Government Operations committee  I think the member has touched on an important issue here because of the diversification of the market around N95s. As I mentioned earlier, we get some from the United States and the vast majority from China. The reason we have been doing that is that's where the market is. Whil

Government Operations committee  Just to reiterate, step one is the self-certification piece you mentioned and, yes, the ethical apparel policy that was quoted does have two levels: prime and first level down. We also flagged earlier the integrity check that is done against contractors to look for criminal char

Government Operations committee  When we are doing contracting, we can have dialogue, but the actual policy itself applies to two levels down.

Government Operations committee  I will ask Arianne to correct me or to elaborate, just to make sure I have this right. My understanding of the work done by Deloitte in identifying suppliers is that it was around their ability to deliver quality goods. I don't recall questions such as the member is asking. Ari

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, I have a couple of things on that.

Government Operations committee  Part of the department's plans are in modernizing procurements to look at these types of questions. However, I just want to flag that when you're dealing with a very deep supply chain in a faraway country, getting the line of sight into these types of questions is not an easy thi

Government Operations committee  Where the member is heading with this question, Mr. Chair, is probably a better question for the Public Health Agency. I'm not familiar enough to answer your question.

Government Operations committee  I actually do understand what the member is talking about. I just used a different term in my head. We have mobile respiratory care units. That is what we used to call them, and we've designed two models. One is more temporary, and easier to stand up and take down, and another is

Government Operations committee  In terms of the ordering we're doing now and, more importantly, the receipt of goods that is happening now and in the coming months, that's all about the second wave. That's why we're also getting additional space for the NESS. In terms of the policy questions around the size of

Government Operations committee  When it comes to the question of health, this was early days. There was a struggle around understanding the logistics and getting supply. I think organizations like this were in touch with multiple levels of government. We were collaborating with the Quebec government on logistic

Government Operations committee  Thank you for your question. I'm going to ask Mr. Vandergrift to answer.

Government Operations committee  It depends on the category of goods. They're certainly nowhere near what they were before COVID. They're still elevated above that. Some have come down a little bit. The volatility is a bit less, but on the whole still much higher than they were pre-COVID.

Government Operations committee  I'd focus in on logistics, because that's really where the most important hand-off occurs between PSPC and PHAC. Understanding that the eventual clients of the NESS are the provinces and territories, we are looking at more streamlined logistics so that, for some goods, can we byp

Government Operations committee  With your permission, I'll turn to my colleague Michael Vandergrift as he has been the key interlocutor with the supply council.

Government Operations committee  I'll start with the second part of the question, about how they were helped. The “how" is largely around logistics. We'd heard from a number of organizations, especially early on, that they were having difficulty getting their orders out of China. They were having a hard time arr