Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, I would just give assurances that we have a rigorous process with teams from the three departments looking at the scoring, based on a very detailed and complex RFP, and that process is, as I mentioned, very close to landing on the next steps.

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members, for the invitation to appear today. With me in the room is Mr. Wojo Zielonka. He is the chief financial officer for PSPC. I have additional colleagues joining me online, including Arianne Reza, our associate deputy minister. I am pleased to be here to address questions related to Public Services and Procurement Canada’s most recent departmental results report, for 2020-21, and its supplementary estimates (C).

Public Accounts committee  Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I am very pleased to appear before the committee for my first time as deputy minister of Public Services and Procurement to discuss the Auditor General's report on securing personal protective equipment and medical devices during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Health committee  There's been an extensive effort on both overall procurement of PPE as well as standing up domestic production, as was mentioned earlier. One area of success in terms of domestic production is with respect to N95 masks. The production level domestically is now in excess of four million per month.

Health committee  Mr. Chair, we're working closely with suppliers to ensure that they're fulfilling their obligations.

Health committee  Thank you very much. There were indeed two contracts that were established, one with SNC-Lavalin PAE and one with Weatherhaven Global Resources. The total value is $150 million for up to 10 mobile health units each. Those are the basic details on the contracting. I'd have to follow up on any other details and the current status of that.

Health committee  I'm not aware offhand of any other contracts, but I would note that the contracts are all disclosed through proactive disclosure, so that's a relatively easy one to verify through the disclosed contracts that we have.

Health committee  Thank you very much for the question. I personally don't have all the details at my fingertips right now—

Health committee  Okay.

Health committee  Thank you for the question. As has been noted, we're really putting the emphasis now on securing this goal of 140 million tests for the month of January, so that's job number one. We are working extremely hard on that, with a range of efforts to facilitate the process, such as changing the packaging work that's done on arrival and facilitating that by working with colleagues at CBSA to facilitate the arrival of shipments and working on logistical supports.

Health committee  Thank you very much. I'd just like to add that we were very pleased to secure the delivery of the 30,000 treatment courses coincident with the regulatory approval, and we're also working very hard on the 120,000 treatment courses which are expected over the course of the first quarter, between now and the end of March.

Health committee  Mr. Chair, I'm just checking to see if you can hear me. I had to switch devices.

Health committee  That's excellent. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I want to thank the committee for inviting me here today. As do my colleagues, I fully appreciate the urgency of the meeting. Having joined the department only a week ago, I'd like to start by saying I'm very proud to lead a very talented group of public servants who have been crucial to fighting COVID-19.

Public Accounts committee  With respect to the importance of moving to domestic production, there has been a significant shift over the course of the pandemic to more domestic supplies. Dr. Kochhar spoke about the NESS in particular, but if you look more broadly at procurement of PPE, our estimates are that about 50% of the contracts are with domestic companies and about 40% of the value is going to domestic companies.

Public Accounts committee  As I alluded to in my remarks, a lot of it was just pure effort at the beginning, with the teams working around the clock. But it was also leveraging flexibilities we introduced to make it easier to secure products, such as the ability to delegate authority so we could move quickly, and to use sole-source contracts or advance payments where required.