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Canada needs to become more secure by becoming more self-sufficient. In a new series — Strong & Free: Shockproofing Canada — the Post examines how a country made wealthy by globalization and trade can also protect itself against pandemics and other unknown future shocks to ensure some of our immense resources and economic power are reserved for our own security.

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By the time Dr. Marat Slessarev got word that his London, Ont., hospital was establishing a conservation strategy for the drugs needed to ventilate coronavirus patients, talk of a looming shortage had already been buzzing through Canada’s critical care community for weeks.

Everyone had seen the news reports out of Italy, where COVID-19 has torn through towns and cities, overwhelming hospital intensive care units and leaving medical staff to scramble for equipment to care for sick patients.

In the flood of stories about makeshift field hospitals and emergency ventilators arriving on cargo jets from China, intensive care doctors such as Slessarev saw something else: a shortage of the drugs that patients need when they’re hooked up to the lifesaving breathing machines.