Health

The House of Commons Standing Committee on Health met to study antimicrobial resistance (AMR), hearing from five witnesses: Scot Magnish, Director of Communications and Public Affairs at ATMIS; Rita Dhami, Chief Pharmacy Officer at the Canadian Society of Healthcare-Systems Pharmacy; Kevin Stinson, Program Manager for Infection Prevention and Control at Waterloo Regional Health Network, representing Infection Prevention and Control Canada; Dr. Sameer Elsayed, an Infectious Diseases Physician at Western University; and Dr. Terry Wuerz, an Infectious Diseases Physician with the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority.

Scot Magnish testified that Canada’s reliance on imported personal protective equipment (PPE), particularly isolation gowns from China, poses serious health and safety risks due to frequent false lab reports, substandard quality, and flammability. He stated that the National Emergency Strategic Stockpile (NESS) contains expired gowns, that no new gowns have been procured since March 2022, and that the government has renewed contracts with the same foreign suppliers. He recommended buying PPE from manufacturing plants with medical device establishment licences and ISO 9001 certification, and enforcing existing forced labour legislation (Bill S-211).

Rita Dhami described AMR as a present-day reality, with pharmacists daily confronting patients who do not respond to first-line treatments. She supported the pan-Canadian action plan but stressed the need for dedicated resources, timelines, and federal leadership. She recommended strengthening national surveillance by scaling the CNISP and CLEAR registry platforms to include long-term care and community settings, building sustainable antimicrobial stewardship programs across the health care continuum, and improving access to new antimicrobials by moving from exploration to implementation of push-and-pull incentives.

Kevin Stinson emphasized that AMR is a silent pandemic requiring coordinated efforts in surveillance, infection prevention and control (IPAC), and antimicrobial stewardship. He noted that nearly one in 10 Canadians in acute care hospitals are colonized with at least one antimicrobial-resistant organism, and that Canada’s surveillance program lacks the granularity to map transmission at a local level. He recommended building IPAC workforce capacity through training initiatives like Ontario’s IPAC hub program, improving AMR surveillance with an integrated multi-sector approach focused on transmission dynamics, and supporting vaccination campaigns to prevent infections.

Dr. Sameer Elsayed highlighted that AMR is a top global public health threat, with 75% of resistant infections acquired in hospitals and 50% of community antimicrobial prescriptions considered inappropriate. He identified gaps in the pan-Canadian action plan, including delayed regulatory approval for new antimicrobials (often taking seven years longer than in the U.S. or Europe), insufficient restrictions on agricultural antibiotic use, and the absence of mandatory stewardship programs in long-term care homes. He recommended expedited Health Canada approvals, an online portal for the special access program, limits on antibiotic use in livestock, and increased funding for hospital infection control and stewardship programs.

Dr. Terry Wuerz described antibiotics as a finite resource and a “trust fund” being depleted by overuse and misuse, leading to infections that no longer respond to any available drugs and sometimes require amputation. He noted that in Manitoba, there is no stable funding for antimicrobial stewardship programs, which operate intermittently or rely on voluntary effort. He recommended three federal priorities: fund and standardize stewardship programs in all health care settings, support rapid access to new antimicrobials through streamlined regulatory pathways and incentives, and enable national coordination of AMR policy and implementation.

The committee also debated and adopted a motion to invite the Minister of Health and department officials to appear on supplementary estimates (B), and agreed to a motion ordering the Public Health Agency of Canada, Health Canada, the Department of National Defence, and Public Services and Procurement to answer detailed questions about NESS and PPE procurement from 2019 to the present, with responses due within two weeks.