Summary

  • PHAC answered all 81 requests for emergency supplies received in 2024–25 and 2025–26, but did not record whether deliveries met negotiated timelines.
  • As of 31 March 2026, only four of 20 medical-equipment types had inventory targets, none of the 15 social-service supply types did, and the stockpile still held about 84 million expired items.

A reserve can answer the phone and still be hard to judge. Canada’s Public Health Agency says it supplied all 81 requests for the National Emergency Strategic Stockpile across two fiscal years. The Office of the Auditor General found no record showing whether those supplies arrived on the negotiated schedule. A request count tells Parliament that a file was opened and answered. It does not tell a hospital, province or emergency planner how long the truck took.

That distinction matters because the stockpile exists for a narrow, consequential job: to cover surges when provincial, territorial or federal supplies are depleted or unavailable, and to hold rare medicines that the health system cannot readily obtain elsewhere. The reserve contains protective equipment, drugs, medical devices, and social-service goods such as cots and blankets. Its value is measured less by the number of boxes in a warehouse than by whether the right box can leave in usable condition when a real shortage arrives.

The audit tabled on 29 October puts a striking gap beside the 81 responses. By 31 March, PHAC had established targets for just four of 20 medical-equipment types. For all 15 kinds of social-service supplies, it had completed neither a needs assessment nor a target. Those categories include equipment such as defibrillators and ultrasound devices, and goods such as beds and blankets. The report says the agency therefore lacked a complete picture of what it needed for future emergencies.

The numbers are uneven, not simply low. PHAC had targets for all 30 pharmaceutical types, but 14 assessments were out of date. Only five of ten protective-equipment types had targets. Five essential PPE targets were reduced in 2025 to lower costs and waste, without a post-pandemic needs reassessment, despite concerns from provinces and territories. For three of the five targeted essential PPE supplies and all four targeted equipment types, the stockpile held far more than the stated target. It had 162.5 million N95 respirators against a target of six million. Face shields went the other way: 1,200 units against a target of one million.

The figures put two extremes on the same shelf: 162.5 million N95 respirators against a six-million target, and 1,200 face shields against a one-million target. A useful target needs to name its scenario, time horizon, population, provincial supply assumptions and review date. That is how a number becomes a preparedness decision instead of a purchasing instruction. The essential PPE targets were lowered in 2025 without a post-pandemic needs reassessment, despite concerns from provinces and territories.

There is also a difference between a supply count and a usable reserve. As of 31 March, the stockpile contained about 84 million expired items; 97% were PPE. Keeping expired PPE in storage over the previous two years cost C$6.3 million. In 2025–26, PHAC wrote off C$331 million in supplies because of expiry and damage. The stockpile’s value fell from C$1.27 billion at the start of that fiscal year to C$1.07 billion at its end. It distributed C$27 million and purchased C$163 million over the same year. The write-off figure covers both expiry and damage; it is not a measure of expired goods alone.

One loss had a more direct operational trail. In 2025, PHAC discarded more than C$20 million in pharmaceuticals after warehouse problems that included missing preventive freezer maintenance, insufficient freezer capacity, weak temperature monitoring and staff not following repacking procedures. The Auditor General says those deficiencies had been identified in 2022 and 2023 and were not corrected before the loss. A medicine can be counted in an inventory system and still fail the test that matters if its cold chain was not maintained.

The audit’s date matters. Its findings generally run through 31 March 2026. PHAC’s progress page, dated 23 October, reports work completed since then: stable funding, an improved information portal for federal and provincial partners, and an executive committee’s April approval of the first annual purchasing plan to cover every NESS supply category. The agency says it has also created a federal, provincial and territorial approach for prioritizing threats and developing scenarios. That is a meaningful change in machinery. It is not yet the same thing as a published, current set of targets across every category.

PHAC’s own page keeps several tests open. Pandemic modeling and the communication of medical-countermeasure targets have a September 2027 target date. It plans to communicate its preparedness posture to partners by December 2026. It is also seeking an Order in Council, with a June 2027 target, to allow more flexible use of supplies outside public-health emergencies—for exceptional domestic shortages or international humanitarian emergencies. Canada’s readiness would come first, PHAC says.

That authority is not a warehouse detail. In November 2020, an Order in Council gave PHAC power to transfer, lease or loan stockpile supplies to provinces and territories for public-health emergency management. The audit found that broader authority had not been secured by 31 March 2026, even though the agency’s 2024 plan had set an October 2024 deadline. The new proposal could permit selected stock to move when it would otherwise sit unused. The OAG did not attribute any particular expiry or write-off to the authority gap.

An expanded power would need a clear trigger, a reserve floor and a named decision-maker so a release does not quietly consume the supplies needed for the next emergency.

The response record deserves credit. The 81 requests covered all four supply categories and a range of emergencies, including mpox-related pharmaceutical needs and wildfire response supplies. PHAC also says it distributed 1.8 million respirators and medical masks through the Canadian Red Cross by 20 September 2026 for people at higher risk from wildfire smoke and seasonal flu. But output totals and readiness answer different questions. One counts the requests served; the other asks whether the next request will find a suitable product, still within shelf life, at a location and speed that match the need.

The missing record is a current scenario-based target set reconciled to provincial and territorial inventories, lot-level expiry and condition, and negotiated delivery times. That evidence would change the readiness assessment. Until it is available, an annual response count is a good service result with an incomplete denominator: it says what PHAC sent after requests arrived, not whether Canada holds the right reserve before they do.

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