I think it's clear that it is a guideline. I don't think we dispute or are suggesting the government should go beyond issuing a guideline. We're suggesting that the plan and subsequent guidelines that are released have to be very clear and clearly understood.
Again, I think in any situation you're going to face—H1N1, in many ways, in a positive way, was a perfect storm. We had a situation where a virus emerged just before the school break. It allowed things to slow down before the second wave hit. By the time the second wave hit, we had a vaccine, and we had ample supplies. In any of the pandemic planning that has looked at the H1N1 scenario...we realized we were extremely lucky in the way the plan rolled out.
What I think is of concern to us still is that the plan itself has to make that basic distinction of who firefighters are. They are first-line emergency workers. Any subsequent guideline shouldn't draw distinctions just based on an occupational category. For instance, I use the H1N1. If firefighters weren't separated in that second tier and named as firefighters, I'm not sure we would have had the problem we had, because we clearly met the criteria as an emergency medical responder.
I don't think the question here is that we're saying the federal government should be necessarily making those determinations without allowing provinces or municipalities to look at their unique situations. All we're saying is that the current plan and the subsequent sequencing that came out of it were unclear. It's clear that it was unclear by the amount of confusion and the patchwork that went on because of that. That's what we're really looking to clear up—that confusion and the lack of clarity.