Thanks very much.
Thank you very much, Minister.
Thanks again to your officials for the hard work you've done in this recent outbreak and for your inclusiveness in allowing us to be briefed appropriately and to hopefully to be part of building the confidence of Canadians in what you are doing.
I believe your intentions are well founded, but in looking at the estimates, I'm worried that you don't necessarily have the money to do it. I would like, therefore, to understand, just beginning with the line item on emergency preparedness and response, why it would be more than $10 million less than last year. There was $38.97 million last year, and there's just $26.8 million this year.
Also, as you know, there's pandemic preparedness and then there's pandemic response. We are now into response, so we want to know what happened to the $400 million that was booked in the 2006-07 budget, which was $600 million for departments and agencies over the next five years, and $400 million that could be set aside as a contingency fund, accessed only as necessary. My understanding is that this is down now to $80 million.
We want to know if you have been able to access that contingency fund. How big is it? Why are the estimates for emergency preparedness and response so much lower than they were even last year?