Health committee  Yes, we and Public Works and Government Services will work together supporting the needs of the Public Health Agency of Canada.

Health committee  I know of a few departments that have done it. Frequently when we talk about plans, people say, “Well, you have plans, but what does it mean?” I've brought in the scenario that we prepared. We've put it on a website internal to the government and we've offered it to all departmen

Health committee  Yes, absolutely. The people we target with this are obviously the senior management group. You have a lot of people working, but until the senior managers are seized with the value of doing something like this, until the senior managers see that it leads somewhere and it actually

Health committee  That's a tough one. In terms of the evolution, what we would do if there's a 30% shortage is one thing, but 30% absenteeism is highly speculative and it would not happen tomorrow.

Health committee  To adjust, yes.

Health committee  No one has asked about that recently. However, during the first wave, there were a lot of requests on the health care side. All of a sudden, we had to do a number of things that we don't normally have to do when things are normal. Funds were allocated to health. Departments and

Health committee  In order to be able to provide you with figures, we would have to know...

Health committee  The nature of the problem varies. Our approach allows us to adapt to the situation. With the national emergency response plan, all we have to do is set the machine in motion.

Health committee  Without wanting to put words into your mouth, I think that we are experiencing a pandemic. The difference is that the scientists say that this virus is not very...

Health committee  That's it. If the virus were to change, perhaps then it would be, but at this time, I think it can be said that all of South America and Australia have managed to get through it.

Health committee  I can speak for my department, about what we're doing at Public Safety. I've talked many times about the Government Operations Centre. This is our critical service. Should everything else fail, we need to maintain this service for the rest of government. We are actually training

Health committee  I think so. According to what we saw, the deputy ministers worked very hard as early as 2006 to develop plans and these have been in place since the spring of 2008. They were used to deal with the first wave of the virus. In the month of June, we met and asked ourselves what rem

Health committee  As for measures of success, we can probably send to the committee some objective numbers about the success of the review of the departments that we are conducting now. I said that we're satisfied with about 90% now, and once we're done, we can tell you what the final result is.

Health committee  We have a number of tools. One of them is the situation reports that we prepare, produce, and share with the provinces and territories. When there is uncertainty, having clear and common information is very helpful in making decisions and avoiding surprises. We are also in the p

Health committee  To manage emergencies in Canada we have a committee called the Senior Officials Responsible for Emergency Management, or SOREM. It is made up of the senior people in each province, and we have developed a system that allows us to work together. Something like H1N1 is national, bu