Experts say the question is when, not if, a pandemic will strike.

A new report from Dr. Amin Mawani at York University's Schulich School of Business says the probability of a widespread, highly infectious illness is as high as 65 per cent within the next 10 years.

Despite its rapid spread and 774 deaths worldwide, the 2003 SARS outbreak was not widespread enough to be considered a pandemic.

However, the effectiveness of the response to the outbreak is being seen as a major lesson in preparedness.

Lessons from SARS

Dr. James Young oversaw the SARS crisis as Ontario's Coroner and Commissioner of Public Safety and Security, and he now works as the medical director for Pandemic 101.

Pandemic 101 is a group of experts whose goal is to prepare families and companies for an infectious disease outbreak.

Young says that while officials weren't as prepared as they should have been then, "We have a gap now before the next pandemic and we should be using it, and absolutely fighting against the complacency that's tending to creep in right now."

And, he says, education is going to play a key role in the extent of the impact.

"The more people understand, and again we saw that in SARS...the fear about SARS was less in Toronto than was outside of Toronto, because people in Toronto paid attention, they listened, and they understood what SARS was and wasn't," he told CTV earlier this week.

Young is encouraging both families and corporations to ensure they are prepared in the event of a flu pandemic.

"It's very important because, not only will there be deaths and great emotional upset, but there's tremendous economic consequences potentially."

Why people should keep working

Outside of obvious economic damage to sectors like tourism, fear could drive many employees to book off work and stay home. That could have a significant impact on most industries and the economy.

According to Mawani, lost productivity due the SARS crisis resulted in an adverse economic impact of $2 billion.

This impact arises from both health care costs and employee absenteeism.

In the same way as a failure at a single supplier or distributor can idle workers at several plants, a pandemic-related disruption anywhere in the world could have an impact in Canada, and vice versa.

"The key in a pandemic is to keep people working together, and have people not hide from the virus," Young says, "but rather go to work and contribute, but to do that they have to understand it properly and they have to be prepared for it."

Introducing strategies like social distancing and effective public health hygiene measures such as hand-washing, can be instrumental in keeping people working safely.

To that end, companies like Pandemic 101 are already offering systems to help organizations design plans in advance of an emergency.

"By investing in it, you're certainly going to have less consequences, you have a much better chance of employees showing up, and that's going to be the key," according to Young. "We need everyone working, and hiding from the pandemic will not work, that will make it worse rather than better."

Experts like Mawani, who encourage investing in pandemic preparedness liken it to insurance for other disasters, saying you "cannot buy fire insurance after the fire."