The reason we're here today is to ensure that the routine immunizations that can protect all children are available to all children across Canada. When new vaccines become available, and there's been a flurry of them, and there will be more because the vaccine technology is exploding, there will be so many more preventive measures available to us.
What we observed was that there is a variable implementation and a variable uptake of these programs, especially for kids, and the two examples were hepatitis B, which took ten years to implement across the country--a very safe and effective vaccine that will reduce the long-term complications of that disease--and the seven years it took to get the new pertussis vaccine for adolescents.
There is a lot of investment in pandemic preparedness right now, at both the national level and also at the provincial level, at least in Ontario, where I live. So my comments are really directed much more towards the routine vaccines. We feel very strongly that this principle of equal access to services in our health system should be applied not only to treatment measures but also to prevention measures.