It's clear that there was a [Technical difficulty—Editor] stockpile. To follow their own reports that go as far back as 2012, they knew that they were going to have issues with respect to the expiry and the maintenance of the standards for our stockpiles. This is something that has been reported on time and time again. In 2012, they knew that the assets stored within the NESS were no longer in good quality due to long-term storage, yet this government still failed to address the system management failures, resulting in the shuttering and disposal of millions of critical PPE on the eve of a global pandemic.
I still have not heard a rationalization for how this abject failure was acted on. This is something that has been known for almost a decade. I asked Ms. Thornton. I moved a motion hoping to get this information. I'm finding that, in all the materials that have been given to us, this information has either been redacted or not submitted.
There must be a national standard on how many N95 masks the national emergency strategic stockpile was supposed to have. We heard today that two million were thrown away in one location. We knew, and I have been on this now for the better part of a year, that two other locations were also shuttered. It is left to me to believe that those responsible, in the past it would have been Ms. Thornton and we have Ms. Evans here today.... Again, it's not personal. They're just staffers on this file. If there were two million thrown out in Regina, there could have been two million thrown out at each of the other locations.
We started off this pandemic woefully behind the rest of the world as it related to having access to these. I have documents in which they're just unwilling to share what the stock levels looked like. I've asked questions in multiple different ways and iterations, trying to get to the information on who's accountable for the disposal of critical PPE.
This is all without it being said that, on the procurement side, even when we tried to catch up—you recall from the work of this committee—11 million masks were procured and nine million of them were deemed to be unfit for use and not to the standards of the N95.
It's my position that there was an abject failure. I think this is a scandal, quite frankly. I've been saying this now for the better part of a year. There are now internal documents that support that the requests from the provinces—this is March 18, 2020—far exceeded our stockpile, yet nobody within government wants to take responsibility.
Therefore, I'm moving this motion. I want to make sure that this committee is clear about what transpired in the shuttering of the national emergency strategic stockpile. How many were thrown out, and were they replenished? How was Canada situated on the eve of a global pandemic—which we knew to be coming going back 10 years now, this pandemic coming after SARS—to be in a position to address it?
Those are my comments, and I think you can hear my frustration. I just want to reiterate that it's not directed at any individual person. It's just that I've been after this now for the better part of a year.