Government Operations Committee on April 26th, 2021

[The Chair (Mr. Robert Kitchen (Souris—Moose Mountain, CPC)), Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 26 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates.

The committee is meeting today from 3:34 p.m. to 5:34 p.m. We will hear from the Auditor General and her colleagues as part of the committee's study on the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind all participants at this meeting that screenshots or taking photos of your screen is not permitted.

To ensure an orderly meeting, I would like to outline a few rules to follow.

Interpretation in this video conference will work very much like a regular committee meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen to floor, English or French. Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. When you are ready to speak, you can click on your microphone icon to activate your mike. When you are not speaking, your mike should be on mute. To raise a point of order during the meeting, committee members should ensure their microphone is unmuted and say “point of order” to get the chair's attention.

The clerk and the analysts are participating in the meeting virtually today. If you need to speak with them during the meeting, please email them through the committee email address. The clerk can also be reached by calling his mobile phone. For those people who are participating in the committee room, please note that masks are required, unless seated, and when physical distancing is not possible.

I will now invite the Auditor General to make her opening statement.

[Karen Hogan, Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General]

Mr. Chair, thank you for this opportunity to discuss our recent reports on the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which were tabled in the House of Commons on March 25.

Joining me today are Jo Ann Schwartz, Philippe Le Goff, Carol McCalla and Chantal Richard, the principals who were responsible for the audit.

The reports presented were the first of many audits on the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic that my office will conduct. There is no doubt the COVID-19 pandemic was an all-hands-on-deck emergency the world over. Governments had to mobilize quickly to respond to the public health, social and economic effects of this pandemic. Canada was no exception.

While we found that the government was not as ready as it could have been for a pandemic of this magnitude, the public service mobilized, prioritized the needs of Canadians and quickly delivered support and services.

I am going to turn first to the Canada emergency response benefit. With this benefit, the government wanted to quickly deliver financial support to eligible individuals. We found that the Department of Finance Canada, Employment and Social Development Canada, and the Canada Revenue Agency rose to the challenge and quickly analyzed, designed and delivered the Canada emergency response benefit.

To simplify the process and get support to people quickly, Employment and Social Development Canada and the Canada Revenue Agency took the approach of relying on personal attestations and automated pre-payment controls to validate applicants’ eligibility. Once the benefit was launched, they introduced additional pre-payment controls to limit potential abuse.

With the decision to rely on personal attestations, post-payment verification becomes very important. Employment and Social Development Canada and the Canada Revenue Agency are working to start their post-payment verification efforts relating to the Canada emergency benefit later this year. Their work in this area will be the subject of a future audit.

Turning now to the Canada emergency wage subsidy, we observed a similar focus on getting help out quickly, in this case, to businesses. Once again, the Department of Finance Canada and the Canada Revenue Agency worked together within short time frames to support the development and implementation of the Canada emergency wage subsidy.

The design and rollout of the subsidy highlighted pre-existing weaknesses in the agency's system, approaches and data. These weaknesses will need to be addressed to improve the robustness of Canada's tax system.

To prioritize issuing payments, the Canada Revenue Agency chose to forego certain controls that it could have used to validate the reasonableness of subsidy applications. For example, the Agency decided that it would not ask for social insurance numbers, though this information could have helped prevent the doubling-up of applications for financial support. This decision limited the Agency’s ability to perform pre-payment validations, as did the absence of complete and up-to-date tax information that would have helped it efficiently assess applications.

I am going to now turn to our last audit, which focused on pandemic preparedness, surveillance, and border control measures. In this audit, we found that the Public Health Agency of Canada was not as well prepared as it could have been to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Not all emergency and response plans were up to date or tested, and data sharing agreements with the provinces and territories were not finalized.

The Public Health Agency relied on a risk assessment tool that was untested and not designed to consider pandemic risk. The agency continued to assess the risk as low despite growing numbers of COVID-19 cases in Canada and worldwide. In addition, the global public health intelligence network did not issue an alert about the virus that would become known as causing COVID-19.

I am discouraged that the Public Health Agency of Canada did not address long-standing issues, some of which were raised repeatedly for more than two decades. These issues negatively affected the sharing of surveillance data between the agency and the provinces and territories during the pandemic. While the agency took steps to address some of these problems during the pandemic, it has much more work to do on its data-sharing agreements and its information technology infrastructure to better support national disease surveillance in the future.

We also found that the Public Health Agency of Canada and the Canada Border Services Agency implemented restrictions at the border and quarantine measures. They provided guidance and tools to inform travellers and essential workers coming into the country of public health requirements.

However, the Public Health Agency of Canada had not contemplated or planned for a quarantine on a nationwide scale, from the collection of travelers’ information through to all enforcement activities, including following up on those identified to be at risk of non-compliance. As a result, the Agency doesn’t know if the majority of travelers properly quarantined.

These audits looked at programs that were rolled out in record time. Faced with a pandemic, the public service focused on the pressing outcome: helping Canadians.

In its first year, this pandemic has shown that when the public service must, the public service can. This crisis has highlighted the importance of dealing with known issues, whether it's agreeing on which organization has the lead, who will do what when and who will report what to whom, or replacing outdated systems or processes and addressing issues in data quality. These are not problems that you want to have to deal with at the same time as you are focusing on helping people, because this is not an efficient way of working, nor is it a productive way to serve Canadians.

Government organizations need to do collaboration better. We made recommendations to each audited organization. They agreed with all of them.

Mr. Chair, this concludes my opening statement. We would be pleased to answer any questions the committee may have.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Ms. Hogan. I appreciate your comments.

We will now start into some questioning.

We will start with Mr. Paul-Hus for six minutes.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, Ms. Hogan.

My first question concerns the Minister of Health. Since March 2020, we've frequently heard that quarantine measures at the border are strict and among the toughest in the world. However, your report reveals that the Public Health Agency hadn't contemplated or planned for a nationwide quarantine, including the monitoring of persons identified as being at risk of not complying with quarantine. You also say that the agency doesn't know whether travellers properly quarantined.

Then are we to understand that the Minister of Health is boasting of measures that aren't really being enforced? Is she merely playing politics while nothing's actually working the way it should?

[Karen Hogan]

May I speak, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Yes, please.

[Karen Hogan]

I believe the minister made her comments after the period covered by our audit.

In our audit, we examined the measures in place at the border from early January to June 30. There were a lot of travellers during that time, at the start of the pandemic, and many Canadians were coming home because the border was about to close. Our audit really focused on that period. I can't tell you whether, following our audit period…

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

I can confirm that either Minister Blair or Minister Hajdu said at the time that we had the best control measures in the world. I understand that your assessment was conducted last year, but we were told the same thing during that period.

The minister also said—I don't know exactly when—that she had hired 1,000 additional personnel to assist Health Canada. However, we understand that the systems were obsolete, that the equipment didn't work properly and that the computer systems were too old to transmit the information.

How can those 1,000 people work if we don't have the equipment? Are they entering data manually? We know that forms were being completed manually in the airports and then forwarded elsewhere to personnel who had to input the information manually.

Do you know how the information is compiled?

[Karen Hogan]

I don't know where those 1,000 people who were hired by the Public Health Agency of Canada are working or exactly what they're doing.

We found during our audit that many processes had been performed manually at the start of pandemic. Here are two examples.

First, at the border, travellers' information was forwarded in paper format, and that's why the Public Health Agency of Canada experienced delays in monitoring travellers.

Second, health information was exchanged between the provinces and territories and the federal government. The process wasn't done manually, but rather electronically in various and incompatible formats. Agency employees had to do a lot of copying and pasting to gather all the information and establish an overview of the situation across the country.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Coordination between the Department of Health and the provinces was precisely the subject of my next question.

You say in your report, "Of the individuals considered to be at risk of non-compliance, the agency referred only 40% to law enforcement…"

Of the thousands or millions of individuals who received the order to quarantine for 14 days, we know, having verified it—you mention this in your report—that 46% didn't comply with it. We also recently learned that Quebec had not been informed of it. No one told Quebec authorities, "Here's the list of people to monitor, and you'll have to go and call on them if we call you."

Quebec's minister of public safety mentioned that her government was unaware of the order.

Are you confirming that there was no coordination on this during the audited period? Perhaps the provinces served by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the RCMP, operated differently, but we don't have the RCMP in Quebec.

So is that the case?

[Karen Hogan]

Given the lack of traveller monitoring at the border, we found that the Public Health Agency of Canada was actually unable to show us that two thirds of travellers had complied with mandatory quarantine requirements.

The mandatory quarantine measure has been in place since March 25. Quarantine was on a voluntary basis until then.

All travellers were assessed based on risk. The names of those deemed to be at high risk of non-compliance with quarantine requirements were referred to law enforcement. We found that only 40% of those persons had been put on the lists. There again, the agency hadn't followed up with law enforcement to determine whether officers had in fact verified those individuals. That's why we said the Public Health Agency of Canada didn't show that two thirds of travellers had in fact complied with mandatory quarantine requirements or that quarantine was effective.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

In short, then, the information was provided and people were trusted, but there was no subsequent monitoring or control.

Thank you, Ms. Hogan.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Paul-Hus.

We'll now go to Mr. Jowhari for six minutes.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Madam Hogan and your colleagues, first of all, for the testimony today as well as the great work you are doing.

Madam Hogan, you opened your testimony by saying that, in general, Canada didn't seem to be ready, or PHAC didn't seem to be ready, for the pandemic. Have you had an opportunity to look at other jurisdictions in the G7 or G20 to see how their performance has been as far as their readiness and whatever you put under the readiness column, whether it's surveillance or support mechanisms for the economy, individuals and businesses, as well as health and safety. How do we compare against them?

[Karen Hogan]

I'll give you a bit of a summary very quickly of the four areas where we felt that the Public Health Agency of Canada was not as prepared as it could have been to respond to a pandemic.

First would have been that emergency and health plans were outdated and, more importantly, the federal, provincial and territorial plan had not yet been tested.

Second, we noticed there was a long-standing agreement between the provinces and territories and the federal government about sharing health data surveillance. That agreement had not even been finalized, and in fact the infrastructure needed to handle the volume of all that had not yet been updated.

Third, we noticed that the agency was using a risk assessment tool that was not designed to be used to consider pandemic risk.

Finally, as we just mentioned, the agency had not planned nor contemplated enforcing a mandatory quarantine across the nation.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

Those are the areas of opportunity for us to enhance, and I saw that in your recommendations—specifically point 8.51, 8.65 and 8.66.

However, the question fundamentally was whether any other country was ready for this pandemic, and when it came in they were 100% there and all their policies were there. I'm trying to figure out how we fared, and just answer quickly because I want to go into the three recommendations you made.

Thank you.

[Karen Hogan]

Absolutely. I apologize. I'll try to go more quickly.

Normally we would compare ourselves to other countries. As you can imagine, in the middle of the pandemic, it was really a difficult thing to do. What we did look for, though, was whether or not Canada was following some of the best practices according to the World Health Organization, and some of our findings were that they weren't. I don't think any country was prepared for this type of a pandemic. I do think everyone could say that.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

That's fair. Thank you very much.

In your recommendation 8.51, you are specifically saying:

The Public Health Agency of Canada should, in collaboration with its provincial and territorial partners, finalize the annexes to the multi-lateral agreement to help ensure that it receives timely, complete, and accurate surveillance information from its partners.

Can you specifically highlight some of the key areas that, in your opinion or in your department's opinion, were missing and what their impact was on our government's response during the first wave and the subsequent second and third waves? I understand that this report only focuses on the first wave but, based on your observations, what was the impact of those key areas that were missing? If you could highlight them, that would be great.

[Karen Hogan]

Absolutely.

When it comes to the sharing of health data—and I might turn to Chantal Richard in case I miss something—what was needed in those annexes was getting a common understanding of the types of elements that would be shared and how and in what format they would be shared.

As you can imagine, every disease might have different peculiarities, but basic things like the timeline in which you report—in this case it was decided that reporting was needed every 24 hours—and agreeing on that...because we noted that provinces and territories likely were having difficulty meeting that because very few of the reports came in within that time frame.

We also found that only 10% of the files from the provinces and territories contained important information like symptoms. In an evolving disease, symptoms are needed to inform the response of the country and whether and not it needs to be adjusted.

It's having that basic understanding of who has what role and responsibility, what information should be transmitted and how it should be transmitted, in a timely way.

What happened here is that we saw the Public Health Agency, with the provinces and the territories, adjusted throughout the pandemic to what they were capable of doing. The end result was that it delayed the federal government's ability to assess and better inform the response to the pandemic. It's not that they weren't able to eventually gather all the data. It's just that there were a lot of delays in putting it all together and seeing a global picture.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

What you're suggesting is that, had we had these in anticipation, the Government of Canada would have been able to respond better as far as supporting the provinces is concerned. Is that what I'm hearing?

[Karen Hogan]

I don't think anyone would be able to say what would have happened if we had been better prepared, but obviously, if you've ironed some of this out, you're not doing it on the fly, in the middle of responding to a pandemic as well.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Okay.

You talked about the long-term pan-Canadian health data strategy. Can you take the 10 seconds I have left to talk about what you mean by that strategy?

[Karen Hogan]

Just because it's quick, maybe I'll ask Chantal Richard to jump in and give you some of those extra details.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Ms. Richard, you can do so very quickly, please.

[Chantal Richard, Principal, Office of the Auditor General]

I would just say that the pan-Canadian data strategy is meant to incorporate the information-sharing pieces but also the IT infrastructure, and having those systems speak to one another so that the information is shared more readily as well. The strategy would cover both of those elements.