Thank you for that question.
With regard to the flu kits, at that time in August when I was here, we didn't have any flu kits, but we wanted to get flu kits to the communities. We wanted the support of the federal government to help us assist the first nations and be able to do what we've done in the last couple of weeks. The provincial government didn't have a problem with it. They helped us when the private sector stepped up. It wasn't political; they just did what they felt they needed to do for the first nation citizens in Manitoba.
Last time I was here, I spoke about the need for annex B to be funded, because it's the federal government's pandemic plan for first nations. I spoke strongly because our communities are not ready. Even though the communities had plans, you can have the plans, but if you don't have the resources, that's all they are: plans. They're difficult to implement without the resources. Since then what we've done is really work hard to make sure we had people who could actually focus.... As opposed to volunteers or taking people out of other programs to make them pandemic coordinators, we now will have pandemic coordinators who will specifically work with those communities to make sure about what needs to be done with their plans. Wherever the shortfalls are or whatever needs to happen, we will now have that information, so we can be very specific as to what exactly needs to happen in each of those first nation communities. That's where we are.
We believe that's a good first step, and then we'll see what happens once the coordinators are actually at work.