Thanks for the question.
There's no doubt that data has been a challenge during this pandemic. Obviously different provinces and territories have vastly different data systems, different ways of collecting data and different kinds of characteristics that they collect. There are huge gaps, for example, in racialized data and knowing exactly how the pandemic is affecting racialized groups, depending on the province or territory and sometimes even the local jurisdictions.
That has made it challenging at the federal level to truly have a concrete picture. In fact, part of the safe restart agreement—over $5 billion—was for testing, contact tracing and data systems that can give all levels of government a more granular understanding of how the pandemic is affecting the various groups that we have responsibility to deliver services to.
The Public Health Agency of Canada is working very closely with the provinces and territories now to get data on patient ethnicity and build out that data set, because we know from other jurisdictions, and even from the limited data that we have, that oftentimes various racialized groups are experiencing COVID-19 in worse ways than other folks.