Considering that, and considering the minister's experience with SARS, you and he will both know the tremendous importance of the medical officer of health in each--sometimes it's a county, sometimes it's a region; it depends on the type of government in which province. My understanding is there's a tremendous shortage of medical officers of health, and there are many areas where they simply don't have one. I'm wondering if, as part of the pandemic preparation, there is some money to encourage--maybe through scholarships--or some way to entice medical students to pursue their studies to become members of the public health field as medical officers of health. If not, and if we run into a pandemic, we could have a situation in which one medical officer of health who knows his own area very well is actually going to be in charge of a couple of others because there's nobody there in those other regions. It seems to me we need some leadership from the federal government here to try to help the provinces fill those spots. I'm wondering if there are any plans to use this extra money for that particular purpose.
On May 11th, 2006. See this statement in context.