Bill C-42 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Quarantine Act

This enactment amends the obligations set out in section 34 of the Quarantine Act that apply to the operators of certain conveyances arriving in or departing from Canada.

Quarantine Act

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as a member of the Liberal Party and one who sat on the government side for a number of years, the thing perhaps of which I am the proudest is the achievement of balance. I am speaking of balance in terms of balancing budgets, balance in terms of balancing justice legislation against the rights of our citizens, and balance in terms of assessing the international situation as best we could given the evidence of the day. We did a fair job of that.

That is exactly why we put in the sunset provisions for those two clauses that many years ago. We feared we were stepping out of balance. Given the extreme circumstances of that particular autumn following 9/11, it seemed prudent to do that. It also seemed prudent to look further ahead because we did not know what was coming next. We put it in to ensure that we returned to the human rights balance with the terrorism legislation when it was reviewed a few years later.

There has been absolutely no flip-flop. I remember the discussions in caucus and exactly why we put in those provisions. That is why I am so proud that we sunsetted them, given the evidence we have today.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as the critic for health, I listened intently to the member for Oakville on the Quarantine Act. She certainly went astray and talked about a number of other issues. I am going to ask her about the issues that were in her speech.

Can the member for Oakville stand in the House today and tell us that the threat of terrorism no longer exists and that is why she voted the way she did on those provisions? Has she given the same speech to members of her own party who supported us in maintaining those provisions in the Anti-terrorism Act?

She mentioned that the Liberal Party was open to debate and discussion on different items. Just this past week her own leader kicked out a member of her party who claimed that he was going to vote for our budget. Is that the kind of openness she was talking about in her discussions?

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I realize that the member for Burlington is fairly new to this place and has not yet learned that when one gives a speech on one topic or bill, one may draw comparisons with almost anything and everything and it is perfectly in order.

He also does not know, or maybe he has not yet learned, that it is considered that anything to do with a budget requires party discipline, as his own party demonstrated at budget time, and as we demonstrated.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on Bill C-42, An Act to amend the Quarantine Act.

The Quarantine Act was first passed in 1872. In those days, the movement of people and goods took much longer than today. The spread of communicable disease was therefore less and it was often more localized.

At the time when the legislation was drafted, marine transportation was much more of a concern than air transportation. But the significant expansion of air transportation in the intervening decades, as compared to marine transportation, justifies the need to modernize the act.

The proposed legislation would help protect the people of Canada and Quebec from the importation of dangerous, infectious and contagious diseases and prevent the spread of these diseases beyond Canada's borders.

It is true that, with the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, known as SARS, in 2003, the ensuing reports have emphasized the need to counter public health threats both at our borders and within our borders. We are not alone to have had to step up such measures. At that time, the World Health Organization requested that all countries do so, saying that we had to be extra careful and monitor the situation because of all these infectious diseases.

Bill C-42 would update the legislation to give effect to a specific section, namely section 34, which sets out the obligations that apply to the operators of certain conveyances in terms of informing quarantine officers of known or suspected risks of disease spreading on board their conveyances. Two other sections, specifically sections 63 and 71, as well as the schedule have also been amended to bring them in line with the new section 34.

While stressing that health falls under the exclusive jurisdiction of Quebec and the provinces, the Bloc Québécois supports this bill in principle.

Coming back to the bill, it is simply a question of safety, a notion of safety that we completely support. Furthermore, long before the SARS crisis or the various outbreaks of diseases carried by birds and other carriers, many countries had already begun trying to protect their citizens. I remember a trip I took to Cuba in 1985 or 1987. Cuba was already cleaning the interiors of its planes and paying particular attention to ensure that no diseases could be brought in by air travel.

The enactment repeals the Quarantine Act and replaces it with another act to prevent the introduction and spread of communicable diseases. It is applicable to persons in conveyances arriving in or in the process of departing Canada. It provides measures for the screening, health assessment and medical examination of travellers to determine if they have communicable diseases. It also provides—and this is important—measures for preventing the spread of communicable diseases, including referral to the public health authorities, detention, treatment and disinfestation.

It provides for additional measures such as the inspection and cleansing of conveyances and cargo to ensure that they are not a source of communicable diseases. It imposes controls on the import and export of cadavers, body parts and other human remains. One never knows what could happen when such matter is brought in. We cannot know the circumstances when someone dies outside the country and whose remains are brought back to Canada. We must disinfect, at least. Furthermore, the bill contains provisions for the collection and disclosure of personal information if it is necessary to prevent the spread of communicable disease. Lastly, it provides the Minister of Health with interim order powers in the case of public health emergencies and enforcement mechanisms to ensure compliance with the act.

Section 34 is extremely important. This is where the bill is much more specific concerning operators of certain types of conveyances. The current act provides for an obligation to report any means of transportation, including watercraft, aircraft, train, motor vehicle, trailer and cargo container, that arrives in Canada or is in the process of departing from Canada. Moreover, any conveyance used in a business of carrying persons or cargo, or any prescribed conveyance, shall be reported. There is an obligation to notify a quarantine officer without delay. The act indicates that the operator must notify a quarantine officer as opposed to the designated authority. In the past, the operator was asked to notify the designated authority when departing from Canada or arriving in the country. Now, the operator must notify a quarantine officer. The new section 34 makes it an obligation for the operator to notify the officer as soon as the situation is known. Here is what it says:

(2) As soon as possible before a conveyance arrives at its destination in Canada, the operator shall inform a quarantine officer or cause a quarantine officer to be informed of any reasonable grounds to suspect that

(a) any person, cargo or other thing on board the conveyance could cause the spreading of a communicable disease listed in the schedule;

(b) a person on board the conveyance has died;

or (c) any prescribed circumstances exist.

As soon as possible before a conveyance departs from Canada through a departure point, the operator shall inform a quarantine officer or cause a quarantine officer to be informed of any circumstance referred to in paragraphs (2)(a) to (c) that exists.

(4) No operator contravenes subsection (2) if it is not possible for the operator to inform a quarantine officer or cause a quarantine officer to be informed before the conveyance’s arrival at its destination in Canada, as long as the operator does so on the conveyance’s arrival at that destination.

Thus, all doors through which some infestation or disease might enter Canada are looked at in section 34 as amended by the bill. These amendments thus clarify the obligations of operators of watercraft and aircraft when arriving in Canada or departing from Canada.

I was saying earlier that the World Health Organization, notably in the case of the avian flu, SARS, infestations or pandemics, had asked all countries to have a law that would guarantee the physical safety and the health of each of their citizens. The majority of WHO member countries passed such laws. Unfortunately, there are still countries that are not members of the WHO and that cannot legislate in that regard, but that are easy prey, that are vulnerable to diseases. We could mention a few of them. Let us start with the first one, Taiwan. Last year, that country asked for our support so it could have a seat at the World Health Organization.

Canada supported Taiwan's request, but not very strongly. Nonetheless, it supported the request that this island nation of 23 million inhabitants obtain a seat at the World Health Organization, in order to protect itself and also protect other peoples and other populations.

We know that a number of illnesses that break out in China spread all the way to here. We also know that SARS first appeared in China. The Chinese travel by boat and plane. Thus, if Taiwan had been able to set up a protective mechanism, then its people might have had a much easier time containing the SARS epidemic.

It is the same for Quebec. In cattle breeding we have experienced the mad cow crisis. We know that at some point, this epidemic started out west. Unfortunately, Quebec was unable to legislate on this since we are still not considered a country.

It is very difficult for a population that can only rely on the legislation of another country to protect itself from various infectious disease. I hope that Taiwan, like Quebec and other countries, can a obtain seat at the World Health Organization, can one day be recognized as a country, can write its own laws and pass them in order to protect itself and its people.

That said, the bill before us is a good bill. I was saying earlier that the Bloc Québécois is in favour of this bill in principle. I will make the parliamentary secretary laugh by coming back to the fact that health is the exclusive responsibility of Quebec and the provinces. Nonetheless, we recognize that infectious disease such as SARS and West Nile virus know no boundaries. That is why the Bloc Québécois is in favour of this bill in principle.

As far as the proposed amendments to Bill C-42 are concerned, they apply mostly to clause 34, which applies but is not limited to the operators of ships and aircraft. These amendments are technical in order to give effect to this clause.

We will vote in favour of this bill.

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for her comments. In reference to the previous speaker from the Liberal Party, I wish to state for the record that the risk at present is greater from countries other than the United States. To require bus operators, train operators and so on, and every time a person gets sick on the bus, this would be a very onerous and burdensome task. In fact, the risk factor may have all sorts of other consequences. However, the risk has changed. There are measures in the act that deal with that. I hope that the hon. member from the Liberal Party will see that and change her position.

Given that the Bloc member says she will support us here, I gather that we can count on the Bloc support in committee as well and that we can work together to ensure the safety of all Canadians and that they can all enjoy the same safeguards.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, obviously, with a bill like this one, where the object is to protect public health, I do not see why the Bloc Québécois would not work with the governing party. A bill like this one deals with everyone's security. As far as I know, Quebec and the rest of Canada are not separated by huge fences. Infectious diseases can spread on the ground and through the air, as is the case with birds and the avian flu. They can also spread by many other means.

I do not know if I was clear enough in my speech earlier. For example, when the mad cow disease came from Alberta, we had to deal with the problem in Quebec. It was not our fault and it was not your fault either. Such a situation just happens, and we were greatly affected. The disease may come from Quebec or Manitoba or British Columbia, but we will all eventually be affected.

Therefore, in the case of a bill like this, there is no doubt that we will work with you. There is no problem.

[Richard Nadeau, Bloc, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in her eloquent speech, my colleague talked about the World Health Organization and Taiwan. I would like her to tell us more about this topic.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we are probably all aware of what is going on with the tiny island of Taiwan. Taiwan is a very small island with a population of 23 million. These are people who want independence from China, who want sovereignty. They are located very close to China. If memory serves me, a narrow strait only 4 km wide separates Taiwan from China.

As we know, in 2003, when China was dealing with the SARS epidemic, there were no cases of the disease in Taiwan. Members may recall that at the time, China did not announce that it was facing a SARS epidemic. As far as I know, China was one of the last countries to admit that some of its people had SARS. Taiwan could have been infected. The small island has extremely competent doctors who attend meetings of the World Health Organization as observers.

Given Taiwan's population, 23 million people, this could have been disastrous because the country is so small. Those 23 million inhabitants are squeezed into a very small space. If there had been cases of SARS in Taiwan, the situation would have been dreadful.

At the time, Taiwan asked for a seat at the World Health Organization so it could stay up to date on procedures to prepare for SARS and treat the sick. China opposed Taiwan's request. Canada agreed to support Taiwan's request, which made the Taiwanese very happy. Unfortunately, their request was denied, but they still hope to have a seat at the World Health Organization one day. The World Health Organization did send Taiwan an invitation to attend because it is an Asian nation and, very often, these infectious diseases emerge in Asia.

I hope that Taiwan will get a seat at the World Health Organization. They have Canada's support, and Quebec's too, of course.

I chose this example to illustrate how important it is to cooperate in fighting epidemics and infectious diseases in a small nation.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Surrey North is being recognized although with a bit of trepidation because she has 20 minutes to speak, of which there is less than two minutes today.

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will not try to do 20 minutes in 2 minutes, but I will make my opening comments.

When the act was last seriously looked at, the world was a very much smaller place. The idea that one Wcould start in Europe and be in Canada eight hours later, as opposed to six months later or four months later, was an unheard of concept. Therefore, keeping out communicable disease was probably not foremost in everybody's mind.

People would be cognizant of the tremendous tragedy that communicable disease brought to their own countries. We only have to look at the number of people who died of plague in those days, of smallpox, to know that it was a tragedy, but within countries. The idea that tragedy would travel across the water to a continent that many people could not name or would never see was not there.

However, we live in a very different world. Many people move around the world, either for work, or for leisure or to visit family, with great frequency. People fly to Australia, some fly to England for the weekend. Some of my family did that for some time.

With so many people travelling, the potential for communicable disease to move from country to country is significantly—

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Order, please. It is with regret that I interrupt the hon. member for Surrey North. When we next return to the study of Bill C-42, there will be 18 minutes left in her time.

It being 1:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.

The House resumed from March 23 consideration of the motion that Bill C-42, An Act to amend the Quarantine Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

When the House was last debating this matter, the hon. member for Surrey North had the floor. She has 18 minutes left in the time allotted for her remarks. I therefore call on the hon. member for Surrey North.

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I think it is a one line amendment and I am sure that I can talk for some time about the amendment. Although it is a very small amendment it would have a life-saving or potentially-life threatening effect if we do not carry it forward.

As I said the other day, this is really an amendment to the Public Health Act. It is a very interesting act. It was written in 1872. I do not need to give any history on it because the last time we did anything with it was in 1872.

Here we are now 135 years later. The House was full at the time and I think everybody did support it. It was probably right after a small pox epidemic which, in those times, was very frightening and killed many family members. We should never make fun or ridicule that kind of tragedy that occurs to families when there are diseases of epidemic proportions.

When this act was written people were concerned about the illnesses they saw in their countries. People died of small pox and the plague. They were concerned about what happened within their cities or their towns. They never conceived of the fact that a disease would travel to a country or a continent that they had never seen, never heard of and were never going to see. No one would have believed that a disease could be transmitted in that kind of way.

We find ourselves, 135 years later, in a very different kind of health environment. We need to take very seriously the fact that the potential for communicable diseases to move from country to country is significantly heightened.

We only need to look at the last few years and what we have seen in Canada to be reminded of that. Anyone who was part of responding to or living in a city where the SARS epidemic was so tragically seen, will know that the responses to that particular disease were late starting and we were not able to respond in the kind of quick fashion that we all would have liked.

If I were to be biased toward British Columbia, my home province, I would say that British Columbia actually led the way in many of the innovations that came about as a result of SARS.

I have a few concerns I would like to raise. I certainly support the amendment but it seems to me that there are one or two pieces missing in it.

What it does is it adds to the Quarantine Act the reporting responsibility to be expanded to include aircraft and commercial watercraft. Anyone operating an aircraft or commercial watercraft has the responsibility to report any person who has died or any person they believe has a potentially communicable disease or any cargo they believe is suspect.

What about one of the main ways in which people and products are transported around the country and into the country, which is by truck or by rail? This does not include either people or products transferred by rail.

From living in British Columbia, I know the truck traffic, and I assume it is the same in many other provinces, that goes back and forth across our border is lined up for miles. On any holiday weekend, we can turn on our radio and hear that there is a two hour wait at the border because so many cars are lined up to come into Canada from the United States.

The fact that rail and road traffic are not included in this causes me considerable concern. We have seen several times in the last year or so an alert not to buy a produce that has come across the border because of the concern it may be contaminated. I am concerned we have not covered off all of the potential ways in which a communicable disease could be transmitted.

This is particularly important in this day and age because we discover, on an annual basis, viruses that nobody has ever heard of before. I think there was a stage when people thought they had identified most of the kinds of viruses that affected particularly people. However, we now know that those viruses transmute until we have differing versions on a pretty continuous basis. Therefore, we have to be incredibly rigorous and vigorous in our actions to protect the population of Canada against in any way being susceptible to a communicable disease.

The whole issue of quarantine reminds me of what happened before people were immunized.There may be some people in the House who remember when people had the whooping cough, or diphtheria or whatever, their whole home was quarantined. Then we developed immunizations for many of those diseases for which we previously would have been quarantined.

What now has happened, which causes me concern because it is about quarantine and communicable diseases, is we do not know what our immunization rates are really like across the country. There is no mandatory reporting by any province of their immunization rates.

I know in certain parts of my province of British Columbia immunization rates of diseases, which have been designated communicable, are dropping. Therefore, we have the potential of seeing a disease we thought we no longer had to quarantine or we thought we had an immunization for it. However, if for whatever reason fewer families choose not to immunize their children, we could very well see another bout of some communicable disease that we thought was long behind us.

For a long time people thought that tuberculosis was a communicable disease with which we no longer had to deal. That is one that was quarantined for a long time. We not only learned how to treat it, but we also learned how to immunize against it. In many parts of the country, particularly in aboriginal communities and in urban centres where people live in conditions that are less than healthy for anybody, we see an increase of tuberculosis. We thought it was behind us, now it is not.

There is no mandatory reporting of that. Surely the federal government has a national leadership role to play in having that information available so Health Canada, CIHI and all health organizations, which have a responsibility for public health threats, have an ability to see a trend. If we only look at what is happening in our own provinces, we will not know if this is some kind of trend happening across the country that requires some national leadership.

We have seen SARS, the West Nile virus and avian influenza. All those things have caused the public health community to work well together, to develop better procedures, protocols and surveillance at least in the provinces, but I still am concerned that is not a mandatory responsibility of provinces to report potentially communicable disease.

This bill would broaden the coverage of the Quarantine Act, and that is a good thing. It would also help us meet our World Health Organization obligations as a signatory to the revised international health regulations. These regulations ensure maximum security against the international spread of disease, with minimum interference with global travel, and I know that is very hard to do. However, our first responsibility is to the health and safety of Canadians, but also a much more humanistic and moral way to the health and safety of people who live anywhere in the world.

Those WHO regulations are scheduled to come into effect in June of this year. This regulation would then put us in compliance, as we would wish to be, with the World Health Organization. It will know we are doing all we can in Canada to meet that health obligation.

There will be a creation of different kinds of responsibilities for people. There will be quarantine officers, which is a good step. Previously officers were designated by the minister, as was stipulated in the act. These quarantine officers will have very specific education and responsibility to collect information, to know how it should be disseminated and, wherever possible, to get ahead of something that might happen.

We are very concerned that this tool be able to be used by the Public Health Agency of Canada. It came from the report that Dr. Naylor did after the SARS epidemic.

I remain concerned about the lack of rail and truck cargo being included in this and about the fact that other communicable diseases, which are being less immunized for, are not reported nationally. There is no national database for that and we may put a next generation of children or potentially a current generation of adults, who are not immune to what we think of as children's diseases, at risk.

While I am speaking to the issue of communicable diseases and immunization, there is also a national leadership role. There is certainly a provincial role. I understand perfectly that provincial governments deliver health care services, but there may be a national leadership role that can be played by the federal government in terms of disseminating more education information or working with public health officers in each province to ensure that standardized information is getting to all the parents.

People take their new babies for their first immunization shots. Everybody does that because it is a good thing to do. A smaller percentage take them back for their second set of immunizations. If I were to go around Parliament and ask people if all their immunizations were up to date, I expect the majority would say no. We do not know the fact that we do not stop being immunized at age four. There are immunizations that we must continue to get throughout adulthood to protect ourselves from certain kinds of diseases.

There is a national leadership role that can be taken, working with public health officers in each province who have that responsibility, to ensure that we have a more vigorous initiative of getting out standardized information not only to parents of newborns, who get very good information about immunization, but to all Canadians so they know immunization should continue through adulthood in order for them to be safe. If adults are not safe, they may put their families at risk as well.

I support the amendment. I have expressed some concerns about the fact that it could go further. I also have expressed concerns about other things we could do around communicable diseases. For example, we could have mandatory reporting. Diseases we had previously quarantined may be at risk of being quarantined again if we do not vigorously address immunization like used to do, and more so under the Quarantine Act.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Surrey gave a very thorough overview of the bill we are speaking to today regarding quarantines. I want to pay tribute to the long experience that my colleague has as a former minister of health in the provincial government of British Columbia and the very worthwhile comments that she made today.

My comments and my questions to her are in the context of the role of the national Chief Public Health Officer in the context of quarantine protection. Also I would like to expand for a moment on the need for grassroots community involvement in the important work that the national Chief Public Health Officer does and the national institute of public health in the province of Quebec.

I would like the member to comment on an incident in Winnipeg. The riding of Winnipeg Centre is host to the only level four virology laboratory in the country where testing is done on the most dangerous diseases, such as Ebola virus. Any outbreak of a disease that needs attention if it were to be a national epidemic situation comes to Winnipeg.

The citizens surrounding the virology lab were very concerned because that virology lab was sent to Winnipeg Centre as a booby prize. Really what we wanted was the CF-18 airplane maintenance contract back in the Mulroney era and we all know what happened to that. It went to the highest bidder because that bidder happened to be in Quebec. To try and calm down the people on the Prairies who were so outraged, insulted and offended at losing the CF-18 contract, he gave us a disease lab, we called it then, now the virology laboratory.

To begin with, people were not thrilled to get a level four disease laboratory in the middle of a residential neighbourhood in the heart of my riding of Winnipeg Centre. There were great concerns about the security issues associated with having the most deadly microbes and viruses in the world being analyzed next to a school and next to a low income residential neighbourhood. We pulled together a citizens committee to deal with the federal government. We got some guarantees in place that the highest safety protocol available would be used in the transfer of the deadly viruses, germs and microbes.

We were not too concerned with what was happening within the four walls of the virology laboratory because they were two feet thick concrete walls. They were bomb proof. There was bulletproof glass. But how would the microbes, the germs or the viruses get from the point of origin to the laboratory for study and analysis? We were guaranteed that it would be done by Brinks armoured car. There would be three of them in a row and only one would be carrying the product; the other two would be dummies to fool terrorists, et cetera.

There is an incident I would like the member to comment on in the context of how important it is to have community involvement. It turns out there was a car accident on the corner of Arlington and Logan, right near the virology lab, involving a FedEx truck. Out of the back of the FedEx truck popped a bunch of vials of anthrax and Newcastle disease and all these deadly microbes that were on their way to the virology lab.

It turns out that in spite of the commitment and the promises that were made to us that the highest safety protocol would be used, anthrax was being shipped by FedEx. The pimple faced kid who was driving the FedEx truck drove it into a pole and the stuff spilled out into the street. That is not the highest security and safety protocol. What is next, Ebola by bicycle? There was anthrax by FedEx, so there might as well be Ebola by bicycle courier because that is about as secure as these materials are.

The Chief Public Health Officer has an obligation and a duty to oversee epidemics and runaway viruses to quarantined areas, but surely he has a duty and an obligation to listen to the best interests of the people in the community as well.