Thank you for the question.
Certainly I'm very well aware, having been a former provincial minister of health, of some of these challenges, although when always looking for silver linings where you can find them, one of the things we observed post-SARS was that there was an increased interest among medical students in public health, because it really underlined just how fragile public health is and how it can be, quite frankly, an exciting, very important, and very rewarding line of work to be involved in as a medical doctor, or a nurse, or any other kind of medical professional. So you find these silver linings where you can, sometimes. I'm not trying to diminish the suffering during SARS, but this is one thing we observed after SARS was over.
In terms of our role and responsibility, I'm going to let Dr. Butler-Jones say his piece on this, but we're very cognizant that, in terms of pandemic planning, it really cannot be the federal government acting as an island in its preparations. To be very effective, there has to be a seamless approach, involving local public health authorities all the way down to the municipal level, the provincial public health authorities, the national public health authorities, as well as the continental and the international.
There's an immense degree of collaboration now. So we have to be respectful of each other's duties and responsibilities, but also aware that in the end we're all in this together.