New COVID-19 ventilators, purchased for $22,000 each, were hastily sold as scrap to "further understand" the recycling business, according to a Department of Public Works document obtained through an Access to Information request. Blacklock's Reporter says the ventilators, acquired under a $169.5 million sole-sourced contract, were scrapped even as the pandemic continued.“There was one negotiated sale of four ventilator samples with conditions to recycling organizations for the purposes of industry engagement in efforts to further understand constraints and considerations of recycling,” the department stated. The ventilators were sold for $21.39 each.Other ventilators were offloaded for as little as $6. All were StarFish Medical brand Canadian Emergency Ventilators. To date, no federal agency has explained why these new, federally licensed ventilators were quickly scrapped while still viable for hospital use.Records show that StarFish devices were scrapped as early as August 24, 2022, with devices sold for parts in Langley, B.C., according to an auction notice. The World Health Organization did not declare the end of the pandemic until May 5, 2023, nine months later.Neither StarFish Medical nor the Public Health Agency, which purchased the StarFish devices, has commented on the scrap sales. Federal agencies had previously highlighted the StarFish ventilators as a Canadian success story.StarFish Medical was “driving a fresh round of innovation to help Canada respond to an unprecedented health crisis,” stated the Canadian Intellectual Property Office. In 2020, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau praised StarFish by name, saying, “This is exactly the kind of innovative and collaborative thinking we need.”The Commons ethics committee in 2020 was informed that StarFish was awarded a $169.5 million contract for 7,500 devices, equating to $22,600 each. On April 5, the Department of Public Works stated that only $15.8 million was paid for the delivery of an unspecified number of ventilators. “To protect commercial confidentiality we do not disclose the unit price,” a spokesperson said.StarFish Medical executives had acknowledged the high cost of their ventilators. “This has not been a cheap enterprise,” testified John Walmsley, executive vice-president, at 2020 hearings of the Commons industry committee.“In order to deliver a safe product fast, we have paid for contingencies that we have not necessarily needed,” Walmsley stated. “We have custom machined parts in Canada rather than ordering ready-made parts from overseas, but we still needed to source some key components internationally.”Walmsley noted that “over 30 design engineers” worked on the ventilator project, with the devices described as “absolutely outstanding” in a 2021 announcement by StarFish Medical.
