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.
"There was a promise to procure at the end and that has never happened," said Hunt, whose association has 15 companies remaining as members. That success prompted both the Ontario and federal governments to ask Irwin to consider setting up a plant in Canada, he said. He crunched the numbers and believed he could make a better mask than the ones from China for about the same price.
They make components for safety shoes and, in 2019, got into the N95 mask business after signing a distribution deal with a company in Singapore."We decided right then and there, let's get into the mask business," he said.
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