Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I thank all the witnesses for being here tonight.
Thank you also, Minister, for being here. It is a pleasure to meet with you again.
I have to say that it's rather curious to ask you about your 2019 mandate letter, when we had a new Speech from the Throne in 2020. I guess the priorities are the same. The good news is that you've already had almost a year to implement your commitments.
I am particularly interested in your border protection strategy. You have committed to working with the United States to modernize the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement. The pandemic has shaken that up a bit, and understandably so. It's all the more reason to be concerned about border management.
I want to go back over the chronology of events, because the few days between the border closure and the time it was requested—also the time when the World Health Organization, or WHO, declared that there was a global pandemic—could have made all the difference in stopping the spread of the virus in Quebec and Canada.
I remember telling the House that Montreal's Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport was a real sieve. It was the mayor of the city of Montreal who had to go there with employees of the Direction régionale de santé publique to inform travellers arriving from Italy and other countries around the world where the epidemic had surged. There was no quarantine information or personal protective equipment. It took some time before measures were put in place.
Why has your government been slow to close borders, especially with the U.S.?