Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, everybody, for your presentations. It's greatly appreciated.
Thank you to each one of you who has stepped forward on the ground, Dr. Mohammad and Ms. Lapointe, on all the efforts that you're putting into making certain that Canadians are protected.
Ms. Lapointe, I appreciate your comments. I would like to start with you.
I speak a little bit of French. I'm learning a new word every day.
That's all I can do. I apologize.
In our last meeting, Linda Silas, who is the president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, presented. She said, “However, workplace safety has never been PHAC's primary focus, and the agency has unfortunately failed, over and over, to consider and appropriately protect the health and safety of health care workers.”
She went on further to talk about things, but I'll just end here: “In a nutshell, our message to you is this: When faced with this level of uncertainty around the new coronavirus, especially around something as fundamental as how it is spread, we should start with the highest level of protection for health care workers, not the lowest.”
Do you feel from what you've seen that PHAC has actually taken the workplace safety of health care workers seriously, Ms. Lapointe?