Public Accounts Committee on Oct. 29th, 2026

[Karen Hogan]

I would encourage that this public accounts committee invite Health Canada to a hearing. We can have, I think, a very valuable conversation with them about net new people.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

I always enjoy your probing and suggestions to departments along those lines as well. Thank you very much for your work.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chambers.

Finally we have Ms. Tesser Derksen for five minutes.

You'll close us out, please. The floor is yours.

[Kristina Tesser Derksen, Liberal, Milton East—Halton Hills South, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

Thanks again for all this great information.

I want to talk about the public health emergency stockpile report. I want to step back and approach this as an average Canadian might try to understand this.

In your report, I note that the agency, you said, achieved most inventory targets for critical supplies but did not have a strategy to manage excess and expired inventory. There were about 84 million items that had expired. Some went to provinces, and others just had to be kind of written off because they expired. Your critique was that there wasn't necessarily a strategy for the agency to divest of those expiring items.

Where's the market? Is there evidence that there is a market to divest these products to?

[Karen Hogan]

It's an excellent question. I guess it depends on the medical supply we're talking about. Here, a lot of the excess is N95 masks, which would have been purchased as a result of commitments entered into during the pandemic. If you plan ahead, you can really turn to hospitals across the country, to northern communities and to the provinces and territories and their stockpiles. If you really coordinate a pan-Canadian assessment of what is needed to respond in an emergency, then you can minimize that wastage.

There will likely always be wastage, because the stockpile is meant for a rainy day. I guess it determines if you think that's wastage if you say that we were better prepared in case something happened, but not being as prepared with a stockpile as we should have been is why there was the need to buy so much personal protective equipment in the pandemic when it was really a seller's market instead of a buyer's market. The cost of so many things went up at that point.

Here's a chance to get better value, when you plan ahead. That includes knowing when things are going to expire. You would do the same thing if you bought milk. You wouldn't buy four litres of milk if you know that every week you're only going to use one litre. You'll end up throwing away expired milk. You need to know your needs, buy accordingly and then monitor expiry dates

[Kristina Tesser Derksen, Liberal, Milton East—Halton Hills South, ON]

I guess that's the rub with the experience we went through with the pandemic. I don't know if anyone anticipated we would need so much.

That being said, you hit the nail on the head with something I was thinking and what an average Canadian might think as well, which is that I'd rather have more than not enough and then deal with managing it after the fact, to ensure that safety is the top priority.

Is there an international convention on what the acceptable margin of waste or expired materials is? Do we know if we're in line with what other countries were dealing with?

[Karen Hogan]

I don't believe there is an international set that says you should have x number of medical devices or medical equipment in your stockpile. I think it starts with a needs assessment. I can give you a great example.

One of the four categories in the national emergency strategic stockpile is pharmaceuticals. Those would be vaccines, for example. Most of the pharmaceuticals are only available in the federal stockpile. You do scenario modelling around potential events. The Public Health Agency does that. It helps to predict how many masks you might need, how many cots, how many vaccines and so on and so forth.

While that scenario modelling and assessment is done, we found that they hadn't really updated that assessment since 2018. You have to factor in that between 2018 and now, we lived through a very major health emergency that we hadn't seen in a long time.

Those scenarios should be updated to reflect those lessons learned. It really starts with that basic, “What are my needs?” Even when you're doing an assessment, it's making sure that your needs reflect the evolving geopolitical environment and the lessons learned over the last few years.

[Kristina Tesser Derksen, Liberal, Milton East—Halton Hills South, ON]

I definitely appreciate the lessons we've learned, which we can pass along to.... Hopefully it doesn't happen again in our lifetimes. We know there is kind of a 100-year pattern for pandemics and that sort of thing.

I want to pick up on one thing. This is strictly from the lens of my riding. I talked to folks in hospitals and clinical settings and asked about the PPE. There's a cost for them as well for storing, and a lot of them were already over-equipped and not able to take more. That's not to say there weren't locations, maybe in northern or more remote communities that could have used them, but from my experience, it's just not as easy as bringing a truckload of supplies to your local hospital and saying, “Here you go. Now store it.”

[Karen Hogan]

Absolutely. I make it sound easy, but I think this is where information sharing becomes critically important. The Public Health Agency hasn't really ironed that out. That's been a recommendation from my office and from their own internal audits for many years now.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you. That is the time, Ms. Tesser Derksen.

Ms. Hogan, I have one last question.

In your report on call centres, you state, “Shared Services Canada did not provide evidence that invoices paid aligned with actual usage”, and that “there was no evidence that Shared Services Canada officials reviewed and approved them to confirm that the hours billed accurately reflected hours worked.” This has echoes of the ArriveCAN app.

Are you concerned about the approval process and possible abuse? What are your conclusions from those two quotes?

[Karen Hogan]

Yes, in this case, this is a bit of a complex contract.

The contract was for call centre services across three different organizations.

Shared Services was the one managing that contract and receiving the invoices. Some of the services are based on the number of agents. How many phone lines do you have? How many calls are received and stored? Those come with a cost. They didn't verify with the Canada Revenue Agency or Employment and Social Development Canada how many agents they actually had online. If you're not doing that, how do you know that what you were being charged was the right number?

For me, these are basic rules that are set out in the Financial Administration Act and in procurement rules, which is why I didn't issue a recommendation, but I did reiterate that the rules are well known and should just be followed.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

I'm sure I'll pick that up further at a future meeting.

I want to thank you, Auditor General, and your team, for coming in today and for your testimony and participation in relation to the study of the 2026 fall reports from the Auditor General of Canada.

Thank you very much. I know you have a busy day.

Members, we'll see all of you back here on Monday for an in camera meeting.

Thank you.

This meeting is adjourned.