Liberals launch pandemic preparedness agency, seeking faster vaccine development Achi-News

OTTAWA – The federal Liberals are creating a new agency to improve Canada’s ability to treat rapidly spreading infectious diseases and protect against future pandemics.

Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said the agency is supposed to protect the “top gun team” of public servants who helped steer Canadians through COVID-19.

Health Emergency Preparedness Canada is tasked with boosting Canada’s life sciences sector and ensuring Canadians have faster access to vaccines, medical therapies and diagnostics by accelerating the transition from research to commercialization.

“The danger would be (that) if we didn’t have a permanent agency sitting somewhere, even collective information that we’ve gathered during COVID would end up being dispersed, maybe even lost from within the civil service,” Champagne told reporters on Tuesday.

“We pull them together in a team so people know where to knock when people talk about health, emergency preparedness.”

The new agency will be based in the Department of Industry but will include staff from the Public Health Agency of Canada and Health Canada. Champagne said that it does not require new legislation and that it is based on the expenditure of the Senate already approved through this year’s budget.

“We want to stay very closely connected with industry,” Champagne said.

The agency will coordinate efforts between Canadian industry and academic researchers as well as international partners.

This follows a similar move by the European Union to create an agency in 2021 that not only tries to prepare the continent for pandemics, but tries to learn from mistakes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Canada was underprepared for the COVID-19 pandemic with an outdated and understocked emergency stockpile, and a virtually non-existent vaccine production industry.

Last year, the British Medical Journal called out Canada’s “major pandemic failures” such as jurisdictional controversy and a high death rate in long-term care homes.

Yet the Trudeau government has resisted calls from medical experts and the NDP to follow countries like the UK in conducting an inquiry into how governments handled the COVID-19 pandemic and how they could better manage future pandemics.

When asked about an investigation, Champagne said the publication is focused on having the right materials and investigators on hand when needed.

“We all hope there won’t be another pandemic. But the responsible thing to do is to make sure the team is ready and prepared,” he said.

Champagne told a biotech industry gathering Friday that officials found Canada unprepared to coordinate “health crisis preparedness” when peers began looking in to prepare for future events.

“We realized that things were scattered,” he said.

He said Canada faces the danger of being the only G7 country “without a dedicated team” for pandemic preparedness.

Once fully operational, the agency will have an “industrial game plan” to move quickly on research and industrial mobilization if another health crisis such as a pandemic is declared.

Champagne said the pandemic and investments in personalized medicine have made the public enthusiastic about the biotech sector.

“If there’s one industry that I think Canadians have fallen in love with again, it’s certainly that industry,” he said.

This report was first published by The Canadian Press on September 24, 2024.

Canadian Press. All rights reserved.