As I was saying, 15 years ago, the vision I had hoped we would adopt was not so much one of a federal agency, but a national agency. We had some resources with the federal government, but it was also a time when Ontario was developing Public Health Ontario and British Columbia was augmenting the BCCDC.
There was a real advantage in developing a sense of co-operation between the federal government and the provinces, because the reality is that the provinces collect the data and the provinces make most of the public health decisions. You don't have the federal authority to tell them what to do. They're going to do what they want to do. The only way to get consistency in a truly national approach to a problem like this is to get people to buy in, to get people to be willing to do it because they think it's the right thing to do and because the prestige of the direction they're getting from the national agency is sufficient for them to.... I'm not going to say fall in line, but be consistent with their approach.
We don't ever expect everything to be the same. Here's a great example: Why should British Columbia be doing with COVID what Quebec is doing? They are very different sorts of situations. I think we would all be much happier if we knew there was a common purpose, common objectives and a common directive.
I'm hoping, maybe a little naively, that there will be another surge in interest in public health—I'm sure there will be—after the COVID crisis comes and goes. I hope we rethink how we set things up. That's not a criticism of the Public Health Agency of Canada. I just think it would function better if it was better integrated with the provincial agencies and if the provinces and the federal government were truly partners in this.