Federal reserve overflowing with expired PPE from pandemic, AG report finds - National Post

Karen Hogan, Auditor General of Canada attends Standing Committee on Public Accounts at the West Block on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Monday, May 4, 2026. Photo by HYUNGCHEOL PARK /PostmediaArticle contentOTTAWA — Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) has accumulated so much excess medical inventory that it is now overflowing with expired or soon-to-be expired personal protective equipment (PPE).

That is one of the findings of a new report by the Office of the Auditor General of Canada published on Thursday. It reveals that PHAC did not effectively manage the National Emergency Strategic Stockpile (NESS), a federal reserve of medical supplies.

In 2020, Canada was engaged in a race against the world to secure enough PPE and other critical supplies, such as respirators, masks, face shields and hand sanitizer.

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The country’s efforts to stockpile these items were so successful that PHAC will essentially manage the disposal and the recycling of these items in the months ahead.

“Since most of the PPE in the stockpile was purchased during the COVID-19 pandemic and has a 5-year expiration, about 75% of the PPE inventory (1.044 billion items of the 1.4 billion total PPE items) will expire by March 31, 2027,” reads the report.

Federal Auditor General Karen Hogan found that, to reduce inventory levels, PHAC distributed 115.6 million medical supplies valued at about $27 million to provincial and territorial governments and federal organizations in the last fiscal year.

But over the same period, the agency wrote off more than 12 times that amount — $331 million — in medical supplies because of expiry and damage.

Hogan told a House of Commons committee that there was simply no strategy from PHAC to manage the surplus of PPE and follow up on their shelf life.

“You wouldn’t buy four litres of milk if you know every week you’re only going to use one litre. You’ll end up throwing away expired milk. So, you need to know your needs, and then you buy accordingly, and then you monitor expiry dates,” she told MPs.

Among the recommendations included in the report, the auditor general recommends that PHAC should “develop and implement a divestment plan to reduce excess and expired supplies to minimize waste and limit storage, disposal, and recycling costs.”

The report also recommended the agency should “strengthen its authority to distribute medical supplies outside of public health emergencies.”

PHAC agreed to all the auditor general’s recommendations, while noting that “the exceptional volume of excess pandemic-related holdings” arose from a situation where Canada was procuring supplies amid global shortages and limited domestic supply.

It also said it will continue to work to distribute these nearly expired federal supplies outside of emergencies and that one of these options could be to send them abroad to help with international humanitarian crises.