Public Accounts committee  I'm not sure I could answer that. I don't know, Carol, if you have a question...whether you looked at hotel enforcement in other jurisdictions. Can you add to that?

Public Accounts committee  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.

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

Public Accounts committee  That was in 2021. That's correct.

Public Accounts committee  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.

Public Accounts committee  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.

Public Accounts committee  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.

Public Accounts committee  You're correct that this was our second audit. The first audit covered March to June of 2020. Where we did note some improvements from the Public Health Agency was in its ability to contact travellers to determine whether or not they were quarantining. In the first audit, we found that they were unable to follow up with 66% of travellers.

Public Accounts committee  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.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. In this case, we did not look at the IT system and whether it was operating effectively, and we did not look at the complaint resolution. We were looking to determine whether or not the agency could explain to us whether these border measures were effective at limiting the spread.

Public Accounts committee  We currently don't have any plans to look at other border measures. That is considering where we are in the pandemic. That can obviously change as we move forward. We monitor the environment and make decisions based on that. When it comes to speaking with Canadians directly, we found in other audits that there's sometimes a hesitancy to want to speak to us, especially when it's a very personal matter.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you. I believe that in the cases you're talking about, law enforcement was the right party to do that investigation, not our office. I'm happy they followed through on that. I will take your feedback under advisement as we consider whether or not we want to do another audit on the border and as we continue to improve our auditing through a GBA+ lens.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, I'll go first and then I'll leave some time for Dr. Kochhar. The purpose of the ticketing regime was really to see national enforcement of quarantine measures across the country, and it was clear from our findings that the Public Health Agency hadn't worked through the cohesive enforcement requirement across the country.

Public Accounts committee  First of all, I am pleased to report that we have reached an agreement and all employees are back in the office as of yesterday. We will now enter a period of healing and I am very much looking forward to a new normal that will allow us to better support the work of Parliament.

Public Accounts committee  Are you talking about individuals who tested positive?