Public Accounts Committee on Feb. 6th, 2023

[Luc Gagnon]

I thank the member for his question.

In the end, Deloitte provided the platform. We were in the context of a worldwide pandemic, and resources were extremely scarce. I’m talking about IT experts who manage functionalities and provide platforms.

Our teams worked 24/7 for 16 hours and even 18 hours a day to set up a platform in time for Canadians to get vaccines. We needed outside help. Deloitte won the bid and provided platforms, an evolving platform, as well as developers to help us develop functionalities very quickly.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Gagnon. Your time is up.

Mr. Desjarlais, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for being present, and of course thank the Auditor General for this report.

I want to bring the committee's attention to exhibit 9.3, which of course has been touched on today, in relation to the amount of dosage waiting for donation. It shows that 50.6 million doses waited for donation. Of those, 13.6 million had already expired by May 2022. These life-saving doses were largely wasted.

We can see that Canada managed to donate 15.3 million doses by May 2022. I believe due credit should be given to the public service for their good work in being able to assist people not just here but around the world in combatting this deadly disease. However, this does leave another 21.7 million doses that were offered by the federal government but were still waiting for donation as of May last year.

This is the part where I believe Canadians deserve a really credible and really sound answer. I think it was touched on and alluded to by some of my colleagues here. The issue here is trying to understand how this number is so high. If it were a small number, I think Canadians would be relatively fine with it, but it's the sheer size of it: 21.7 million doses were offered by the federal government but were still waiting for donation as of May last year.

I also want to remind my colleagues and of course our witnesses here that most of these doses had already expired by the end of 2022. There are some issues here.

I guess I will direct my question to you, Dr. Kochhar. How many of the 21.7 million doses were successfully donated to countries in need of vaccines?

[Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar]

Mr. Chair, I'll start by mentioning that we have been very diligent in working with COVAX, an international way of making sure that donations are equitably distributed. We have been able to donate. We offered almost 41.5 million doses as the doses became available. We also did it bilaterally with 37 countries. We were able to move 3.76 million doses through direct bilateral agreements with them—

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

I'm sorry. Very specifically, Dr. Kochhar, just because time is limited, of the 21.7 million, how many were successfully delivered?

[Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar]

Can I pass it to you...? [Inaudible—Editor] numbers are probably different.

[Stephen Bent, Vice-President, COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout Task Force, Public Health Agency of Canada]

Thank you very much.

In the context of vaccine donations, I think the number you're referring to is in the context of some AstraZeneca doses that we had. I think you referred to 13 million doses that expired. Those were put on offer in 2021, as soon as we were able to make them available. Unfortunately, COVAX was unable to place those doses in countries, because there wasn't sufficient demand.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Of the 21.7 million, how many would you say were wasted?

You just said that they were unable to deliver them to those countries. Would that mean all the 21.7 million? Does that mean 10 million?

What is the estimate here?

[Stephen Bent]

The 13-million dose number that you cited for AstraZeneca were the doses that were lost because they were not able to be placed. The remainder were donated to countries.

To bring precision to what Dr. Kochhar mentioned in terms of the countries we were able to support both through COVAX and through bilateral donations, we've been able to provide doses to 37 countries around the world.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

It was 13.6 million wasted vaccines. Is that correct?

[Stephen Bent]

AstraZeneca vaccines. Yes.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

I think that's my answer. Thank you very much.

To the Auditor General, in paragraph 9.55 of your report you state:

The agency was not able to properly track vaccine surplus and wastage once vaccines were delivered to the provinces and territories. A lack of data-sharing agreements with provinces and territories...affected the agency's capacity to gather information on the inventory, wastage, and expiry of COVID-19 vaccine doses.

I recognize the tremendous difficulty this would place on the public service's ability to monitor and track that, considering that you rely on the partners—at least we hope so—in the context of them reporting their need.

The lack of data-sharing agreements with provinces and territories is something that is important for Canadians to understand. In light of that finding and of the 13.6 million that were wasted that we just heard about, is it likely that there's a greater percentage of wastage, considering we weren't able to actually know how the provinces handled their vaccine dosage?

[Karen Hogan]

That's one issue we were trying to raise. It's that the federal government actually loses some visibility in what happens to the doses once they've been delivered to the provinces and territories.

VaccineConnect was suppose to help with creating some awareness of where those doses were used, administered or expired. The long-standing issue of not having data-sharing agreements is that it just doesn't allow the provinces and territories to let the federal government know where the information is, who has it and how to share it.

Those have been long-standing, where an agreement needs to be in place, back to 1999.

I'll just highlight this. You asked about the 21.7 million doses that were waiting to be donated back in early December when these reports were released. At the time, the department had confirmed to me that eight million had been donated and that a million of those 21.7 million had expired. That was in early December.

I can offer up that additional information following your exchange earlier with the other witness.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

What's my time, Chair? Do I have enough for another question?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

You have about 15 seconds.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

I don't have time for my next question, but I want to thank you all for your information today.

On behalf of Canadians, this is an important piece to realize: Data sharing is an incredibly important piece for understanding our visibility in the provinces and territories and, of course, nationally.

I'll follow up in my next round.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

Turning to the next round, Mr. Kram, you have the floor for five minutes, please.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all the witnesses for being here today.

I guess I will start with the Auditor General.

In October 2021, Bob McKeown from the CBC's The Fifth Estate ran an investigative report about CanSino. I would like to read a couple of quotes from a couple of articles.

The subheading of one article reads, “Federal officials wasted months, spent millions on a lab that never produced a single shot”.

Another article reads, “The National Research Council of Canada...signed an agreement with Tianjin-based CanSino Biologics in early May 2020 to 'fast-track the availability of a COVID-19 vaccine in Canada for emergency pandemic use.'”

Ms. Hogan, are you familiar with the CBC's The Fifth Estate and this investigative report?

[Karen Hogan]

I believe I saw it at the time, but that company was not one of the seven companies that an advance purchase agreement had been signed with. Hence, it was not scoped into our audit, which was looking at how the government responded to the need for vaccines and procured them for the country.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Why would this agreement, signed in May 2020 with the National Research Council, not be relevant in terms of vaccine procurement for Canada?

[Karen Hogan]

As I mentioned, Mr. Chair, it wasn't one of the seven advance purchase agreements. We were focused on how the government ensured there were sufficient doses for all Canadians in the country who wanted to be vaccinated.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Okay. I couldn't help noticing that at the beginning of the report there was no mention of the National Research Council at all.

Given that the National Research Council was involved in these negotiations with CanSino and did sign at least one agreement, can you just elaborate on your thought process as to why...? Did you reach out to the National Research Council in doing this audit? Why was it not included at all?

[Karen Hogan]

We did speak to it at the beginning of the audit, when we were scoping, but as I mentioned, it wasn't a contract that resulted in an advance purchase agreement for vaccines for the country, so it wasn't included in the scope of our audit.

[Michael Kram, Conservative, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Can you inform the committee as to what it had to say on lessons learned from dealing with CanSino, in establishing the vaccine task force, and what the vaccine task force learned from this experience with CanSino?

[Karen Hogan]

Unfortunately, because it wasn't scoped in, I don't have any information to share with the committee about CanSino.