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Ontario has written off more than one billion items of personal protective equipment at a cost of $1.4 billion since 2021, the province’s auditor general has found.
Shelley Spence found the province continues to purchase masks, gowns and other protective equipment at the same level as at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, despite a significant decline in demand.
“We discovered that expired products began to accumulate in provincial stocks as some of the products purchased during the pandemic did not meet desired quality standards and were not used,” Spence wrote in his annual report.
Ontario had a critical shortage of protective equipment during the pandemic, especially in the early days when much of the province’s PPE inventory had already expired.
The province set up Supply Ontario in late 2020 to manage stockpiles, but Spence found it doesn’t have a system that can properly track the equipment.
“Supply Ontario does not have an effective inventory management system to report costs in a timely manner and instead relies on an inefficient manual process to report annually,” Spence wrote.
Province signed long-term contracts
Supply Ontario now incinerates expired PPE and converts it into thermal energy instead of recycling it like British Columbia does, Spence found.
The province signed long-term contracts for PPE between October 2020 and April 2021 that required it to purchase 188 million surgical masks annually. However, last year it only distributed 39 million of those masks, or 21 percent.
The auditor also found that Supply Ontario purchased 25 million N95 masks in 2024-25, but distributed only 5.5 million, or 22 per cent.
“Assuming usage levels remain unchanged, we estimate that approximately 376 million surgical masks and 96 million N95 masks, worth approximately $126 million of taxpayer money, will expire between 2025/26 and 2030/31,” Spence wrote.
“If purchasing commitments must be maintained to satisfy policies to protect public health and support local production, and Supply Ontario does not increase its distribution of PPE, waste will likely continue to occur.”
Province should increase PPE use, auditor says
Despite the large amount of PPE in stock, Spence found only a “disproportionately low” two per cent of the items go to hospitals, which say the province cannot meet their needs.
Spence recommended Supply Ontario create a system to integrate and consolidate inventory records from a variety of sources and better use that data to manage and report on PPE levels. It also recommended the province conduct a value-for-money analysis to make better policy decisions on purchasing commitments.
He also suggested the province develop and implement a plan to increase the use of PPE, particularly in hospitals.
Supply Ontario has agreed with all six of Spence’s recommendations.
