Martin Montreuil goes viral in China
Martin Montreuil is the Director of the Specialized Professional Services Procurement Directorate. He has been working at Public Services and Procurement Canada for almost 20 years. On March 12, 2020, his work took on a whole new meaning.
Martin Montreuil had been a director for only nine months when his Assistant Deputy Minister, Arianne Reza, asked him to go where no public servant had gone before: working in the Pandemic Response Sector to find personal protective equipment (PPE) for the Government of Canada. He didn’t know it would be a daunting, high-pressure task for which there was no precedent and no playbook.
Before his first day was done, Martin, along with his boss, Alain Dorion, went to work, putting contact details on the Buyandsell.gc.ca website and telling potential suppliers that the government needed PPE and needed it fast.
Then the unexpected happened.
“It went well on Thursday all through to Sunday,” recalled Martin. “Suppliers were making contact and telling us they had PPE for us. Then, on the Sunday evening, my phone and email account suddenly started to go completely wild.”
Alain and Martin were getting hundreds of phone calls, emails and text messages. Global Affairs Canada (GAC) trade representatives in China explained to them: “We’re worried about you guys. Your names have gone viral on Chinese social media.”
Martin laughs as he recalls those first few rocky days: “Going viral is one thing, going viral in China is quite another. We were getting emails from anyone who had a relative working in a Chinese mask factory, and they all had masks to sell us. But it got us some traction, which was a good thing. About 30 other employees quickly joined the team. “These are all people of action with the health of Canadians at heart,” said Martin. “They are great employees who weren’t looking at the clock or thinking about the hours.
“After about two months of long working days, we said to them, ‘If you want to pause and go back to your job, we can find others to replace you. We get it, we understand.’ Amazingly, nobody wanted to drop out.”
And the days were long. “We were getting hundreds of emails a day,” said Martin. “So it was about setting priorities. We were communicating as efficiently as we could and making sure the phone was always charged. I called a really busy day, a two-charge day: when you had to charge your phone twice.
“A typical day for me started with a 7 am call to get updates from China, where it was early evening. My last call started at 8 pm, where we basically told the people in China, ‘This is what needs to happen while we are sleeping.’ I finished at around 9:30 pm.”
“But I remember one day finishing a contract negotiation at 4 am. We were balancing the need to be prudent and not pay too much with the need to get products as quickly as possible. It was quite an adventure.”
Martin’s spouse was assisting her colleagues and clients at Employment and Social Development Canada during the height of the procurement emergency and busy working on matters related to the various support programs for Canadians.
Like millions of other Canadians working from home, the couple also has family priorities: in their case, their 14-year-old son. “We were looking at his homework and making sure everything was done. But, more importantly, we found we had to increase our confidence in his capacity to be independent instead of focusing on the quality of his homework. He’s back at school now and looks more independent than he did before, so maybe all this has had a positive outcome for him.”
In June as he was taking his first week off since the pandemic began, Martin calculated that he had worked 100 consecutive days. Things have calmed since those early frenetic months, but requests from the provinces for PPE continue.
That earlier balance between the urgent need for quality PPE, price and speed of delivery has eased. The team of 30 is now down to 15 or so. Those intense months of work have left a legacy of friendships that Martin predicts will last forever.
The legacy of newly formed friendships is matched, he said, by the great collaboration our team developed with other departments, especially GAC, the Canadian Armed Forces and the Public Health Agency of Canada. And this collaboration has resulted in new expertise in contracting quickly and efficiently.
“All the GAC people on the ground in China, the trade commissioners and others: these guys really helped us. And that’s the lesson learned for me. If this virus and the emergency could disappear, and the level of cooperation we experienced between departments could stay, that would be the best legacy of this crappy pandemic.”
Martin gets emotional when asked about his motivation, what has driven him during this arduous journey. “My mom turned 80 in September, and I had wanted to see her turn 80. My spouse has a big family. There are parents and grandparents … When you’re doing this work, it’s the people you know who are always at the back of your mind.
“So yes, I have enjoyed this challenge, and if necessary, I would throw myself under the same train again tomorrow.”