Health committee  I have not received any requests from people who have suddenly realized what is going on and who are saying that they need a plan. I should point out that the Emergency Management Act requires every department to prepare plans for the agencies under its direction. That was a resp

Health committee  Yes. There are two things. First, under the law, everyone is required to have a business continuity plan. Second, there is an appendix on pandemic response. We initiated those efforts in 2006. The outcome has been very positive: people have taken this seriously and developed plan

Health committee  We are in the process of doing that.

Health committee  Not yet, but one is being developed. The sudden appearance of H1N1 forced us to accelerate the development of certain tools. That is one of the things we had to do. If the same thing happened in 2002 or 2003, this work would not even have begun. So we have made progress thanks to

Health committee  In 2006, we had asked the departments and agencies to develop a pandemic plan together with their plan to ensure the continuity of operations. Thus, in the spring, this allowed us to manage the H1N1 crisis in quite an organized manner. During the summer, we realized that should t

Health committee  The departments have the tools to assess their plans. They develop their plans, exercise them, and test them. They make whatever adjustments are needed. In my department we review them and see if they meet the standards that are in place.

Health committee  Most of them do.

Health committee  I don't have a number. There are more than 80 departments. We know that 79 departments have them, and about 150 organizations would be affected.

Health committee  I would say that most of them have. In the summer they were written to and told that they needed to review their business continuity plans and update their pandemic annexes.

Health committee  I missed the spring.

Health committee  In the spring when the first wave of H1N1 hit, there was not a big scramble in the Government of Canada because the government has a pandemic and avian influenza plan that we started developing in 2006 . At that time we asked each department to develop their own pandemic annexes.

Health committee  The short answer to your question is yes, there has been learning. People have updated their plans. We have a sense that about 90% of the departments--

Health committee  For what?

Health committee  The tough decisions for what?

Health committee  I'll take it. There are two components to pandemic planning. There's the health component--