Public Accounts Committee on April 5th, 2022

[Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar]

I'll start by saying two things, Mr. Chair. There are the quarantine hotels that were referred to...probably government-authorized accommodation. Then there are the designated quarantine facilities, which are also hotels. The GAAs are the government-authorized accommodations. They were privately owned hotels that agreed to meet public health guidelines.

The selection criteria were for the purpose of accommodating asymptomatic air travellers awaiting their COVID-19 test results. There wasn't any contractual relationship between the Public Health Agency and the government-authorized accommodation. Travellers paid for their own stay. The cost included meals, transportation and security, which was provided by the GAA.

The mandatory hotel stopover requirement of the GAA was eliminated as of August 9.

However, the DQFs, which are contracted and mandated by the Public Health Agency, are to support symptomatic and asymptomatic travellers who do not have a suitable location for quarantine, or who don't have a quarantine plan upon entry into Canada. That's the last resort. Transportation and other services at the DQFs, or designated quarantine facilities, such as daily meals, are a part of the arrangement, which the Public Health Agency bears at no cost to the travellers. This is in relation to reducing any of the infection getting out if they do not have a proper plan.

Again, there are criteria through which we have made sure that the DQFs are adhering to the public health guidelines that we have prepared for those hotels.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you for that complete answer. The other thing I am wondering about is on compliance.

I was interested to notice the great discrepancy with the issuance of tickets for non-compliance. Basically, most of them were from Toronto or Vancouver. There was really not much happening in that line in Alberta and Quebec.

I wondered why there was a discrepancy. In Ontario, there were 5,000 tickets issued, and there were only 6,203 total tickets issued. Why is there such a great discrepancy between how Pearson was handling this versus the other airports?

I'm not sure who wants to tackle that one.

[Jennifer Lutfallah]

If it's okay, I'll jump in and respond to that question.

The majority of the incoming travellers arriving from international destinations to Canada arrive in Vancouver or Toronto. I believe that over 50% of travellers arrive at those two airports. Similarly, at the land border, the majority of travellers coming into the country are coming in via Ontario. It obviously leads to a greater portion of individuals that would have to be looked at from an enforcement and compliance perspective.

With respect to Quebec, you noted that there is a variance with respect to the ticketing. For tickets issued in Quebec, they actually have to go through a two-stage process. There's a report written and provided to the public prosecutor in the province of Quebec, who assesses the case and the evidence as provided by a PHAC officer and determines whether or not to go forward with the ticket.

I'll also point out with respect to P.E.I., Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, as well as the territories and Nunavut, that there is no land border, and none of the airports that were operating in those jurisdictions were actually accepting international flights. Therefore, there was no enforcement undertaken.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you very much. I appreciate your answers.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much. We're turning to the fourth and final round now.

Mr. Patzer, I understand that you're going to try to split your time, but I'm leaving it up to you to do that.

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

That sounds good.

For the Auditor General, on page 24 at section 15.61, your first sentence says, “The agency did refer more travellers at high risk of not complying with quarantine orders to law enforcement for follow-up but did not know the outcome for 59% of these priority referrals.”

I'm just curious. What were the factors that were used to determine what a “high risk of not complying” individual is?

[Karen Hogan]

I believe that Dr. Kochhar may be in the best position to answer that, but there was a set of criteria given to individuals to assess, based on their answers and so on, as to whether or not they were at high risk of non-compliance.

As you noted, there was an improvement in the ability to refer individuals to law enforcement and an improvement in the agency's following up with individuals, but still, 59% of those referred were not followed up on by the agency to know whether or not they were properly quarantined.

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

Dr. Kochhar, do you have a quick answer?

[Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar]

We have a set of criteria that would put those at a high risk.... We could provide you that if that is a better—

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

That would be fantastic. If you could provide the criteria to this committee, I would greatly appreciate that, and that would allow me to move on to my next set of questions.

For the Auditor General, I'm going up the dollar figures here, and $614 million was allocated for border measures and $342 million for testing orders. I had a constituent who was told that because there were no courier services to where they live, they were going to send a taxi out to where they are, out in the rural area, which would have been a four-hour, one-way taxi ride and an eight-hour round trip. Were those costs factored into the government's decision-making on how they were going to run these programs?

[Karen Hogan]

I think that's an excellent question to ask the department, as to how they weighed the pros and cons in administering the COVID testing protocols.

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

In your auditing, though, you didn't find anything specific in the line items you looked at when you were looking at the costs? You didn't find anything specific on anything like that.

[Karen Hogan]

We didn't identify an issue like that, where taxis were being reimbursed, but we did not do a detailed audit of the $342 million.

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

Okay. I'll go to Dr. Kochhar.

[Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar]

Mr. Chair, what we have is a service provider with whom we have a contract. It is incumbent on the service provider to make sure those tests that are conducted remotely are provided to us. There is a specific kind of built-in system for which we have averaged the cost, and that is the cost we pay. If there is an extraordinary cost, they will have to flag it to us in that situation.

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

Okay, because there was an example—I think it was in the Winnipeg Free Press—of one such case. There was a 660-kilometre round trip and there was a taxi bill of over $1,000 simply to get the test in to be processed for this individual. We're talking about timelines and getting results for people in rural Canada. By the time they did their 10-day test, they still hadn't even gotten the results back from their first one because of the amount of time it takes to process these things. I think that's something that needs to be addressed going forward.

I'm going to leave the rest of my time here for Mr. Lawrence. Thank you.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Patzer.

We've heard repeatedly that incarceration was never considered an option. I just want, though, to cite paragraph 43, which caused me a bit of confusion. It says, “Government-authorized hotels had to maintain a secure perimeter, while designated quarantine facilities had to post security officers at hotel entrances and on floors occupied by quarantining travellers.”

Why was this necessary? Were we protecting these people?

[Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar]

Maybe I'll start and then go to Jennifer.

The designated quarantine facilities are where people are sent if they are either positive or do not have a reliable quarantining place. In that situation, we want to make sure there is no movement outside or inside by any person who is actually sent to the DQF. That is partly why we had a security perimeter built in.

Jennifer—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I'm afraid I'm going to stop it there just to keep on track here, but thank you.

We turn now to Ms. Yip.

I understand you might be sharing your time as well. You can manage that.

Are you going to start first, Mr. Dong?

Please go ahead for five minutes.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I want to follow up on my previous line of questions, to make sure the public sees this report in perspective.

To the Auditor General, I was looking at a chart in the report. There was a finding from between February and June 2021, “Number of missing or unmatched test results”, from a combination of on-arrival and post-arrival tests. Everyone had to do on-arrival and post-arrival tests, and the total was almost 400,000. I divided that by two, because everyone has to go through two tests, and that's 200,000 travellers whose test result was a match or was missing. Out of this number, how many were positive? Did you keep a count of how many were positive from these results?

[Karen Hogan]

I'm going to try to answer on all of those details, and Carol can jump in if I misspeak.

I don't think it's a clear analogy that 400,000 tests divided by two equals 200,000, because one individual may be missing both tests or only one test, so it could be a slightly different number than 200,000.

What we found through the data we analyzed was that there were 8,000 travellers who tested positive, and in the cases of just over 1,000 of those positive tests, the agency did not contact the travellers to inform them of those results.

Carol, did I get that right? She's nodding. There we go.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

So 1,000 travellers out of this almost 400,000 were matched and missing? Can I say that?

[Karen Hogan]

There were 8,000 travellers who tested positive, and approximately 1,156 had not been contacted about that positive test.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Okay. That's for the span of four months, between February and June?

[Karen Hogan]

That was in 2021. That's correct.