Thank you very much for the question, Mr. Hanley.
I can say yes. It's not just for infectious diseases. There have been many what I would call unintended consequences and a lot of collateral damage obviously as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of people accessing health services for other infectious diseases as well as obviously for a whole host of what I would say are non-communicable diseases—mental health, etc. We all know that. The opioid crisis is also obviously a very important priority.
For infectious diseases, I would say that the ones that have probably suffered the most, which we need to get back on track, are the ones that I think are unduly, disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations, those who are marginalized, who are racialized and who are not able to have the same resources to deal with certain infectious diseases as are perhaps many of us who are more fortunate.
For example, I would point out tuberculosis. Certainly the burden has been borne unduly by, for example, indigenous populations especially in the north and by the Inuit. We continue to work with them, but obviously in terms of the effort, we have had to take away from those scarce resources to deal with COVID-19, and addressing something like tuberculosis is certainly something we need to get back on track.
There are also what I would call the sexually transmitted, blood-borne infections, such as HIV/AIDS. The global pandemic that's been long lasting certainly isn't going away, and we need to get back to addressing HIV and all the other sexually transmitted, blood-borne infections.
Finally, I would say that another priority, which we're making headway on but which is certainly something we need to pay much more attention to in the future, is antimicrobial resistance. COVID-19 is the current very real pandemic, but I would say that may become a slower-moving pandemic if we don't pay attention. You can see even the WHO has listed it among its top 10 threats as being something that's going to affect us down the road. Can you imagine living in a pre-antibiotic era, if that were to return to Canada, in which we were not able to use antimicrobials, antibiotics, in a way that we're so used to doing at the present time?
Just in a nutshell, those are some of the infectious disease issues we're looking at. Of course I could go on and on. There are also things like climate change and how climate change is affecting infectious diseases in terms of the spread and distribution of vectors. Lyme disease and others certainly have a much wider range now, and more Canadians are being affected because of climate change.
You can see that there is a wide scope, and we intend to start addressing other infectious disease threats in addition to dealing with COVID-19 at the present time.
Thank you.