The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) for the first time acknowledged it was “not as prepared as it could have been” for the pandemic. PHAC on Tuesday released a report on its National Emergency Strategic Stockpile’s Comprehensive Management Plan. It follows boasting from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his administration that Canada was among the best prepared nations on earth, per Blacklock’s Reporter. “The Public Health Agency was not as prepared as it could have been to meet the demands of the provinces and territories for routine medical countermeasures,” said the report. It blamed “unaddressed problems with the systems and practices in place” to store medical supplies.The Trudeau Liberals to date have resisted Opposition demands for an inquiry into pandemic mismanagement. Deaths numbered 60,362, while lockdowns led to the worst crash in Canadian retail since 1932 — a record $576 billion in federal deficit spending, according to a 2022 Budget Office report on its COVID-19 response plan.“Canada was among the best prepared countries in the world,” Trudeau said March 11, 2020, the day the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic. “Canada did pretty well,” Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland told reporters August 10, 2023. “The reason we did well is because we had a real Team Canada approach.”Parliament in 2004 created PHAC as a pandemic preparedness unit following the 2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome that killed 44 Canadians. The agency in a 2006 pandemic influenza plan warned a future pandemic was “inevitable.”Documents show the Agency ignored a 2011 audit to stock up on supplies as “an insurance policy” against future pandemics. “No one ever wants to draw from that insurance policy because that would mean an undesirable event has happened,” said the report on the evaluation of emergency stockpiles. The latest management plan complained of inadequate budgeting, though the agency was fully funded at $675 million a year prior to COVID-19. Internal records showed the agency in the year prior to the pandemic’s outbreak threw away 8,839,942 masks, medical gowns and other essential supplies in a bid to save $900,000 on warehouse leases.Mismanagement of emergency supplies prompted a 2020 commentary in the Canadian Medical Association Journal that recommended the service be commercialized. “The preference would be a Crown corporation,” said Dr. Scott Laing of Ottawa, author of the commentary Canada’s National Emergency Stockpile System: Time For A New Long-Term Strategy. “Not for profit is included here as an alternative and less desirable option should a Crown corporation not be feasible.”
