Thank you, Minister.
Thank you for the question.
The agency takes great care to protect its primary mandate, to which you were referring, in terms of emergency preparedness and response, leadership in health promotion, disease prevention and health protection, public health capacity, and science leadership. This includes things such as surveillance.
As we went about the exercise of looking at what efficiencies we could engender, we made sure that we protected our ability to do surveillance. We made sure that we protected our ability to do science in our three laboratories in the country, so that we could be ready and we will be ready when we next face a pandemic or other significant public health event.
This year the agency is facing a reduction of about $35.7 to $36 million, and 80% of those savings are coming from administrative efficiencies in the back office. So when we talk about surveillance, we are talking about our 55 surveillance programs not in terms of the data we collect or what we do, but in terms of how we do it in the back end.
Thank you.