Thank you for the question.
I would say a couple of things. First of all, I've been a health minister in this country for close to five years. I know that the honourable member has not had that wonderful experience, but I can tell him that despite the best laid plans of mice, women, and men, there's always something that crops up where you have to respond to a situation that was not planned for. After you respond in the best interests of your constituents, Canadians, there's always a group of people who say you did far too much and overreacted and there's always a group of people who say you did far too little and underreacted. That's the price one pays.
But I am quite convinced that once we heard that this was an unscheduled shutdown that was going to occur to such an extent that it was going to have an impact on supply, we acted immediately. The first thing you do is collect information, and that's what we did. My own personal conversation with one of the European suppliers actually took place on Saturday, December 8—not on December 10, as you suggest—with the CEO of AREVA in Paris. Indeed, there were many official contacts as well by NRCan on Friday, December 7, when we learned about the extent of the issue we faced.
So the first thing you do in any potential crisis situation is collect information, and that's what we did. We started talking to hospitals, and then we created a plan.