Our audit looked at many aspects of how the Public Health Agency of Canada should be prepared for a pandemic, and we did identify that many long-standing issues had gone unaddressed. I think the most important one would probably be health surveillance information and finalizing an agreement with the provincial and territorial partners. That is a matter we raised back in 1999, in 2002, and again in 2008 during audits. There were even lessons learned that the department had identified.
What this underscores is that all too often we don't place a lot of importance on being prepared. The current pandemic has hopefully made everyone realize that we need to take time to invest in IT tools that support important aspects of preparedness and response for health crises, and that we need to act on known issues. This isn't the first audit where we've seen known issues that go unaddressed, and across the entire federal government, it's time to place some importance on those things we do behind the scenes that no one really sees but that really make a difference when we're in the middle of a crisis.