Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I thank the witnesses and of course the Auditor General for being here again today.
Just to start off, we have been very fortunate in this country not to have had many national emergencies. We've had a number of regional emergencies and we've not had national emergencies.
I can speak a little bit about involvement in the development of a local emergency plan. And we talked about this, actually, the first time the Auditor General was here. I have some appreciation about this, quite honestly, and I listened to my colleague David, who raised valid points.
I also have a complete appreciation for the complexity and time it takes to bring a plan together. When I'm looking at a plan that went from 2003 or 2004 to 2007, in that time Public Safety Canada was formed and in 2007 the Emergency Management Act was brought forward. With that came a sort of emergency response plan.
I know there is a lot of textbook theory that goes into a plan, and every time there is an event, there is then a review of what happened on that event. Lessons learned come from those, and the good ones are put into the plan and the bad ones are taken out. So I will always believe that an emergency plan is a living document.
Looking at the living document in terms of timing from 2003 to 2009, in 2003 I don't remember a lot about the issues around cyber-security at that time—and in fact I'm not sure it was in the old file. So in terms of some of the earlier discussions that actually happened around agriculture in 2003, I can tell you that in 2003 the issues around biosecurity and genetics were not what they are today. Those are evolving. They are not simple. They are very complex.
I'm not defending unsatisfactory issues. I'm just trying to illustrate to the public and to those of us here that I have an appreciation for the complexity and the timing because what I'm understanding is that we now have a draft action plan.
As you have presented to us now, there is actually an action plan, and this is the timing in which we are going to try to resolve it. Earlier in your comments, sir, you talked about some of the issues, the things we are hopefully going to be able to deal with in this year. I wonder if you could comment in terms of the action plan and how you are going to meet those schedules you have put in place. Some of them, quite honestly, are fairly significant.