Health committee  Thank you very much. Good day. I want to thank you for the opportunity to address the Standing Committee on Health today for the briefing on the Canadian response to the outbreak of the coronavirus. My name is Homer Tien. I'm the president and CEO of Ornge, the provider of air

Health committee  The support for mass vaccinations in the north?

Health committee  Thank you for the clarification. Like my colleague from the Red Cross, I think that surge capacity is an important aspect of it. I think part of the challenge for our northern communities, particularly remote indigenous communities, is getting that surge capacity to those commun

Health committee  We actually work very closely with all of them to share best practices. I think we realize that STARS does a wonderful job in what they do; LifeFlight as well. As we know, it's about sharing best practices. In fact, we set up a Canadian organization, the Canadian Transport Medici

Health committee  My understanding is, and this was based on a conversation maybe a month ago, I don't think they've seen the same spike in volumes—lucky for them. I think Ontario, unfortunately, has more COVID patients and more ICU patients. Because we do the transports in between, to access crit

Health committee  I think we had the opportunity to present that but, to be honest, I think in the time of COVID it's been more about communicating the capability to our northern partners. Certainly, I think our remote indigenous communities are particularly interested. I've spent a fair bit of ti

Health committee  I think it's important to realize that, for some of the communities that we're talking about for the surge, it wouldn't be just the equipment that would go, it would be the critical care paramedic who would go with the kit. They have very little infrastructure there. At some of t

Health committee  Obviously we have some capacity, but in planning for the COVID surge, we have to think beyond the normal influenza season, with its one or two patients, or even three patients, who need immediate evacuation because they're in severe respiratory distress. One of our surge plans,

Health committee  I think it's very difficult for these communities to have field hospitals, at least as I know them from the military. We'd have an operating room, ventilators and ICU capacity for any prolonged period of time. These communities, even the largest of them, have maybe 3,000 to 5,000

Health committee  I did hear about that, yes.

Health committee  To date, my air-ops people have said not so much, so—

Health committee  Well, it would, but to my knowledge, because of that there hasn't been a cessation of service to my knowledge in Ontario, but—

Health committee  Absolutely. We're completely dependent on airports, so if an airport did shut down because of any reason—and there are many different reasons for a shutdown besides that reason—we would be affected. It would deeply affect our operations, particularly in the north.

Health committee  I think the airports fall within the jurisdiction of an essential service, especially in the pandemic. Not knowing the communities, I can't speak to the impact on the communities, but if they were rural and remote—and generally they tend to be rural and remote—there'd be a tremen

Health committee  I would be, absolutely. There have been issues for a variety of reasons, and we're very concerned about airports and their ability to function, because we are completely dependent on them, especially for our fixed-wing aircraft.