Sure, I'm happy to do that.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and honourable members.
I'm happy to provide information on how a Guelph company came to produce ventilators. I am the president of FTI Professional Grade Inc. We are the prime contractor for the delivery of 10,000 V4C-560 ventilators. To date, FTI has delivered 7,788, and we expect to complete our contract before the end of December.
Pre-COVID.... I am the co-founder, president and CEO of ABS Friction and Ideal Brake Parts. We've proudly manufactured Canadian-made brake pads, which we export worldwide. Every Ideal box contains a Canadian flag pin in it. We just celebrated our 25th anniversary in business.
COVID-19 has required an extraordinary response from our country's manufacturers. In March, the federal government made a call to action and asked Canadians to help. I immediately realized this was an opportunity for me to step up and help the country.
I was personally motivated to take action and help with the fight, for two main reasons. The first was that, on March 12, I received an email from a family friend in Italy who told us about the total lockdown of the country. Doctors were making unbearable decisions about who would live and who would die. The lack of ventilators impacted the situation. The second reason was that I feared for vulnerable family members. On March 19, I stepped away from my full-time responsibilities at ABS Friction and Ideal Brake Parts to co-found the Ventilators for Canadians consortium.
I put up a website to outline our purpose, to make ventilators. We had the energy, experience and expertise to do the job. This was our moment to serve. At the very beginning, we looked at crowdfunding. We had access to the financial resources for licensing and the engineering talent; however, we had no medical quality system. A number of companies were identified, but two proven medical device manufacturers were shortlisted. After researching numerous options, we approached a U.K. company about a licensing collaboration. During that evaluation, we introduced ourselves to Baylis Medical to satisfy our requirement for a medical quality management system and facility.
Manufacturing a Health Canada-approved medical device is very complex. We determined that Baylis Medical was qualified to take on this project as our subcontractor. The U.K. design fell through because of supply chain concerns and the ventilator's suitability for COVID use. We had put together a very capable team and we pursued other designs.
I reached out to the public service to discuss what we were doing. Soon after, we began the vetting process with the public service and presented our solutions to an expert panel. This was my first public contracting process with any government. On Saturday, April 11, Easter weekend, FTI signed a contract with Public Works to deliver 10,000 ventilators based on Medtronic's PB560 permissive licence. This design has been used for over 10 years and is utilized to treat patients worldwide. Negotiations took place, and a contract between FTI and Baylis Medical was signed on Thursday, April 16. Baylis Medical then began the process of submitting the required documentation to apply for regulatory approval based on the Health Canada emergency interim order.
We received Health Canada approval for the ventilator on Tuesday, June 16. We are the only consortium in the world that has successfully replicated, received regulatory approval for and manufactured the proven Medtronic PB560 ventilator. That's the result of the collaboration between two Canadian companies—FTI and Baylis Medical.
FTI's approach to utilize the Medtronic permissive licence allowed us to reduce the time to get high-quality ventilators to Canadians from three years to three months. Typically, it takes three years to develop, achieve regulatory approval for and manufacture a medical device. It took us only three months from contract signature on April 11 to first delivery to the Public Health Agency of Canada in mid-July.
Our ventilator is versatile. It has features and benefits to address acute and non-acute hospital care, long-term care and in-home environments. We're extremely proud that FTI has delivered 7,788 ventilators to the Public Health Agency of Canada so they're available for Canadians who need them.
I would like to thank the inspiring group of people who've helped us from around the world, including Medtronic for making its design available, and most importantly the Public Health Agency of Canada, Health Canada, Public Works, and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada and others from the government whom I've surely missed and who have guided FTI through this process.
I would like to recognize the honourable members of the committee and parliamentarians for their continued support of Canada's COVID-19 response.
I would be pleased to answer your questions.