Health committee  Thank you for the question. Mr. Chair, this is an area of ongoing scientific studies. Variants actually also differ in the amount of immunity that they confer. For example, we do know that those who just got the infection and haven't been vaccinated are not as well protected as

Health committee  Measles is a very contagious childhood disease, but the vaccines are very effective, to the extent that the elimination of measles is now a global priority. It is really important for people to keep up to date with the vaccination. It may have been delayed due to COVID itself, so

Health committee  Thank you for that question. Mr. Chair, as you and many who watch the media briefings or the press conferences will know, we've been providing modelling information on a regular basis. There are different types of models. There are ones that are longer-term, but only good for, l

Health committee  Absolutely, but policy-makers also need data on the effectiveness on reducing transmission and infection on top of severity and on top of trajectories on vaccine uptake as well and what difference a mandate might make.

Health committee  Yes. There are different vaccine mandates, if you like, or other mandates in relation to the federal roles and responsibilities. The federal workforce is one, which I just mentioned. Transport Canada and other departments, working with the Public Health Agency and others, will be

Health committee  I don't, personally. Again, that is led by another department. Perhaps the minister will have more information on that.

Health committee  There's a broad interdepartmental approach to reviewing all of these different types of mandates. It is a collective, multidepartmental process, but there are lead departments, depending on which policy you're talking about. I don't have a specific response for you about the ti

Health committee  The review of these policies is in the domains of other departments, including the Treasury Board. Some follow-up with that department and the employer, essentially, would be the most appropriate.

Health committee  Okay. All of this experience can be used, because vaccines are going to be useful in future pandemics. We can apply all of the experience of the last couple of years to future applications as well.

Health committee  Thank you very much for that question, Mr. Chair. I think there is no denying that vaccines are extremely foundational to our response to COVID-19, and right now the National Advisory Committee on Immunization has provided recommendations, including up-to-date vaccination booste

Health committee  Right now, the epidemiologic situation is improving, but it is a little bit unstable. We have seen in European countries, for example, that a resurgence is being undertaken at this point in time. As the Minister of Health indicated, the federal responsibility, for example, is f

Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Chair, these are two entirely different kinds of data. One is volunteers saying, “Oh, I have flu-like symptoms.” Mobility data gives you the ability to look at spread and the dispersion of a virus and some other infectious disease. They are complementary, but they are not t

Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Chair, yes, you can say, “I have flu and I'm at this spot,” but you can't tell the trajectory and the movement that led to the potential spread of that virus. They are complementary information and support each other if you were laying on the epidemiologic data.

Information & Ethics committee  Public health has really not taken the best advantage of available big data, so this is one of the key ones being utilized at this point. There are other big data sets that could be examined, and the application of algorithms and artificial intelligence. However, it's quite sad b

Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Chair, as Mr. Allison has outlined, certainly the Public Health Ethics Consultative Group would have been presented with the fact in front of them, which is that we are using de-identified and aggregated data so that privacy is not an issue. There is a need going forward, a