In defining the requirements that help us decide what we stock and how much we stock, we start first with threat and risk assessments. I'm talking predominantly about the chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear events that we plan for. We conduct threat and risk assessments with our security and intelligence partners. That helps us inform scenarios that they should be considering and that we should be considering to respond to.
Once we've looked at the different scenarios, we determine how many people might we need to treat for those types of scenarios. That helps us decide how many treatment courses, effectively, we have. We then look at the range of available medical countermeasures. We set acquisition and divestment plans based on those.
As it relates to something like pandemic preparedness, we're currently working with provinces and territories, as we did during the pandemic, to conduct modelling to identify what would be a national target. For example, how many masks should Canada have in order to be prepared to respond during a surge until supply becomes available, if there are supply constraints? That work is being undertaken in support of the Canadian pandemic preparedness plan that is anticipated to be delivered this year and help us collectively, as a country, define those targets and then assign a surge requirement for the NESS as well as for provinces and territories.