Government Operations Committee on May 15th, 2020

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

You have 15 seconds, Madam Vignola.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

We need 20 minutes of speaking time, Mr. Chair. I will let—

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

I know. Time is precious, isn't it?

We'll go to Mr. Green for five minutes, please.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'll switch gears a little bit and talk about the notion of a radical change that will be required for the national emergency strategic stockpile. We've heard about whole-of-government. I'd like to ask either Mr. Matthews or Ms. Thornton if they've had preliminary conversations about integrating between PSPC, which is supposed to have the expertise on procurement, and the health security infrastructure branch, and to talk more about how we can have a more integrated whole-of-government supply chain.

[Bill Matthews]

Maybe I'll start, Mr. Chair, and then turn to my PHAC colleagues.

What you're seeing right now is collaboration in terms of ordering to meet the current needs. I believe your question is around whether, going forward, we see a different form of collaboration.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

That's correct.

Just to clarify, in the last iteration, when we had Minister Anand here, she made it very clear that the responsibility of PSPC stops the moment it's ordered and hits the shores here. I'm wondering if there could be a greater supply management responsibility with PSPC to be able to identify and flag early so that we're never again in a situation where we have this critical 20% of our stock discarded on the eve of an epidemic.

[Bill Matthews]

I think the value-add that PSPC would bring to that conversation would be around, when you're looking at certain goods, based on what we know now, should this situation occur again, what are the lead times? How long does it take to get here? That can be factored into any planning. I think the actual planning for the NESS itself would be more in PHAC's bailiwick.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I think I've exhausted that. I know I've probably exhausted Ms. Thornton, so I'll stick with you, Mr. Matthews.

We heard today that 11.5 million respirators have been received to date, and yet 9.9 million N95 respirators were assessed—thanks to the good work, I should say, of PHAC—as not meeting the specifications. Based on the earlier line of questioning, is it safe for me to assume that Deloitte's role in procurement in terms of quality verification failed miserably here, or was it something other than Deloitte?

[Bill Matthews]

I think the question of QA has been evolving since this started. Again, when this started, it was about getting contracts in place quickly. There was a mad scramble to get mass contracts in place. These KN95 masks that arrived were part of the earlier set of contracts.

In terms of the QA we're doing now, the ideal is that you basically vet the company in advance, which was already being done. We're dealing more directly with the manufacturers in China now than we did in the past, as opposed to with a Canadian intermediary. The principle we'd like to move to, and PHAC certainly has a role here, is that the more we can test in China, the better off it is, because you don't bring it here.

Certain types of—

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

If I could, Mr. Matthews, to me, when we talk about the integration between the two ministries and, to go back to nineties corporate jargon, the “silos” that happened, the fact that we didn't have a sample tested prior to delivery on the order and magnitude of 9.9 million respirators is very concerning.

So when we move forward, are we going to have that happen?

[Bill Matthews]

We're doing that to the extent possible. I'll flip this to Éric or Sally in a moment—I'm drifting into PHAC turf here—but with something as important as KN95, we want to test that in Canada as well. You can have a company test itself, and that's great, but before we put something into the medical system, they want to make sure it meets their needs.

Éric or Sally, do you want to comment on QA?

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

My point, to whomever is about to comment on this, is that it would make sense to me to have somebody from PHAC and PSPC working on the ground in China to test the sample before you order darn-near 10 million of these masks to have them be turned around and shipped back.

[Éric Dagenais]

Mr. Chair, I agree. The best-case scenario would be independent testing, and I underline independent.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Your audio levels are very low.

[Éric Dagenais]

I agree, Mr. Chair, that the best-case scenario is independent testing in China, and I underline independent, because sometimes the tests that a company will do are not the same as when we do the testing. That would be the ideal scenario.

To date we've tried to locate with PSPC and others laboratories in China that are available to do the testing. There are some with international reputations that we would gladly hire, but they are backlogged for weeks and months.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Sure. I can tell you—

[Éric Dagenais]

This is why we've moved to bringing samples to Canada and are testing them here before bringing in the bulk.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I need to go on the record to say that I'm very grateful that happened. If 10 million compromised masks had been put out among the public, it would have been another scandal. Certainly, every single one of these products is potentially a lifesaver, and that's the kind of urgency I want to bring to this conversation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

We'll go to our four-minute rounds starting with Mr. McCauley.

Mr. McCauley, are you there?

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

PHAC, and Mr. Matthews, we saw recently that the U.S. banned a fair number of Chinese companies, or the importation of masks from them. One of them was the Guangdong Golden Leaves Technology Development Company; yet, they are still on the approved list for Canada.

Would we not be following the U.S. in banning some of these companies? Why is that company still approved by us?

[Bill Matthews]

Maybe I'll start, and others can jump in.

I think Health and PHAC may have a role here.

I think the U.S. experience has highlighted that there's a lot of fraud happening in the manufacturing of these types of masks, and you want to make sure that you're getting a legitimate product. I think the issue with the company that's being cited here concerns some fraudulent masks, and we're monitoring this very carefully.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

We've been burned by fraudulent masks. The U.S. has pointed out that this company is a problem, so why would we just be monitoring them? Why won't we just ban them outright?

[Bill Matthews]

As was mentioned earlier, Mr. Chair, the question of who gets banned and who gets licences comes from Health Canada, so I think it's better to ask them.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Okay, that's fine. I'll move on quickly.

Of the million substandard masks that came in, we were told that we'd probably get our money back. Then we heard in the House of Commons the PSPC minister saying that we're going to use them because it's just the elastic that's faulty. Then we heard from Global Affairs saying it was a contract issue.

What are we doing about the price of those masks and the other eight million masks we heard about that are going to be used as surgical masks? We paid full price for them as N95 masks. Are we getting them discounted or rebated to reflect the value of what these masks are being used for?

[Bill Matthews]

What I believe I said was that we expect the supplier to stand behind the product, and this is a product that is in short supply.