Once again, I call this meeting to order.
Welcome to meeting number 25 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health.
The committee is meeting today to study the supplementary estimates (C), 2020-21: votes 1c and 5c under Canadian Food Inspection Agency; vote 5c under Canadian Institutes of Health Research; votes 1c and 10c under Department of Health; and votes 1c, 5c and 10c under Public Health Agency of Canada.
I would like to remind everyone that you have the right to participate in these proceedings in the official language of your choice. I would emphasize that in the event there is difficulty hearing translations, I ask you to please bring it to my attention as soon as possible, as Monsieur Thériault has just done, so the matter can be resolved.
I would now like to welcome the witnesses.
Today we have the Honourable Patty Hajdu, Minister of Health. Supporting the minister today are, from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Dr. Siddika Mithani, president; from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Ms. Catherine MacLeod, acting president; from the Department of Health, Dr. Stephen Lucas, deputy minister; and from the Public Health Agency of Canada, Mr. Iain Stewart, president; Dr. Theresa Tam, chief public health officer; and Major-General Dany Fortin, vice-president, vaccine rollout task force, logistics and operations.
With that, I will invite the minister to give her statement. You have 10 minutes, please.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I will do my speech in English to avoid having to flip back and forth between the channels.
I appreciate the invitation to appear before the HESA committee. I will let you know that I have many departmental officials joining me today, including Dr. Stephen Lucas, deputy minister; Iain Stewart, president of the Public Health Agency of Canada; Dr. Theresa Tam, chief public health officer; Major-General Dany Fortin, vice-president, vaccine rollout task force, logistics and operations; Dr. Siddika Mithani, president of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency; and Catherine MacLeod, acting president of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
When I appeared before the committee last month, I provided an overview of Canada’s COVID-19 vaccination strategy. Today I would like to begin with a brief update on COVID-19 vaccinations and the situation in Canada right now.
So far we've delivered more than 3.8 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to provinces and territories. More than two-thirds of these—a total of 2.6 million doses—have already been administered. We expect these numbers to rise quickly as deliveries from vaccine manufacturers continue to ramp up this month and in the months to follow. The recent authorizations of the AstraZeneca and Janssen vaccines by Health Canada give us two more tools in the fight against the pandemic.
Following the authorization of the AstraZeneca vaccine, the announced that Canada has secured two million doses through an agreement with Verity Pharmaceuticals Inc., Canada, and the Serum Institute of India. This is in addition to the 20 million doses already secured through an earlier agreement with AstraZeneca.
The Janssen vaccine is administered in a single dose and can be stored and transported at regular refrigerated temperatures. Canada has an agreement with Johnson and Johnson for 10 million doses of this vaccine between now and September.
Although we've seen a decline in COVID-19 activity from mid-January through mid-February, daily case counts have since only levelled off, and COVID-19 variants could threaten the progress we have made if we relax public health measures too soon. That's why we all need to keep following public health measures that we know help identify and stop the spread of COVID-19. This includes testing, screening, contact tracing, and of course isolation. We also need to keep doing our part to protect each other. That means continuing to wear masks and limiting our interactions with other people.
Canada also has strong restrictions for travellers arriving in the country. In addition to being tested for COVID-19 before they arrive, travellers must now take a test on the day they arrive in Canada, and another on day 10 of their quarantine. All positive tests are evaluated to determine whether there are variants of concern. These strengthened requirements help protect the most vulnerable Canadians, and I want to thank the many Canadian travellers who are doing their part to protect their neighbours by following these new rules.
From the very first day, this pandemic has required us all to adapt and change our behaviours to protect public health. Canadians as individuals have had to do it, and so too have governments. As the pandemic has evolved, the federal response has evolved as well, and our budgetary needs reflect this.
I will now provide you with a financial overview for 2020-21 as set out in supplementary estimates (C). Through this exercise, I'm seeking $684.5 million on behalf of the health portfolio, which includes Health Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. This increase over the 2020-21 main estimates will complement work that is already under way in a number of important areas.
Beginning with Health Canada, I'm seeking an additional $603.1 million. This will increase the department’s statutory spending by $553.6 million and its voted spending authorities by $49.5 million. This funding will be used to address pressures associated with Canada’s COVID-19 response, as well as our obligations under the Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2020. This includes investments in long-term care, mental health and substance use in the context of COVID-19, as well as supporting innovative approaches to COVID-19 testing.
For the Public Health Agency of Canada, I'm requesting a total increase of $66.5 million. This reflects an increase of $5.634 billion in voted authorities, which is offset by a decrease in statutory spending of $5.567 billion.
The increase in voted authorities will go towards innovative research and the procurement of testing technologies related to the pandemic, surge capacity and support for mental health and substance-use initiatives.
For the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, or CFIA, I am seeking $13 million. This will increase the agency's statutory spending by $1.8 million and its voted spending authorities by $11.2 million. The majority of this funding will go towards improving existing domestic and import safety control systems through increased surveillance and inspection, supporting Canadian exports through the inspection and certification of goods, and the ongoing digitization of the agency's internal and public-facing business.
Another $1.5 million will support the Canadian food safety information network, which will improve confidence in the food safety system by connecting authorities and laboratories across jurisdictions.
Finally, for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, I'm seeking $2 million. This will decrease its statutory spending by $126.7 million and increase its voted spending authorities by $128.7 million. These research investments will contribute to our overall understanding of COVID-19 and will continue to inform Canada's public health approach.
Mr. Chair, it has been a long road, but with vaccination under way across the country, we are closer than we have been in a long time to a more hopeful future. The Government of Canada is working steadily towards that future with actions that protect Canadians and safeguard the progress we've made.
Health Canada and the agencies of the health portfolio are proud to lead these efforts. Our resourcing plans reflect our commitment to ensuring the health and safety of Canadians during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. My colleagues and I will be happy to take your questions.
Thank you.
:
Thank you very much to the member.
Mr. Chair, I think the member identifies rightly that the tragedy of loss of life in long-term care is something that I'll remember and something we've all been mourning this week, and indeed throughout COVID-19.
We also know that more needs to be done. The has been very clear that we will be there for provinces and territories as we move forward in the development of shared long-term care standards.
I will also say this: We didn't wait to take action. For example, through the safe restart agreement, we provided $740 million to provinces and territories to strengthen their protection and infection prevention control measures. We also proposed a billion dollars in the fall economic statement to create the safe long-term care fund. We've provided wage top-ups, Mr. Chair, which I think were critical to support the labour security of people working in long-term care homes, and we had the rapid response program that funded the Canadian Red Cross and allowed it to go into many long-term care homes in crisis to support those seniors who were struggling in some pretty difficult situations.
Finally, of course, the Canadian Armed Forces.... I think all Canadians will be grateful for the work they did in the first wave to protect seniors in Ontario and Quebec, particularly.
Mr. Chair, I would first like to congratulate the member on her incredible advocacy for people living with diabetes. We've met a number of times. I know she has done very much work in this space.
This is a specific challenge. Many of us know someone who lives with diabetes. It's a disease that many Canadians face. Again, delivery of health care falls to the provinces and territories. We're investing millions of dollars in research. It's an area where we support the provinces and territories to understand more about diabetes—not just how to prevent it, but also how to treat it and how to support people who are living with it.
Over the past five years, $230 million has been invested through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. In addition to that, the CIHR is investing more than $30 million over the next seven years in new research as part of the 100 Years of Insulin: Accelerating Canadian Discoveries to Defeat Diabetes initiative. This is an important piece of work that we have committed to people who are living with diabetes, and to provinces and territories, so that we can, first of all, prevent diabetes, but also help support those people who are living with this disease.
Through the chair, this is an area that I was personally involved in for many years prior to being in politics. In fact, it was under the previous Conservative government that we saw some of the cruellest changes to public policy, which resulted in spikes of opioid overdose deaths, a lack of supportive care, a lack of compassion in drug policy and the criminalization of many people who use substances. We've been taking steady steps to reverse those trends over the last five years, including by making sure that we could support safer supply centres, invest in safer supply centres, invest in programs that allow for safer consumption and community-based treatment, and restore harm reduction so that those people who are struggling with substance use and addictions know that people actually care about them and want them to get better.
We're working with provinces and territories to explore legal options for harm reduction. In fact, the Province of British Columbia has written to me recently to explore decriminalization.
We're going to continue to be there for Canadians and their families. This is a public health crisis, as you point out. It's something that we must continue to do as we see families struggling all across the country with substance use issues.
Welcome, Madam Minister.
From our previous conversations, I imagine you have an idea of what I'm going to talk about today. I know you're not in an easy position. In fact, it is difficult to convince a Prime Minister of Canada to invest in health transfers. It is also difficult to convince a Minister of Finance to be proactive and invest in health transfers. However, I am reaching out to you today. My goal in our discussions today is to reach out to you. You know that I am cooperative by nature, as I demonstrated during the discussions on medical assistance in dying. So, perhaps after our discussions, you will have additional arguments. I will try to give you some figures that will help you convince your colleagues.
In fact, it has been established before this committee that, before the first wave of COVID-19, the health networks in Quebec and the other provinces were already weakened because of chronic underfunding. The pandemic hit, but we were not ready. The networks became even more fragile, to the point that two groups of patients are now affected by COVID-19: those who actually have COVID-19 and those who do not have the disease. By that I mean the people who have been offloaded.
So far, I'm assuming everything is fine and we are still in agreement, because in order to solve a problem in medicine, you have to diagnose it first. That's what I'm trying to do with you.
Do you know how many people have been offloaded in this way? Do you know how many cancer cases were offloaded in the first wave?
:
Madam Minister, do you have any idea of the number of undiagnosed cancer cases that were offloaded in the first wave in Quebec?
Since it is not your department that provides these services, you probably don't know. So I'll tell you: there were 4,000 cases of undiagnosed cancer. The Canadian Association of Radiologists told us at the end of October that 80,000 people were waiting for MRIs. For CAT scans, 52,000 people were waiting. So you can understand that we have a serious problem. Between the first and second wave, we were not able to treat all of those non-COVID-19 patients.
When we have to offload, it is because our networks are already “sidelined,” as they say. So, in light of this, don't you think the provinces and Quebec are quite right to say that now is the time to give them some hope to restore their networks and avoid having undiagnosed cancer patients end up in the mortality column next year?
:
Thank you, Chair, and hello to all the witnesses.
Again, there are so many people to thank as we go through an unprecedented pandemic. You're one of the many on the front lines and behind the scenes, and in some cases in front of the camera and behind the scenes, so this is Just a special thank you from people in my riding and me.
My questions will be directed to the minister. Hello, Minister.
I want to talk a little about health care services in rural and remote communities like mine here in Nova Scotia and Cape Breton—Canso. Many of my constituents, Minister, do not have easy access to a hospital. Some don't even live in communities that have active clinics, but they still need to get the care they need when they need it.
I know that your mandate letter instructs you to work with the Minister of Rural Economic Development to ensure that all Canadians have access to more health services. I'm wondering if you can tell us more about the progress you're making on this file, especially in light of COVID-19.
The way I approach things is I want to give people an opportunity to answer and to speak. I know somebody mentioned about running out the clock. I like answers that are thoughtful and introspective and empathetic and evidence-based. Consider this the time to do so.
Through the chair, first of all I want to acknowledge the challenges that Canadians face in rural and remote communities. I know we live many kilometres apart, but in my riding as well I have rural communities and remote communities that I serve.
You're absolutely right that the challenge of accessing health care services in these communities is profound. This won't come as a surprise to the member, but in fact people who live in these communities often have to travel multiple times per week back and forth to larger centres for specialized services. In order to see anybody other than a GP, people often have to travel. In some cases there might not even be a GP in some of these communities, so it is a significant gap. I was very excited to work on this issue when I was first appointed minister, way before the pandemic, in what feels like a lifetime ago, because I knew it so well as an MP representing rural communities.
In some ways, COVID-19 has been an asset, weirdly, for virtual access to primary care. You wouldn't think that COVID-19 had anything good about it, but it did cause provinces and territories to quickly accelerate access—for example, to change their billing codes to be able to allow doctors and a variety of other health care practitioners to bill for virtual visits.
This has been a real breakthrough for rural and remote communities that struggle—and will struggle, from my perspective, for a very long time—to hold on to professionals in their communities. We know that often people don't want to relocate to small communities. We try. We have a million different ways, I think, in every province to try to lure people to these beautiful places and keep them, including by introducing them to wonderful potential spouses and having them marry and stay in that area, but unfortunately it still is quite a challenge for some of these smaller communities.
Virtual care has proven to be a boon, actually, during the pandemic, and provinces and territories have realized just how much they can accelerate access to care. It's not ideal for every kind of care, but it really fills a gap for some of those primary care health services.
In the estimates, we're asking for $47 million for virtual care. It's part of a larger investment of $150 million. That's to strengthen this work that has already begun as a result of COVID-19 to strengthen those virtual care systems and hopefully help the provinces and territories solidify this gain they have made in breaking through a barrier in providing access to care in some very challenging geographical settings.
As you all realize, I tend to run down the clock all on my own with my lengthy questions.
Let me first of all say that this is for Dr. Tam and Dr. Stewart, so I hope you'll listen.
I want to ask about therapeutics. Like all of you, I know that health care is primarily a provincial jurisdiction. However, I think we'll all admit that the federal government has put billions and billions of dollars into helping the provinces in dealing with the pandemic. There's also a national therapeutics task force, so here's the question.
The question is around bamlanivimab, a monoclonal antibody made here in Canada by AbCellera. Several studies have shown that it seems to be effective when used early in the disease by high-risk people in preventing them from going on to have severe COVID. There have also been a number of other studies with other monoclonal antibodies. As infectious disease people have pointed out to me, there are no studies that have shown that it isn't effective.
The problem, at least in Ontario, has been in getting this treatment out to people. It would certainly be useful, especially in a place such as Thunder Bay, where our ICU is filling up with COVID cases, but they've been unable to use it—and this is all provincial.
I know that for a month across Ontario, six groups of infectious disease people were trying to access it and weren't able to do so. People with transplants have a 20% mortality rate when they get COVID, but they couldn't access it. All across Ontario, and I think all across Canada, people are having difficulties accessing this medication, and with the funding to administer it, because you have to bring people into heated tents or something and transfuse it over a couple of hours.
Given the fact that this is a problem all across Canada, are we aware of this problem, and what can we do to help the provinces in order to get this potentially important treatment out to them?
As for the certainty of its use, as one infectious disease person told me, he felt that an informed physician treating an informed patient should be able to use it, but it's not getting out there.
:
Since I have the floor for only two and a half minutes, I'm going to play all my cards.
Madam Minister, you know that I have a hard time understanding your logic of dealing with the pandemic first and then dealing with health transfers, as if we were asking to implement a health transfer program. It already exists.
What we are saying about chronic underfunding is that the various federal governments have not contributed for 30 years. This has weakened the systems. The systems weakened during the pandemic have created two classes of patients, COVID-19 patients and other patients.
The statistics I am giving you are from the ministry of health and social services report. Dr. Champagne, president of the Association des médecins hématologues et oncologues du Québec, said that we are living off our credit cards and that this will cost society dearly, both in human and financial terms. A cancer diagnosed later becomes a heavy burden to cure. To say that we need to fix the pandemic before we start investing in caring for non-COVID-19 patients is to fail to understand the lessons we must learn from the pandemic, Madam Minister.
How can you justify logic like that?
Minister, Dr. Quach-Thanh from NACI yesterday very bluntly said that Canada has had to effectively take rationing measures for vaccines, basically because of a lack of supply. She was very clear about that on several occasions. One example of the rationing is extending the administration of a second dose to four months.
Your government has repeatedly said it relies on science, but Canada's chief science advisor, Dr. Mona Nemer, who's presumably advising your government, said with respect to this that “it amounts right now to a basically population level experiment” and that she thinks “it's really important that we stick with the data and with the great science that give[s] us these fantastic vaccines, and not tinker with it.”
Then last week the Pfizer Canada president said this about the four months: “The fact is, we don't have any data after two months to know what the impact of one dose will be.”
As health minister, can you tell us how it is respecting science and data to have a recommendation from Health Canada to extend doses to four months in light of that advice and opinion from NACI and your chief science advisor?
Through you, Mr. Chair, in fact there was yet again a false premise in the member's opening statement. In fact, opioid deaths declined in Vancouver just prior to COVID-19 striking. That was, I think, due in part to a commitment by both the Province of B.C. and the federal government to increase access to safe supply and safe consumption sites, to restore harm reduction to the Canada drug strategy and to take a number of other measures, besides the House of Commons' approving, of course, of the Good Samaritan Drug Overdose Act, which was presented by your chair and ensures that people who call for help for someone who's overdosing won't be criminally penalized for doing so.
Listen, a lot has happened in this space, and, of course, we're working with the Province of B.C. on their request. I spoke with Minister Malcolmson just last week and with Mayor Stewart about their plans, and we're working on the framework as we speak.
:
But you have lapsed $4.2 billion, and they're asking for more money. I know the provinces could deliver this. They would do it.
There are places in the world where vaccines are being delivered 24-7. That's because they have vaccines. We're not doing that in Canada, because we don't have vaccines, so it's very frustrating for the provinces.
I'm sure the minister has been in touch with them, or the has, and understands that. In fact, the said that he talked to them 28 times this morning, but we still don't have those vaccines on enough of a delivery mechanism that we can do it on a 24-7 basis. We need to ramp up and we will ramp up, but we're months late.
I guess I will just ask the minister when the plan will come out to tell these people who are expecting elective surgeries and have been placed on elective surgery lists when they can expect to get them.
:
From a regulatory perspective, Health Canada uses extreme seriousness and high standards in reviewing the data in front of it, a lot of which is from clinical trials, with tens of thousands of persons studied, to ensure that vaccines are safe and effective and of high quality and that the benefits far outweigh any risks. That is the bottom line.
The National Advisory Committee on Immunization also takes into account the data, but in addition provides a lens for looking at all the vaccines together, as well as the epidemiology of where Canada is at, who's at the highest risk in terms of risk factors, and feasibility, acceptability, ethics and equity as they make their recommendations. The bottom line, though, is that any recommendation they make takes into account vaccine effectiveness and safety. That is how they provide recommendations.
As you've seen, the provinces and territories, through their chief medical officers and their vaccine programs, are essentially aligned with the NACI recommendations as well. I think Canadians should feel confident that the vaccines provided are effective and safe.
:
I'm very happy that people in Canada have significantly elevated their knowledge base and their acquisition of that scientific knowledge.
“Vaccine efficacy” is generally used to describe the data coming out of clinical trials done in very specific circumstances under a great many protocols. As you've seen in phase 1, 2 and 3 trials, escalating into phase 3, they're generally done with tens of thousands of patients enrolled. Those who are vaccinated are compared with those who received a placebo or another vaccine to see the final outcome, and that's how you get the really high effective rates. Highly efficacious vaccines are the results coming out of those trials. The safety aspect is also monitored through the clinical trials.
After authorization by regulatory authorities around the world, the vaccines are deployed in the tens of millions all around the world. The real, live on-the-ground performance of the vaccine is called “vaccine effectiveness”. In general, one might expect it to be a bit lower than what you find in well-controlled environments.
Those are the real, live administrations in the field. You have to give the vaccine under different circumstances to different populations, some in remote areas, with different logistics. What is very heartening is that the real, live on-the-ground data is really good as it stands. Some of the data coming out of British Columbia, Quebec and Ontario is demonstrating real-life vaccine effectiveness, particularly right now, in reducing long-term care facility impacts in very significant ways.
That's effectiveness. Safety is also—
:
Thank you very much, and please say hi to your mom for me. I have never met her, but she sounds like a wonderful woman and I've enjoyed your stories of her.
I'll say that we knew right away that seniors were going to struggle, especially since seniors in particular often face isolation already. When we were asking people to stay home and avoid going out, we knew that for those seniors not living in long-term care isolation would be difficult, but for those in long-term care it would obviously be even more so.
We worked very closely as a whole of government to increase access to financial supports for seniors and to ensure that New Horizons programs across the country had additional money to rapidly change how they were connecting to seniors in communities. Obviously, all the work we did to support provinces and territories in long-term care work was very critical. We'll continue to do that work for seniors.
The seniors across this country have been there for us in our toughest times, so it's time for us to be there for them, and that's why I'm so honoured to be Canada's health minister and to be working on the many ways that our government can support seniors to have healthier, more dignified lives.
:
Madam Minister, let me make you aware of the reality that the provinces and Quebec may be experiencing. I know that health care does not fall under federal jurisdiction. Perhaps that is why you are a little removed from the reality created by the first two waves of the pandemic.
The Quebec ministry of health and social services report I was referring to indicates that, in the first wave, 4,119 people with cancer were not diagnosed in Quebec. In addition, from April to June 2020, there were 1,539 fewer cancer surgeries. For the same period, the number of radiation treatments decreased by 9%. There were 58% fewer of the most common prostate cancer screening tests. Medical imaging tests to detect lung cancer, the leading cause of death for both women and men, were down by 21% last spring.
That's the reality for non-COVID-19 patients.
The report also shows that the number of lung cancer surgeries for the period April through June 2020 decreased by 18% compared to the same period in 2019. The largest decrease was in April with 42%.
The same was observed with colorectal cancer, which is also very common. We have seen an incredible drop in the number of screening tests and the number of surgeries has dropped by 30%. I could go on and talk about breast cancer as well.
As a result, Mario Décelles, the director general of the Fondation québécoise du cancer, said that the numbers may unfortunately be worse in the second wave. This report was published at the end of January 2021, and the numbers in the second wave will be even worse.
You have the nerve to tell us today that we need to separate the approaches and deal with the pandemic first, as if the reality I am talking about is not urgent. Health transfers can solve this problem.
What are you going to do when non-COVID-19 patients die because they are not diagnosed, Madam Minister?
Are you going to say that this was not your responsibility and that the pandemic needed to be addressed first?
:
First of all, my heart is with all Canadians who have sacrificed, struggled and dealt with the pandemic in ways that we can see and in ways that we can't.
I will remind the member that the provision of health care rests with the provinces and territories, and we've been there to help them deliver on historic demands on their health care systems. In fact, as the member knows, we paid for personal protective equipment, and billions of dollars have been transferred directly to the provinces so they could augment the many capacities they've needed. We've also supported seniors in long-term care. We've supported infection prevention and control in schools. We've been there for the acquiring of vaccines and many other therapeutics, which were paid out of pocket. There were no expenses to the provinces and territories for testing, including for rapid testing.
Every step of the way, I have worked with Minister McCann and Minister Dubé, receiving calls for urgent supplies. We've been there for the Province of Quebec, as the member knows. We're going to continue to be there as we—
On this issue, Mr. Chair, I would also like to clarify that we have five minutes each time we speak, whereas the government party can take all the time it wants to ask its questions. With the time it has available, it can let the witnesses take more time and more detours when answering questions.
However, when you have two and a half minutes to ask your questions and the witness goes off topic, at some point you have to interrupt them. I think that needs to be understood.
The government party has a lot of time to ask questions, unlike Mr. Davies and me, and witnesses need to understand that dynamic. When you say we have two and a half minutes, that doesn't mean that witnesses can avoid a question by saying something that doesn't directly answer it.
I wanted to make that point of order, because you could also sometimes remind witnesses that a question has been asked. If you're calling us to order to let the witnesses speak, you should also remind the witnesses that they have to answer the questions.
Having said that, I am in a very good mood.
:
Thank you, Mr. Thériault.
I would remind Mr. Thériault and all members that the time allocated for speaking is a matter that was decided among all the whips and determined in our routine motions when we started this committee at the beginning of the session.
It is certainly the prerogative of the chair to recognize people to speak or not. During questioning, we typically allow the members to control the flow during their own questioning, but if that is abused, the chair has to take action.
I would advise all witnesses to answer the questions as best they can, but I'd also remind members not to put words in the mouths of witnesses or to try to impose specific sets of answers on them. The answers are the prerogative of the witnesses.
I would also remind members that when a minister appears, she appears with officials whose job is to support her. It is her prerogative to pass the question to them when she feels it is more appropriate.
Is there any further intervention on this point of order?
Seeing none, let us once again go forward and conduct the vote.
CANADIAN FOOD INSPECTION AGENCY
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Vote 1c—Operating expenditures, grants and contributions..........$10,979,485
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Vote 5c—Capital expenditures..........$225,000
(Votes 1c and 5c agreed to on division)
CANADIAN INSTITUTES OF HEALTH RESEARCH
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Vote 5c—Grants..........$126,700,000
(Vote 5c agreed to on division)
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Vote 1c—Operating expenditures..........$43,968,111
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Vote 10c—Grants and contributions..........$47,492,269
(Votes 1c and 10c agreed to on division)
PUBLIC HEALTH AGENCY OF CANADA
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Vote 1c—Operating expenditures..........$6,035,445,421
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Vote 5c—Capital expenditures..........$48,256,000
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Vote 10c—Grants and contributions..........$251,947,356
(Votes 1c , 5c and 10c agreed to on division)
The Chair: Shall I report the votes on the supplementary estimates to the House?
An hon. member: On division.
The Chair: That concludes the business before us today.
I would like to thank all of the witnesses. I wish to thank the minister and her officials. I know how exhausting your schedules are, so I do appreciate the time you spent with us today to share your expertise and knowledge. Once again, thank you.
Thank you to all the members.
The meeting is adjourned.