Health committee  We are aware of the gate holds that have been occurring across the country. There are a number of factors that are contributing to those gate holds. In terms of your question with respect to testing, as you are aware, we have moved over to an MRT system, which has significantly decreased the number of individuals who are being tested at airports, thereby reducing the number of people within those airports.

Health committee  If I may answer, the president has provided you with the positivity rates. Those tend to mirror what we've been experiencing on a domestic level in terms of trends. During the omicron phase, we saw a fairly substantial increase with respect to positivity for those travellers who were arriving particularly at the land port of entry, so in terms of your question, the trend seems to be the same.

Transport committee  Are you referring to masking within the context of flights?

Transport committee  Okay. I'm going to pass this on to my Transport Canada colleagues, but I would point out that we have assessed masking, and obviously it is a public health measure that would protect you as an individual, as well as people around you, by creating a barrier for any exchange of fluids in conversations and so forth.

Transport committee  Yes.

Transport committee  According to the advice that has been.... I'm sorry, but I'm getting a lot of feedback. Can you hear me?

Transport committee  I'm sorry.

Transport committee  In terms of non-compliance with ArriveCAN and the potential monetary penalties that could be imposed on individuals, I want to point our that our officers at the airports as well as land borders try to bring people into compliance rather than writing a ticket as a first measure.

Transport committee  There's a multipronged approach that's being used for quarantine follow-up. Quarantine is generally applied for individuals who are unvaccinated or deemed unvaccinated because they were unable to provide us vaccine credentials. We at the Public Health Agency have an escalation protocol, if you want to call it that, where we will start with phone calls.

Transport committee  With respect to the measures that have been put in place as a result of COVID-19, we've undertaken a multipronged or multi-layered approach. With respect to a mandate based on vaccination, obviously a vaccination mandate would mitigate the importation of COVID-19 as well as decrease the potential for infection and severity.

Transport committee  Along with the vaccine mandate, Canada has taken that multi-layered approach and implemented a number of other mechanisms to reduce the risk to Canadians' health and to increase their health security. That included testing as well as quarantine, isolation and masking. When you take all those measures together, as Dr.

Transport committee  We do on-site verification as well, based on the risk that the individual may pose with respect to non-compliance. In very limited circumstances, after we have the on-site verification, which is usually done by a security company, we will refer some of those more egregious cases to police of jurisdiction.

Transport committee  I will have to get that number for you. I don't have it readily accessible.

Government Operations committee  Good morning. My name is Jennifer Lutfallah. I'm the vice-president of health security and regional operations at the Public Health Agency. I'll just underscore a few points that are contained in my speaking points, which I think you do have. At the onset of the pandemic, monitoring health measures at the border was a paper-based process.

Government Operations committee  Excuse me, I'll be responding. As I understand it, the request that had been made by the committee did not include promotion, and therefore it was excluded.