Health committee  I do, yes. This was for Bill C-54, not for Bill C-11, but I was certainly apprised very fully of its content and was given the opportunity to comment on it by the Public Health Agency of Canada.

Health committee  As I receive a lot of my funding from the U.S., I have to abide by the equivalent of Bill C-11 with the select agent rule. That's a little different because pathogens are considered select agents not based on their risk group. So you can be a risk group two pathogen and still be a select agent, and then you are governed by the select agent rule, whereas in Canada you would be a risk group two pathogen, and some risk group two pathogens would certainly be treated even under Bill C-11 with less concern than they would be if they were being handled in the U.S.

Health committee  Not as far as risk group two pathogens are concerned. My understanding is that it boils down to whether the federal government wishes to know what risk group two pathogens exist in laboratories in Canada and whereabouts in Canada those laboratories are based. It's that simple. For risk group two, that's all the information...if you do away with the security clearance, the only information you will gain from Bill C-11 is that you will know all of these labs and they will also come now under the microscope.

Health committee  If there's a requirement for a formal security clearance by a federal agency, yes.

Health committee  For sure. It used to be common practice for researchers to share their pathogens. As far as level two pathogens are concerned, the most risk is to the researcher, unless there's malicious intent. If there's malicious intent, you could do a lot of damage with a level two pathogen, if you decided, as they did in the U.S., to take some listeria and go to several Pizza Huts locally and spike the salad bars with listeria or salmonella or shigella.

Health committee  We run both level two and level three labs.

Health committee  In Bill C-54 the intent was that people engaged in levels three and four work would require security clearance.

Health committee  All government employees undergo an enhanced security clearance, so I guess it's a matter of what level of clearance and how fast it can be done. That fact is that the federal government is a big agency, and most of its employees have some level of enhanced security screening before they're employed.

Health committee  Bill C-54 didn't have that provision for level two pathogens in its original form. That security clearance was only for level three and four pathogens in Bill C-54. All Bill C-54 was asking for was a list of what pathogens an organization held and where they held them. It wasn't that onerous a thing to produce, I don't think.

Health committee  It would take CSIS decades to go through the number of security clearances required, if everybody had to get a security clearance to work in a level two lab. It's not practical.

Health committee  Is it going to have some impact on research? Sure, but if you work with animals, the red tape surrounding the use of laboratory animals is far more onerous than the red tape proposed for level two pathogens by Bill C-11. The red tape surrounding the use of radioisotopes in laboratories is more onerous than the red tape for level two pathogens proposed by Bill C-11.

Health committee  I don't want to add to the bureaucracy surrounding this. But I can see for contentious issues, so long as the panel was made up of bona fide experts that the rest of the community had faith in, then why not? I can't imagine there are too many contentious issues that are going to arise as a consequence of this bill.

Health committee  I guess it's a political matter. We're not governed by provincial rules and regulations, only by federal regulations.

Health committee  I personally was consulted through direct contact through the Public Health Agency of Canada. They just walked me through the whole process.

Health committee  I had a lot of concerns that have probably been raised over the past few days about the level of regulation and how overburdening it might be for the people concerned. The questions I had at that time were largely answered, and the answers largely assuaged my fears. The spirit of this act isn't that onerous for level two labs.