Yes. Don mentioned that paragraph 4(2)(i) speaks to the working conditions of essential workers across all sectors. That would include, obviously, PSWs, and that would include nurses.
Paragraph (h), though, is probably where it speaks to it most directly: “support local public health and primary care capacity building”. I know there are some jurisdictional challenges here. Primary care is ultimately delivered by provinces. Having said that, we just entered into bilateral health accords where we, as a federal government, are delivering dollars and emphasizing the need to use those dollars for primary care.
I think there is an opportunity here not to take on provincial jurisdiction—primary care is provincial jurisdiction—but to emphasize in the course of any plan, “Here is the work the federal government is doing,” including through PHAC, as an example. If you read the name of the report in the wake of SARS, they emphasized the need for PHAC to deliver funding directly to public health agencies in some ways.
There are ways of thinking about unique funding opportunities. There are ways of ensuring that strings are attached in some ways, but at all times I think we, as a federal government and all levels of government, need to work together to ensure, as you say, that we're addressing the health human resources challenge, and we're ensuring that there's capacity for contact tracing and capacity for all of the activities for responding to a pandemic, especially the health care response in relation to local public health and primary care.