What I would say in response to your question is that we need to remember that a situation like a pandemic does not recognize jurisdictional boundaries, whether they are municipal, provincial, territorial, or federal. The reality is that we need to have a comprehensive plan that relates to each and every Canadian from coast to coast to coast and helps ensure that the needs of all our communities are being addressed--and specifically, in the case of municipalities, the needs of our front-line workers--in order to ensure that we can respond to our citizens if and when the situation were to get worse.
On August 12th, 2009. See this statement in context.