Public Accounts committee  I would ask Ms. McCalla to answer this question. However, I know that just over 1,000 people who tested positive were not contacted. Ms. McCalla, could you give us the exact percentage of people who were contacted?

Public Accounts committee  I will ask Ms. McCalla to add to this with a little more detail. Part of our work included looking at the security measures that the Public Health Agency had in place to monitor the quarantine facility and the government-authorized hotels. During the scope of our audit, we were aware of one issue that had been investigated in rather detailed fashion, I believe, by the agency, and measures were being taken to address it.

Public Accounts committee  During our analysis, when we looked at what the Public Health Agency had done for gender-based analysis plus, we saw they had collected information but really not used that information or analyzed it to see whether or not adjustments needed to be made. One of the other recommendations we saw that came out of their own analysis and hadn't been implemented was the bias training for many officials.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, thank you for this opportunity to discuss our report on the enforcement of quarantine and COVID-19 testing orders by the Public Health Agency of Canada, which was tabled in the House of Commons on December 9, 2021. I would like to acknowledge that this hearing is taking place on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people.

Public Accounts committee  I agree with you that the government as a whole, the Prime Minister himself, acknowledged that systemic racism exists in the federal public service and it exists in Canada. The issues that we saw were ones that were systemic problems across the organization that allowed our findings to happen.

Public Accounts committee  No, there is not.

Public Accounts committee  It's always a bit complicated when multiple levels of government help manage a program for Canadians. We're seeing this here. The standards are set by provincial and municipal governments. There isn't any established national standard for improving housing conditions. However, a federal program monitors these conditions.

Public Accounts committee  No, we did not. As I said, our review was limited to looking at the inspection files and the implementation of the immigration and refugee protection regulations around COVID, so we didn't extend that far. Now, I do want to give you some assurance that, if we had seen something that we felt was not appropriate, we would have followed up on that and inspected that, but within the work we did, we did not see any issues like those you mentioned.

Public Accounts committee  When we started to see the results—and they are quite negative, when you start to hit over 75% to 80% where you see issues—we started to look at whether or not we could disaggregate the information that we had to see if there were any trends by inspector, by employer or by location.

Public Accounts committee  If I understood Mr. Tremblay's comments correctly, I think he mentioned that his internal audit work post the end of our audit period, which was in June 2021, has demonstrated that there was some improvement. I do know that during our audit, we did look at some of the internal audits that had occurred.

Public Accounts committee  That's an area that I think we've been looking at very closely lately, the coordination of jurisdictional issues between the provinces and territories and the federal government. We didn't target it in this audit when we looked at temporary foreign workers, but it does come up about who sets standards, who has enforcement power and who has regulations.

Public Accounts committee  That's a bit of a complex question to answer, because it is the employer's responsibility to comply with basic housing requirements that are set either provincially or municipally. The temporary foreign worker program inspection regime is one that's supposed to ensure that the employer continues to meet the minimum standards prepandemic and even in those post-quarantine inspections.

Public Accounts committee  The scope of our audit did not look at vaccination policies. We looked at the changes to the immigration and refugee protection regulations. Any traveller coming into Canada has to comply with vaccination rules, and that would have been handled by another party, but it wasn't part of the inspection regime.

Public Accounts committee  It's hard to assess the situation when information is lacking. For example, in order to conclude that accommodations allow for proper physical distancing, the inspector has to be able to show that beds are at least six feet apart. However, if a photo shows only one bed in a room, when the room actually has other beds in it, it is very difficult to determine whether the accommodations meet the requirements.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, that's right. Without concrete evidence, it's difficult, if not impossible, to determine whether employers protected the health and safety of workers and whether the department was right in concluding that employers had taken the necessary steps.