Wednesday May 27, 2020 ~ VICTORIA, BC
by Mary Brooke ~ West Shore Voice News
Given the outcome of the extradition court case today in Vancouver for Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, it was appropriate to frame that in a question to Premier John Horgan about personal protective equipment (PPE) supplies for use during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in BC.
Various quantities of PPE for use in the BC health care system (and across Canada) are procured from suppliers in China.
West Shore Voice News asked during the Premier’s live media teleconference today May 27: “Do you see any PPE procurement problems for BC or the federal procurement system, as part of the expected Chinese government push back? And, as part of that, how is BC’s overall progress with producing PPE and manufacturing ventilators here at home?”
Making sure we have the needed supplies:
Premier Horgan of course framed that himself as that being a decision of the courts, which of course are independent from politics.
“For my part I’m going to continue to the conduct business of BC to the best of my ability, to make sure we have the supplies we need and to make sure the relationships we need to have in place are in place,” the premier said.
PPE purchasing continues:
BC Health Minister Dix says there have been “extraordinary efforts in BC” where people have been working hard to address the “massive disruption” caused by addressing COVID-19.
Minister Dix said today that 60,000 of the four million N95 respirators received since the beginning of April have been received “from China and non traditional sources”.
“Public servants’ work has been extraordinary,” said Dix. “With some help from the federal government,” said Dix.
“Because we want materials to be safe for people… we’ve also obtained, just this week — and are putting into service — a testing machine to help speed up that process. So we’ve been doing that work. And I think the work that public servants have done and British Columbians have done has really been extraordinary. We’ve had some help from the federal government. They’ve had some challenges too,” said Dix today.
“But our people as you can see from those numbers have been quite effective, and we’re just going to continue to do the work, working to ensure the excellent supplies of PPE because we’re going to need that in the months to come,” said Dix.