In terms of the health system and also, even more complicated, the long-term care system, which is funded both privately and publicly, this is actually in the purview of local and provincial jurisdictions. However, as the chief public health officer, I've been pointing out some of the systemic issues that were present in Canada prior to the pandemic. That includes health equity challenges for seniors and for other persons, including first nations, Inuit and Métis peoples, and women who are particularly impacted, the low-wage, often racialized populations. The health system itself, and access to the health system, is a challenge for a number of people.
The long-term care facility impacts were really the feature of the first wave. Absolutely everything needs to be done to improve capacity in that sector. From the public health system side, I think we have to do everything we can to improve the capacity of the public health system. Public health is very invisible when there isn't a pandemic. It represents a much smaller proportion of health care spending in the provinces—municipal level, which means it's actually quite a small system that's trying to do many things, including preventing the acute care system from being severely impacted by the pandemic.
I would certainly advocate, going forward, that we not forget the lessons learned from this pandemic. We need to keep the public health system going at all levels. This is not just at the federal level. The local level is where things happen. Long-term care for sure needs to be better supported.