Mr. Speaker, I also would like to say that while my colleague just behind me was newly elected last June to the House of Commons, he has a long experience in the provincial legislature and a distinguished career indeed. I appreciated and enjoyed his remarks on this important legislation.
I would like to ask him a philosophical question. It is hard for us to imagine being quarantined. It is hard for us to imagine that terrifying impact on the quarantined individual or family, whether they are quarantined at an airport, a hospital, a home or wherever the case may be.
Let us try to imagine ourselves in their shoes. It must be a time of great uncertainty and a time of great trepidation. Not only are they in those moments facing the uncertainty of their own health, but they are also facing the uncertainty of what the health system and the rules and regulations will do to them.
However, let us put ourselves in the shoes of the community at large. It is important that the health of the community at large also be protected. While we can look with great sympathy upon those who are quarantined by necessity, and we should, that quarantine has the effect of protecting the larger community.
As we so often see in society, we have to balance the needs and the rights of the individual against the needs and the rights of the community at large. That is why it often requires great wisdom to draw the dividing line between what circumstances or actions of an individual have consequences for the larger community and when the larger community must take action.
I know it is a bit of a philosophical question and I know that this legislation attempts, and I think attempts well, to find the balance between those two extremes: the needs and the quandary facing the quarantined person and on the other hand the need of the community to protect itself, as we saw with the SARS outbreak, as the member spoke about in his last response, and the avian flu. We can also think back to long ago and smallpox epidemics and polio and so.
These do not come without consequences to the community and to individuals. I wonder if he could talk about that balance between the needs of individuals and the needs of the community when it comes to matters such as these.