This committee has heard, time and again, that PHAC was not adequately prepared to deal with the spread of COVID-19 in an efficient way, in part due to the underfunding and mismanagement of health care preparedness. In fact, just yesterday we heard from the Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters, who had a plan put forward in 2009 after the SARS epidemic, dealing with an influenza pandemic program. Basically what they said to us was “We forgot about it; governments forgot about it.” That seems to have happened when PHAC actually started in 2003 to develop these things. It seems to have been forgotten about.
Mr. Cloutier, in a recent article in The Hill Times, you said a couple of things that struck me. One was that given Canada's experience with SARS, Canada “should not have experienced the critical shortage of medical supply in its health care system”. Further in that interview you said that PHAC's visibility and access to cabinet should be increased, even outside a disease outbreak, through the establishment of a “pandemic preparedness council”.
Given that PHAC was established as a result of the SARS epidemic and given that we have seen significant gaps in preparedness by PHAC, what would a pandemic preparedness council do differently to address the shortcomings in Canada's COVID-19 responses? If you could comment on that, please, I'd appreciate it.