Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'd like to dive into paragraph 8.82 of the Auditor General's report. This deals with the 24-hour rapid risk assessments, and it reads:
the agency prepared a series of 24-hour rapid risk assessments, using a methodology that was in a pilot phase of implementation and had not yet been formally evaluated or approved. Furthermore, the assessments were designed to assess the risk of a disease outbreak at a specific point in time and were meant to trigger more thorough risk assessments. We found that the methodology was not designed to assess the likelihood of the pandemic risk posed by a disease like COVID-19 and the potential impact were it to be introduced to Canada.
My question is for Mr. Stewart.
Even if PHAC were using COVID to test drive a new methodology, why didn't your agency also follow its established procedure? It seemed that essentially you were test driving a new methodology but you had nothing to compare it with in order to know if the new methodology was producing accurate results.
How did you know that the new methodology was going to provide the required thoroughness if you didn't have that comparable?