Public Accounts Committee on June 1st, 2021

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lawrence.

We will now go to Mr. Longfield for five minutes.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to Ms. Hogan and Mr. Goulet for being here to answer our questions today.

I was interested in a couple of areas. One was on nurses and paramedics and the hiring of staff for Indigenous Services Canada. In paragraph 11.55 in your report, you mention 77 nurses had been hired for the 51 remote communities prior to the pandemic and that 147 additional nurses and paramedics had been hired during COVID. It seems to me that we would be in really tough shape if we hadn't started hiring for remote communities before the pandemic hit.

I know retention is a problem. My wife and I have friends who had gone up to one of the remote nations to work in education. She did about a year of service there and then didn't renew her contract.

Turnover is part of it. I'm wondering how many of the 77 who were hired prior to the pandemic were still in place and whether we've got a net new hire there. I also know that in our community, the local long-term care facilities had a lot of trouble hiring during COVID. People were getting scooped by the hospital, where they got more money or different hours. Some of the long-term care facilities really had trouble keeping staff.

Did you look at turnover in your audit?

[Karen Hogan]

I will eventually turn to Glenn Wheeler and see if he can add something about net new hires.

What I can say is that the streamlining process Indigenous Services Canada applied during the pandemic to increase the number of nurses they could hire for those 51 remote communities where they're responsible for delivering health services was really effective. That's why we recommended they consider whether that should be a process going forward.

You're absolutely right that attraction and retention is a very long-standing issue in those communities. It's driven partially by a national shortage of nurses—as you've mentioned and alluded to, and as we saw, the pandemic made that worse—but also by the challenging nature of the work. Often the nursing stations are run by one or two individuals who have to deal with a complete host of issues along the spectrum of medical responses needed. Then there's the ever-present inadequate housing issue that we see in some of the remote and isolated communities, such that retention is complicated.

I don't know, Glen, if there's anything that you wanted to add about turnover and staffing.

[Glenn Wheeler, Principal, Office of the Auditor General]

Madam Chair, no, we did not do an assessment of the turnover rates for the 77. It would be fair to say that there was some turnover.

As the Auditor General mentioned, that's a long-standing issue that we've seen in many audits, going back over several years. It points to the importance—as we've said in other audits—of taking various steps to increase capacity, including trying to educate, recruit and retain folks from indigenous communities and from the north to take those positions. There is probably a greater likelihood that if you're from an indigenous community or from the north, you would be more likely to stay over the longer term.

To answer your question, we didn't look at turnover rates.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Right. They are building their own capacity within their own nations. Of course, the audit and COVID itself highlight the need for more work to be done.

During our audit discussions, inventory and data come up a lot. We had that on our Department of National Defence audit as well. I was really interested in the PPE report. Paragraph 10.50 was talking about using third party services— something I was familiar with back in my previous industrial career—whereby you'd have vendor-managed inventory. You would have guaranteed stock managed by a vendor of that stock. It would be held outside the warehouse, or maybe even inside the warehouse, and the vendor would manage the inventory in your warehouse. That's an interesting concept. It looks like that's something you came across in your audit that was being used as of September 2020.

Could you comment on the long-term impact of that type of strategy and maybe how it might impact other departments, like the defence department?

[Karen Hogan]

What we saw during the audit—and looking at the additional warehousing that was used in order to deal with the volume of mass purchasing that occurred—is that software was developed that would allow provinces and territories to have visibility on when personal protective equipment and medical devices were received in a warehouse and when they were ready to be shipped out to them. It was so they could track it better. However, those warehouses were still using Public Health Agency of Canada's inventory system, which continued to contribute to some of the long-standing issues.

What you're saying is absolutely an area that they could explore going forward. It's one they didn't explore when they were in a reactive mode, but afterwards they should think about it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much, Mr. Longfield.

We will now go on to our next round of questioning, which is a two-and-a-half minute round, starting with Ms. Vignola.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I'll continue along the same lines as earlier.

We've talked about this briefly, but based on your findings, wouldn't it be more effective to replenish the national emergency strategic stockpile from local suppliers, rather than proactively managing the stockpile, so that it's replenished and disposed of through our health systems or our charities? Wouldn't it be more strategic to do so?

[Karen Hogan]

There are several options to better manage the reserve in the future.

During our audit, there was some management of the reserve. Subsequently, there seems to have been less of a focus on it, and more of a focus on bulk procurement and seeking third-party support for inventory management because of the volume. There really hasn't been any attempt to address the existing gaps. All we're seeing are reactive behaviours.

It is hard to say whether a system like the one you are suggesting should be used, but it is an analysis the government should do to be better prepared. Indeed, the use of local suppliers would allow for a more timely response.

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

You said that the Public Health Agency of Canada was ill-prepared, but that it had taken reactive measures to deal with the situation.

Do you think that such measures could serve as a basis to something more permanent, or do you think instead that, after the crisis, we will automatically revert to a situation of improvisation and poor preparation?

[Karen Hogan]

Public Services and Procurement Canada's reaction was to accept more risk. There is a balance to be struck between risk management and the need to act quickly. The department did decide not to use certain processes in order to provide a faster response. It is also important to recognize that all procurement processes help to reduce risk, but never eliminate it completely. There is a balance to be struck between risk management and speed of response.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much, Ms. Vignola.

We will now move to Mr. Green for two and a half minutes.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Madam Chair, I think the members of this committee would agree that there have been startling revelations today, in particular the understanding that in 2019 this department, public health, threw out two million masks in Regina.

We know there were requests coming out of the province for 3.2 million masks, and yet the government was only able to respond with a little over 100,000 critical N95 masks for a disease that is respiratory and airborne in nature from February all the way until August, in the height of the first wave.

I heard talks of audit committees, systems that would have been set up for quality control. I'm going to go back to the original question. Who was responsible for these decisions, and who was responsible for the audits and the oversight?

[Karen Hogan]

In the case of the Public Health Agency of Canada, as we mentioned in our audit, we felt that governance was something that was lacking in order to ensure good follow-up from their 2010 internal audit.

An internal audit usually contains management responses. It is senior management. It's the deputy minister who is responsible and accountable for actions to be taken. There is an advisory role that the departmental audit committee plays in ensuring that action is taken. Hence, that's why we concluded that we felt governance needed to be improved, because no one had acted on action plans that they had committed to.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

That being said, I've asked this question to the minister responsible, I've asked this question to Dr. Tam, and now I'm going to put it to the Auditor General: At what point in time in the governance model, in this structure, would the cabinet have been briefed on these shortfalls and apprised that the funding was the issue that created this catastrophic failure in the NESS to begin with?

[Karen Hogan]

I'm not sure I can speak to exactly what would have happened back in 2010 and 2013—

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Sorry; this would have been 2019. The decision to close the NESS happened in 2019, under this Liberal government, and yet we can't seem to find out who made the decision.

[Karen Hogan]

I don't believe there was a decision to close the national emergency strategic stockpile. The decision was made to focus on being able to mobilize in a different way to respond to the surge in need—

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

And the response, I think you would agree, was a 4% delivery rate on N95s at the height of a global pandemic. That's a catastrophic failure, would you not agree?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Please answer very quickly, Madam Hogan.

[Karen Hogan]

I would agree that they didn't respond to the needs, and from that perspective the national emergency strategic stockpile was not ready to support a pandemic.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much, Mr. Green.

Colleagues, we have two and a half minutes left before we end this portion of our meeting. I would be happy to steal a few minutes from our committee meeting business if you would like to finish up the last round of questions. I'm seeing some thumbs up.

All right. The next round of questioning is a five-minute round, starting with a Conservative member. I do not have—

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

Mr. Lawrence will start, please—a.k.a. Phil.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lawrence.

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

I want to go back to the N95s.

We have established that the government didn't have reliable data with respect to how many they had and how many had expired. Do we have reliable information that tells us how many were thrown out in the first quarter of 2020? Do we have reliable numbers as to how many were given away, particularly to the Communist Chinese regime?

If you could kindly answer those questions, that would be fantastic.