Emergency management in Canada and the model for the national emergency strategic stockpile are built on the assumption that provinces, territories and local governments are prepared to handle the most common emergencies, so it was designed to provide health emergency assets when local, provincial and territorial resources were exhausted and to be the sole provider of certain niche assets.
It had not had a focus primarily on PPE historically in the past, but despite that, we worked quickly with the provinces and territories to deploy a multipronged approach, including our bulk procurement, to quickly bolster in Canada the supplies of the PPE and other medical equipment, in addition to galvanizing Canadian industry to help us gain additional sources of supply.