Public Accounts Committee on June 1st, 2021

[Karen Hogan]

I'm sadly going to have to turn to Jean again to probably answer this, but I'm going to guess that the answer will be no, we didn't have reliable data. It would all have been contained in the same system, following the same mechanisms and processes. If you can't have reliable data on what was there and what those expiry dates are, chances are you don't have it as well on ins and outs.

Jean, would you like to expand on that question?

[Jean Goulet]

To the best of our knowledge, we're not aware of masks being thrown out when the pandemic started, but, again, we don't really have reliable information to that effect.

With regard to masks or any type of other equipment going to China, we didn't really look at that for the reasons that Ms. Hogan explained earlier on.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Okay.

I'm going to pass it over to my colleague Mr. Berthold, but before I do, I want to tell you that one of the reasons that I focused on this aspect is that someone who's close to me, a health care professional, who was working in an Ontario hospital, was asked to reuse N95s on the front line during COVID. This has very serious consequences, and we can never ever let this happen again.

It's over to you, Mr. Berthold.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Thank you—

[Karen Hogan]

If I may, Madam Chair, I agree with the member's comment. I too have family members who are frontline workers, and the country has to do better the next time around.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Hogan, I want to go back to what I said earlier about the importance of this report and the need to highlight failures, in a long-term perspective.

We were able to see that the machine could react in the short term and adapt, but it still took three months to get there. During those three months, public health authorities advised Canadians not to wear masks because they were not available. This had disastrous consequences for the health of Canadians. The Public Health Agency of Canada must recognize its share of responsibility for not following your recommendations.

Ms. Hogan, you saw that only 4% of the masks requested had been delivered. That is simply unacceptable. How can you send a clear message to the Public Health Agency of Canada and the departments so that we don't have this kind of failure in the future?

[Karen Hogan]

In my opinion, by having this discussion, we are sending the message that it is unacceptable not to address the deficiencies that we know exist.

We wanted the dialogue to really focus on improving ways of doing things, not on why things were as bad as they were and why the reserve was not ready. We could spend a lot of time talking about that, but mostly we want to make sure that the situation improves.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

How can you ensure that emergency measures adopted in an emergency situation will have long-term effects? The measures that were adopted were designed to address urgent needs quickly. However, the structural problems still exist.

It's good to want to look at what has been done well as well, but we also need to ask how we can avoid making the same mistakes again. I don't feel that your report puts enough emphasis on this issue, which has been hard on Canadians.

[Karen Hogan]

Thank you for your comment on the report. We will certainly take it into account in our future reports.

In order to ensure that the same mistakes don't happen again, many individuals must make an effort. That includes parliamentary committees and deputy ministers. In addition, our office must continue to follow up. Finally, the various levels of government, including those of the provinces and territories, must sit down together to address all the issues that need to be resolved to better manage health across the country.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much, Mr. Berthold.

Our last questioner will be Mr. Sorbara. You have five minutes.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you, Chair. You were saving me for last.

Good morning, everyone.

To the Auditor General, these reports were issued on May 26, to much scrutiny.

I want to first thank you and your team for the great work that you're doing. I want to refer to your opening remarks in paragraphs 6, 7 and 8, where you talk about the agility and responsiveness of the individuals who work for the federal government in the various departments.

I would like you and your team members to elaborate, please, on these two words of “agility and responsiveness”, because we faced a once-in-a-100-years pandemic and it required the muster of resources from across the federal government, from the Canada Revenue Agency to the various departments to PSPC. We see the vaccines that have arrived in Canada. We see Canadians being vaccinated, and for a statistical fact, almost 73% of the residents of the region I live in have actually received their first dose, so great work's being done by all levels of government, and there's lots of co-operation.

Going back to these two words of “agility and responsiveness”, can you comment on that, Auditor General, please?

Good morning to you, of course.

[Karen Hogan]

Thank you. I'll try to do it quickly and cover both reports, if I may.

With regard to the Public Health Agency of Canada and Public Services and Procurement Canada with Health Canada, the agility and responsiveness that we saw there I would outline in four ways.

There was a long-term national supply and demand model that was developed in order to determine the needs across the country. That model was then used to help inform bulk procurement and make it more accurate. We saw the Public Health Agency of Canada move to bulk procurement, which was led by Public Services and Procurement Canada. They took on some additional risk, but they were able to secure large amounts of equipment in a very competitive market where supply was often not keeping up with demand.

The third thing we saw was that the Public Health Agency of Canada outsourced a great deal of its warehousing and logistics in order to deal with this massive amount of volume, and they did that in a temporary way, because it is just surge capacity.

Finally, after the issues about managing who had what in which stockpile provincially and territorially, we saw the provinces and territories collaborate with the federal government on a scarce resource allocation strategy. There was the issue of deciding how would they equitably distribute what was received across the provinces and territories when the purchases were just not meeting the demand. All of that was evolving and continued to improve throughout the pandemic.

With regard to to Indigenous Services Canada, the responsiveness we saw there was that they were actually able to meet all of the personal protective equipment requests from indigenous communities. They too developed a tool—a calculator—to figure out how much every community might need, and they streamlined processes and increased the pipeline of workers. While it didn't meet the surge, they still were able to increase how many health care workers were in communities.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you for that, Auditor General.

As we move forward, a lot of lessons will be learned for the potential next time. When you think about what you and your team witnessed, can you draw on one or two lessons from the various departments that you think will ensure that we have this same agility and responsiveness for Canadians?

[Karen Hogan]

I hope they recognize that being in a reactive mode is hard and difficult and isn't sustainable. Actually planning and addressing long-standing issues is absolutely needed. As I mentioned earlier, it's important to invest in the things you just don't see. Whether it's an IT system that supports an important program or whether it's replenishing the stockpile with gloves and masks and determining how much should be there or whether it's addressing long-standing health-care issues in indigenous communities, I hope they realize the value in taking care of those things as we go forward, instead of always being in reactive mode.

We saw great collaboration, and I hope they continue to build on that with their provincial and territorial counterparts.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you.

Chair, I am done.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much, Mr. Sorbara.

I would like to thank our witnesses for joining us.

We will now move into the next portion of our meeting, and I would remind members that you have to log out of this public meeting and log in to the in camera meeting with the information that was sent to you in the same email as the information for this meeting.

[Proceedings continue in camera]