Government Operations committee  Stryker is the American company. The name of the original company escapes me.

Government Operations committee  Health Canada has approved five technologies to reprocess N95 masks. They include Stryker, STERRAD, Steris, Clean Works and Bioquell, if memory serves.

Government Operations committee  In this case, Stryker was the first of the technologies we looked at that was approved, and Stryker did not go through a competitive process.

Government Operations committee  That's correct.

Government Operations committee  I'm sure we can provide the list of contracts. I'll turn to my colleague Mr. Matthews on that.

Government Operations committee  Yes, having been at ISED, I know that the National Research Council has a challenge for made-in-Canada filtration material for the manufacture of N95 respirators and surgical masks. That challenge closed recently. There has been a call to Canadian industry to see if they can deve

Government Operations committee  Yes, after the ministers agree, essentially we push out proactively 80% of what we receive on a per capita basis, and the NESS withholds 20%, which we allocate when provinces make calls on this. We call them “requests for assistance”. We've had 57 requests for assistance so far.

Government Operations committee  PHAC is buying 82 machines and distributing 81, and one is going to the National Research Council. Stryker Canada was, until last August, a Canadian-based company. The Stryker machine was designed and manufactured in Canada, and they still have a very strong presence near Quebec

Government Operations committee  This is why we've moved to bringing samples to Canada and are testing them here before bringing in the bulk.

Government Operations committee  I don't have a dollar amount. We're using the National Research Council's metrology laboratory to do the testing. There has been a certain amount of purchasing of equipment, TSI machines—

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, I agree. The best-case scenario would be independent testing, and I underline independent.

Government Operations committee  I agree, Mr. Chair, that the best-case scenario is independent testing in China, and I underline independent, because sometimes the tests that a company will do are not the same as when we do the testing. That would be the ideal scenario. To date we've tried to locate with PSPC

Government Operations committee  The Public Health Agency of Canada works very closely with the provinces in identifying their PPE needs. There are regular surveys of their stockpiles as well as what we call their “burn rates“, and we try to forecast when they are going to run out of specific types of PPE, so we

Government Operations committee  On a quasi-daily basis.

Government Operations committee  Maybe, Sally, you can talk about past experiences.