Federal Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said the agency aims to preserve the front line team of public servants who helped Canadians face Covid-19.
Health Emergency Preparedness Canada has been tasked with boosting the country’s life sciences sector and ensuring Canadians have faster access to vaccines, medical therapies and diagnostics, accelerating the transition from research to marketing.
The danger would have been that, if we did not have a permanent agency somewhere in the public apparatus, the collective knowledge we have accumulated during the Covid-19 pandemic would eventually be dispersed, perhaps even lost within the civil service.A quote from François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Industry of Canada.
We’re putting them together as a team so that when people talk about health and emergency preparedness, they know who to call.Champagne explained to the press on September 24.
The new agency will be based in the Department of Industry and will include staff from the Public Health Agency of Canada and Health Canada. Champagne said the establishment of this entity does not require new legislation and its spending will be part of this year’s budget, which has already been approved by Parliament.
We want to maintain a very close link with the industrysaid.
The pharmaceutical industry quickly developed Covid-19 vaccines and detection kits.
Foto: The Canadian Press / Jeff McIntosh
The new entity, Health Emergency Preparedness Canada, aims to coordinate efforts between Canadian industry and academic researchers, as well as international partners.
The creation of this unit is inspired by a similar measure taken by the European Union which established an agency in 2021 to prepare the continent to face pandemics and learn from the mistakes made during the ravages caused by Covid-19.
Canada was not adequately prepared to face the Covid-19 pandemic: it had an obsolete and insufficient emergency reserve and a practically non-existent vaccine production industry.
Last year, the British Medical Journal highlighted Canada’s major failures in the pandemic, such as jurisdictional disputes and the high mortality rate in long-term care homes.
The Trudeau government has resisted calls from medical experts and the New Democratic Party to follow the lead of countries like the United Kingdom and conduct an investigation into how governments handled the Covid-19 pandemic and how they could manage better a pandemic in the future.
When asked about an eventual investigation into authorities’ actions in the face of the pandemic, Champagne said his announcement focused on having the right materials and researchers on hand for when needed.
We all hope there isn’t another pandemic, but the responsible thing to do is to make sure the team is preparedhe stated.
At a biotech industry meeting on Sept. 20, Champagne said officials found Canada was not ready to coordinate the preparedness for health emergencies when researchers began to study the state of the country’s preparedness for future events.
We realized that things were scatteredsaid.
The minister said that Canada would end up being the only country in the G7 without a dedicated team to preparing for a pandemic.
Once fully operational, the agency will have a industrial game plan to rapidly advance research and industrial mobilization if another health emergency such as a pandemic is declared.
Champagne said the pandemic and investments in personalized medicine have made the public excited about the biotech sector.
If there is one industry that I think Canadians have fallen in love with again, it is without a doubt thishe stated.
Fuentes: CBC / PC / D. Robertson
Adaptation: RCI / R. Valencia
