First I'll address the question about personal protective equipment.
We have not been given any indication by Correctional Services that there is a lack of personal protective equipment. Our questions are often about where it is going to be used.
When I spoke about the planning in my opening comments and the contingencies in all of these things that need to be discussed at the local level, those have to do with what's going to happen when the virus comes. When I talked about the personal protective equipment, it's about when you use it. It's only now that the levels of PPE that are required in certain situations are coming down to the field through our health and safety committees. If we have an inmate who has tested positive for COVID or is symptomatic for COVID, of course the response to coming into contact with that inmate is far different from what it is when we are able to keep a social distance. I can tell you that an inadequate stock of personal protective equipment has not been flagged to us; our question is about where it's used.
When it comes to the testing, we know that the 188 tests, as you say, for those institutions alone are of course for those inmates who are symptomatic or are expressing symptoms.
In my opening comments I referred to testing being a priority. What I meant by that is that public health comes into the institution when somebody tests positive for COVID. They do contact tracing, and those officers who might have been around an inmate or another staff member are told to go home and self-isolate for 14 days. They're asymptomatic, so they're not able to get a test in the province where they live because they don't have any symptoms, but they have to stay at home for 14 days.
The problem we are having, and what blew up very rapidly first at Port-Cartier Institution, was that a significant majority of our staff members were sent home to self-isolate. Then the members are forced to create different schedules and work excessive hours just to keep the front line strong. Of course testing is an important piece for the inmate population, but it's also important for correctional officers when they're sent home.