Clearly, first of all, public health is a local function. That's where the action happens. But it needs to be connected regionally, provincially, nationally, and internationally.
The other thing is that no jurisdiction has the capacity alone to deal with these issues. So what the federal government brings, and through the agency and others--not just the agency--is, in that partnership, looking at what the capacities are and how we can contribute to that in a collaborative way.
We bring special expertise. We bring resources. For example, when there are outbreaks, in virtually every jurisdiction in the country we have sent field epidemiologists to help with the investigation. It's still managed locally and it's still in their authorities, but we can support technically and otherwise, as well as in an intelligence-related way elsewhere.
In terms of the research community and so on, there are intensive linkages not just to public health laboratories, but under the public health network that is now established there are expert committees and other federal-provincial-territorial and expert connections that could look at these issues across the country and internationally and identify who can do what best and who is in the best position to respond to those issues.
As the committee knows, the health goals for Canada were accepted by ministers of health previously. The intent is that each jurisdiction takes those to work up in terms of their strategies, targets, and so on, as appropriate to the jurisdiction, including federal jurisdiction. So we will be having conversations across departments as to how, as Canada, we deal with our accountabilities in this or what we hope to achieve in this, as well as, through the network, coordinating to the extent that people want to coordinate, sharing information, sharing ideas, and so on, and doing that collaboratively across the country.