Thank you for being with us, and thanks to your staff.
Minister, in 2009 the H1N1 flu virus caused 428 deaths in Canada. In response, the federal government mobilized an emergency operations centre 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This provided more than 6,000 person-days of assistance to help coordinate emergency responses across the country. Now, in comparison, we had 2,800 deaths in 2016 and 3,000 deaths this year from the opioid overdose crisis, yet only 113 person-days of assistance have been reported by the Public Health Agency of Canada, and that's to help write two reports.
In addition, during the H1N1 outbreak, the Public Health Agency of Canada spent $322 million on communications and advertising alone. In contrast, your government's total commitment to fight the opioid crisis is $123.5 million, and that's spread over five years.
Minister, given the longer, more entrenched, and more serious death toll of the opioid overdose crisis, why has your government's response been so substantially less than what was done for the H1N1 health crisis?