Honourable senators, I rise today to talk about Canada’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.

In 2002, I was involved, along with many others, in managing the SARS crisis in Ontario. That outbreak was challenging in many respects, but we also learned a lot about preparedness for future events. In his 2003 report on SARS, Dr. David Naylor found that the response to SARS was hampered by issues of governance, poor integration of government responses, and inadequate resources to investigate and confirm the nature of the disease and to track patterns of infection.

Here we are 18 years later, and what a difference we have seen in the past several weeks. The Public Health Agency of Canada, PHAC, was created as a result of the Naylor report, as was the position of Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, a position currently held by Dr. Theresa Tam.

PHAC has provided national leadership in responding to the coronavirus, and has enabled close collaboration and information sharing between all levels of government, and the medical and scientific communities.

Many of the gaps identified by Dr. Naylor have been successfully addressed, including clarity of governance, more rapid identification of the nature of disease outbreaks, an improved ability to track disease outbreaks, close cooperation and information sharing between all levels of government, and an integrated and science-led approach to risk-based public communications. PHAC is working closely with provincial, territorial and international partners, including the World Health Organization, to actively monitor the outbreak and manage responses to it.

Colleagues, these things do not happen on their own. It takes a huge amount of leadership and hard work across government and organizations outside of it. In this case, it is the minister and deputy minister at Health Canada, their counterparts at Global Affairs Canada, Dr. Tam and her colleagues at PHAC, as well as other political leaders at all levels — public servants, health professionals and the scientific community.

It’s also important to recognize the successful repatriation of Canadian evacuees from China in the past weeks. We see the right people on the ground in Trenton: military personnel; PHAC; Ontario’s Emergency Medical Assistance Team; local infection control specialists from the Quinte regional health authorities; and medical specialists and volunteers from the Canadian Red Cross, who, as they always do, drop everything in order to respond to emergencies at home and abroad.

Colleagues, please join me in recognizing all of the people who and organizations that are working hard to protect the health and safety of Canadians. To all of them, we say thank you.