Public Accounts Committee on April 5th, 2022

[Brigitte Diogo]

Thank you.

We have continued to look at the data and at how we can improve the tracking of the test result. Our completion has improved over time, from 76% and 61% in February 2021 to 95% and 82% in June 2021.

We are continuing to make progress. We take the Auditor General's recommendations very seriously. We are working with all the private sector companies that do the testing to see how we can improve and have a thorough electronic process that tracks test results.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Desjarlais, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'll follow up on my previous line of questioning regarding uniform enforcement across Canada, in particular Alberta, and particularly the Calgary International Airport. It was just mentioned, I think by the deputy minister, that there are hopes to ensure that there are financial penalties moving forward, and that work is ongoing. However, how can we ensure that, if provinces like Alberta don't sign the Contraventions Act?

Perhaps the deputy minister could respond, or Dr. Kochhar.

[Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar]

I'll start.

Mr. Chair, of course there are multiple tools in terms of making sure we are able to enforce the law in terms of working with both the local jurisdiction and the law enforcement agencies. Also, as my colleague mentioned, we are exploring other options that we could put in place so that we are better equipped and have more tools.

We are very much in the initial stage of discussion to see what would give us more of an ability to have another tool in our tool box, to make sure that if such a situation were to arise again, we would be able to have a proper enforcement vehicle, whether it is through the monetary aspects or whether it is working with the provinces and territories. As my colleague said, we are in the initial phase of discussions internally, and we will continue to move forward in terms of discussing this more.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

What are those tools in particular?

If Alberta says “no way” to the Contraventions Act and continues to do that, this of course puts uniform enforcement at risk and essentially allows an open-door policy for folks coming into Alberta. What then stops them from going to B.C., Ontario, Quebec or anywhere else if they get through Calgary? There's really no point in enforcing anywhere else, if we're not going to enforce it uniformly.

It's really important that Canadians understand the tools the Canadian Public Health Agency is using.

[Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar]

Mr. Chair, as I mentioned, we continue to explore some of those options.

Jennifer may be able to shed a little more light on where we are in terms of our initial discussions.

[Jennifer Lutfallah]

We're assessing all possible options with respect to enforcement. By way of example, other government departments I have worked for, such as CBSA—and I know Transport Canada does as well—have administrative monetary penalty regimes. That could be used as a potential model going forward.

As I indicated, and as the president indicated, we have just started these discussions. It is too early to come down with respect to a recommendation.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much. I will turn now to Mr. Patzer, who is joining us on Zoom as well.

It's over to you, Jeremy. You have five minutes.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'm going to start with the Public Health Agency of Canada.

I am wondering, can you give me a really quick definition of what you use to determine whether somebody is from a rural area?

[Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar]

The information provided in ArriveCAN would probably give an idea of whether they were from a particular jurisdiction, based on the information they had in there.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

That's great.

Does your department have a uniform definition for rural?

[Brigitte Diogo]

Maybe I can add something.

[Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar]

Please go ahead.

[Brigitte Diogo]

Typically we would be working with Statistics Canada definitions of urban versus rural.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you.

To the Auditor General, in this report I couldn't help but notice that, I think, not even once was any consideration given to people living in rural areas of Canada. I'm just wondering if you have anything to say to that, or if you want to elaborate on the lack of enforcement, or maybe just the issues of enforcement on rural Canadians.

[Karen Hogan]

Obviously we didn't focus on rural Canadians. What we did was look at whether or not the Public Health Agency had worked through that sort of cohesive enforcement regime. As we've been saying this morning, that wasn't thought through when the measures were put in place. Having clear guidance that's well understood comes with good monitoring and a good enforcement regime to ensure that it's being followed. One of the good lessons learned as we move into the next wave or start planning for another health crisis that will come our way is that enforcement has to be cohesive if you want it to be effective across the whole country.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

It does, absolutely. I couldn't agree more with that statement. I'm just going to strengthen that by saying that in one of the largest rural ridings in Canada I had lots of ranchers calling my office and saying, “Hey, I just spoke to somebody from Public Health Canada, and they are telling me I can't leave my house to go look after my herd, to go look after my cattle.” That was in the middle of calving season. These people have jobs to do and they're out, literally living hundreds of miles away from any major centre. They're not going into town. They're literally going to look after their herd. It's their livelihood, but it's also, quite frankly, about our food security and looking after our supply chains. They were telling these people they couldn't leave their house.

It was the same thing with our grain farmers. These people were told they couldn't leave their house, and yet their job by nature is isolating. They go sit in the tractor all day and then come back home. They're not at risk of spreading transmission, and yet there was no recognition of this.

To public health, there seemed to be no flexibility. I even had a senior who had a pay-by-use phone. He ran out of minutes on about day three of his quarantine and lost contact because he couldn't call anybody for the next 11 days and couldn't leave his house to go buy more minutes for his cellphone. There seem to be all kinds of gaps like that. I'm just wondering what's being done to rectify those situations and to be willing to consider the fact that not everybody lives in downtown Toronto.

[Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar]

Jennifer, would you mind answering that?

[Jennifer Lutfallah]

Each case that is presented to a quarantine officer or screening officer is assessed on its individual merits. I know that our officers are provided flexibility with respect to assessing these cases, and they are provided the discretionary authority to weigh exigent circumstances. On the whole, you are correct that the officers are administering the Quarantine Act and do stipulate that quarantine must take place within one's particular dwelling and so forth. Our officers do take that into consideration. The situations you've outlined here are unfortunate, and I recognize that they are very unique with respect to the rural nature, but I will leave it there.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

I'm afraid that is your time, Mr. Patzer.

Now we're turning to Ms. Shanahan.

Ms. Shanahan, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Thank you very much, Chair. I'm very interested in the questions that have been posed by all members of this committee today.

To follow up on Mr. Patzer's question regarding rural versus urban and earlier questions we had on gender-based analysis plus being used—and of course that's part of the recommendation—I would like to hear from Dr. Kochhar on what work is being done.

I know it's an ongoing thing. When I first arrived here in 2015, GBA+ was barely on the map, and in fact I am so encouraged to hear that members on all sides of this committee are now using the GBA+ analysis framework to look at vulnerable people, people for whom there are unintended consequences when we put programs in place. It's not easy to do in normal times, and I'd like to hear from Dr. Kochhar on what the Public Health Agency is doing now in this area.

We're talking about intersectionality of a number of different factors, of which rural and urban can certainly be one, and certainly about anything that affects a person's identity and how they're affected by programs.

[Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar]

Absolutely, Mr. Chair.

In reality we have worked quite a bit on this aspect. We've implemented mitigations to identify disparate impacts of border measures and operational policy on vulnerable groups, to the extent possible. We've tailored a combination. We've provided for families and caregivers who are required to stay in designated quarantine facilities.

We continue to focus on the vulnerabilities and the pieces based on which we need to tailor our programs.

We also did amendments to OICs, orders in council, to create exemptions for several cohorts of potentially vulnerable travellers, including persons living in transborder communities and persons living in remote communities who needed to cross the Canada-U.S. border, as well as those in compassionate circumstances, for example, to be present for the final moments of life of a loved one or to attend a funeral.

On top of it, Mr. Chair, we tried to provide specialized training on gender and diversity considerations to our frontline staff, so that at the border and at the DQFs, the designated quarantine facilities, they were aware. That included training on bias, which was launched last September. We also gave training on security awareness and de-escalation of situations, and we continue to provide that.

With the ongoing renewal of emergency orders in November, we also started to update our GBA+ analysis and to incorporate any results we got from those analyses for our future border measures. We have been very focused on those components, as was mentioned in the recommendation by the OAG, but also on doing our part to make sure we are improving ourselves both internally and in terms of our policies focused on GBA+.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

I'm looking forward to the progress.

I want to add to the remarks of my colleagues, Madame Sinclair-Desgagné and Monsieur Desjarlais, concerning co-operation with provinces.

Could you just say a few words on how that devolved to co-operation with municipalities that have their own police forces and that would have been very much concerned by enforcement of the Quarantine Act?

[Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar]

Mr. Chair, most of the work we did was with the provinces and also at the local jurisdiction level, because, for example, Toronto had the municipality of Peel Region and three other municipalities that had law enforcement officers who would actually follow up.

Similarly, as I mentioned earlier, there were multiple layers at which we could reach out to those who were supposed to be quarantining or who were not in a proper set-up, and we could make sure that our law enforcement agencies were informed properly so that they could follow up with proper enforcement.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much, Doctor. We're now going to our third round.

Mr. Duncan, you have the floor for five minutes, please.