Our working group was formed in response to the pandemic planning initiative that took place at S & W in early 2005. The hospital's Clinical Ethics Centre was invited to provide ethics support in this planning initiative. It soon became apparent that the scope of the issues went beyond the purview of clinical ethics to include organisational and public health ethics. Expertise in organisational and public health ethics was quickly procured through the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics which is a partnership between the University and sixteen affiliated healthcare organizations that includes S & W among its partners. S&W was subsequently de-amalgamated into Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and Women's College Hospital, thus the ethical framework is currently being implemented at Sunnybrook HSC.