Health committee  What I would say in response to your question is that we need to remember that a situation like a pandemic does not recognize jurisdictional boundaries, whether they are municipal, provincial, territorial, or federal. The reality is that we need to have a comprehensive plan that relates to each and every Canadian from coast to coast to coast and helps ensure that the needs of all our communities are being addressed--and specifically, in the case of municipalities, the needs of our front-line workers--in order to ensure that we can respond to our citizens if and when the situation were to get worse.

Health committee  As I indicated in my response earlier, since our letter to the minister in early May from our president, we have had dialogue with federal officials about this issue. In recent weeks we've been encouraged by some of the announcements that have been made in terms of public statements around the need to address the protection of front-line workers and also some of the announcements with respect to the acquiring of both antivirals and vaccines.

Health committee  Thank you. Ms. Neville, very simply, I think what we're looking for is the federal government to design and implement a national plan, with municipal input, that will keep critical front-line workers safe and on the job during a pandemic. Specifically with respect to your question about the dialogue that has occurred, we've had a long-standing dialogue with the federal government about the need for this.

Health committee  I'll be speaking for all three of us.

Health committee  Merci beaucoup, madame la présidente and members of the committee. It is a privilege to be here today to speak about a pressing challenge facing our country, the H1N1 pandemic. My name is Berry Vrbanovic, and I'm a vice-president with the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and a councillor in the city of Kitchener, Ontario.