Government Operations Committee on April 26th, 2021

[Karen Hogan]

What we saw during the analysis by the Department of Finance for the Canada wage subsidy.... We felt the analysis was comprehensive and robust. Unfortunately, I can't talk about the contents of what was in that analysis, because it was either contained in secret documents or cabinet confidence documents.

It wasn't that I did not have access to them—

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

What's the difference between the two?

[Karen Hogan]

—but I'm not able to report on them.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

In your opinion, what's the difference between secret documents and cabinet confidence?

[Karen Hogan]

Cabinet confidences are documents that go to cabinet, and typically contain recommendations and inform debates the cabinet has on policy choices. That's really a matter of protocol that keeps them secret.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Secret documents, what would they be?

[Karen Hogan]

Secret documents are those where the author deems that the contents of the report might harm national security or an organization, and the author declares it secret. You can declare it protected A, protected B or secret.

That's in line with the government security policy. Items that are of a secret nature are not allowed to be disclosed in public documents. I must respect the security classification that the author puts on a document, and hence I'm not allowed to discuss the content.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

That is very helpful. I do appreciate that. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you very much.

We'll now go to Ms. Harder for five minutes.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Last month at this committee on March 22, I asked Cindy Evans, the acting vice-president for the emergency management branch at the Public Health Agency of Canada, whether, if Canada's pandemic warning system had been fully operational, the government would have heightened the threat level of the pandemic at an earlier date and therefore increased safety measures such as closing the border. She responded by saying:

The number of alerts did decrease over the past number of years. However, GPHIN continued to operate without reductions in that time.

She continued to say:

The GPHIN system did exactly what it needed to do and the issuance of an alert to international partners would have in no way impacted the domestic activity that took place.

Again, she repeated:

The GPHIN system did exactly as it needed to do in providing the signal that was detected of the unusual cases of pneumonia in Wuhan, China.

Ms. Hogan, in your findings you state that PHAC's global health intelligence network—the GPHIN, of course—did not issue an alert to provide early warning about the virus that would become known as the cause of COVID-19 just a little while later. Instead, the network shared daily reports only, as we have discussed with Canadian subscribers, including federal, provincial and territorial public health officials.

PHAC prepared five rapid risk assessments of the virus outbreak but did not prepare a forward-looking assessment. You've talked about all of that.

Based on your audit and your findings, if the system had been fully functional, fully operational, can you tell us how things may have transpired differently? I recognize that an earlier statement you made to a colleague who asked a question was that you couldn't speculate. However, I would propose that part of the audit you've done, in your capacity as Auditor General, is to say that these are the things that weren't done well and perhaps these are the differences that could have been made in the lives of Canadians had they been done well. If we were fully operational, what would the difference have been?

[Karen Hogan]

I can offer a few things.

The Public Health Agency of Canada has criteria that would have called for an alert to be issued in this instance. There were alerts issued in the past. There was an alert issued for H1N1 and for SARS. It's not clear why an alert was not issued this time.

You correctly identified that there was a significant decrease in the number of alerts issued. However, I will note that throughout the pandemic two alerts were issued. One was for, I think, a virus from a tick bite coming out of China, so clearly alerts were still being issued.

The alert is not just domestic, but it's also to alert our international counterparts. I think this is where I don't think anyone could speculate what might have been different if our international counterparts had received the alert from GPHIN earlier on. Would their response have been different? Would then our response or the spread of the virus be different?

Those are all speculative, and I don't think anyone could really say for certain. That is why I think it's important that the Public Health Agency decide what it expects from the global public health intelligence network, make it very clear when and how it should be used and then use it as intended. In our view it was not used as intended, and I just alluded to all the reasons.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

When Cindy Evans says that the system did exactly as it needed to do, would you agree with that statement?

[Karen Hogan]

I would agree that the system issued a daily report, and that the chief public health officer of Canada reacted to that report and alerted her provincial counterparts, but the system did not issue an alert, which for all intents and purposes, looking at the criteria in the past, should have been done.

I would equate it to an alert from your smoke detector. When you're in your home, you want your smoke detector to go off to tell you to stop, come and take a look, investigate what's going on and see if you need to react. If you're standing outside your home and it's already on fire, I don't think you really care if your smoke detector is going off.

I would use it that way. An alert is meant to signal that you should stop and investigate and do something.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

I'm sorry. Did you just say that Dr. Tam did alert the provinces and territories in time?

[Karen Hogan]

As I mentioned earlier, following the December 30 daily report that contained an article about a virus that would become known as the one causing COVID-19, she did reach out to her provincial counterparts. If you take a look at exhibit 8.1 in our pandemic preparedness report, you'll see a listing of some of the key dates, and that's listed in there as a key event.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Ms. Harder.

We'll now go to Mr. Drouin for five minutes.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses here today.

And I'd like to welcome Ms. Hogan and the members of her team.

One advantage of working for the Auditor General is that you don't have to worry about the April 30 deadline. I have spoken to a number of accountants over the past few days and I congratulate you on your work. More seriously, I believe the work you do as a third party to correct any errors is very important.

I'd like to talk about border control. You made recommendations and the department responded. Many ministerial orders were issued because certain changes were needed. I remember that in April 2020, the issue was foreign workers and determining whether or not they could come to Canada. The rule had to be changed and it was our Canada Border Services Agency employees who had to enforce them. The agency reacted by saying that more training would be required if new ministerial orders were issued.

Have you come across other examples elsewhere, in which ministerial orders were being issued every month? I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of the people who issue them, and then of those who have to act upon them. Is it realistic to say that it's possible to train people when there are so many new rules coming into play over such a short time?

[Karen Hogan]

There were in fact many changes at the border. The Canada Border Services Agency worked with the Canada Public Health Agency to develop guidelines for border agents, but the rules kept changing as the pandemic progressed.

Our recommendation included not only better training, but also better monitoring in terms of applying the rules. The agents have supervisors, and it is at this level that better monitoring to ensure consistency would have been useful during the pandemic.

It's probably very hard to train people in the middle of a pandemic, but it's important to find other options for doing so. What I have in mind here is monitoring and surveillance. That's why we came up with that particular recommendation.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Your audit began on March 25 and ended in June 2020. That's the period when Canadians were returning home en masse. I remember that most of my colleagues and I were busy repatriating Canadians from around the world.

You mentioned quarantine monitoring. Should there be closer cooperation between public health officers and the provincial forces, as Mr. Paul-Hus mentioned earlier? In Ontario, it would be the Ontario Provincial Police, the OPP, in Quebec the Sûreté du Québec , the SQ, and in the other provinces, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the RCMP. In the latter instance, it was a separate contract that was not with the department.

How could your recommendation fix the problem? I can't imagine hiring 3,000 full-time public health officers. I'm simply trying to understand this recommendation and figure out how we might improve the situation.

[Karen Hogan]

Our recommendation was focused on enhanced preparation, which does not necessarily mean hiring 3,000 people, as you suggested, just waiting for a mandatory quarantine to be ordered so that they can monitor it.

It really means having a plan in order to be ready in case it becomes necessary to increase capacity. In our audit, we found that the Canada Public Health Agency had not done this kind of planning and was not ready to administer a national quarantine. It realized that it did not have the required resources and therefore asked for assistance from other agencies to monitor travellers by phone and other methods. In only 40% of cases, when it had established that certain high-risk people were not complying with the requirements, did it call upon law enforcement agencies.

That's why it's important to be better prepared and to have a plan in place so that capacity can be increased if required.

However, in English it would be “to deal with surge capacity”.

In other words, it's important to be able to react when there is a rapid and significant increase in needs, followed eventually by a decrease. It means being better prepared and doing a better job of planning.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Drouin.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

We'll now go to our fourth round, starting with Mr. McCauley for five minutes.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Hogan, in your conversation with Mr. Green, you were talking about the Department of Finance doing an analysis regarding the wage subsidy. Do you know if the government acted upon the analysis and recommendations made by finance?

[Karen Hogan]

As I mentioned earlier during the exchange with the other member, recommendations to the cabinet are in cabinet confidence documents—