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Results: 136 - 150 of 196
View François-Philippe Champagne Profile
Lib. (QC)
Thank you, Chair.
Since the onset of the pandemic, Minister Gould, Minister Ng and I have issued 44 joint statements with international partners, in addition to working actively alongside other cabinet members to drive actions to forums like the G7, the G20, the UN, the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO and the OECD. No fewer than 18 G7 and 12 G20 leader-level and ministerial meetings have been held since March, aimed at laying out guiding principles for concrete actions, including addressing high debt levels in developing countries.
As part of these efforts, the Prime Minister has spearheaded two very important global initiatives.
First, Canada co-hosted a pledging conference on vaccines and therapeutics, alongside the EU and Japan, which raised $8 billion U.S. to better test, treat and protect people and prevent further spread of the COVID-19 disease around the world.
Second, in partnership with the Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness and the UN Secretary-General Guterres, Prime Minister Trudeau convened a special UN high-level meeting to advance solutions to the economic crisis and development emergency that have been precipitated by the pandemic.
For my part, I established a ministerial coordination COVID group at the very start of the pandemic. I wanted to make sure that we could discuss, coordinate and share best practices. I've done that with colleagues from Australia, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Morocco, Peru, Singapore, South Africa, Turkey and the United Kingdom. The initial set-up was a venue to coordinate a response to multiplying travel restrictions, but this forum has become a key channel for exchange on the multinational response, where we discuss trade and emergency measures, and where we discuss maintaining the famous air bridges, maintaining transit hubs and ensuring that supply chains would remain open.
These efforts have been complemented by Minister Ng's support for Canadian businesses during this extraordinary time of global uncertainty and tightening credit conditions.
Minister Gould has also been at the forefront of international efforts on issues such as enabling the continued access to education during the pandemic, global health, food security and reducing the disproportionate impact that the pandemic is having on women and young girls around the world. By early April, our government had announced $160 million in funding for tangible supports to fight the pandemic, from strengthening health systems in vulnerable countries to food security, education and combatting disinformation.
Mr. Chair, without global action, what started as a health crisis could easily turn into a food crisis, which would then lead to a humanitarian crisis in some parts of the world. With a crisis of this scope, it is important for us to reflect on the global architecture we would like to promote and contribute to for generations to come. The features of the international system have served Canadians very well over the past 70 years, and will continue to be fundamental to Canadian prosperity and security. Let me assure you that Canada will continue to play an active role in shaping this new era, as we have at other defining moments in history.
I will conclude my remarks by discussing two things that have recently been in the news.
First is Canada's bid for a seat on the UN Security Council. While the result we got on Wednesday was not what we had hoped for, we are proud of the campaign we conducted over the last four years. I want to thank all the teams that have spent so much passion and energy to promote Canada around the world. For Canada, this campaign allowed us to renew and strengthen many of our bilateral relationships, which will serve Canada well for years to come. We will continue to promote our values and our principles around the world to build a more peaceful, inclusive and sustainable world. I want to take this opportunity to once again thank the many officials, Ambassador Blanchard, parliamentarians and Canadians who worked so hard over so many years on this bid. You really made Canada proud.
Finally, there's been recent coverage regarding mortgages on two apartments I own and rent abroad. I would like to take a moment to address this issue here with you today. In keeping with my obligation as a public office holder, both mortgages have been disclosed to the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner and placed in the public registry since I first entered politics, more than four years ago.
Neither of these mortgages, nor any of my other liabilities, have ever had a bearing on my function as a public office holder. To avoid any distractions, both have been repaid in full and refinanced with a Canadian bank, and the public registry will be updated accordingly.
With that, Mr. Chair, I apologize for the technical glitches, and I will be more than happy to take questions.
View Sonia Sidhu Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you for joining us, Minister. I want to echo my colleagues and thank you and the whole Global Affairs team for their historical efforts in bringing thousands of Canadians back home. You also heard that when you joined Brampton virtually at the Brampton town hall.
Minister, my question is about Canada's global role in responding to the crisis. What has been achieved so far in working with our partners around the world in fighting COVID-19, particularly when it comes to vaccine research? How do you see this relationship moving forward now?
View François-Philippe Champagne Profile
Lib. (QC)
I think during this crisis Canada has shown its best, and leadership in times of crisis is what people will remember. The Prime Minister, for example, participated at the gathering at the UN and the Gavi pledging conference. When the EU and Japan ask Canada to be there, that just shows the place of Canada in the world, the role we can play and the influence. I think we will build on that, and we have built relationships.
The foreign ministers' COVID meeting, which I referred to in my opening statement, is but one example of where we have led. We realized that we needed more coordination and to learn from each other and look ahead. I must say that I'm pretty proud that we have had our ninth call. If you look back at the history of Canada, it's not really common that Canada would be talking on almost a weekly basis with countries like South Korea, Singapore, South Africa and Brazil. We're trying to make sure we take into account what's going on and how we can work together. We're talking about air bridges, supply chains and transit operations. We've been trying to make a difference in very concrete ways for people.
At the end, Canadians expect us to rise to the challenge. I'm happy to say that we've been able to work together with members in a way that I think shines a very nice light on the work that parliamentarians can do when they work together.
View Jenny Kwan Profile
NDP (BC)
Given the pandemic, the immigration levels would be impacted, so I look forward to that update.
The international community is very concerned about the Chinese government's national security law for the people of Hong Kong in that it would mean the end of the one country, two systems Sino-British agreement that was signed. Close to 900 international parliamentarians have signed a statement condemning this action, and the U.K. government has launched a plan for 2.9 million British national overseas passport holders to move from Hong Kong to the U.K. with a work visa.
Working with the international community, would the minister consider bringing forward a special immigration measure for the people of Hong Kong, including possibly working with the U.K. government to accept asylum seekers from Hong Kong?
View Marco Mendicino Profile
Lib. (ON)
Certainly, as I've said, we are profoundly concerned with the situation in Hong Kong and anything that would detract from the one country, two systems principle, which Canada supports.
As far as initiatives are concerned, as I've said, for Canadians there is a right of return subject to health screenings, and for other foreign nationals there are many pathways.
I am aware of this example that you raise today in the United Kingdom. I'm not aware of what the details are, but all I will say is that there are various pathways that do exist for those who wish to relocate to Canada, either on a temporary or a permanent basis, which they can avail themselves of.
View Don Davies Profile
NDP (BC)
Let me move to a proposal for that. I understand that the Government of Costa Rica has proposed that the World Health Organization set up a global pooling mechanism of intellectual property rights, research and data for all COVID-19-related technologies. They say that this would accelerate open innovation and support the scale-up in production of necessary COVID-19 technologies and other things. Has the Government of Canada made a public statement of support for that initiative?
Jason Nickerson
View Jason Nickerson Profile
Jason Nickerson
2020-06-10 17:33
To the best of my knowledge, no. I did check the WHO website earlier today, and I did not see Canada listed there. I may have missed it, but to my knowledge, no.
View Emmanuella Lambropoulos Profile
Lib. (QC)
Thank you.
My last question is in regard to our international partners. I know this is not just a made-in-Canada approach. You've been working with Italy and other countries as well. What role do these other countries play? A lot of the public opinion is moving towards making things in Canada, really being dependent solely on Canadian businesses and trying to be more protectionist, because we've experienced some issues with being dependent on other players. What positive role do you think the international players can play in the COVID-19 situation?
Arthur McDonald
View Arthur McDonald Profile
Arthur McDonald
2020-06-01 12:37
Let me give you the example of our dark matter studies. We're looking for the particles that make up five times as much mass in our universe than we do and that hold our galaxy together. We have a project happening at SNOLAB right now. We are working internationally with a group that is looking at something 10 times bigger and has committed to something 10 times bigger than that to be done here in Canada, perhaps 10 years from now, when there would be tremendous economic benefits, again, back here in Canada.
The international co-operation of 400 scientists and 14 countries in this collaboration is a way in which Canada can both contribute to very fundamental questions, where we don't know what this part of our universe is, and scale up to try to get the ultimate sensitivity, which could happen at our laboratory, SNOLAB, but would require major co-operation on the scientific front from other countries. It is becoming typical in particle physics—has been for a while—and I think it will have economic benefits in the long term as well.
Mona Nemer
View Mona Nemer Profile
Mona Nemer
2020-05-19 17:18
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. I'd also like to thank my fellow witnesses for their statements and for all their efforts during this pandemic.
As you know, I was appointed as Canada's chief science adviser on September 26, 2017, to provide science advice to the Prime Minister and cabinet. My office is responsible for ensuring scientific analyses are considered in government decisions and coordinating expert advice to cabinet. I also provide recommendations on how government can better support quality scientific research. Furthermore, my office helps to ensure that government science is fully available to the public. Lastly, I have a mandate to promote collaboration between federal scientists and academia, both in Canada and abroad, and to raise public awareness of scientific issues.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I have had the opportunity to make contributions in all these areas. If I may, I will summarize them for you.
Starting in February 2020, I set up a number of expert groups and task forces. These experts are keeping us abreast of ongoing clinical and scientific challenges, and best practices for pandemic response in Canada. I have also been involved in science coordination efforts within the federal government with respect to medical countermeasures. I have worked with the broader science and research community in Canada to enhance coordination efforts.
For example, working with a few other people, I helped set up CanCOVID-19, a pan-Canadian research platform to optimize collaboration during the COVID-19 crisis. More than 2,000 researchers are registered on the platform—barely a month old—which attests to the determination and extraordinary engagement of the Canadian scientific community in the response to the pandemic.
Additionally, I'm engaged in the international science advice response to COVID-19. Chief science advisers, or the equivalent, from a dozen countries have been meeting weekly for the past two months. We discuss the dynamic developments and challenges of the pandemic and its evolving characteristics in different countries at different times. We share data and information on social and medical measures. These interactions provide important opportunities for coordinating research and science advice.
An example of this international effort was the group's call to global publishers to make COVID-19 scientific publications openly accessible to all, which the publishers quickly agreed to. This has meant that research results are now quickly disseminated and used to help manage the pandemic everywhere. This is an unprecedented development that is supporting scientific data-sharing at a rate never witnessed before.
Over the past few months, our knowledge of the new SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 has rapidly progressed, including efforts by our own Canadian researchers. However, there are still many unknowns that affect disease prevention and management. I'll highlight a few of those, with your permission.
The first area is in terms of disease susceptibility. Not everyone in the population appears to have a similar risk of infection, but how exposure to different levels of the virus leads to different individual responses is unclear. As you can imagine, this has an impact on prevention measures in different settings.
The issue of infectivity still needs to be clarified. Infected individuals seem to be contagious for two or three days prior to symptom onset until around seven days thereafter, and possibly longer. This implies that significant transmission comes from asymptomatic individuals, which creates an added challenge for early detection and the control of disease spread.
With respect to disease outcome, we've all seen that older age and chronic preconditions, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes or obesity, have been associated with a higher risk of a poor COVID-19 outcome. However, the reasons remain unexplained. Our experts have pointed out the need for harmonized, quality data collection and sharing, which is important for sorting out the confounding variables and, more precisely, guiding disease management in the Canadian context.
With respect to prevention and treatment, Dr. Tam has already alluded to the importance of a vaccine. In the absence of acquired immunity or an effective vaccine, avoiding or minimizing exposure to the virus is the best prevention. We know what this means.
Vaccine development is under way, including in Canada, using a wide range of classical and novel approaches.
With respect to treatments, several clinical trials are ongoing, including in Canada, to test the efficacy of existing drugs. However, the results so far are disappointing. It should be noted that currently there are very few broad-acting antiviral medicines, which is why the development of new antiviral drugs is being pursued in parallel to vaccine production efforts.
Let's remember the successful management of hepatitis C and HIV with antiviral therapies, not vaccines. I think that we have hope on both fronts.
With respect to diagnostics, Dr. Tam has already mentioned the use of qPCR, which is the gold standard for testing for the presence of the virus. However, this multi-step test is not very well suited for remote areas and for other situations that require faster or repeated screening, such as borders and primary care, which is why the development of complementary detection methods is ongoing.
I have the privilege of sitting on the immunity task force with Dr. Tam. This ongoing work is going to be important to determine the actual prevalence of exposure in Canada and to inform vaccine development.
As countries reopen their economies in the weeks and months ahead, the scientific community will continue to gather more data to better understand both the virus and the disease it causes. These efforts are instrumental for our ongoing preparedness to live with and overcome the virus.
Around the globe, countries are also stepping up their efforts in key areas, including deploying robust and agile systems for virus testing and contact tracing, as well as understanding the level of the population that has been exposed to the virus.
Another area is the standardization of data collection, constantly improving the quality and developing protocols for sharing and mining the data, including using AI-supported tools. This is again an effort that Canada is part of.
Of course, everyone around the world is stocking up on medical equipment and therapeutics, or at least trying to, and putting in place national strategies for local manufacturing of personal protective equipment as well as COVID-19 diagnostics and medical countermeasures. More broadly, countries are expanding research and development efforts and considering approaches to national health security across the entire medical supply chain.
Last but not least, strengthening health emergency preparedness is on everyone's mind, including at the level of the multidisciplinary science advisory function.
In conclusion, this pandemic is highlighting the critical value of research and the importance of science coordination across disciplines and sectors. It's also underscoring the need for national production capacity for health security. Right now, we're playing catch up, but we hope that current investments and efforts will result in a sustainable ecosystem for infectious disease research and development. The war against COVID-19 will be won through science. Let's ensure that Canada's excellence in science continues to be mobilized for the benefit of all Canadians.
Thank you.
I look forward to our exchange.
View Sonia Sidhu Profile
Lib. (ON)
Yesterday I spoke with an exceptional local company, Medtronic, in my riding, Brampton South. This is one of many companies leading the way when it comes to global research. They simply announced that they were releasing their ventilator design to the public to speed up research and production.
I know my colleague asked that question before, but my question is for whoever can answer. What other examples of international and Canadian collaboration can you list, and how can we speed up global research corporations? I know funding is one way, but can you elaborate?
Robert Fowler
View Robert Fowler Profile
Robert Fowler
2020-04-30 19:43
I think on the clinical research side—I'm a bit biased because it's a lot of what I do every day—there is, I would say, tremendous global collaboration on clinical research right now. I think people have realized that in order to get answers most quickly, we are going to need to collaborate across the world on trying to figure out what treatments work and don't work.
Rob Annan
View Rob Annan Profile
Rob Annan
2020-04-30 19:43
Certainly I'll say from Genome Canada's perspective that the researchers as individuals are used to collaborating internationally. What we're seeing now is a more systematic approach to this and we're having a lot of international tools. For instance, there is something called the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health, which serves to have set standards and share best practices. Its secretariat is actually based here in Canada but it is operating internationally. They do a lot of coordination work to support that on-the-ground collaboration.
Then we've had a number of companies, data companies in particular but also other biotech companies, reaching out to us just to offer to help and not for their own personal intellectual property development but to offer their services. I think we're certainly seeing a motivation like we haven't seen before.
View Elizabeth May Profile
GP (BC)
My heavens, I thought I would get one question in. Thank you, Mr Chair.
Again, thank you to colleagues for allowing me a question.
I also want to add my thanks to you, Governor Poloz, and to your senior deputy governor, Carolyn Wilkins. I don't think any Canadian would doubt that we're being extremely well served by your approach to stabilization of our markets and making sure we get through this.
I was drawn to your analogy about looking at Canada as a human being and looking at our immunity, our physical strength, going into this, and your points that we were at full employment when this hit and that our debt-to-GDP ratio was pretty healthy at the federal level.
In other countries around the world, the financial risks are again likely felt just like a human being. There are a lot of economies out there that don't have our internal resilience and don't have the robust balance sheets that Canada has. As COVID spreads and makes its way around the world, we haven't yet seen the continent of Africa with the kinds of.... There could be very bad effects of COVID-19 that we haven't seen yet in many economies around the world. How is the Bank of Canada working in that international context to coordinate with others, as I assume you are, to support more vulnerable countries to enable them to maintain their market confidence and to buffer the risks of financial stability in that global context?
Stephen S. Poloz
View Stephen S. Poloz Profile
Stephen S. Poloz
2020-04-16 17:40
The level of international coordination has been quite high. The G7 and the G20 have been meeting regularly. This morning was the big IMF meeting, which is, of course, most of the world.
What you see is a lot of commonality across the fiscal reactions, at least in the types of tools that are being used. As I indicated earlier, I think there has been a high level of sharing. Even though it feels as though it's happening all at once, it has been a bit sequential, so it has been possible to talk among various countries as things unfolded.
I remember—it seems like a long time ago—talking to my colleague from Italy as it was just getting under way and having those insights then, which, compared with Canada's timing, was very far in advance of it. It's the same thing with South Korea. I know the governor there very well. As for China, we got great insights from the governor of the central bank of China along the way, before anybody else was really affected. That's been great, and certainly the central banks have coordinated even harder than that.
Frankly, we've been spending almost the entire week in crazy hours on Skype, meeting in the way we are doing now. I started at six o'clock this morning with my first meeting, and that's just because of the time zones.
I think we do have a sense that we're all in this together, and I think it does matter a lot to our outlook. You raise a good point, which is that it's sequential, and therefore, the recovery will also be sequential. As an important exporter, we know that our foreign counterparties will be going through it at different times, so it's not that we're going to have a simultaneous recovery, and that will affect commodity markets in the longer term. That's why I said that oil and other commodities might take a little longer to get the full benefits of a recovery.
I hope that answers your question.
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