Health committee  I think that's part of the guidance that the Public Health Agency of Canada and the chief medical officer provide in Canada. It's outside our expertise, unfortunately.

Health committee  I can speak to that from the Global Affairs Canada side. We have a regular program of exercises, tabletop exercises. We work with other government departments, specifically on exercises related to international pandemic response following on our experience with the SARS and Ebola

Health committee  I can definitely answer that. Our call centre is staffed, I would say, on a 365-days-per-year basis. We have operation officers, consular officers, responding to calls every day and every night. Now we have a call centre with over 50 additional people responding to emails and tel

Health committee  We're following the advice of Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada in terms of the protocols and procedures on the aircraft. We will have protective equipment on board the plane for those who wish to use it, and everyone will receive information sheets about what

Health committee  I believe the guidance from the Public Health Agency of Canada is not to have a full suit but to have protective masks.

Health committee  Related to your question, obviously one of the important aspects of humanitarian assistance that our department contributes to is responding to requests for assistance from different countries. In some cases, we are providing supplies, first of all to the Government of China in t

Health committee  We develop our travel advice in consulting a wide range of sources. Obviously the travel health notices are developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada, with their medical expertise. That is separate from the travel advisories that Global Affairs Canada has published across a

Health committee  I think it will depend as we continue to reach out for Canadians. Every day—and every night, given the time zones—we're in contact with them as we explain the process, the timelines, the procedures on arrival in Canada and the 14-day period of observation. Canadians are making th

Health committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. In our case, many of those other countries had missions on the ground in Wuhan and very large resident national populations. We did not have a mission in Wuhan. It requires us to send our standing rapid deployment team into the city in order to stage and pr

Health committee  In terms of this response, I can say that we've had very good and close co-operation with Chinese authorities as we seek to have exchanges about addressing some of the challenges related to transit, travel, etc. We have to gather a lot of information from Canadians in order to pr

Health committee  Minister Champagne spoke earlier today. He indicated that in a matter of hours, not days, the flight would be in motion, but given the pending landing and overflight clearances from China, we're not in a position to comment specifically on timelines for that flight at this moment

Health committee  Well, the numbers throughout this process have been very fluid. About a week ago, we had almost no one requesting assistance or registered with us as living in Hubei province. Now we have much larger numbers. We have, as of a few hours ago, 312 seeking departure and 563 Canadians

Health committee  There are several different levels of coordination with the provinces and with provincial representatives. With regard to Global Affairs Canada, our mission, our embassy in Beijing, is in close contact with its counterparts from the Government of Quebec. Our efforts in assisting

Health committee  Our recommendation is that they call our 1-800 number, which is 24-7, and/or contact our email mailbox, which gets you into direct contact with consular staff here in Ottawa. Due to the high volume of calls, the staff will be receiving and providing advice to everyone who calls.

Health committee  We have a network of consulates, along with our embassy in China, that provide consular service. They have teams of consular experts who are available to solve problems, work with local authorities, refer to medical services and deal with the issues that come up, in this case rel