Well, I guess it was a good thing that they were stopped and caught, right? We have regulatory standards for a reason. What I was worried about, actually, is that the regulatory standards would be loosened in times when people most needed protection and that these things would come into the country. That didn't happen, which was good.
This isn't about having our own domestic supply chain. I think the conversations going down this road are a bit dangerous. Canada long ago gave up the idea that we are our own unique economy. Starting with the Auto Pact back in the 1960s, we started integrating with other economies. It's been a huge advantage to our economy overall—all that trade that Mr. Laskowski was talking about—and that's because of trade.
I think the trick, though, is to make sure we understand where those supply chains are, who manufactures what and where the weakness and vulnerabilities are in the supply chains. That work really hasn't been done all that well, not at all. When you find the weaknesses, then you can identify them. There need to be duplicate supplies. You need to fill those holes by understanding those gaps, right? That really is the trick, and right now we don't understand that.
The other thing is that we didn't really do a good job following 9/11, when initial stores were created to augment PPE, for example, N95 masks. We originally had pandemic planning in place following 9/11 and SARS. Most of those stores were never maintained. That was actually the bigger problem. Governments didn't maintain the stores to keep them updated, and that was right across the country. It's more a provincial issue than a federal issue. That was a bigger problem, probably, than the foreign supply chains.