Medical ventilators purchased from a Toronto-based company by the Trudeau Public Health Agency via a $169.5 million sole-source contract were later sold for scrap, according to a new report from Blacklock's Reporter.
Ventilator parts were left unopened in shipping cartons with the Canadian Emergency Ventilator stencils being auctioned off, according to records, with hundreds of disassembled units being sold in the first quarter of 2023.
Trudeau touted the whopping contract as a success, patting himself on the shoulder during an announcement in 2020.
"Canadian companies are answering the call," Trudeau said at the time, praising biomanufacturing company StarFish Medical. "This is exactly the kind of innovative and collaborative thinking we need."
Parts of ventilators were sold for as little as $6 a carton. According to Blacklock’s Reporter, the Department of Public Works refused to reveal how much it paid for them: “The Commons ethics committee in 2020 was told the $169.5 million contract was payment for 7,500 devices, the equivalent of $22,600 apiece.”
The Department of Health remained silent on the perplexing issue of why unused ventilators were offloaded as scrap, especially when these devices were licensed for hospital use by regulators.
StarFish Medical refrained from commenting on the matter. Nevertheless, during hearings before the Commons industry committee in 2020, John Walmsley, the executive vice-president at StarFish, admitted that the endeavor was anything but inexpensive.
"This has not been a cheap enterprise,” he said.
“In order to deliver a safe product fast we have paid for contingencies that we have not necessarily needed,” he continued. “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.”
“We are proud to have answered a national call,” Walmsley continued. “Our team will be tired when they are done but they are not done yet.”
One paramedic who purchased 51 units said that the ventilators were still in their original factory wrapping, and that dissembled units that were sold for $6 a piece cost taxpayers more than $22,000 each.
“I bought 50,” Luke Halstead, an Ontario paramedic, said. “About half of them were in their original shipping crates with the Canadian Emergency Ventilators stencil on the box. They were brand new.”
“They even had the original factory plastic wrapping,” Halstead continued. “All the shipping labels were intact.”
He said that he spotted the ventilators at a 2023 online auction at GC Surplus, the public works`department`s sales divison and that bidding started at $5.
“I bought so many I had to make multiple trips to the sales warehouse with a livestock trailer,” said Halstead. “They are still sitting in my driveway.”
“The warehouse workers told me the ventilators were in their original shipping crates,” Halstead claimed. “They told me they continued to receive these ventilators well into 2022.”
