Canada’s once booming PPE industry is now ‘running on fumes.’ Why?
Global News
The scramble for PPE began in the spring of 2020, when governments around the world rushed to procure masks, gowns, gloves and other protective gear as COVID-19 spread.
Most Canadian businesses that answered federal and provincial calls during the pandemic to build up a domestic sector for personal protective equipment have collapsed.
The association that represents Canadian PPE companies says 90 per cent of those businesses have been forced to close or pivot to other industries because the federal government and Ontario have given contracts to a massive American company and a Quebec operation.
“We’ve got an industry that is just running on fumes,” Barry Hunt, the president of the Canadian Association of PPE Manufacturers, said in an interview.
“Most of them are out of business and the ones that aren’t out of business are going out of business quickly.”
A major issue, Hunt said, is large PPE orders the federal and Ontario governments placed with American company 3M, which has a facility in Brockville, Ont., and Quebec-based Medicom. Hospitals – who buy as larger groups – have also shut out domestic PPE suppliers, he said.
“There was a promise to procure at the end and that has never happened,” said Hunt, whose association has 15 companies remaining as members.
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