The story behind N95 mask shortage in Canada
This is the story behind the incompetence of the Government procurement program to ensure Canada would have N95 mask for our front line workers. Disgraceful that some of these people still have their jobs.
small snippet....worth the read to get the whole story...
Quote:
Thousands of businesses came forward with offers to supply PPE like masks, gloves and gowns, flooding the inboxes of MPs and political staff — people who don't normally handle the finer details of procurement.
That was the context when the government of Canada rejected an offer from Honeywell, a major U.S. industrial conglomerate, to supply N95 masks to protect health workers on the front line. N95 respirators are designed and fitted to filter out the smallest airborne particles.
The emails reveal the government struggled to respond to an onslaught of correspondence from PPE brokers large and small. To break through, some major firms turned to well-connected lobbyists and government relations professionals to help.
In one email exchange from March 19, Sarah Goldfeder, a lobbyist at Earnscliffe, came forward with an offer from Honeywell.
The company — with billions of dollars in revenue and a long track record of producing respiratory masks and protective equipment — was offering a supply of N95 masks just days after Canada initiated an ordered shutdown of social and economic life as COVID-19 caseloads increased.
But the company was punted to an online portal, Goldfeder reported — the government's Buy and Sell platform. She said an offer of this magnitude needed a personal follow-up, not a generic web-based application for tenders.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/n95...ents-1.5910829
