Thank you very much.
There are two points on which I want to get some more information.
I note that we talked a lot about the five points, but I think there are six points. If you look at your preamble, one of the pieces in emergency management is prevention. I would like to hear about prevention. I would like to hear the plans for prevention.
If we remember Hurricane Katrina, one of the biggest problems was that it was a preventable catastrophe, and no one moved to prevent it. In my province of British Columbia, there is a catastrophe that could occur, which is a large earthquake, and there has been no move at all to look at this from a prevention perspective, of making sure we're prepared for this in a way that we could prevent as much damage as we can, especially to human life, and especially schools.
So I want to hear about prevention. Mr. Pereira, I want to hear your plans for prevention, and I would like to hear Dr. Young's issues on prevention with regard to biological emergencies.
The second piece I want to ask about is the issue of municipalities. I'm going to go back there again, because in Vancouver our experience in SARS was extremely good. The reason it was extremely good is that the municipalities took a lead role.
While I understand that municipalities are children of the provinces, and so on, I really don't see whether there is a problem in this bill with adding the words “and other stakeholders”, which could include municipalities in cases where the municipalities may have a very significant role to play and may want to be a first point of contact in an emergency where minutes count.
So I'd like to hear your answers, all of you, on both of those pieces, on adding the term “stakeholders” to the language in the act and on the issue of prevention.