Thank you very much, Minister, for coming here.
I also want to thank your government very much for continuing to support the initiative of our last government in setting up this particular public health agency.
The question Madam Brown had was one that I wanted to follow up on.
As you know, if we're going to be coordinating public health, there needs to be a rapid response. Dr. Butler-Jones might be able to answer this: what is the role of the federal government's Public Health Agency in coordinating that, especially in areas where certain provinces and certain municipalities may not have the resources for rapid response?
Secondly, is there going to be a linkage with researchers and with clinical places such as ERs and so on, and with community groups and hospitals? That's the kind of rapid response....
I know in British Columbia, when SARS came down, we had the ability to respond very rapidly because we had genomicists who tested to see if it was a man-made or mutated organism. It was mutated. We were able to move seamlessly throughout all the emergency rooms and we were able to contain it very rapidly in B.C.
So what is the role of the federal government if there isn't the ability for provinces and municipalities to do that? Do we have resources to help them?
The next part is, what will be the position of the agency with regard to setting measurable benchmarks for population health in Canada? Is this going to be a federal responsibility? We're going to work with provinces, obviously, but will there be one standard across the country for benchmarks on this issue?