If the committee will allow it, I have a quick question.
I'm trying to get a handle on what we're really looking at. With the SARS situation, the federal Quarantine Act was not invoked; it was only the provincial quarantine act. Each province has its own act. I don't really know exactly how powerful or how different each provincial or territorial jurisdiction's quarantine act is.
Nonetheless, we have this piece of federal legislation before us. I'm trying to envision a ground conveyance. Let's say a Greyhound bus is going from Seattle to Vancouver in the middle of a pandemic--and we know, or hear from experts around the world that it's not a matter of if it will happen but when it will happen--and somebody is deathly ill. The Quarantine Act, to me, would be invoked not necessarily to deal with the ill person, but to make sure the disease or whatever it might be is contained within that bus at either a border crossing or a hospital. That's the thing I envision.
My concern with the testimony here is that you have to think of the worst-case scenario. Why would we weaken something, thereby not allowing for the opportunity for us to contain it in that worst situation? The Quarantine Act has never been abused or overused in my mind, even in the worst situation we've had in the country.
I guess that's my position on it. As a chair, I'm neutral, but either one of you might want to answer and convince me otherwise.