Thank you very much for the presentations.
I'm reminded a bit of a story I heard about algae growing in a pond. In 20 days, if it doubles in size every day, it would cover the entire pond. You begin on day one with what looks like a very small problem, and on day 17 a quarter of the pond is filled. On the 19th day it's half filled, and on the 20th day it's filled. That's the logarithmic growth you can get in some of these spreads.
In our case, we're looking at 10 million people worldwide, or 50,000 Canadians, if we don't manage it.
I listened to your testimony and read through it. All of you are pretty much saying the same thing: in collaboration, Mr. Chair, CIHR will continue building research capacity, and we're going to work to fight this global threat; from CFIA: we're making progress through collaboration, and there's still work to be done, but we're working on it; at PHAC, we'll continue to develop the federal contribution in global efforts to make sure that AMR will be addressed.
The message you're giving to the health committee, then, is that you're on it, that it's being managed, that there's still work to be done, but you have the capacity, frameworks, and collective efforts to address this problem.
I wish we had the pan-Canadian framework done, so that we could see what's in and what's not in it. I'll ask each one of you, however, is there anything you would like this committee to say in the House and to the minister to further prevent this potential crisis from emerging? Is there anything more that any one of you feels we should be doing?
I'll start with Dr. Njoo.