National stockpile not designed for pandemic
OTTAWA • Canada’s National Emergency Strategic Stockpile wasn’t focused on personal protective equipment and had little of the necessary gear to respond to COVID-19, government officials testified at a House of Commons committee on Friday.
The stockpile, or NESS, was established in 1952 out of fear of the Cold War. It has changed over the years and warehoused different items depending on expected demands.
But Sally Thornton, a vice-president with the Public Health Agency of Canada, told MPS it was never meant to backstop the provincial health care systems.
“We do not focus on PPE and that wouldn’t be a major element, because we count on our provinces, within their respective authority, to maintain their stockpile.”
She said the stockpile is for backing up in emergencies like natural disasters or terrorist attacks that hit suddenly and without warning.
“The NESS was structured to prepare for low probability, high impact events,” she said. “It’s a niche role in stockpiling rare and hard to find assets.”
She said that has included the facilities needed to deal with mass evacuations or terrorist attacks, as well as vaccines for rare diseases or antidotes for chemical weapons.
“The role has changed to focus more on chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats. We began to move away from beds and blankets and increased our holdings of antiviral medications and key treatments.”
The stockpile, Thornton said, is run by 18 people in normal times and doesn’t have the budget to act as a backstop on the entire health system.
“The operating budget for the NESS has been about $3 million per year.”
The stockpile is spread out across eight warehouses in six cities and was reduced in 2012 from 11 warehouses in nine cities. When that reduction took place, two million N95 masks that had been expired for a decade were thrown aside.
Thornton was pressed repeatedly about that decision and said the masks were expired, nearly 10 years old. She said if there had been a good use for them, the government would have found it.
“There would have been no demand for these products or they would have been used.”
NDP MP Matthew Green found the answer troubling. He said it’s clear the two million masks should not have gone to waste.
“This is a national scandal. You’re saying that there are systems in place yet these systems have clearly failed.”
Green, a former small business owner, said there is no reason the federal government shouldn’t have a detailed inventory of what is in its stockpiles.
“I knew to the letter how many T-shirts that I had left in my stock, that we don’t have that is extremely troubling,” he said.