QUESTION PERIOD — Public Health Agency
Global Public Health Intelligence Network
June 10, 2021
Leader, in March the Auditor General released a scathing report on the Trudeau government’s pandemic preparedness, and it was particularly critical of the decision just prior to the pandemic to shut down our infectious disease early warning system, one of the most effective systems of its kind in the world. The Auditor General recently issued another report that said the Public Health Agency of Canada was not as prepared as it could have been to respond to the surge in provincial and territorial needs for PPE and medical devices brought on by the pandemic.
As Senator Housakos mentioned, the Trudeau government threw out some 9 million pieces of PPE in the National Emergency Strategic Stockpile that could have helped Canadians, and it closed down three of the stockpile’s warehouses.
Leader, will your government ever take responsibility for this failure?
Thank you for your question, which is hot on the heels of Senator Housakos’s and which allows me to repeat what I said. The government does take responsibility. You have quoted correctly from aspects of the Auditor General’s report. The Government of Canada values the work of the Auditor General and accepts the recommendations. Like any responsible government, it understands that it can and will do better.
In 2008, testifying post-SARS pandemic before the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, David Butler-Jones, who was then the Chief Public Health Officer, said:
We need to sustain the interests and momentum around doing the planning so that we are not surprised and able to respond.
Yet the Auditor General recently reported that:
Some of the federal stockpile inventory was expired or outdated and the Public Health Agency of Canada did not track the age or expiry date of some items.
How will those who were responsible for this be held accountable? It’s the Auditor General, leader, who is saying this. If no one is accountable, then how do you think that will impact our ability to be well prepared to deal with another pandemic?
At the risk of repeating myself, through the advice and input given by the Auditor General and others, one hopes that the lessons we are learning in this chamber from the experience with this pandemic, and through the follow-up work that our committee will be doing will all be taken into account by this government, and I expect every future government, so we can be better prepared for the next crisis of this kind that may come our way.
