Ottawa creates pandemic preparedness agency, aims for faster vaccine development

The federal government is creating a new agency to better enable Canada to tackle rapidly spreading infectious diseases and protect Canadians from future pandemics.

Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said the agency is intended to maintain the “top team” of civil servants who guided Canadians through COVID-19.

Health Emergency Readiness 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 somewhere, the collective knowledge that we have gathered during COVID would end up being dispersed and perhaps even lost within the civil service,” Champagne told reporters on Tuesday.

“We bring them together in a team, so that people know where to go when it comes to health or emergency aid.”

The new agency will be located within the Industry Department and will include staff from the Public Health Agency of Canada and Health Canada. Champagne said it does not require new legislation and is based on spending already approved by Parliament in this year’s budget.

“We want to keep in close contact with the industry,” he said.

The agency must coordinate efforts between Canadian industry and academic researchers, and with international partners.

This follows a similar move by the European Union in 2021 to set up an agency to prepare the continent for pandemics and learn from mistakes made during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Canada was ill-prepared for the COVID-19 pandemic, with an outdated and understocked emergency stockpile and a virtually non-existent vaccine manufacturing industry.

Last year, the British Medical Journal criticized Canada’s “major pandemic failings,” including a lack of jurisdiction and high death rates in nursing homes.

The Trudeau government has resisted calls from medical experts and the NDP to follow the lead of countries like the United Kingdom and launch an inquiry into how governments handled the COVID-19 pandemic and how they could better manage a future pandemic.

When asked about an investigation, Champagne said the announcement is aimed at having the right materials and researchers available when needed.

“We all hope that there will be no new pandemic. But it is wise to make sure that the team is ready,” he said.

Champagne told a biotechnology industry meeting Friday that officials felt Canada was not ready to coordinate “health emergency preparedness” as other countries began preparing for future events.

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

He said Canada is in danger of becoming the only G7 country “without a dedicated team” for pandemic preparedness.

Once fully operational, the agency will have an “industrial action plan” to enable rapid research and industrial mobilisation if a health emergency, such as a pandemic, is declared again.

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

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