Thank you for the question.
The time we consider something a red alert is when we see a significant number of related cases. In this listeria outbreak, which occurred August 12, we identified a number of different listeria strains from Ontario with identical fingerprints, or very similar fingerprints. At that point, we sent out an alert to the provinces.
What we can do to make that better is decentralize the system, which we've already started to do. It had begun before the listeria outbreak with Quebec and the Health Canada lab in Ottawa. We've since expanded the decentralization to include Ontario and Alberta. We will be working with other provinces so that all the provinces that wish to will have this capability. That will take a bit of time off the time it takes to detect cases—a few days, three or four maybe--but it will improve the system.
We also work closely with provincial public health laboratories, which are closer to the front line than we are, to ensure that they have appropriate testing capabilities. I think there are some things we can do to enhance the system for detecting these events even more. That will permit earlier detection of outbreaks, earlier detection of the food source, earlier recall, and ultimately fewer cases.