Health committee  —warning that Canada's research councils will likely see 10,000 to 15,000 jobs lost in the next few weeks if they are not granted access to some form of federal support. The federal government can avoid those layoffs by granting the research institutes based in health care organi