Government Operations committee  Thank you for your kind words. We work very hard and hope we deliver reports that provide value to the government and Canadians. In the report on PPE, I note where we saw the government be agile and react, and I will highlight four ways for you. One was the development of a long-term national supply and demand model, which did not exist before.

Government Operations committee  In my opinion, it was clear that the national emergency strategic stockpile was not ready to respond to a pandemic. I do want to provide a bit of the nuance of the purpose of the stockpile. It's to deal with surge capacity. Each province and territory manages health care, which includes managing and having their own stockpile of personal protective equipment.

Government Operations committee  I would agree that the national emergency strategic stockpile was not ready for this pandemic. One of those long-standing issues that the Public Health Agency had not addressed was doing a needs assessment to establish that baseline threshold that should have been in the stockpile in order to be prepared for a pandemic.

Government Operations committee  I unfortunately don't have the knowledge or the data to be able to come up with that. That's something the federal government was supposed to do following its response and lessons learned from H1N1 and SARS.

Government Operations committee  The contract you are referring to was not part of our sample, so I don't have any more details than what I have seen in the newspapers.

Government Operations committee  Thank you very much for the question. I would like to let the member know that I also shared that letter with the chair of this committee this morning so that everyone here could get a copy of it. I felt it was relevant to our hearing today. You're referring to the table we looked at during our audit period, so the requests received between February and August of 2020.

Government Operations committee  At this time, the procurement contract policy requires a financial viability audit when advance payments are made. That's why we expected this audit to be done, even during the pandemic, given the high risk involved in advance payments. Payments usually aren't made in advance, which is why this takes place.

Government Operations committee  The government shouldn't accept this risk when dealing with suppliers that it hasn't previously worked with. It should be noted that all steps of the procurement process are there to reduce risk, but the steps won't completely eliminate risk. Even if an assessment is done, there may still be an issue with the contract.

Government Operations committee  Yes, that's right. There were 14 contracts involving advance payments. Seven of these 14 contracts were assessed. Personal protective equipment wasn't received in only one case.

Government Operations committee  I think the Public Health Agency required all suppliers to send in samples, so that the agency could assess the products' quality. This did not apply only to suppliers having received an advance payment.

Government Operations committee  PSPC clearly said it agreed with our recommendations, but I would have rather that it said it was in agreement and that it do all the financial viability assessments going forward. PSPC said it needed to find a balance between quickness and assessments, as a number of assessments need to be carried out.

Government Operations committee  I don't know. I don't know whether Mr. Goulet or Mr. Duvnjak can respond. I think that this didn't concern advance payments for supplies that weren't received. I think that we're talking about supplies in general here.

Government Operations committee  I think that I understand what you mean. We audited 14 contracts where advance payments were made. For seven of those contracts, we assessed the financial viability of the supplier. However, I don't believe that we looked at the timeliness of the equipment delivery. Many things must be considered, including the time required for manufacturing and the availability of the equipment from the supplier.

Government Operations committee  I'll give you the floor, Mr. Duvnjak.

Government Operations committee  We looked at what the Public Health Agency of Canada did to ensure the quality of the personal protective equipment ordered. We used many suppliers, and several of them were unknown or had no previous dealings with the government. The agency tested samples to verify the quality of the equipment before recommending that Public Services and Procurement Canada award the contract.