Question Period Note: COVID-19 HEALTH HUMAN RESOURCE SURGE SUPPORT

• To reduce the impact of COVID-19 on Canadians, the Government of Canada established a Federal Rapid Surge Capacity initiative to augment existing services in areas where needs are most critical, including Health Human Resources (HHR). The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated and highlighted pre-existing shortages in Canada’s HHR capacity. Fatigue and burnout among health professionals continue to expose some of these gaps.

• In addition to funding provided to provinces and territories (PT) through Safe Restart Agreements, tools have been developed to provide federal surge supports to PT for COVID-19 pandemic response. Surge supports, including HHR, are available for consideration when needs exceed municipal, provincial, and territorial capabilities.

KEY MESSAGES

• The Government of Canada is actively providing surge support in a number of provinces and territories and remains ready to assist in future efforts to address COVID-19.
• The federal government has a variety of tools available to support provinces and territories that request surge support for health human resources. Strained provinces and territories can access these supports through Public Safety’s Request for Federal Assistance process.
• Over the course of the pandemic, federal health human resources have deployed across the country providing medical supports in intensive care units (ICUs), acute care, and greater hospital settings.
• As part of the $16 billion in federal funding provided to provinces and territories under the Safe Restart Agreements, provinces are also being encouraged to make strategic investments in their own health human resources capacity to respond to COVID-19.
IF PRESSED ON SUPPORT GIVEN TO PT …

• The Government has provided HHR surge support to PT including through:
o Public Safety’s Humanitarian Workforce (HWF) Program, which includes Canadian Red Cross and other national non-governmental organization Personnel
o Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) Multi-purpose Medical Assistance Teams and Canadian Rangers
o Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) health care specialists
o Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) nurses
o Federally-maintained HHR nursing Rosters
o Funding for mutual assistance supports between provinces and territories (e.g. Operational Framework for Mutual Aid Requests and the Health Human Resource Assistance Program)

• HHR is a finite resource and provinces and territories will be responsible for prioritizing requests from their local jurisdictions. The Government of Canada will prioritize requests received based on the needs and capacity available at the time of the request.
IF PRESSED ON FUTURE SURGE CONSIDERATIONS …

• The scale of the resurgence experienced during the third and fourth waves of the pandemic created significant pressures on HHR capacity in multiple jurisdictions, with particular shortages in clinical capacity, specialised and acute care.

• The likelihood of future outbreaks in unvaccinated pockets, indicate a continued need for rapidly deployable teams able to respond to localised resurgence nation-wide, including to support testing, vaccination, and safe isolation.
IF PRESSED ON FUTURE HHR CONSIDERATIONS …

• Rebuilding depleted PT healthcare workforces on a permanent basis is a key challenge. HHR tools to support medium and long term solutions require ongoing, intensive collaboration with PT as the primary employers. Health Canada is working with PT and stakeholders to address systematic and longer-term issues in the HHR landscape, including supply (recruitment and retention), resiliency and data.

Provinces and territories (PT) are responsible for prioritizing requests from their local jurisdictions. The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) serves as the single window to coordinate PT requests. The Government of Canada triages requests based on needs and the capacity available at the time of the request.

This initiative is complemented by the Safe Restart Agreements (announced on July 16, 2020), which provide PT with over $19 billion in federal investments to support:
• health care system capacity
• outbreak management, testing and contact tracing
• social services to support Canadians

The Fall 2020 Economic Statement committed a further $150 million to support the Canadian Red Cross and other non-governmental organizations with enhancing their surge capacity workforce for Canada’s COVID-19 response.

In fall 2020, the Government of Canada established the Safe Voluntary Isolation Sites Program (approximately $100 million over 2 years) to complement the efforts of municipal and provincial and territorial health partners to reduce COVID-19 community transmission by providing safe self-isolation spaces for individuals living in crowded housing conditions.

In April 2021, the Government of Canada launched the Health Human Resources Assistance Program (HHRAP) which provides funding to PT in support of their deployment of resources to other jurisdictions in need. The HHRAP is aligned with the intent and spirit of the Federal Provincial and Territorial Operational Framework for Mutual Aid Requests (OFMAR). OFMAR was created in 2013 as a mechanism that can be activated by PT to identify and share healthcare professionals and health assets inter-jurisdictionally during emergency events, with a facilitative role from PHAC.

Through these initiatives and others, surge support resources and mechanisms are made available to PT to augment existing services related to: rapid public health assessments, public health specialists (e.g. epidemiologists, infection prevention and control support, outbreak management support), testing equipment and supplies, laboratory services (e.g. test processing at surge site laboratories, laboratory technician support), medical supplies (e.g. personal protective equipment such as masks, and biomedical equipment such as ventilators), health human resources (such as nurses), therapeutics to treat COVID-19 patients, safe voluntary isolation sites, and contact tracing. These supports are primarily provided by PHAC.

Statistics Canada administers contracting for contact tracing. Public Safety Canada leads coordination of non-government organizations services (i.e., the Canadian Red Cross). Indigenous Services Canada oversees services to Indigenous communities. As a measure of last resort, the Canadian Armed Forces provides a variety of surge supports to jurisdictions across Canada.

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