Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good morning.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before this committee to discuss the federal response to COVID-19 in the context of emergency management.
My name is Christyne Tremblay, and I am the deputy clerk of the Privy Council and associate secretary to the cabinet, and the deputy minister for Intergovernmental Affairs. I am joined today by my colleagues Thao Pham, deputy secretary to the cabinet for operations; Jodie van Dieen, assistant deputy minister of Privy Council Office legal services; and Rob Stewart, deputy minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness.
The Government of Canada's efforts responding to the pandemic run the gamut from federal investments in public health such as testing and contact tracing or the purchase of personal protective equipment; to providing direct financial support to individual Canadians and businesses; ensuring adequate and reliable supply of therapeutics and medical supplies across the country; maintaining effective border measures to minimize the importation and spread of COVID-19 and its variants; and purchasing and distributing vaccines to the provinces and territories.
The federal government has also worked collaboratively with the provinces, territories and indigenous communities to manage the pandemic. Public Health measures are largely within provincial and territorial jurisdiction, and the federal government sought to ensure that they had the tools and resources to exercise their jurisdiction.
Federal funding to support Canadian workers and businesses provided the space for provinces and territories to enact public health measures in their jurisdictions, tailored to their specific circumstances.
Through the Safe Restart Agreement, the federal government provided nearly $20 billion to support the provinces and territories in their efforts to deal with the pandemic. A further $7.2 billion in pandemic support was provided for provinces, territories and indigenous communities, in recognition of the ongoing pressures COVID is putting on the health care systems.
The federal government also provides PPE, medical equipment and surge capacity support to the provinces and territories. This includes the provision of testing and contact tracing supports and mobile health units. The federal government has responded to more than 70 requests for assistance, including by deploying the Canadian Armed Forces to long-term care facilities, supporting vaccinations in remote First Nations communities, and most recently deploying nurses and medical assistance teams to Ontario hospitals. My colleague Rob Stewart is responsible for coordinating these responses to requests for assistance.
Additionally, the federal government has provided health care staff and equipment to the front lines and more rapid testing and support for contact tracing thanks to teams at Statistics Canada. We have also provided additional drugs and developed laboratory testing capacity within our federal labs. Through our partnership with the Canadian Red Cross, support has been provided to long-term care facilities in several provinces, and additional nurses and physicians were recently deployed to assist in Toronto.
The Privy Council Office has played a central role supporting the Prime Minister and Cabinet throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes supporting the Cabinet Committee on the Federal Response to the Coronavirus Disease, or COVID-19, which has a mandate to ensure leadership, coordination and preparedness for the response to, and recovery from, COVID-19 across Canada. The committee has also played a coordination function, working with all federal departments participating in managing the pandemic.
We have also played a central convening and coordination function, working with departments and agencies horizontally across government on a wide array of COVID-related priorities as well as communications through our COVID communications hub. My colleague, Thao Pham, is very much involved in this work.
Our responsibilities for Intergovernmental Affairs has also meant that the Privy Council Office has been leading engagement with the provinces and territories, including supporting 30 first ministers meetings in the past 15 months, which have focused primarily on the response to the pandemic. The last meeting was held 10 days ago and every provincial and territorial premier was in attendance.
I understand the committee is interested in discussing the legislative tools that exist at the federal level to respond to emergencies like the current public health crisis the country finds itself in. Parliament has granted the government authority to deal with emergency situations and some of these authorities have already been employed in dealing with the pandemic. An example of this is the Quarantine Act, which has been used to implement restrictions at the international border, including mandatory testing and quarantine requirements for travellers.
The Emergencies Act also exists as one possible tool for dealing with emergencies on a national scale. There are four types of emergencies that can be declared under the act: public welfare emergency, public order emergency, international emergency, and war emergency. Pandemics such as the COVID-19 pandemic are considered a public welfare emergency. The act includes a specific definition of a national emergency as urgent, critical and temporary in endangering the lives, health and safety of Canadians that exceeds the capacity of the provinces and territories to deal with. Importantly—