Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you so much to all of the witnesses for joining us here today.
I'd also like to welcome our two new members, MPs Goodridge and Barrett. Welcome to HESA. I thank you for being here today.
I also want to thank you for all of your extraordinary work over the last two years. These last two years have been relentless, and all of our staff have been exhausted by them, and I imagine that you and your staff have been too, so I just want to acknowledge how challenging they've been and thank you for your extraordinary efforts.
I have two questions today, and both will focus on the Public Health Agency of Canada. Canada is fortunate to have one of the lowest death rates of all of our peer nation countries. While it's less productive to focus on how our system proved to be resilient and supported the health and safety of Canadians, I'm wondering why, from your perspectives, given that we have seen this pandemic unveil quite a few gaps in our health care system and some issues that we need to address as soon as possible....
It's also true that, from a performance perspective, Canada has demonstrated fairly good resilience against COVID-19. I suppose we all have our reasons to believe that to be the case, but I would like to hear from the Public Health Agency of Canada on why they believe our country has fortunately been among the countries with a lower death rate than many others.