Mr. Chair, I've been a part of many of them.
I feel very privileged to have the role I have. I feel like I'm doing important work on behalf of the government and on behalf of Canadians, so you will never hear me complaining, and I think that's true of many of my colleagues. I want to preface this by saying, because I don't want it to sound like a complaint, that I'm very grateful to have the role I have.
However, it is very true that in the early days of the pandemic, it was a seven-day-a-week affair, with very late evenings and very long hours, more or less continuously, for weeks at a time. For a lot of my colleagues and for me, that kind of intensity continues. We're very happy to be able to do our roles.
I would say that “panic” is maybe not the right word, but certainly there was a profound sense of leaving no stone unturned, of real urgency and, certainly in the early days, a really profound sense of not quite knowing what was going to happen next. Maybe many Canadians would die, and it was on us to make sure we did everything we could to support the government in making sure that didn't happen—