Evidence of meeting #12 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was masks.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Thank you very much. Unfortunately, we're out of time.
We'll now go to Mr. Aboultaif for four minutes, please.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Ziad Aboultaif Conservative Edmonton Manning, AB
PHAC is currently deploying 81 sterilization devices from Stryker Canada that will provide provinces and territories with the capacity to reprocess approximately 275,000 N95 respirators a week.
How much of Stryker Canada's supply is based in Canada or in North America?
12:30 p.m.
Vice-President, Public Health Agency of Canada
PHAC is buying 82 machines and distributing 81, and one is going to the National Research Council.
Stryker Canada was, until last August, a Canadian-based company. The Stryker machine was designed and manufactured in Canada, and they still have a very strong presence near Quebec City. Sixty have already been made, and they are making another 20. Those are being made in Quebec City.
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
Ziad Aboultaif Conservative Edmonton Manning, AB
Was Stryker somehow acquired by an American company? Do you know?
12:35 p.m.
Vice-President, Public Health Agency of Canada
Stryker is the American company. The name of the original company escapes me.
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
Ziad Aboultaif Conservative Edmonton Manning, AB
Are there any other companies that are assisting in providing the services Stryker is providing, just to make sure we get the extra support?
12:35 p.m.
Vice-President, Public Health Agency of Canada
Health Canada has approved five technologies to reprocess N95 masks. They include Stryker, STERRAD, Steris, Clean Works and Bioquell, if memory serves.
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
12:35 p.m.
Vice-President, Public Health Agency of Canada
In this case, Stryker was the first of the technologies we looked at that was approved, and Stryker did not go through a competitive process.
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
Ziad Aboultaif Conservative Edmonton Manning, AB
Would you be able to provide a list of all major suppliers that had contracts to supply PPE?
12:35 p.m.
Vice-President, Public Health Agency of Canada
I'm sure we can provide the list of contracts. I'll turn to my colleague Mr. Matthews on that.
12:35 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
We can certainly highlight most of the Canadian ones. We are not disclosing the international ones at this stage because we did the procurements under an NSE, a national security exception, and we want to protect our sources because product availability is such a competitive field.
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
Ziad Aboultaif Conservative Edmonton Manning, AB
Millions of masks have been rejected because they do not qualify or don't pass specifications, and now you are suggesting you will not provide the names of those suppliers.
Canadians need to know, and as parliamentarians we need to know, the names of those suppliers. Would you be able to provide to the committee the names of these international companies?
12:35 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
No, not at this stage. As I mentioned, the procurement is being done under an NSE, and we want to protect our supply lines, if I can use those words, while the crisis is at such a competitive stage from a procurement perspective. To properly protect our product, we do not want to do that at this stage.
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
Ziad Aboultaif Conservative Edmonton Manning, AB
The product is on the market and has labels, so why wouldn't you provide the names of the suppliers? The factories' names are on the boxes, aren't they?
12:35 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
The product is not, in fact, in the public domain. It's being held by and given to other government sources, as mentioned earlier. The contract itself is still under discussion, so it wouldn't be wise for us to share those names at this stage.
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
Ziad Aboultaif Conservative Edmonton Manning, AB
How do we know that some of this product does not come in after being disqualified at source, since you're not inspecting it at source, or that your suppliers aren't doing something to change the labels or are relabelling products and giving them back to—
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
We'll have to end the discussion there, but if you wish to provide an answer, Mr. Matthews, again I would encourage you to do it as quickly as possible in writing, through our clerk.
We'll now go to the last of our four-minute interventions.
Go ahead, Mr. Drouin.
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will share my time with Ms. May.
Mr. Matthews, I've been reading stories about stolen goods at airports and warehouses in China. From your understanding, is that impacting our supply chain to Canada?
12:35 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
There's certainly a risk. I talked about how things have evolved on the ground in China since this started. We had to put in measures to make sure we were effectively getting our supplies as they came off the production line because of the risk of either theft or being outbid on the factory floor.
One of the early adjustments the Government of Canada made was to take steps to basically secure that supply line as it came off the factory floor, get it to a warehouse that the Government of Canada rented or leased and then arrange for transport ourselves.
If we were in a normal environment, we would be looking to our suppliers to basically transport the goods to Canada themselves, but that was proving to be an overly risky endeavour, given the environments on the global stage and competition for goods. We have made the adjustments on the ground in China to properly secure out product.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
12:40 p.m.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
Thank you. I assume that's okay with the chair. Thank you so much.
I want to go back to Ms. Thornton. I know a lot of the questions have been fairly combative.
It strikes me that there's a collective failure in Canada, and I wonder if you would agree with me. We made decisions after the SARS epidemic that we would be prepared and that there should be minimum stocks of PPE available in Canada. Allowing so much PPE critical equipment to go well past its best-before date, and five years past expiration, suggests that we lost track of this critical function of preparedness.
I wonder if you can comment on what we will do in future to make sure this doesn't happen again.
May 15th, 2020 / 12:40 p.m.
Vice-President, Health Security Infrastructure Branch, Public Health Agency of Canada
I thank you for the question.
Mr. Chair, we do have an inventory management system. On the items that were five years past expiry, there would have been no demand for those products or they would have been used prior. On a go-forward basis, though, I do think that this whole episode, the pandemic, will inform not just how the federal government approaches our national emergency strategic stockpile but also our relationship and engagement with the provinces and territories.
There has been a significant increase in transparency. When we did our first call-out, provinces and territories largely had distribution systems within their own organizations and could not tell us right off the top what they had in their stockpiles, what they needed and what their burn rates were. Through this, we've actually all learned about the use of PPE, and not just for the health system; we're beginning, collectively, to also learn about that outside of the health system.
I think it's going to be very different in terms of management and collaboration with the provinces and territories, and ultimately in terms of some principles around stockpiling. We're beginning to identify not just for the next wave, but what would be appropriate as a matter of course. Is it a six-week burn rate? Is it a one-week burn rate? Also, where and who should actually have those stockpiles?
I think it'll be very different. I'm not sure how different it'll be from the actual federal stockpile, but probably a great deal different from the federal collaboration with our provinces and territories.