Public Accounts Committee on June 1st, 2021

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Hogan, Canada has warehouses built to store equipment should the provinces and territories need it. A few weeks before the pandemic began, thousands of apparently expired masks were thrown away.

To your knowledge, does Canada have a schedule or system for tracking equipment, as any company does if they don't want to throw their money out the window or into the landfill?

In its procurement strategy, has Canada found ways to ensure that, in the future, it won't be dependent on foreign countries to meet its needs?

[Karen Hogan]

You raise one of the shortcomings we found in our audit, that the electronic inventory management system for the national emergency strategic stockpile was not effective. The government could not track the expiry dates of certain equipment stored in the Reserve Force and was therefore unable to act if necessary.

We recommend that the government put in place a comprehensive process to better manage the reserves, and that requires technology that provides data to make good decisions. We could not find out why the government did what it did, but we know that there was some very important data missing.

We found that, during the pandemic, the government tried to use Canadian suppliers, but that there was a lack of personal protective equipment suppliers in Canada. We didn't really look at how the government had expanded that market. As I mentioned on the day I tabled my report, this is something I will look into in the future, as it will help us determine whether Canada has positioned itself well and is better prepared for a future crisis by ensuring that we have Canadian suppliers.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you.

On January 30, the WHO announced the health emergency represented by the coronavirus. In early March, the WHO declared a shortage of medical equipment.

What preventive measures did Canada take between January 30 and early March?

[Karen Hogan]

Between January 30 and early March, the provinces and territories began making requests for equipment. As I mentioned in an earlier answer, the government attempted to meet these needs, but could not meet them fully.

In early March, the government began a transition to mass procurement. Public Services and Procurement Canada created a procurement team to support this initiative. After March, work continued on how to best assess needs and make the necessary equipment purchases.

The process was very reactive initially, as the government was just trying to get equipment to meet the needs.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Canada sent tons of medical equipment to China to help it in its own fight against the coronavirus. Isn't it strange that Canada would send equipment to the country that succeeded and continues to succeed in supplying equipment to the entire world?

[Karen Hogan]

We haven't really looked at what the government has done for humanitarian purposes. However, I pointed out in my March report that the government did not have the necessary tools to more accurately determine the risk that COVID-19 posed to our country. Perhaps that explains the initiatives it has taken. In any event, we didn't look at the humanitarian initiatives that were taken until it was felt that there was a need to change the approach to a Canadian-centred approach. For our part, we did audit the Canadian approach to personal protective equipment.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you.

The diagram in exhibit 10.2 shows me that the Public Health Agency of Canada is responsible for assessing the needs referred to it by the provinces and territories and authorizing the equipment and the suppliers.

Would PHAC have determined that the provinces and territories did not need as much equipment as they were requesting and, on that basis, reduced or denied the requested quantity? I suspect they didn't, I'm quite sure of that, but did it have the authority to do so?

[Karen Hogan]

We found at the beginning of the pandemic that there was a lot of confusion. There was a lack of information at the federal level about exactly what the provinces and territories needed and what they had in their own stockpiles. Each province or territory must use its own stockpile before applying to the national emergency strategic stockpile. We have seen change and collaboration during the pandemic, but at the beginning there really was a lack of information.

Yes, the agency had the authority not to respond to these requests. However, the reason it did not respond to all requests was because it didn't have the equipment requested, not because it had the authority not to respond to the requests.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

In short, to be 100% assured of receiving the necessary equipment, the provinces and territories could just as easily have acted independently and made their own decisions. Is that correct?

[Karen Hogan]

Madam Chair seems to be indicating that I have to answer quickly.

Each province or territory has its own stockpile and should use it to try to meet its needs. When there is a very high demand that the provinces and territories can't meet, they must turn to the national emergency strategic stockpile. Then, it's a collaborative effort. If the reserve can't meet their needs, they can ask for support from other provinces.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Okay.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you, Ms. Hogan, and thank you, Ms. Vignola.

We will now go to Mr. Green for six minutes.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you.

I'm certainly happy, and I know the residents of Hamilton Centre are happy, that we're having this discussion about the national emergency strategic stockpile. It's something that I've been on for quite some time, both at this committee and at the government operations committee.

I want to pick up where Ms. Yip left off with some really good questions about post-SARS. Everything I know about this tells me that we've known a pandemic was a possibility, so we created an organization called the national emergency strategic stockpile, yet we've heard testimony today that the planning was driven by short-term thinking with possible implications in and around the budget.

Through you, Madam Chair, to Ms. Hogan, whose short-term thinking? Who would have been responsible to make the decisions and the recommendations to put forward to the minister, and likely cabinet, that resulted in the shuttering of three out of our nine national emergency strategic stockpiles?

[Karen Hogan]

In my reference to short-term thinking, I look at all the work that we've done so far on the COVID response. I look at the response in the pandemic report that I issued in May as well as in this report here, and I see that many of the responses were reactive when dealing with H1N1 and SARS. We know there are things that need to be addressed as a government, but then we deal with the next crisis instead of planning for that rainy day.

I believe there are oversight committees and departmental audit committees within the entities, the departments themselves and the deputy ministers. There is also the tension that comes with the need to invest in things that people see versus the things that we don't see. It's a tension between the political world and the federal public service that I think also pushes some of that short-term thinking.

I believe that as a whole country, municipal, provincial, and federal governments need to recognize and learn from this pandemic. We have to sit down together and coordinate a better response for the next crisis.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

We did that. We did that post-SARS. If I recall, Dr. Tam was one of the authors of some of the original SARS responses and actually planned for.... At some point in time along the way, somebody made the decision to have nine national emergency strategic stockpiles—the key word is “emergency”—based on our experience with H1N1 and SARS, and that they would have some kind of national standard, and this is where I get really caught up. In the audit, we hear that there was a lack of data, a lack of information and a lack of systems.

In your review of internal documents, did you come to a finding that presented a national standard for the supply levels for each of the products that would be stored in the national emergency strategic stockpile?

[Karen Hogan]

No, we were unable to locate an assessment about that. We have been unable to find a national or even an international standard on basic levels that should be in stockpiles. It's fuelled by so many inputs. You need to understand your population. You need to understand what type of medical response might be struck up to deal with an emergency. For example, in the current crisis, N95 masks were very important because the virus was airborne. In the next crisis, it might be a different piece of equipment. It really is about ensuring that you have some equipment and then the flexibility to increase access.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

With regard to that point, somewhere along the way, somebody had the wisdom to purchase millions of N95 masks. They knew that SARS and H1N1 were also airborne. We had, in Regina, two million N95 masks thrown out. We know that there were two other warehouses shuttered.

In your review of internal documents, did you come to a finding that there was a consistent supply of products in each warehouse? For example, if it is true that there were two million N95 masks that were expired in Regina, is it safe to assume that there were also two million in the other two locations?

[Karen Hogan]

Unfortunately, I can't comment on what would have been in the provincial and territorial stockpiles.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

No, I mean the federal one.

[Karen Hogan]

Okay.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

We had nine national emergency stockpiles. Somebody made the decision to shutter three of them to save a couple of hundred thousand dollars.

[Karen Hogan]

There were nine warehouses—

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

In shuttering three, if two million were thrown away in Regina, logic tells me that there is a likely scenario in which there were two million in the other locations that were also expired and thrown out.

[Karen Hogan]

There were nine warehouses that housed all of the equipment in the stockpile. I'm not sure that you can make the analogy that there were two million masks in each of the nine locations. There were nine warehouses that stored all of the equipment in the stockpile.

As I mentioned earlier, the data in the system was too weak for us to be able to come to some of those findings. There were no expiry dates—

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Just to be clear, my understanding is that these national emergency strategic stockpiles were distributed across the country to have regional distribution to all the different provinces, so logic would tell me that each one of these warehouses would have contained the appropriate population density to which all the products listed in the stockpile would be distributed. It's not like you would have N95 masks in Regina and then gloves in Montreal or something like that. Logistically, that wouldn't make any sense.