Government Operations committee  Thank you. My name is Ernie Philip. I'm the president of Medline Canada. I'm actually glad to hear the passion of the committee; I'm also personally passionate about this topic. On behalf of our 500 employees, whom I am so very proud of and want to thank, I really appreciate th

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question—great question. It's two-pronged. We've legitimized and continue to legitimize our supply chain by taking advantage of opportunities around the world where we need capacity, especially when you have the unplanned, huge demand spikes that we have obvio

Government Operations committee  There are a couple of questions in there. You're right, and that's why we use a lot of local manufacturers as well in Canada, for things like sanitizers, etc. I think you've hit on the two big issues. The last one would be raw materials. For example, with regard to something li

Government Operations committee  We have, and we've dialled in on masks. Medical-grade masks are where we see an opportunity in Canada, for sure.

Government Operations committee  We do have an N95 contract with some of the health authorities, yes.

Government Operations committee  We did.

Government Operations committee  I was not.

Government Operations committee  It's just starting. Anita Anand hosted an industry event that I attended. We have a PPE continuity program, and you're poking at exactly where I think industry can help. It's not as easy as just setting up a warehouse. You want to go to industry that actually turns this invento

Government Operations committee  Whatever 3M will give us.

Government Operations committee  We would typically have four months' on hand, as a good rule of thumb. I couldn't tell you exactly, but four months' seems right.

Government Operations committee  We have an inventory management system that would manage it, with quality and regulatory alerts, and then we have—

Government Operations committee  It's a digital system, yes, and then you move it—

Government Operations committee  It's simple if you can turn it, right? What you don't want to do is just have a warehouse that.... You know, governments change and people change, and all of a sudden you have a warehouse that has cobwebs and hasn't been looked at in 10 years. We saw a bit of that going back to

Government Operations committee  We actually went to the federal government and said that we're not a supply chain company but we'll—

Government Operations committee  Thank you for letting me finish. We had a solution where—and industry can do this—we said, “Industry's unique value proposition in this category is that we have warehousing space. We have the systems and we have the contracts to turn this inventory. Instead of spending capital,