Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank both witnesses. My first question is for Dr. Sinha.
First, I can understand the desire to study the practices in Denmark, in particular, or in other parts of this region of Europe, where family and social programs are very important issues. In any case, Quebec has drawn heavily from these practices in order to implement a number of social policies, particularly in the area of early childhood education.
I also agree that our seniors, in general, want to grow old in their own homes. This was true before the pandemic, and the pandemic has certainly strengthened that feeling. Obviously, the reason for this is the isolation that they experienced in nursing homes. However, nursing homes and long-term care facilities will always play a role in the organization of services, even though we know that the number of hours of care required for admission has increased dramatically. There must be a balance between the two.
I was troubled by what the Auditor General said in her report regarding the Public Health Agency of Canada. You also released a report on the pandemic, and I wanted to ask you about that. The Auditor General said that, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Public Health Agency of Canada hadn't updated all the pandemic plans or tested plans together with the provinces and territories. The report states that better preparedness could have minimized serious illnesses, overall deaths and social disruption among Canadians as a result of a pandemic.
Are you troubled by this report?
What solutions should we implement to be better prepared? What more proactive measures could have helped lower the high death toll among seniors?