Story by Postmedia News •
Records show that the Public Health Agency auctioned off new ventilators, valued at just over $22,000 each, for $6 scrap, violating its own rules, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.
Apparently, PHA directives forbids licensed medical devices to be sold as scrap metal.
“They were sold for parts as the possible divestment option for unlicensed medical devices,” the agency said in a statement to Blacklock’s.
“The medical devices were no longer authorized.”
But documents show the ventilators were sold as such as late as Feb. 8, 2023 while still licensed by the Department of Health. The with licenses were revoked weeks later on March 22 after dozens of units were scrapped.
StarFish Medical of Toronto was awarded a $169.5 million sole-sourced contract in 2020 to deliver up to 7,500 devices at $22,600 apiece.
The devices were among $700 million worth of rush orders for ventilators placed by the Department of Public Works as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The company has declined comment to Blacklock’s.
A total of 40,547 ventilators were ordered from various manufacturers but only 27,025 were delivered and only 500 ever used, with the latter being relayed to the Commons government operations committee in 2021.
“We know we ordered too many of them,” Bloc Québécois MP Julie Vignola told the committee at the time
“What if we have to return the surplus of ventilators? Do we get reimbursed at the end of the day for those? I am just concerned with taxpayers’ money.”
While most ventilators remained in federal warehouses, 839 were donated to hospitals in India, Pakistan and Nepal or sent to Ukraine as war surplus, according to a March 25 Inquiry Of Ministry, tabled in the Commons.
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