Health committee  The scenarios are multiple, and it would be easy to say it's the minister of this or the minister of that. It is very much aligned with the situation.

Health committee  We reviewed the plans of more than 80 departments and agencies. We know that those plans exist and that they have been improved. In our view, 90% of these plans are satisfactory and have been updated over the summer.

Health committee  I have not received any requests from people who have suddenly realized what is going on and who are saying that they need a plan. I should point out that the Emergency Management Act requires every department to prepare plans for the agencies under its direction. That was a resp

Health committee  Yes. There are two things. First, under the law, everyone is required to have a business continuity plan. Second, there is an appendix on pandemic response. We initiated those efforts in 2006. The outcome has been very positive: people have taken this seriously and developed plan

Health committee  We are in the process of doing that.

Health committee  Not yet, but one is being developed. The sudden appearance of H1N1 forced us to accelerate the development of certain tools. That is one of the things we had to do. If the same thing happened in 2002 or 2003, this work would not even have begun. So we have made progress thanks to

Health committee  In 2006, we had asked the departments and agencies to develop a pandemic plan together with their plan to ensure the continuity of operations. Thus, in the spring, this allowed us to manage the H1N1 crisis in quite an organized manner. During the summer, we realized that should t

Health committee  That is precisely the principle of the operations continuity plan. We can't have 40 plans for 40 possible problems. We have an overall approach. In the case of the H1N1 virus, in fact, should there be a pandemic, that problem was a possibility. And so we asked for a specific plan

Health committee  Our readiness increases with every passing day. No society in the world can say that it is totally ready to deal with such a situation. However, whenever a department does an exercise, it identifies or corrects weaknesses and is better prepared to deal with crises. That is the ap

Health committee  I just want to clarify. The national security policy was issued by the government in 2004. What we have is a Government of Canada coordination contingency plan for avian and pandemic influenza. I can table that. It covers how the government--the machinery--will deal with specific

Health committee  We are currently doing some adjustments. We have a work plan that focuses on the weaknesses we identified in the spring, and we are making improvements to it.

Health committee  What we have at the Department of Public Safety is the Government Operations Centre, and it was created by the national security policy in 2004.

Health committee  It is the Minister of Public Safety.

Health committee  It's probably me.

Health committee  If you make the scenario as bleak and as bad as possible--