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

[Jim Prentice, Conservative, Calgary Centre-North, AB]

moved that Bill C-42, An Act to amend the Quarantine Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to begin the debate in the House today on Bill C-42, An Act to amend the Quarantine Act.

The new Quarantine Act received royal assent on May 13, 2005 and recently came into force on December 12, 2006. It replaces existing quarantine legislation which contains many outdated authorities.

The modernization of the Quarantine Act addresses urgent issues with respect to the spread of communicable diseases in Canada and abroad. It modernizes existing legislation that dates back to 1872 by providing new tools to manage serious emerging public health threats.

It also represents a complementary step in a series of legislative initiatives to strengthen Canada's public health system which also includes the creation of the Public Health Agency of Canada and the Office of the Public Health Officer.

Due to the priority placed on this legislation, the Quarantine Act received royal assent with the understanding that a period of time following royal assent would be used to develop and put in place the implementation tools that would ensure proper application and enforcement of the act.

While trying to develop a regulation related to section 34, it became apparent that the section would not operate as intended. Section 34 obligates operators of commercial conveyances, such as marine vessels and air carriers, to report any death or illness of public health concern on board prior to arrival in Canada.

This advance notice is critically important to federal officials as it permits an appropriate response to health emergencies on board various vehicles. Further, it permits the minister to better assess whether to order the diversion of a conveyance to an alternate landing site in Canada if required to protect the health and safety of Canadians.

In its current wording, section 34 requires a report to be made directly to a destination authority situated at the nearest entry point in Canada.

As mentioned, the development of a regulation was necessary to support the designation of an appropriate authority.

The current wording of section 34 in the new Quarantine Act is problematic for three reasons.

First, in the event of a health emergency on board a conveyance, an operator may be unable to determine which of the many Canadian entry points is nearest at the time of reporting. In practice, this may lead to delays in reporting and hinder an appropriate and timely response.

Second, the authority designated by the minister may not actually be situated at an entry point. As defined in the new Quarantine Act, an entry point is a place where a customs office is located or a point in Canada designated by the minister.

The most appropriate authority to handle important public health information is a quarantine officer, a federal nurse or a medical practitioner with public health experience who is trained and designated by the minister. Like other authorities, they are not necessarily situated at every single entry point to Canada, which would include smaller ports or seaports and so on.

Finally, the current wording in section 34 implies direct reporting. It does not take into account intermediaries who may have a role to play in receiving and transmitting important public health information on behalf of a conveyance operator. For example, a pilot will likely call the company dispatch centre first before a report is formally made to the responsible public health authority.

For those very reasons, there is a need for a minor and technical amendment to the current wording used in section 34. The new wording for section 34 requires operators of conveyances in the air and marine community to report an illness of public health concern or death on board as soon as possible to a quarantine officer before the conveyance arrives at its destination in Canada.

At this point in time it does not bind the operator of land conveyances to the same advance reporting obligation. If necessary, the new wording offers the minister the flexibility to preserve other conveyances. This would most likely happen in the event of a large scale outbreak that escalated in a way that was not necessarily predictable.

Limiting reporting obligations to the marine and air community supports a risk management approach.

First, approximately 94% of international flights arrive in Canada through six international airports where there are established quarantine stations and the presence of a quarantine officer. They are Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax, though there are other airports as well.

Second, it is easier for conveyance operators of a bus or train to have a sick traveller disembark in order to attend the nearest medical facility before the conveyance reaches the Canadian border. In addition, issues of a public health concern may be captured at points of entry when sick travellers and conveyances are processed for admittance into Canada.

Under the new act, travellers would have a duty to provide certain public health information and to answer any questions posed by a screening officer, such as a Canada Border Services Agency official or a quarantine officer. It is also important to note that under the previous quarantine legislation there was no requirement for land conveyances to report in advance. Thus, the new legislative framework maintains the status quo for the scope of advance reporting obligations.

While the bill is before Parliament to address a technical issue with the current wording in section 34, this government committed to bringing the new act into force without section 34. This approach provides federal officials, screening officers, quarantine officers and environmental health officers with access to new and strengthened authorities.

Now that the new act is in force, existing quarantine regulations have been repealed with the exceptions of sections 12 and 19. These two sections maintain existing advance reporting obligations to be met by conveyance operators. In essence, this is a stop gap measure until the bill completes the parliamentary review process.

Given the simple nature of this wording issue and the importance of having a complete and comprehensive act in place, it is essential that all parties cooperate to ensure that this minor and technical amendment passes swiftly through both Houses.

Moving forward with this bill in a timely manner reaffirms this government's commitment to public health renewal and the ongoing pandemic planning efforts. Furthermore, it underscores the priority this government has placed on the safety and security of all Canadians.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member has laid out the specifics of the bill. However, since we are talking about the Quarantine Act, I was interested to learn that four persons at the Mississauga Trillium Hospital in my riding have died as a consequence of that viral strain that killed some 200 people in Quebec. I understand samples have been sent to Winnipeg for analysis. We are very hopeful that this will not be a serious situation.

It is quite coincidental but very appropriate with the Quarantine Act being established and the problems that occurred during the SARS epidemic and the work done since then. This raises a question. What else have we done and learned from, for instance, the SARS situation, particularly in the Toronto area, that may have necessitated a review of the Quarantine Act?

Has there been any review of the Quarantine Act since those events that would give Canadians some comfort that the appropriate steps for the safety, security and well-being of Canadians is being protected and, as the member indicates, is a priority of the government?

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I assume the member is talking about the virus C difficile.

In any case, the government has taken significant steps to ensure the public health of Canadians is protected. We have approved and expedited the Quarantine Act which was reviewed at the health committee in the previous Parliament.

More than that, we brought forward Bill C-5, the Public Health Agency of Canada Act, which I believe was the first bill the government voted on and approved. It brings into play many protections for Canadians, not the least of which is a chief public health officer who has the powers of a deputy minister and is the head of the Public Health Agency, as well as Canada's chief public health authority. He is able to provide direction, not only to government but to the public with a credible scientific background.

Moreover, the member raised the issue of SARS. We are very fortunate in this country to have a health minister who was actually the health minister in Ontario at the time of the SARS crisis. He also has a very unique background of being not only a provincial health minister but now the federal health minister. He certainly understands the issue of public health, the challenges of SARS and other similar potential public health emergencies.

The minister has been able to create an environment between the provinces, territories and the federal government that is very conducive to bridge building with all the communities and stakeholders necessary to ensure that Canada has the best public health protection possible.

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary gave a good outline of what the Quarantine Act is about and what the proposed amendments will do. However, I noticed that he talked a great deal about quarantining individuals who might be carrying a disease, which is the way most Canadians think of quarantine. They think of people being quarantined in their domiciles because they are infectious.

The parliamentary secretary did not talk very much about the other aspect of the bill, which is cargo coming into this country. Could he explain to us how this bill affects cargo coming by air, by ship or by land transportation such as rail or truck?

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for her many years as chair of the health committee, including the time the committee looked at the Quarantine Act. I was the opposition health critic at that time.

The Quarantine Act, along with other legislation that is available to the government, does allow the government to take the necessary action to protect the public interest in a wide range of scenarios, not the least of which is what we are discussing today.

The problem with the legislation as it now stands is, for example, if a plane is flying over Canadian territory, let us say it is flying from London to Toronto, and there is a public health issue and the nearest port of entry is Goose Bay or St. John's, Newfoundland, technically that plane would need to land there rather than complete its trip and go to Toronto where there may be more appropriate facilities and resources to deal with the situation.

This is really a technical amendment to expedite a public health situation or a quarantine situation. In the spirit of ensuring that the public health of Canadians is protected, I hope the member and her party and the other parties in the House will support this technical amendment so the public health of Canadians will be protected.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I wanted to look at the news story. The Deputy Chief Coroner in Ontario has already suggested that these Mississauga cases could be linked to the ones in Sault Ste. Marie, confirming at least--

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Order. Unfortunately, I must interrupt. I invite the hon. member for Mississauga South to finish asking his question the next time this bill comes up for debate.

The House resumed from February 28 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.

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in recent years several significant public health threats, such as SARS, West Nile virus and avian influenza, have prompted both the medical community and policy makers to work together to better respond to public health threats.

Responding to the SARS outbreak, the Liberal government of 2003 established the National Advisory Committee on SARS and Public Health. The committee's mandate was to provide a “third party assessment of current public health efforts and lessons learned for ongoing and future infectious disease control”.

Chaired by Dr. David Naylor, the committee recommended several legislative changes to better address risks of emerging or re-emerging public health threats. One of those recommendations was to update the existing quarantine legislation, which had remained largely unchanged since 1872.

In October 2004 the Liberal government acted upon these recommendations and introduced the new Quarantine Act. It received royal assent in May 2005 and most of the bill came into force this past December.

The new act enables the federal government to respond more effectively to disease outbreaks. While each province and territory has its respective public health or emergency preparedness legislation in place, which includes the ability to isolate or detain individuals who pose a risk to public health, the new Quarantine Act enables the federal government to apply public health measures at Canadian borders in order to prevent the spread of communicable diseases entering Canada or other countries. It complements provincial and territorial health legislation that deals with provincial-territorial borders.

The act also helps Canada meet its international obligations as a signatory to the World Health Organization's revised international health regulations. These regulations aim to ensure maximum security against the international spread of disease with minimum interference with the global movement of people. These WHO regulations are scheduled to come into effect in June of this year.

More specifically, the Quarantine Act contains provisions to divert aircraft to alternate landing sites, to designate quarantine facilities at any location in Canada, and to prevent entry to Canada of travellers who represent an imminent and severe public health risk.

The bill also created two new classes of officials: environmental health officers and screening officers. These officials, along with quarantine officers, oversee the screening assessment and, if necessary, the detention of people, vessels, goods and cargo that represent a public health risk. The presence of these officers strengthens national preparedness for future potential public health risks, including an influenza pandemic.

The bill we discuss today, Bill C-42, proposes to amend the Quarantine Act by doing three things.

First, it obligates the operators of certain conveyances to report potential health issues to quarantine officers, as opposed to officers designated by the minister as stipulated in the act at present. I have no problem with this.

Second, it requires conveyance operators to report to a quarantine officer “as soon as possible” before entering and departing from Canada. This is distinct from the current act, which stipulates that reporting be done simply before entering or departing the country. Again, I do not find this problematic.

However, it is the main amendment proposed within Bill C-42 that I have concerns about. As the act is currently written, the operators of commercial air, water and ground transport are obligated to report when they are carrying a person who has died or have reasonable grounds to suspect that any person or cargo they are carrying could cause the spread of communicable disease.

However, Bill C-42 proposes to restrict this reporting requirement to aircraft and commercial watercraft only. This means that the huge volume of truck and rail traffic and cargo that crosses our border each day would be exempt from these reporting requirements.

As we all know, disease-carrying cargo and passengers pose the same health threats to Canadians, irrespective of the mode of transport by which they enter the country. Therefore, I do not understand the logic behind an amendment that seeks to narrow the scope of those required to inform Canadian officials of real or suspected health threats. It would appear to me that it creates a gaping hole in our strategy to protect the health of Canadians.

I must say that I find this very odd considering the extreme measures the government is prepared to take to ward off other threats it perceives to our physical safety. Just last month, the government tried to extend the two sunset clauses within the Anti-terrorism Act that empowered authorities to detain suspected terrorists without charge, subject to release on strict bail conditions, and to permit police to force witnesses to testify in a closed court before a judge. Those measures ran counter to the basic legal rights we all share and which have served our nation well.

It is instructive, too, that the Supreme Court of Canada recently ruled against the related security certificate measures which, similarly, allowed authorities to indefinitely detain foreign-born nationals without charge and without making public any evidence against them.

As the government well knows, the Anti-terrorism Act was drafted at a time when North American was under extreme duress and reeling from the events of 9/11. Security issues had jumped to the top of America's priority list. There was both internal and external pressure for Canada to tighten its security detection and enforcement measures.

However, it was also recognized that the preservation of civil rights is absolutely fundamental to our democracy and that it is precisely at times of stress that our commitment to civil rights is most important.

That is why the Anti-terrorism Act was drafted to ensure those clauses that withdrew longstanding fundamental civil rights were only temporary measures. It is to the great credit of the House that we had the foresight to sunset these contentious clauses, thereby forcing a sober second thought at a future date, a date which came just recently.

I find it disturbing that an issue as important as the basic charter rights of Canadians was treated in such a highly partisan and highly politicized manner by our Prime Minister in the debate surrounding the Anti-terrorism Act. I would like to address a few of the misleading ways in which the Prime Minister attempted to frame this important issue for Canadians.

As noted above, the original Anti-terrorism Act included sunset provisions in order to ensure that the measures I have outlined were reviewed again under less emotional circumstances. That is precisely what happened.

Both parliamentary and Senate committees reviewed the act. In neither case did they recommend renewing the sunset provisions as is. The Prime Minister would have us believe that these committees had fully endorsed the sunset clauses when in fact they had not. In both cases, in both houses, committees recommended various revisions to the act to ensure that proper checks were in place, checks that would counter the potential for abuse that the two sunset clauses posed.

After the committees reported, there was ample time for the Prime Minister to act upon their recommendations, but he chose not to do so. He chose to ignore these inconvenient truths when framing this discussion before the media and in the House.

Instead, he turned what should have been a very important and sober discussion around fundamental human rights into rancorous partisan gamesmanship, which brought the level of discourse in Canadian politics to a new low. He also impugned the reputation of a member of the House in an audacious effort to imply that the Liberal position on the sunset clauses was formulated in order to protect the family of a sitting member from participating in an Air-India investigation.

This was and is ludicrous. The Prime Minister's refusal to apologize reveals a hubris that is quite extraordinary and is evidence of a value system that places personal political ambitions over a respect for truth or respect for others.

The Prime Minister also claimed the Liberals were flip-flopping on the Anti-terrorism Act, when he and his colleagues know full well that the insertion of the sunset clauses at the beginning of the process was designed by the Liberals to allow these clauses to expire. The Liberal position is completely in accord with the intent of the original bill.

However, if the Prime Minister wants to know what a real flip-flop looks like, he need look no further than his own income trust tax policy: now that was a flip-flop.

Next in the Prime Minister's plan was to dredge up the old tactic of accusing one's opponents of being soft on terror. This is a very odd accusation given that it was the Liberal government that brought in the Anti-terrorism Act in the first place. Perhaps another way of looking at this recent fiasco would be to consider the Prime Minister tough on human rights.

This is the other side of the coin that the Conservatives never want to discuss. Their actions, however, speak louder than words. The cancellation of the court challenges program, which was a key instrument in protecting civil rights, the cuts to funding for advocacy groups and the cuts to literacy training, all while politicizing the process of judge selection, are but a few examples of their policies in action.

The Prime Minister also tried to portray the Liberal Party as being deeply divided on the issue of the sunset clauses. Of the 101 Liberal caucus members, only a few expressed an interest in reviewing the clauses and most of these were only in favour of doing so if they were accompanied by offsetting amendments to ensure that the provisions could not be abused. This could hardly be seen as a major fissure.

What it does reveal, however, is that the Liberal Party is an open and inclusive party in which all members have a say and a healthy exchange of views is in fact encouraged. This, of course, is in contrast to the iron fist with which the Conservative cabinet and caucus are ruled. One does not need to take much time to decide which process fosters the best long-reaching policies.

Lastly, the Prime Minister tried to create the impression in the minds of Canadians that allowing the sunset clauses to expire would in some way impinge upon the ability of the RCMP to continue its investigation of the Air-India disaster. Once again, this is a politically motivated distortion that is simply unsubstantiated by the facts.

The RCMP has been investigating the Air-India accident for decades. For over five years now, RCMP members have had the Anti-terrorism Act at their disposal, and in over five years not once did they choose to use either of the two sunset clauses. I repeat: not once in over five years did the RCMP members feel they needed to use either of the two provisions that the House has now allowed to expire.

Furthermore, there have been close to 450 public inquiries in Canadian history, several of which have dealt with tragedies and legal issues of various sorts, yet never has there been a request for broader police powers by the chairs of these inquiries. They simply are not needed. Yet according to Mr. Harper, the nation's security is in imminent danger--

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Oakville is quite experienced in this House and knows not to use the proper names of other members, but only their titles or the names of their ridings.

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

I withdraw that, Mr. Speaker.

The Prime Minister is giving us the idea that the nation's security is in imminent danger and that only these clauses could have saved it.

I would like to turn back to Bill C-42 now and revisit the contradiction between this and the Conservative position on health risks, risks, I might add, that are much more a threat to the general population than those risks posed by terrorists.

It seems apparent to me that the reduced reporting requirements proposed in Bill C-42 will expose Canadians to the introduction of diseases and, as such, it cannot be supported in its current form.

I do recognize, however, that the Quarantine Act as currently enacted may require some modification in order to ensure that its provisions can be practically implemented and enforced. However, I believe it is important that provisions be made to ensure that cargo shipped across the border, both by rail and by truck, is subject to reporting regulations similar to those required of commercial air and water operators.

I would like to work with the government in ensuring that appropriate amendments to Bill C-42 can be made, enabling the creation of a more robust Quarantine Act.

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

Mr. Speaker, I commend the hon. member for her comments. There is irony in the member's statement in regard to the Anti-terrorism Act.

Mr. Speaker, there seems to be a ringing in the audio equipment. I always seem to get ringing in my ears when I listen to Liberals. They are sometimes hard to discern.

Having said that, the member may want to reflect on the Liberals' position on the Anti-terrorism Act. On one hand they say that the two provisions are not necessary, and on the other hand they say they are necessary and that is demonstrated by the fact that the bill was introduced by the Liberal Party in the first place. For them to flip-flop on that is disappointing. We have heard that debate many times before. I am surprised the member brought it up on Bill C-42, and on that note I will focus my comments on Bill C-42.

The main thrust of the member's concern is in regard to why land travel is not included in the act. In fact, it is included in the amendments to the act. I refer the member to section 34(1), which reads:

This section applies to the operator of any of the following conveyances:

(a) a watercraft or aircraft that is used in the business of carrying persons or cargo; and

(b) a prescribed conveyance.

The term “a prescribed conveyance” can be applied to the method of travel that the member is concerned about . There is less of a risk from land travel, but it is in fact addressed in the act.

With the knowledge that section 34(b) applies to any conveyance that in the future might be considered a high risk, be it a bus, train or whatever, will the member with that knowledge reconsider her position?

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary in responding to my remarks made a statement that I find quite surprising. He said that there is less of a risk from land travel. I did not know that bacteria and viruses chose air and water travel over land travel. It would seem to me that the greatest volume of traffic entering our country comes by land.

Perhaps he means there is only one country from which people and cargo come into Canada by land and that is the United States, whereas we receive ships and airplanes from all over the world. Is he trying to imply there is less risk with people and cargo coming from the United States, or is this absence of reporting requirement for land travel simply a suggestion that our best friends and neighbours should not really need to report, whereas people from further afield should? I do not know. I just know it does not make sense to me, because I do not think germs and viruses really care which way they come into the country.

On my reference to the Anti-terrorism Act which I used in my remarks, it has been a long-held belief of mine that it is the government's main job to protect the personal security of Canadian citizens. The Canadians with whom I speak have far more worry and anxiety over two other sources that threaten their security.

One is the impact of some of these extreme weather events, the results of which most of us have watched on television, whether it was hurricane Katrina, the tsunami, or various other things, which I think is what has been the impetus behind our attempts to stop global warming.

The other thing Canadians are very worried about is the arrival in their midst of new diseases for which there are no vaccines or cures and which might spread quickly through the population. We have put a name to that, a pandemic influenza, but we know that is simply a label which is current. There could be many different kinds of diseases. The idea of a new quarantine act is as important to Canadians in protecting their health and well-being and their futures as is the anti-terrorism legislation. They are all pieces of a puzzle that are put in place by responsible governments to protect citizens.

That is why I felt quite free to use what I saw as a contradiction between the extreme measures of anti-terrorism legislation and activities and the extreme amount of money put into those things, as compared to the efforts and the money put into protecting us against disease, which threatens our health, and extreme weather events, which threaten our health, our lives and our property.

Perhaps that will explain to the parliamentary secretary why I chose to use that example.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I would like the member to comment on the fine balance between human rights and personal liberties and security.

The parliamentary secretary shocked me by seeming to suggest that in spite of the fact that Parliament had called for a five year review for the very reason of ensuring that balance was in tune, that that was not important. We saw that the Conservatives made that insinuation this week during discussions on prisoners in Afghanistan.

The member has been a great champion of this during her time in Parliament. I wonder if she could comment on the importance of maintaining the fine balance between human liberties, human rights and security.

[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.

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I was not here when that happened, but it seems that the hon. member had asked for a plane maintenance centre and something else landed in his riding that was not what was actually requested.

By the way, the lab to which the hon. member referred does superb work. I want to congratulate the people who work there. It is a very challenging job. The hon. member is right that they work with highly contagious and life-threatening diseases.

I did not hear of the incident that the hon. member mentioned. I will certainly raise the question with the Chief Public Health Officer.

At the time that the chicken farms were being cleared out in British Columbia and other parts of Canada, great care was taken. Neighbours and schools in the area were extremely concerned about the waste material, not only about where it would go, but how it would be collected. They were concerned about whether it would it be wind driven or otherwise disseminated around the neighbourhood.

People in the member's community have every right to know that not only will the viruses and microbes be treated safely when they are inside the building, but also that they will be transported safely.

There have been all kinds of discussions about transportation of hazardous materials up and down the coasts of our country. Certainly on the west coast, the transportation of very dangerous materials by water up and down the coast is a subject of almost constant discussion.

It is not just the people in the hon. member's community that should be concerned. I would assume that the microbes and viruses are being transported across the country to the lab in Winnipeg. It is a Canadian service doing a service for Canadian people. Everybody deserves to know that it is being done safely, not only at source, but along the way.

I will raise that particular incident with the Chief Public Health Officer. I will ask him what the responsibility is of his office. I will get back to the member.

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I would ask you to seek unanimous consent that notwithstanding any Standing Order or special order, the debate scheduled to take place later today on the motion to concur in the 11th report of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food be deemed to have already taken place, the question deemed put, and a recorded division deemed requested and deferred to the end of government orders on Wednesday, March 28.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Does the hon. member have the unanimous consent of the House to move this motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for her unique contribution to Bill C-42. It is easy to simply read legislative notes or extracts of the bill, but to bring some firsthand experience is always very helpful.

When we think about it, the bill exists as a consequence of events that transpired in Canada in recent years having to do with SARS, West Nile virus, avian flu. Indeed in responding to the SARS outbreak, a special committee was put together to make recommendations on how we could better respond. One of Dr. Naylor's recommendations and the committee's recommendation was to update the Quarantine Act.

That was back in 2003-04. It is now March 2007 and I would have thought that public health and safety in regard to possible pandemics of flu or other risks to the Canadian public would have been a higher priority for the government. I am wondering why after 14 months we are still only at second reading on a bill that should have been here in the first place.

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my general experience is that if governments want bills brought forth quickly because they are important, they bring them forth quickly.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-42. It is an important bill.

I have had the opportunity to be a member of the Standing Committee on Health and to work on a number of issues which relate to public health and safety. I participated on a committee with regard to HIV-AIDS. There was quite an education for all members of Parliament who had that opportunity.

As I indicated in the question that I posed to the hon. member who just spoke, recent events in Canada's history in fact are the reason Bill C-42 is now before us. The significant public health threats that I am referring to are the SARS outbreak, the West Nile virus, the avian influenza. They have prompted the medical community and policy makers to work together to respond in a better fashion to public health threats.

If we were to look at the results of the assessment of how the SARS situation was responded to, we would find there were very serious problems. Many of those problems were related specifically to the lack of preparedness. There was a lack of a number of procedures which would normally be in place, as any reasonable person would consider with regard to public health and safety matters.

When I talk about the Government of Canada of the day, I am talking more specifically about the departmental part of the government. When we talk about the Government of Canada, sometimes people look at it solely in the context of the party that currently forms the governing party. The Government of Canada is an enormous institution with enormous responsibilities involved in virtually every aspect of Canadian life.

If we were to look at some of the history, we would find that virtually every department of the Government of Canada, every bureaucracy, had a website section on SARS updates. That has to tell us something about the way the machinery of government looked at things in approaching an issue such as SARS. There were, I believe, 17 different websites that Canadians were asked to look at if they wanted an update. If it was industry, the government had an industry perspective. If it was health, obviously it was health related issues. Seventeen different websites were established in the Government of Canada.

That tells us that within the culture of the bureaucracy there seems to be a lack of continuity, a lack of cooperation and a lack of sharing of information. Continuity, cooperation and information sharing are vital in terms of national emergencies as they relate to public health and safety issues. In this case that we are debating, with regard to health issues, they are extremely important.

In responding to the SARS outbreak, the government of the day established a national advisory committee on SARS and public health. Its mandate was to provide a third party assessment of the current public health efforts and lessons learned relating to ongoing and future infectious disease control. That committee was chaired by Dr. David Naylor.

The committee made several recommendations for legislative changes to better address the risks emerging from public health threats. One of those recommendations back when that group was started in 2003 was to make amendments to the Quarantine Act. As a consequence of the SARS outbreak, it was detected that there were circumstances created in which public health and safety were not protected to the appropriate extent that one would expect.

The good news is that Dr. Naylor did his job. The bad news is that we are here in 2007, some two or three years later, and a bill of this importance is still at a very early stage in the legislative process. We have to ask ourselves why that is. Why is it that when we have an important issue it does not get priority?

In fact, there is an explanation, and it also shows what can happen when in fact we do move too quickly on a bill. What happened as a consequence of the recommendations was that a bill was brought forward. That bill was passed and received royal assent, but one of the things we found was that the bill passed by Parliament in some haste was inoperative in some respects.

As a consequence, we now have before us Bill C-42, which is going to correct the inoperative provisions and in fact bring that recommendation to fruition in terms of a complete piece of legislation that is going to better address the needs of Canadians.

The modernization of this act addresses urgent issues because the act that was passed and given royal assent was inoperative in some aspects, and the act obviously is in respect to communicable diseases in Canada and abroad.

It also represents a complementary step, one that we may want to revisit, but the reality is that there was a series of legislative initiatives to strengthen Canada's public health system. We do not have a comprehensive way of dealing with public health and safety issues. We have a series of things. We tend to chunk things down into smaller pieces.

I can make an assessment of or give an opinion on whether or not those legislative initiatives in fact represent the most efficient mode in terms of legislative productivity or effectiveness, but notwithstanding that, we do have a number of legislative initiatives to strengthen Canada's public health system, initiatives that also include the creation of the Public Health Agency of Canada and the Office of the Chief Public Health Officer.

Having been a member of the health committee and even having had private members' initiatives, I had at one point recommended the creation of something akin to the U.S. Surgeon General. I thought that we should in fact have a physician general of Canada, the reason being that over the years Health Canada has become involved in a broad range of very controversial issues and has become somewhat of a political football when it suits people's needs.

When we have activists, I think of things like the hepatitis C issue, the blood issue, and the reproductive technologies issues, where there is a political debate about the propriety of making certain legislative changes or initiatives. Health Canada as an organization has become somewhat politicized by the various activities that have gone on, not by its own choice, but certainly that has affected, I would suggest, the public's perception of Health Canada and what Health Canada represents and can do for Canadians.

I can recall visiting the U.S. Surgeon General's website on many occasions. If members were to do that, one of the things they would find is that there are sections for young people, for children and youth. There is another section for seniors, a section for women and so on. If there are health and safety issues related to a particular demographic, there is a portal to go through. It is very user friendly.

That same kind of user-friendliness would not be found at the Health Canada website. People have concerns about issues that come out, whether it be how they protect themselves against infectious diseases or what a quarantine means. For example, Mississauga's Trillium Hospital just had a significant outbreak of C. difficile. People died of the most serious and dangerous strain of C. difficile. What were they doing about it, people ask, and how do they find out about it?

We know that hospitals and the delivery of health services are through the provinces, but the Government of Canada has a broader responsibility because sometimes we have these breakouts of infectious diseases. It was shown that the particular cases in Mississauga were related to the very serious outbreak that took place in Quebec. Now we have found out that there has been a migration, in one way or another, from Quebec to Mississauga and in fact to northern Ontario, where some cases of this particular deadly strain of C. difficile have been found.

This, as we can imagine, would raise a lot of questions for ordinary Canadians about their safety and security. They want to know if they have to be concerned about going to those hospitals. Answers to such questions would be found at the U.S. Surgeon General's site, but we would not find the answers at Health Canada's site. As a matter of fact, we would find it very difficult to navigate that site.

If Health Canada is monitoring the debate on this bill, I would suggest that it have a very careful look at the user-friendliness of its website. In recent years there have been some serious problems with regard to contagious diseases and the kinds of things that may be transported in a number of fashions, but I am not sure that on Health Canada's public website we would find what we are doing and how we are caring for Canadians' best interests.

If that is the case, and I believe it is, then this bill is not going to really be as effective as it could be, because we do not have the linkage to deal with Canadians directly in plain and simple language to give them the assurances they are looking for.

I raise this because it is an important issue. It is very likely that these are going to be continuing occurrences. Certainly the West Nile and the avian flu are not going away. I suspect that C. difficile is not going away. I suspect that SARS, whatever it is, is not going away in terms of the possibility of it being migrated into Canada. There are things that we do have to protect ourselves.

In terms of looking at the bill in some specificity, one thing members will note is that it creates two classes of officials, environmental health officers and screening officers. These officials, along with quarantine officers, oversee the screening, assessment and, if necessary, the detention of people, vessels, goods and cargo that represent a public health risk. The presence of these officers strengthens our national preparedness, obviously, for future potential public health risks, including an influenza pandemic.

As we can see, the bill in itself is not terribly complicated, but it does have a couple of issues associated with it that make the current bill, which did receive royal assent, operable. That would be a good thing to do. It would have been a good thing to do at the beginning of Parliament, not 14 months after an election.

With all due respect, I question very seriously whether or not the government has its eye on the ball for the safety and security and priorities of Canadians, particularly when we see some of the things that are on the table. We have been jumping around all over the place. In fact, one thing we see, and which has been discussed in this place many times, is a series of justice bills, and every one of those bills is a very discrete item that has an amendment to the Criminal Code of Canada.

In past Parliaments, we have come forward with omnibus bills. There are a number of initiatives that could be amended or updated in the Criminal Code and they could have been brought forward, but politically it looks a lot better if we bring in 10 bills to do something that could be done in one, because then members can say, “Look how active we have been”.

What it does, and this is the real shame, is grind the system to a halt. The justice committee can do only so much work. It can deal with only so many bills at a time. It has to work through these bills, but many of the same witnesses will be there over and over again. I think Canadians should know that there is a little bit of game playing going on in terms of the legislative process. I am sure that we will hear more about this in the coming days.

I want to also comment on the principal provision, which is an amendment to section 34 of the current Quarantine Act. As I have indicated, the Quarantine Act had initially been part of the health protection legislative renewal package, but this new bill has to provide some technical amendments to bring into order section 34 of the Quarantine Act, which has already received royal assent.

More specifically, on section 34 of the Quarantine Act, clause 1 proposed amendments to section 34 and established the duty of operators of certain conveyances to report to authorities: (a) any reasonable grounds to suspect that persons, cargo or other things on board could cause the spreading of communicable disease listed in the schedule appended to the bill; (b) if a person on board has died; or (c) any prescribed circumstance that exists.

When we look through the rest of the bill, we see a couple of other cleanup items, which effectively relate to the reporting responsibilities of the operator of the vessel. Indeed, it basically means reporting to the point of nearest entry, but there are some circumstances. For instance, if a plane going from London to Toronto had a problem on board, it probably would land in Newfoundland, the nearest point of landing.

Interestingly enough, and some people may wonder why, there is a proviso in the bill as the legislation now stands that the reporting obligations are limited to marine and air community supports. The rationale is that approximately 94% of international flights arrive in Canada through six international airports where there are established quarantine stations and the presence of a quarantine officer. They are Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax, although there are as well other airports that have such facilities.

Finally, the bill has an amendment to schedule which in fact lists the various matters that are subject to be reported under this bill. Clause 5 provides that the proposed amendment to section 34 comes into force on the day that Bill C-42, this bill, comes into force.

I believe we are going to find that there is support from all parties for this bill, but knowing that a particular bill was rushed through and had some technical problems, it bears repeating that there should be some concern that such a bill could not have been brought forward to the House in a more expeditious fashion to show the true priority that Canadians place on public safety and health.

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague a question. This legislation that the member told us about in the last few minutes is extremely important to prevent certain pandemics.

Why does he think that it took so long—14 months after the beginning of this new Parliament—to develop this bill and to introduce it in the House?

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think parliamentarians should reassess. There are certain things that happen in this place and we wonder why. There have been so many changes on the order paper even with regard to important justice bills.

The government has, for instance, suggested that someone is delaying the agenda of their items. Yet, when we ask for unanimous consent for some of the bills, for which all parties support, to have them deemed complete at all stages and referred to the Senate so it can go through the next legislative process, the government disagrees or denies unanimous consent. It plays games. We were supposed to debate a couple of those justice bills today. We are not. We are somewhere else.

I thank the member for raising this. I believe it is disrespectful of not only the hon. members in terms of their preparatory work to participate in debate in the House, but it is a reflective of a lack of vision of priorities set by the government.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Mississauga South for his expansive and wide-ranging overview of Bill C-42. I know my colleague is a long-standing and well respected member of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health. His contributions to this debate have been invaluable.

I was particularly interested in an aside he introduced, which was the notion that perhaps Canada would benefit from a public health officer or a senior health official along the lines of the American surgeon general. There is merit in this even in the context of Bill C-42.

It struck me, as my colleague suggested, that there is very little way for the people of Canada to deal with Health Canada. There is no way to get there. There is no conduit or advocacy. There is no particular way that we can access Health Canada even though it is a behemoth of an institution, which does not administer a single hospital. That is the jurisdiction of the provinces.

In the United States the surgeon general plays a valuable role in providing information and providing a conduit or a mechanism. One of the things that could be addressed by an institution like a Canadian version of the surgeon general is the public health as it pertains to quarantines, although we do have a national Chief Public Health Officer.

In the protection of people from being exposed to harmful elements, be they germs or chemicals or other products, we need to be minimizing that exposure in some coordinated way. A lot of people would be shocked to learn that the greatest industrial killer in the world is asbestos and Canada is the second leading producer and exporter of asbestos in the world.

Quarantine is the idea of isolating people who are ill so others are not exposed to this harm. We need to take a different approach with other harmful elements, asbestos most notably, to try to isolate and minimize the exposure of Canadians to it. However, the Canadian government has just introduced new regulations that expressly allow asbestos to be put into children's toys, for heaven's sake. It is trying to make the case that asbestos is so benign, so friendly and good for us, I suppose is the argument, that it says it should go into drywall mud, which people have to sand in order to finish, and they get exposed to it. I get frustrated when I think of it.

If the purpose of the debate today is to minimize exposure to harm, we should have a much bigger debate on minimizing exposure to harm in all kinds of contexts. If we are to really address the public health, the single greatest industrial killer the world has ever known is asbestos. More people die from asbestos than all other industrial causes combined. Yet we promote it, we flog it, we dump it internationally into third world countries. It makes me furious to think about this.

Even though it is a little bit off topic, would my colleague address the idea of perhaps this being one of the roles this new Canadian surgeon general could play? I am meeting with the deputy surgeon general of the United States this weekend in Philadelphia, at the Drexel University College of Medicine, to talk about asbestos and the role he is playing nationally and internationally to ban this product forever. Canada should follow the rest of the world and ban it as well.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his kind remarks. The issue that came to mind during the SARS was that Health Canada had to establish 17 different websites or so to provide information, updates and ongoing information to interested stakeholders. It does not make sense. It is not pragmatic and it is not workable.

At that point, I remember putting forward a private member's motion. It called on the government to establish the position of physician general of Canada, who would be the principal public contact.

The House may recall the big debate about women' s hormone therapy and whether it was advisable. We can imagine how women were concerned about who was telling the truth. Self breast examination was another one, about whether it was useful. Now we have changes in things like the resuscitation techniques. Should we use the mouth or things like that?

There is no mechanism within Health Canada now to opine on that, to say in plain and simple language to Canadians, who are interested in doing the right thing or getting information from people who they believe are people of integrity, respect and professionalism, who will give them good information.

Those are the kinds of things that may come out of discussions like this. It happens to be linked only to the extent that it was spawned from an infectious disease problem. However, communication to Canadians about the risks of their health, whether it be communicable diseases or industrial risks to Canadian public health and safety, are always relevant in the House.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on Bill C-42, an act to amend the Quarantine Act.

I would like first, though, to make a few comments about what my hon. colleague in the NDP has had to say about the CF-18 maintenance contracts. It is very clear to the Bloc Québécois and all Quebeckers that the Canadian aerospace industry is centered in the Montreal metropolitan area.

When Mr. Mulroney was the Prime Minister, he helped to consolidate this centre by giving it the CF-18 maintenance contract. In the Bloc’s view, this was a perfectly normal thing to do. Southern Ontario, for example, is the heart of the automobile industry.

I would like to say something about asbestos as well. It is true that asbestos is a hazardous product, but it can be used safely, especially in the form of chrysotile asbestos. I always say that it is like water. Water is essential for life, but people can also drown in it. We are able now to use chrysotile asbestos safely. The Standing Committee on International Trade recognized as much a few months ago. So far as I know, even the NDP member voted in favour. I would add that substitute products are just as hazardous to health as chrysotile asbestos.

We are now facing heavy pressure to ban chrysotile asbestos from the lobbies for substitutes for it. We need to work on developing safe uses for chrysotile asbestos. Those were my two preliminary remarks. I noticed that my friend in the NDP took advantage of these questions to raise issues that are hotly debated in Quebec these days.

I want to say something as well about the CF-18s, and then I will get to the heart of the matter. We are currently criticizing the Conservative industry minister because he refuses in the case of the C-17 contracts given to Boeing for Canadian air force planes to require Boeing to ensure that subcontracts are awarded in the greater Montreal metropolitan area in proportion to its weight in the Canadian aerospace industry, that is to say, between 50% and 60%. The federal government made the mistake of spreading the aerospace industry to Winnipeg. I know as well that since Boeing is located in the western United States—especially in Seattle—it will necessarily favour its usual subcontractors.

Various studies including the one done by Yves Bélanger of UQAM show that, if things are left as they are, only 30% of the economic benefits will go to the greater Montreal area. Once again we see a federal government that does not really have Quebec’s interests at heart and that plays on words.

Bill C-42 does not really deal with these issues, even though any discussion about Boeing, planes and aircraft does have something to do with this bill. The bill proposes adjustments and technical amendments to the Quarantine Act passed in 2005, except in the case of one section, section 31, dealing with conveyances.

I believe everyone will agree that the bill before us is rather limited in scope, but it is necessary nevertheless. Like others, I wonder why it has only come up for debate almost a year after its introduction in April 2006. As I was saying, the bill is relatively limited in scope, but it is necessary to reflect the new realities.

I can say at the outset that we, in the Bloc Québécois, support the principle of the bill although we are being extremely vigilant when it comes to areas under Quebec's jurisdiction. Quarantine has to do with health. The Bloc will continue to ensure that Quebec's jurisdiction is respected with regard to health as well as a number of other areas such as education and social solidarity. Speaking of respecting jurisdictions, I will certainly not be the federal government's thurifer.

I will remind members what a thurifer is. I know that the member for Repentigny and you, Mr. Speaker, are aware of that, but perhaps those who are watching us today have forgotten that concept. The thurifer was the cleric holding the thurible, or censer, during religious ceremonies.

Obviously, by extension, a thurifier also refers to someone who flatters. You will understand that I do not wish to play the role of flatterer for the Conservative government when I see that in the budget and in all the policies of the Conservative government they do not respect Quebec’s jurisdiction, despite their fine speeches.

Let me give some examples. In the area of family policy, in the previous budget, they created a new cheque to be paid to Quebec and Canadian families, according to federal criteria, without taking into account Quebec’s family policy, which is extremely progressive. It is not yet fully developed, but since 1998, the Government of Quebec has worked very hard. Here, they not only invaded a field that is the exclusive jurisdiction of Quebec, but, in addition, they did so without taking account of the Quebec reality.

I will give another example that we have been talking about this week during question period. There is an illogical, incomprehensible, and unfounded desire to push ahead with a pan-Canadian securities commission while telling us that it will not be a federal agency. However, when we read what it is all about in the budget, Quebec would have just one seat at the table. Therefore, the rest of Canada would decide how the commission would work, and, obviously, by that very fact, it would weaken the role played by the Montreal Exchange, in Quebec, as a North American financial centre.

That is also a field of jurisdiction that is very clearly spelled out in the constitution as belonging to Quebec. Why are they persisting? It is in the budget, it was in the update from the Minister of Finance and the people of Quebec do not want it, all parties agree, along with the business and securities communities. There is also a reality in Quebec that the Minister of Finance is ignoring, namely that we have two legal systems, the common law and the civil code. That does not exist anywhere else but in Quebec. In addition, as I have already mentioned it cannot be done on constitutional grounds.

Here is another example. In education, the government is creating a federal agency to evaluate foreign credentials. To a large extent, that is the responsibility of professional bodies. The responsibility for education rests with the governments of Quebec and the other provinces. It makes no sense to propose that. What role can the federal government play in declaring whether the credentials of doctors, lawyers, engineers, or psychologists, who belong to professions that fall under the jurisdiction of the Government of Quebec, are valid? Once again, it is the incessant pressure of the federal government—whether it is Liberal or Conservative, only the label changes—that keeps wanting to interfere in the jurisdictions of the provinces and of Quebec.

I will give another example. Page 120 of the budget plan 2007 talks about the Canada Social Transfer, which affects—as you know—not just social solidarity, but also post-secondary education. One of the proposals, one of the objectives of the federal Conservative government, which is supposedly a government that is open to a more flexible federalism, is to identify federal transfer support within the Canada Social Transfer, based on current provincial and territorial spending patterns and existing child care agreements, for each priority area: post-secondary education, social programs and support for families. What is important here is that they talk about increasing the transparency of federal support for these shared priorities. First, these are not shared priorities or shared jurisdictions and, second, the federal government has no business interfering. It transfers money and Quebec and the provinces decide what to do with that money. But no. The government wants to ensure its visibility. This visibility will be achieved at the expense of consistency and Quebec's desire to implement a post-secondary education system that is unique in North America and that responds to the needs and challenges of our society and economy.

We must dispel the myth that the Conservatives are different from the Liberals. Rest assured, we will do our best in the coming months to make that clear.

A little further, on page 130, having to do this time with labour market training, post-secondary education and labour market training being the exclusive jurisdictions of the provinces and Quebec, we read the following:

The government is prepared to consider providing future growth in funding for labour market programs after consultations with provinces and territories on how best to make use of new investments in labour market training and ensure reporting and accountability to Canadians.

In other words, the federal government is telling the provinces it will transfer money to our jurisdictions, will consult with us on the criteria, but we will be accountable and report to it. This in no way respects the jurisdictions of the provinces and Quebec.

This is a centralizing federalism, maybe in a velvet glove, but it is the same centralizing federalism as was practised by the Liberals under Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Jean Chrétien, and now the member for Saint-Laurent—Cartierville.

Job training falls under the jurisdiction of Quebec. The federal government has to recognize this in a number of areas, even though it has retained some components that we would like to see transferred to Quebec, such as the youth component.

This document, the Budget Plan 2007, is riddled with intrusions into areas that are under Quebec's jurisdiction.

As I said, we have to be vigilant, even regarding the Quarantine Act. Certainly in this case we are dealing with amendments that, while they are not cosmetic, are not fundamental. As well, as I also said, the Quarantine Act has existed for an extremely long time—I will be coming back to this—and it needs to be modernized.

We are well aware of the fact that today, just as before and perhaps more than before, because of the means of transportation that have been developed, infectious diseases like SARS and West Nile virus do not stop at borders. The means of transportation can be a ship, a truck or an aircraft. As we know, an aircraft does not just mean an airplane; it can also be a helicopter, or a hot air balloon. And an aircraft can in fact transport contagious diseases. Because of that, we will be supporting the bill in principle.

The adjustments that are proposed in Bill C-42 relate mainly to section 34, as I said earlier, dealing with operators of watercraft and aircraft, but are not limited to them. These amendments are largely technical, and meant to give effect to section 34.

In fact, as I said, when the bill that preceded the Quarantine Act received royal assent, on May 13, 2005, this section 34 was not included. Now, Bill C-42 has been introduced to revive it.

As I said, this act goes back a very long time. In fact, the first Quarantine Act dates from 1872. At that time, of course, when people travelled long distances they mainly travelled by ship, and so the Quarantine Act originally emphasized the marine aspect of travel, and it still does to some extent. This is the heritage that we still see in the present act.

Since we are aware that these days, most travelling is done by airplane, and a lot is by truck, the Quarantine Act and all legislation have to be amended to reflect this fact. I would note that at the time, quarantine was carried out by isolating a ship and the people who had been carried aboard it, along with animals, plants and all goods on board. They were isolated for 40 days—whence the word “quarantine”—to ensure that people coming from countries where there were contagious diseases were not carrying the virus for those diseases.

The proposed legislation would help protect the people of Canada and Quebec from the importation of dangerous and contagious diseases and prevent the spread of these diseases beyond Canada's borders, because the proposed legislation applies to arriving and departing conveyances. It is interesting to note that all the legislation was to have been amended, as I said, to take into account the fact that air transport is much more important than marine transport, or even land transport, in particular for the movement of people. The plan was to amend a whole series of laws to protect the health of Canadians. For example, the Food and Drugs Act, the Hazardous Products Act, and the Radiation Emitting Devices Act were to be replaced by a new Canada Health Protection Act.

There was a terrible breakout of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, in 2003, which hit Toronto particularly hard. The government wanted to act quickly to deal with the most urgent matter. At that point, in 2003, it wanted to amend the Quarantine Act. In 2005, following a process, an amendment was made, but adjustments were still needed. These can be found in Bill C-42.

As I was saying, the bill’s purpose is to complete and update it in order to give effect to section 34, which establishes a requirement for operators of certain kinds of conveyances to inform quarantine officers about any risk or suspected risk that diseases are being spread on their conveyance. This is an extremely important responsibility. Sections 63 and 71 as well as the schedule have also been amended to bring them into line with this new section 34.

Generally speaking, the bill repeals the Quarantine Act and replaces it with legislation intended to prevent the introduction and spreading of contagious diseases. It applies to people and conveyances that enter Canada or are preparing to leave it. As I said, the intent is both to protect us against the outside world and to protect the outside world against any epidemics there might be in one part or another of Canada or Quebec.

The bill provides for certain measures such as screening, health assessment and medical examination of travellers to detect the presence of contagious diseases. It provides as well for certain measures to be taken to prevent the spread of such diseases, such as referral to public health authorities, detention, treatment and disinfestation.

The bill also provides for the inspection and decontamination of conveyances and cargo to ensure that they are not a source of communicable diseases. It determines as well the kinds of inspections that will apply—I admit that this is a bit macabre—to the importing and exporting of human organs and remains, although this too is reality.

In addition, the bill allows personal information to be collected and communicated if necessary to prevent the spread of a communicable disease. Finally, it authorizes the minister to issue orders in case of a public health emergency and to require that certain measures be taken to ensure that the law is enforced.

This in short is the Quarantine Act. What we are discussing, though, is section 34 and the provisions in Bill C-42 that apply to section 34. The current section reads as follows:

Before arriving in Canada, the operator of a conveyance used in a business of carrying persons or cargo, or of any prescribed conveyance, shall report to the authority designated under paragraph 63(b) situated at the nearest entry point any reasonable grounds to suspect that any person, cargo or other thing on board the conveyance could cause the spreading of a communicable disease listed in the schedule; a person on board the conveyance has died; or any prescribed circumstances exist.

That is the report on arrival in Canada.

Subsection 34(2) concerns the report of operators departing from Canada:

Before departing from Canada through a departure point, the operator shall report to the authority designated under paragraph 63(b) situated at the departure point any circumstance referred to in paragraphs (1)(a) to (c) that exists.

As I said, this applies when the operator suspects that part of the merchandise or anything else on board the conveyance may spread a communicable disease.

What will be changed here is the fact that the operator must inform a quarantine officer as soon as possible. The current act says: “the authority designated under paragraph 63(b)”. This bill creates a responsibility and identifies the person responsible. Subsection 34(2) of the act will also be amended as follows:

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

Those are the facts I listed.

Subclause 34(3) reads as follows:

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.

I will conclude with subclause 34(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.

It is clear that these amendments will clarify the obligations of watercraft and aircraft operators before entering or leaving Canada. As I said earlier, the Bloc Québécois will support these amendments.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Windsor West, Foreign Aid; the hon. member for Don Valley East, Status of Women; the hon. member for Laval—Les Îles, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.

[Raymond Gravel, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Joliette, who used the word "thurifier" quite well.

While reading Bill C-42, I was a little concerned by something: if we keep designating certain diseases as communicable, I am afraid that we will exclude and reject certain people.

I recall that, in the 1980s, when I was a young priest, HIV-AIDS was a new disease. I recall how people with AIDS were being treated. They were often rejected by their family and their friends. Even in hospitals, we were prevented from visiting them. I remember having to wear plastic so I could visit them. I think there is always some panic when it is learned that a disease is communicable. I do not know whether this legislation will protect these people, because there are people with AIDS even today. I know that the disease is not as bad as it once was. It cannot be cured, but these people's lives can be extended. However, it is still communicable. I am concerned that, in the legislation, these people will be identified once again, they will be prevented from coming to Canada or from going elsewhere if they travel by air or boat, they will be reported by the operator or the pilot and they will be prevented from travelling. I do not know whether the member for Joliette can enlighten me on this. I believe it is important.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Repentigny for his question.

First, we must situate the Quarantine Act as one of a group of laws that protect human rights. We must also recognize that the prime objective of the act is to prevent the introduction of disease into Canada or Quebec through lack of knowledge of the situation. It is not necessarily to prevent the entry of individuals, but rather to ensure that we are aware of a certain number of situations. Depending on the gravity of the situation, one could clearly prevent a person from entering—that is provided for—or steps could be taken to ensure that the person receives medical treatment or the necessary medical support to ensure that the disease does not spread. That can also be done by information communication.

Having said that, I believe the member is absolutely right. If we take a strictly defensive view of the protection of the Canadian and Quebec population from the onset of communicable disease, we will not get very far. In that respect, it is the responsibility of Canada, as it will be Quebec’s responsibility when it is sovereign, to contribute to the prevention of these diseases and epidemics on the international level. In particular, Canada must now make a commitment to achieve 0.7% of gross national product by 2015. That objective was suggested to us not only by the UN, but also by Prime Minister Pearson. All the G-7 countries, except the United States and Canada, have made that commitment. Even Great Britain, Italy, France and Germany, who are in difficult financial situations, have made this commitment. As a country, we have the means to meet this commitment. This public support funding could make it possible to have more aggressive programs for preventing disease and epidemics. That is not the case at present. As my colleague knows, some diseases often take precedence over others. For example, we know that very strong measures have been taken against HIV-AIDS in western countries but relatively little has been done in Africa. Likewise, some diseases cause great suffering over entire continents but receive no attention in western countries, where there are no programs to assist them. I am thinking, in particular, of malaria. In that regard, prevention is always the best method of protection against the entry of communicable disease into Canada and Quebec.

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate my colleague, the member for Joliette, for having taught us a little something about the French language, as well as a few other things.

This is a matter about which I do not need to be convinced. Nevertheless, it would be useful to have more details for some of our colleagues who either do not see the light at the end of the tunnel or do not understand necessarily what is really going on.

At the beginning or his speech, the member did specify that health care is a Quebec jurisdiction. Therefore, even if one supports the bill in principle, there is a need to point out that this jurisdiction must be protected in some way. I suppose that this is not just a whim.

Thus, I would let the member give us some explanations or details, so that our colleagues from other parties can understand that this has nothing to do with a whim, nor with a narrow vision of things.

I believe that we must emphasize again how important it is to protect our jurisdictions. They are in a way protected by the Constitution, but they are not necessarily protected when a government wants to look strong or wants to impose its views at some point in time.

I believe that heath care is a very sensitive matter. When a government like the one we have now or the one we had before wants to act like this—fortunately they were a minority government, which allowed us to slow them down—I think that it is necessary to hear more details about what the member for Joliette has to say.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his question.

I think this is extremely important, and it is the source of a major misunderstanding between Quebeckers and Canadians.

I travelled all across Canada when the Standing Committee on Finance was holding hearings as part of the pre-budget consultations. Everywhere I went in the rest of Canada, someone suggested to us that a federal department of education be created, with national standards. And every time, I felt that my colleagues from the rest of Canada thought this was an excellent idea. If the federal government were to take charge of this and ensure that the provinces were spending based on the real priorities, they would be very comfortable with this.

We are always presented with the example of Mike Harris or Ralph Klein, who spent the money allocated for social programs on other things.

In Quebec, we know our citizens can be trusted to judge their governments' accomplishments. In fact, we saw this on Monday with health care. Mr. Charest had made commitments that he did not honour, and he was severely punished for it.

The federal government often uses real problems to push centralizing solutions. For example, we are told that diseases do not stop at provincial borders, and that is true.

In Quebec, we are prepared, obviously based on our priorities, our choices and our way of doing things, to share our expertise with the other Canadian provinces and with the entire planet, and to look elsewhere for expertise that might be useful to us. However, we do not want to be told how to manage our hospital system by Ottawa, because Ottawa does not manage a single hospital, apart from veterans hospitals and those for aboriginal people, with the less than glowing success we have seen.

The same is true for education. This is a particularly sensitive subject in Quebec because education is how the values and identity of Quebeckers are transmitted. On that point, it has in fact been recognized that there is a nation, a territory, a land base—Quebec, the nation of Quebec, which includes all Quebeckers, regardless of where they come from. But it is important to us to be able to transmit the values of the Quebec nation, and the French language, which is the common public language of our nation, and our specific history, and our culture, from generation to generation, with the contributions made by the people who come to us from all over the world, and to be able to do this through the education system.

However that is not how the federal government sees it. To the federal government, Quebec culture is a regional component of Canadian culture. There is no future in this, just as there is no future in a Canada-wide vision of education. In fact, our institutions, like the CEGEPS, do not exist anywhere else in Canada. Another example is in health care, as I said, where we have the local community service centres. They have now been merged with other entities, but they were innovations created by Quebeckers. This began with grassroots health clinics, and the government thought this was a good idea.

To conclude, our child care system, for example, is not a public system; it is a social economy system that was established by parents to meet the needs, in particular, of--

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Order, please. Resuming debate. The hon. member for Richmond—Arthabaska.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the hon. member for Joliette on another eloquent speech, and I am pleased to rise after him to address Bill C-42, An Act to amend the Quarantine Act. As my colleague mentioned, the Bloc Québécois supports the principle of this bill, since diseases know no boundaries. Still, we have to remain very vigilant regarding jurisdictions. As we know, health is Quebec's exclusive jurisdiction. The member for Joliette made a very compelling presentation on that, and there is no need for me to dwell on this issue, but I will nevertheless get back to it later on in my speech.

So, as a party, we agree with the principle of this bill. I should remind the House and those who are watching us about the purpose of the amendments in this bill. This 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 and 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 measures for preventing the spread of communicable diseases, including referral to the public health authorities, detention, treatment and disinfestation. It also provides for the inspection and cleansing of conveyances and cargo to ensure that they are not a source of communicable diseases. As we can see, the provisions of this act, which goes back many years—and I will get back to this a little later on—have been tightened up somewhat.

It provides for controls on the import and export of cadavers, body parts and human remains. Earlier, my colleague said that it is not pleasant talking about it, but we must realize that a family may wish to repatriate the body of a person who has died abroad. If this person died in the jungle, or in a country such as China, no matter where or how they died, we must determine how they died and ensure that illnesses are not being transported along with the remains.

It also provides for the collection and disclosure of personal information if it is necessary to prevent the spread of a communicable disease. We must remain very vigilant here also, just as in the case of jurisdictions. We must ensure that this will not happen for all manner of reasons because it would be too easy to disclose personal information. However, in certain cases, to prevent the spread of communicable diseases and to protect public health, these provisions will have to be applied, but only if necessary.

The bill enables the minister to make regulations in the event of a health emergency and to order that measures be taken to ensure compliance with the act. In brief, that is where we are going with Bill C-42.

Earlier, I was speaking about the history of the Quarantine Act, adopted in 1872. Naturally it should be updated because, as we know, at that time most travel was by ship, especially the longest trips. People also got around by horse, on foot, by canoe and so forth, but transatlantic travel at the time, for example, was all by ship. Naturally, travel was slower. We are talking about weeks and weeks of travel. Today, the same distance can be covered in a matter of hours by plane. Even if we do travel by ship, it does not take as long as in those days. This is also obvious.

Consequently, the spread of communicable diseases was often more localized. It took longer for diseases to spread. There was less movement of people and goods, and it was much slower than today. The invention of air transportation completely changed our way of travelling. Travel is now much more frequent and quicker as well. The movement of people and goods from one area to another has increased considerably. That is the difference between our era and the era in which the act was written, about 1872.

Thus, updating the Quarantine Act is totally appropriate. We all agree on this.

Canada, Quebec and the provinces are not immune to the outbreak of diseases.

In 2003, the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) really hit us. This is a painful memory, but we must still remind people about it. There were victims. Reports that were released after this tragedy clearly indicated that improvements had to be made at borders and all across the country to deal with the threats to public safety.

The World Health Organization also got involved because of the outbreak of SARS world wide. In Canada, we must put restrictions on everything that is related to these communicable diseases, but this is unfortunately not the case in all other countries. If all countries do not have measures that are as restrictive as ours, we must be even more vigilant and rigorous to deal with the fallout. I think particularly of China, which flatly denied the existence of SARS on its territory and the fact that there were victims. It took a ridiculous amount of time before China finally admitted that it had had cases of SARS. This does not help at all to maintain public health on its territory. Unfortunately, diseases always manage to spread to other countries.

Avian influenza also poses a threat. In Quebec, the health care and agricultural communities have taken steps to address this threat. I would remind the House that Quebec's department of agriculture, fisheries and food, in cooperation with Quebec's poultry producers' federation, has implemented quota and containment measures for poultry. Obviously, this is not always easy for certain producers. It causes problems for those who are accustomed to raising their poultry outdoors. However, public health and our collective well-being prompted authorities to act before any harm is caused. Quebec has been lucky so far. It is called prevention. All of Quebec's authorities—whether in health care, agriculture or other affected sectors—are working hard to ensure the protection of public health.

“Preparing for an influenza pandemic and other public health risks remains a priority. The enactment of the new Quarantine Act represents a huge step forward in this task”. This is what Dr. David Butler-Jones, Chief Public Health Officer, said on the matter. Dr. Butler-Jones is quite right. We were almost backward, since the act had not been updated in so long. It was time to take action.

The West Nile virus constitutes another threat. Other infectious diseases could emerge and strike us. This is why it has become so crucial that we enforce public health measures at our exit and entry points.

The update to the Quarantine Act provides for the screening of travellers by customs officials or detection devices. It also provides for the referral of travellers to a quarantine officer who may conduct an initial health assessment, order a medical examination, vaccination or other prophylactic measures, order travellers to report to a local public health authority, or detain any person who refuses a medical examination, vaccination, and so on. It also ensures the inspection of conveyances such as airlines and cargo ships, and orders decontamination, disinfection, and so on. Finally, it provides that passengers and conveyances may be detained until there is no longer a risk to public health.

The new powers also include diverting an aircraft to another landing site, establishing a quarantine station at any place in Canada and preventing the entry into Canada of persons or cargo from certain countries to prevent the introduction and spread of diseases. We have truly adapted to the new reality. We hear a lot about economic globalization, but the fact that people—and goods—travel more and more and that all borders are now open has significantly increased the level of risk with regard to the spread of diseases.

There is no need to panic and to become completely paranoid. Nevertheless, this kind of legislation helps us put in place the tools we need to protect public health, as I have been saying from the outset.

As my colleague from Joliette mentioned earlier, Bill C-42 gives 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. This means ships, aircraft, trains, all motor vehicles, trailers and containers entering or leaving the country.

Obviously, if we want to protect ourselves, it must be understood that we do not want to spread to other countries diseases that may be present in our country. I am thinking of our neighbours to the south and any other country that could be affected. Our international reputation would certainly be tarnished if, for lack of due diligence, we allowed a disease to spread from our country to other countries.

The legislation stipulates that the operator must report anything unusual to the quarantine officer as soon as possible. The wording of section 34 stipulates, among other things, that an operator of a conveyance must report to the quarantine officer if he has any reasonable grounds to suspect that any person, cargo or other thing on board the conveyance could cause the spreading of a communicable disease, listed in a schedule of the legislation, explaining which type of disease is involved, or if a person on board the conveyance has died.

As I was saying earlier, as far as cadavers are concerned, when someone dies there is not necessarily a doctor on board or someone who can perform an autopsy quickly enough to determine the cause of death. We have to be certain that the person did not die from a disease that could be contagious and then, having come across our border, infect not just the passengers in the conveyance, but anyone that might come in contact with the cadaver, etc. Diseases do spread and that is where the danger lies.

Section 34 clarifies the obligations of the operators of ships and airplane pilots, namely upon their arrival and during their departure.

As my colleague from Joliette did so well, I want to remind this House that health is a jurisdiction of Quebec and the provinces. That is why, although we are in favour of the bill in principle—because disease knows no boundaries—we will be very careful to ensure that this new legislation does not go against Quebec's legislation on public health. We understand that Canada must also comply with the World Health Organization's International Health Regulations by June. There is a deadline. If Canada meets its obligations while respecting Quebec's legislation, we will continue to support Bill C-42.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleague for making an excellent speech on a subject that, let us face it, can be rather dull. Since we are debating a health-related topic, I would like to take advantage of the fact that he is very familiar with the chrysotile issue to have him respond to our NDP colleague who said earlier that asbestos—without specifying which kind—is a health hazard. I then said that water could also be a health hazard, because if we are not careful, we could drown in it, but we still need it to live.

Given that it is in his region, even if it is not in his riding, I would like him to respond to the false representation that any use of chrysotile is dangerous.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Joliette for having gone to the trouble of asking a question that is important to my riding. At the outset, I would like to clarify that there is a mine in my riding, in Asbestos, so this question affects me personally.

We may lose sight of the fact that the member for Winnipeg Centre is obsessed with this. Today we are talking about communicable and contagious diseases, and as soon as the member for Winnipeg Centre had a chance, he began to talk about asbestos and criticize this file.

All of these products have to be handled carefully, just like all other dangerous goods, such as chemicals and even fuel. But asbestos is not a disease. Today, chrysotile asbestos is being used very safely. There are laws and guidelines for working with it and handling it that make it absolutely safe for both workers and users.

Obviously, it has to be handled safely. Experts from Quebec will go to other countries where chrysotile asbestos is being used to explain to them how to use it safely. Things are not like they were in the 1950s and 1960s, when people did not protect themselves.

When chrysotile asbestos is used in road construction, as it is currently used in Quebec—not nearly enough, in my opinion, because it should be used more—the workers who spread the asphalt must be well protected just so there are no health problems. Nobody is denying that there have been health problems among workers. Users have also had some health problems related to home insulation.

However, as with all dangerous products, they did not know then what we know now. Today, things are much better. Asbestos has become a much safer product. Moreover, biopersistence studies have shown that it is less hazardous than products being substituted for chrysotile asbestos in Europe and South America. It can be used in sewer drains. It is used a lot in construction. When used safely, it is a real asset in those areas.

[Raymond Gravel, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the speech of my colleague from Richmond—Arthabaska and I learned a great deal. I also listened to the member for Joliette earlier.

When I hear a speech like that, I wonder about reporting diseases. If we are talking about objects or animals, it is easy enough to kill chickens or other animals. We can seize objects to prevent them from becoming a danger to the public. But when it comes to people, I am always wary of exclusion and rejection. I know that some people can be contagious and that they can transmit diseases.

I would like to hear my colleague from Richmond—Arthabaska talk about the measures we should take when a person has a communicable disease and it must be reported.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Repentigny for his question and I appreciate his great sensitivity not only to the people of my riding but also to all human beings. He may have been conditioned by his previous career.

Obviously, it is always awkward to quarantine people. Internment is even considered for those who refuse vaccination, for instance. I think that the greatest of respect has to be shown throughout the process. There is no question of excluding anyone. But at the same time, we must never lose sight of the collective good. If someone is suspected of entering the country with a disease, that is what quarantine is for. The idea is not to lock people up in chains, but rather to ensure, using modern medical technology, tests, vaccination and so on, that the individuals are not a danger to themselves or to others.

Sometimes, coming home from abroad, people just want to get home without any hassle. They have a touch of fever, but feel that it is no big deal. For their own protection, however, if they are suspected of carrying the germ of a communicable disease, we have to make sure that they will not die from it. We also have to ensure that they will not spread some disease to family, friends and possibly an entire community. All these actions have to be taken in a very respectful manner, while we ensure that public health is properly protected. That is why we need quarantine legislation. I have a feeling that, if it came to be known that quarantine officers or the people at Health Canada were not showing people proper respect, someone would blow the whistle on them and we would be the first ones to denounce such conduct.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin my remarks by mentioning the beautiful light that shines on this side of the House. This is not a coincidence. The sky is blue and God is a sovereignist. We are going to take advantage of this light to enlighten our colleagues, the members opposite, who form the government. I hope they will be wise enough to listen.

I could not help but smile when I saw that this legislation was coming back here to be amended. Let us not forget that, at the beginning of this session, a bill was rammed through the House, namely Bill C-2. We felt that this issue had not been debated long enough to ensure that this legislation would provide measures that could be implemented, and that it would be responsible and meaningful for our fellow citizens, whom we represent here.

Today, I see that we have to go back to Bill C-12, which was passed in 2005, when I was still a new member in this House. In fact, this bill was my first experience with the legislation here. I had to learn how to debate it in the Standing Committee on Health, along with my colleague, the member for Hochelaga, who was then our party critic on health issues. Even at that time we had serious reservations about the provisions that the government wanted to include in the bill, because we often felt that they were too intrusive or not logical enough to allow for concrete, easy and effective implementation.

We have to be very cautious and serious when we talk about infectious and communicable diseases, about viruses and bacteria that proliferate. We have to take our role seriously. At the time, we deplored the fact that people would be accountable to an authority designated by the Minister of Health, because we felt that this was a somewhat complex process that would prevent the bill from being an effective piece of legislation.

When I saw the bill and saw that there was a move to amend this section, that is, section 34, I thought to myself, “Two years later, people are finally seeing that, once again, the Bloc Québécois was right.” Naturally, it was members of the Bloc Québécois who were the first to oppose that part of the legislation, which called for an authority designated by the minister. We did so because we believed that the bill encroached too much on provincial jurisdictions, especially in the area of health.

In Quebec, our department of public health is very effective and takes great care to protect us against all communicable and infectious diseases. I know that this is not necessarily the case everywhere. A hospital in Vegreville had to close its doors this week. Also, in Loyds, hundreds of patients had to be informed that they had probably contracted HIV or hepatitis, because the doctor had not reported, as one must, these diseases to public health authorities.

It is not enough to simply enact legislation. That legislation must be respected, obeyed and enforced, and we must be able to use that legislation effectively to protect ourselves against what we could call barbarian invasions. Any mention of tuberculosis, west Nile virus or SARS is sure to arouse fear. I would remind the House that the original Quarantine Act was drafted around 1872, if I understood my hon. colleague from Richmond—Arthabaska correctly.

We know that diseases crossed borders with the influx of pioneers who came here to start a life for themselves and become proud citizens of what was then Lower Canada and Upper Canada, in other words, the Quebec and Canada of today.

Infectious diseases did not stop crossing our borders just because we passed this legislation in 1872. In the early 1900s, around 1910 or 1918, right here in Hull, on the other side of the river, a very serious Spanish influenza outbreak killed many people. It decimated entire families. We still see traces of those families today in the names of the hon. members sitting in this House and the people nearby, who live in Hull, in Gatineau. These people probably have in their lineage, among their ancestors, people who died from the Spanish flu. At the time, even though the legislation existed, we did not have the means to enforce or apply it.

As far as such epidemics are concerned, we have to think about all these soldiers we send abroad. Often we pay more attention to what is going on over there in terms of equipment, tools and armament, and not pay much attention to what they might be bringing back with them when they come home. This can be very dangerous for them. These days, a number of women take part in these missions. Many of them come back and can also spread infectious diseases to their families and children because they did not receive the necessary care when they were abroad on a peacekeeping mission or, unfortunately, at war.

It is not enough to have laws, we also need the political will to apply them. We have to start resolving the problems in our own backyard. We currently have tuberculosis epidemics in a number of our first nations communities. It is unthinkable that in 2007 there are still people suffering from tuberculosis. That is the direct responsibility of the federal government. It is a responsibility that it neglects far too often and which it has not respected because the epidemic is spreading, not stopping.

In Kashechewan, people may be forced to leave their homes and to be relocated because their water is not potable. However, they cannot do it today because there is no money. If we have billions of dollars to invest in arms, we should at least have a few million to invest in providing safe, healthy housing where individuals can live with dignity and respect. At present, this is not the case. It is much easier to adopt a laissez-faire attitude. Hundreds, even thousands of individuals will suffer from these illnesses, including tuberculosis and other diseases. They will contract them because of unhealthy living conditions. Nothing is being done about that.

The previous government ratified the Kelowna accord. We all voted in this House to honour that accord. However, the government decided otherwise and is not making any further commitments. That is most unfortunate.

First nations communities, Inuit communities, all these communities find it difficult to carve out a place for themselves in our society. It is difficult for them to have access to adequate health care, appropriate education, and affordable, healthy, safe housing. It is difficult for them, but they have been abandoned even though it is our first responsibility to help them. We abandon them, we do not invest in these societies. Why? Why is there constant encroachment, to the tune of millions of dollars, on provincial responsibilities and jurisdictions when we do not even take care of our own responsibilities?

I do not understand. And yet, some small countries who have very little do much more for their citizens. I regularly visit Cuba, because I love the island and the people. Someone will say to me that they do not have a great deal of freedom, but I sometimes wonder which one of us has more freedom. I know that they have first class health care. All Cubans can study as much and as long as they wish. Education is free. Later, the government assigns the doctors it has trained to various countries to work for humanitarian causes. These doctors are very well trained.

Whenever I go to Cuba, I am never afraid of getting sick. I know I will be taken care of. When we went to Taiwan last fall, my travelling companion got a toothache on Taiwan's national holiday. The person I was with had a toothache. We had to go to a hospital because there are no dental clinics. At the hospital, two doctors took care of us. In under 10 minutes, my companion was in a chair and personnel had administered a sedative and something to take away the pain, and all of this happened on Taiwan's national holiday. Of course, thousands of people live there and their hospitals do not have all the equipment we have here. But their government chooses to invest in human resources to provide a standard of care and services that we rarely find here.

That service standard is rare here largely because of our provincial governments. Why do our respective governments not have enough money? Because previous federal governments cut transfer payments. Beginning in 1994, cuts to provincial transfer payments, including payments to Quebec, resulted in the sorry state of our health care systems today compared to those of some small countries that have much less than we do, but that care about their citizens' health.

We support the principle underlying this bill. We are not against it. Obviously, we cannot be against what is right, but today, as we study this bill, we must ask ourselves a question. Will this bill provide enough money to train quarantine officers? Will enough money be invested in training customs agents and all of the front-line staff who meet people at the border?

That was one of the concerns expressed by the Standing Committee on Health in 2004-05. We were not certain that all steps would be taken in order to enforce Bill C-12. After two years, we see that enforcing it is very difficult indeed, and that it was not really being enforced because there were flaws in the bill. In the years to come, we will likely find other flaws in the bill, given that the Standing Committee on Health had considerable reservations about approving the bill, which was adopted on division.

If we all minded our own business, there would likely be fewer bills of this kind to review. For example, despite what the government thinks, Bill C-2 was adopted very quickly, and a number of its sections are still not in force.

Why are we asked to debate bills that seem so important to the government, only to then have it dismiss everything we determined, everything we decided, everything we wanted to be able to give to our citizens as members of Parliament here in this House? We wonder why.

I do not know. I only hope that, in the future, we will be more careful. If it is true that Bill C-42 is crucial to the proper enforcement of Bill C-12, through the amendment of section 34, it is also true that there are several other sections of the bill that should be reviewed. In enforcing—

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

I am sorry to have to interrupt the hon. member. She will have another four minutes to continue her speech the next time this bill comes before the House.

The House resumed from March 28 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.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as the member of Parliament for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, the home for over 50 years of Canada's Emergency Preparedness College, I am pleased to participate in this debate about modernizing the Quarantine Act.

The Quarantine Act is one of Canada's oldest pieces of legislation. The original act was first adopted in Parliament in 1872. It is the only federal statute concerned with preventing and controlling the introduction and spread of communicable disease. The new Quarantine Act received royal assent in 2005 and is now in force. This legislative renewal initiative was a direct outcome of our Canadian experience with SARS.

As a member of the 37th Parliament, I had the privilege of representing the Ontario riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke during the SARS crisis. What I remember most about the debates in the House of Commons surrounding the SARS crisis, was the almost total lack of accountability from the Ontario Liberal MPs during that crisis and from the administration and the minister they were defending.

While I have certainly been pleasantly surprised by the concerns raised by Liberal MPs who are now in opposition, my question is, where were they during the 2003 SARS crisis? The purpose of a quarantine act is to be prepared for an emergency. This is the same reason we have anti-terrorism legislation, to be prepared. Canada witnessed what happens when government is not prepared. This was evident during the SARS crisis. Let us not make the same mistake twice. Our government is getting the job done.

The official opposition was irresponsible when it made the decision to go soft on terrorism. Canadians can only hope that lives will not be lost as a consequence. The bottom line in this discussion is saving lives, protecting the health of Canadians. It was the inability of the former minister for emergency preparedness in the old government who had the statutory authority but lacked a grasp of the importance of the portfolio that led to the travel advisory being issued against Toronto during the SARS episode.

Information was not communicated to the World Health Organization in a timely fashion. The leadership role that the minister in the old government was intended to assume never materialized. The minister responsible for emergency preparedness claimed it was the minister of health's responsibility to call the World Health Organization. The minister of health figured that in an emergency the minister for emergency preparedness was in charge. In the inevitable passing of the buck, Ottawa twiddled its thumbs as Canadians became ill.

It is shocking to hear MPs who are members of the old government now admit just how unprepared Canada was and how disorganized the government was to communicate accurate information to an alarmed populace for an epidemic of any kind, let alone SARS.

I listened carefully as alarmed Canadians were told to turn to no less than 17 sites on the Internet for information on SARS. This information was incomplete and the sites conflicted with one another. Given this kind of experience with a crisis, it is incredible that opposition members would want Canadians to be unprepared for a terrorism act when they voted down their own terrorism legislation. It is all about being prepared.

Canadians listening to this debate will know that it is partisan posturing to suggest that amendments to the Quarantine Act should have been our new Conservative government's first order of business when in fact Bill C-2, our new government's showcase anti-corruption legislation had to be the first order of business.

The people of my riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke and more specifically the people of Arnprior know firsthand the actions of a corrupt government when the Emergency Preparedness College, which had been located in Arnprior for over 50 years, was shut down. It was wrong to close the Emergency Preparedness College in Arnprior and, as events turned out, it was not only the people of Arnprior who suffered because of that bad decision.

In the case of SARS, the cost to the tourism industry in Toronto and the rest of the province of Ontario was in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The SARS fiasco was the culmination of a whole series of missteps by the old regime that began with the political decision to discard over 50 years of tradition and teaching excellence when the politically motivated decision was made to close down the Emergency Preparedness College in Arnprior.

With the college in turmoil, the people who were supposed to be advising the government were ill-equipped to react even if the legislation tools such as we are discussing here today were in place. What is truly unfortunate about that wrong headed decision by the scandal ridden old government to close the Emergency Preparedness College in Arnprior was the price Canadians had to pay when it came time to act during the SARS crisis.

While taxpayers' dollars were made available to large urban centres like Toronto to deal with the drop in tourism as a result of the travel advisory issued against Toronto, the effect of that travel advisory warning by the World Health Organization rippled throughout the province of Ontario. Many businesses, including small businesses involved in the tourism industry located in my riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke were adversely affected.

The old administration refused to take responsibility for the situation with SARS and it is to the credit of the former member of the House, long forgotten by his own party and frustrated by inaction, that a concert was organized to let the world know that it was safe to be in Toronto and a safe travel destination as well. It is with this background that I participate in the debate regarding Bill C-42.

The modernization of the quarantine legislation was a first step in a series of legislative initiatives, along with the establishment of the Public Health Agency of Canada and the appointment of the new Chief Public Health Officer to help strengthen Canada's public health system. Bill C-42 is a minor amendment to the new Quarantine Act. It proposes new wording to section 34.

This amendment to the Quarantine Act is a minor and technical one. It does not change the policy objective but corrects the current language used in section 34. Section 34 is a provision that supports advance notification of very important health information to federal officials. It requires conveyance operators to report in advance before arrival in Canada if there is an illness, a public health concern or death on board a conveyance.

This provision enables quarantine officers, nurses and medical practitioners designated by the minister to coordinate an efficient response and to mobilize other key health and emergency responders.

In the event of a large scale outbreak and if necessary, this provision would allow the Minister of Health to better assess whether to order the diversion of a carrier to an alternate landing site in Canada to protect the health and safety of Canadians.

In its current form, section 34 would not satisfy its intended purpose. The problem was discovered when attempting to draft a supporting regulation which was necessary to make section 34 functionally proper.

Unfortunately, this issue created a barrier for bringing the new Quarantine Act into force swiftly and a newly worded section 34 is necessary from a technical point of view.

Today, I stand before members with this bill to be forwarded to the appropriate committee for review.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask the hon. member, in view of the fact that there was this technical problem that rendered the bill inoperable and that was identified probably 14 months ago, why has it taken the government this long to make this small technical change that would actually make the bill operable?

At the same time I would like to ask the member to actually fact check her remarks in terms of a so-called previous minister for emergency preparedness in terms of the fact that indeed that was the health minister and the fact that it was indeed the Conservative premier of Ontario standing outside, where there was absolutely no risk of SARS, with a mask around his chin. These kinds of optics actually created the kind of alarm and fearmongering that was very dilatorious to my city of Toronto.

In fact, long before the travel advisories, we knew that the Chinese restaurants in Montreal were empty, that there was a real problem in being able to get the information out that this indeed was a disease that one would have to break into a hospital room in order to get the disease. The problem indeed was that we did not have the science of the incubation period, the mode of transmission, or any of those things at that time when the science was lacking.

I guess I also want to know how the member can stand there when indeed the problem was a lack of communication between the Ontario government and the federal government in terms of whether that was one patient who had gone to two hospitals or two patients who had gone to two hospitals. We were faced with the issue of interference and whether or not data sets would be shared because of somebody worrying about whether they would be the principle investigator on a study. This was a huge problem as we learned from the Naylor report.

We, as the Liberal government, took every recommendation of the Naylor report very seriously. We put in place the Public Health Agency of Canada. We appointed David Butler-Jones as the first ever Chief Public Health Officer. We put in a Minister of State for Public Health. We supervised the first public health network for Canada in which 13 jurisdictions in the country would plan public health together in terms of chief public health officers from all of the jurisdictions, knowing that germs do not respect borders and that we did learn the lessons from SARS.

If we learned the lessons from SARS, put all of these things in place, could the member opposite tell us why it took 14 months for the government to fix this tiny technicality that has rendered this whole bill inoperable?

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will begin by first answering the question on why it took so long. The first order of business for the government was to put in place legislation so that confidence in government would be restored. We had gone through 13 years of a corrupt government and to this day we still have not found the $40 million that disappeared during the adscam scandal.

Furthermore, with the Hewlett Packard incident at the Department of National Defence, we are still not told what happened to the $100 million. That is why it was so important to have the Federal Accountability Act put in place.

To underscore my comments that the old government of the day was confused was further underscored by the statement that there was no minister of emergency preparedness. Under the Minister of National Defence at the time, the Ontario office of critical infrastructure and emergency preparedness was under the defence department.

Recognizing now that they did not even know there was a minister in charge--

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

Order, order.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

There was no federal minister.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

Order, order. I would remind members on this side of the House that there is a question and answer period. People on this side listen while people on the other side are speaking.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

I don't expect nonsense like that from you.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

Order, order. If the member for St. Paul's wants to rise again and ask a question of the member, that is perfectly in order, but let us have a little order here and stop the yelling.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as a consequence of the failure of the minister responsible for emergency preparedness federally, the OCIPEP was completely dismantled and a new department was created, the one we have right now for public safety. That is largely as a consequence of the inaction and confusion that happened during SARS.

Many people never knew that the defence minister was in charge of emergency preparedness. These comments further exemplify that and they were successful, apparently, in whitewashing that over.

In terms of SARS itself, it was our current Minister of Health, the hon. member for Parry Sound—Muskoka, who was able to contain the situation in the province of Ontario. As a consequence of his daily conferences with every public health organization and hospital every morning during that crisis, we were able to contain the situation and stop the spread of this disease.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I was absolutely staggered and flabbergasted by the comments from the member opposite.

People in this House, I hope, do not usually tend to speak the opposite of the truth intentionally, and I hope that was not her motivation in doing this, but I have to ask the hon. member to check her facts.

I do not know if the public is aware of what happened when the Liberals were in power, when we had threats such as SARS, but I am going to correct the hon. member's comments right now. We have an emergency preparedness system across this country. We have a 24 hour op centre that exists. We have provincial counterparts across this country. We deploy mobile hospitals across this country, not only in the event of a biological disaster, such as what she was referring to, but for other disasters that may occur as well. These beds can be mobilized anywhere in the country on very short notice. They are deployed right now.

We were and are a world leader as a result of the work that we did with respect to challenges such as SARS, so much so that Canada was chosen to host a world symposium on dealing with issues such as SARS and international emergencies such as this.

Why was Canada chosen? It was because we were and are the world leader in this as a result of the work that we did, so much so that we were asked to go to Southeast Asia, which is the epicentre of these types of zoonotic diseases that skip the species barrier, with our scientists, with our early warning system, and with our diagnostics to help them deal with their problems.

Why was Canada chosen? It was because we are the best, and we are the best because we put those elements in place that we have here at home and we share that all across the world.

Those are the facts and I want to at least give the hon. member the opportunity to acknowledge all of that work that I just mentioned, and which my colleague from Toronto just mentioned, who is also a physician and who was very intimately involved in this. Will she at least acknowledge that what we have said actually did occur and that these things are in place for the safety of our citizens in our great country?

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member opposite for acknowledging the fact that SARS was a biological disaster, something his other colleague disputed in this House.

This is about saving lives. It is about the health and safety of Canadians. I would ask all members of the House to support this important legislation, Bill C-42.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I do not want to reiterate what was said, but, in the interests of the public, I hope they look at the facts on what occurred when we dealt with the big challenge of SARS and how we will deal with it and other similar diseases that may cross the species barrier in the future that can have profound pandemic effects causing a great loss of life and illness among our citizenry and those of the world.

I encourage people to look at the work that has already been done in the country, because a lot has been done, and, thankfully, we are a world leader in this. Does that mean that we need to rest on our laurels? Absolutely not. However, It does mean that we need to be vigilant.

Bill C-42 updates the Quarantine Act by providing new provisions to manage public health threats. I will go through some of those and perhaps go through some of the elements of SARS because there is a lot of misinformation out there.

Interestingly enough, if we go back in history we know that SARS is a result of a virus that actually starts to reside in birds. Those birds that are living with people in unclean environments at some point in time, that particular virus can jump the species barrier to humans. When it really becomes bad is when we are able to pass that bug on between ourselves.

If we go back in history, every 20 to 25 years a pandemic occurs with a great loss of life, which is why large amounts of public moneys have been invested in early warning systems, in prevention and in the manufacture of a vaccine. I neglected to say to the member that Canada is one of only two countries in the world that has the domestic capacity to produce the vaccine, such as the influenza vaccine.

The influenza vaccine is a difficult vaccine to produce because the type of virus we are dealing with is a very clever virus. It is a simple but lethal virus that can change itself very quickly. In doing so, we need to play catch-up to ensure that what we are doing and what we are producing will deal with the particular viruses that we are trying to protect against.

Our scientists are always playing catch-up and that is a challenge for them. However, we are one of only two countries in the world that have that domestic capacity. We are able to work quickly, effectively and provide that to Canadians.

We also stockpile Tamiflu which is a drug to prevent the symptoms from occurring and prevent infection. It is not something people would want to take regularly or something that should be widely dispensed in a preventative fashion because viruses can cause resistance. We do not want to cause resistance to a drug in case of a pandemic occurring.

As my colleague said, germs know no boundaries and that is a fact. This is an international problem. Where it is rooted as its epicentre is in Southeast Asia. It is very important for us to maintain relations with countries so we can work together to address the problem.

I hope the government works with Taiwan, China and other countries in Southeast Asia so we can be vigilant in preventing a situation where the virus skips a species boundary and people begin infecting each other which causes the virus to spread widely.

The only way we can do that is to have a competent early warning system. Unfortunately, the government has actually cancelled consulates around the world, which is a huge mistake on Canada's part. We have done this in St. Petersburg, in Japan and in other parts of the world.

We have contracted our foreign policy away from other parts of the world. It is good to focus but, while focusing on specific areas, it does not mean to say that it precludes us from having our fingers on the pulse of what is occurring in other parts of the world. A failure to do this means that we fail to address the problems that know no boundaries.

I say to the government that it has made a huge error in closing these consulates and, in doing so, contracted away our foreign policy so that it really deals with only two issues, Afghanistan and Canada-U.S. relations.

Interestingly enough, Afghanistan is not even one of our priorities. However, because of events that superceded, we have chosen Afghanistan which is now taking the lion's share of our CIDA investments and the bulk of our work in defence and in foreign affairs. It is consuming just about everything at the expense of our ability to deal with the challenges of other parts of the world that do affect Canada and Canadians. It is a huge error for the government to contract our foreign policy, CIDA and our defence involvement down to basically two issues. I agree with focus but there are ways to ensure we have a finger in other areas that are in the best interests of Canadians.

On the issues of SARS, HIV and other diseases, we know that HIV is a disease that started in primates in Africa and that probably 30 or more other deadly viruses are harboured in primates in that part of the world.

In the development that is occurring in the jungles of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in formerly difficult to reach areas in Central Africa, logging trucks have gone into the areas to exploit the logs and natural resources. A byproduct of that is that humans are now coming in very close contact to areas that were formerly not exposed to humans. Part of that involves humans killing animals for the bush meat trade, which is resulting in the destruction of many species in those parts of the world. They are being driven to the brink of extinction and will become extinct unless something is done about it.

It has also opened up the trafficking in exotic pets. Does the House know that the trafficking in endangered species is the third leading area of contraband trade in the world, behind drugs and weapons? We should think about that. It is a $25 billion trade in endangered species and it is resulting in endangered species being driven to the brink of extinction. Various forms of rhino: the Indian rhino, the Javan rhinoceros and black rhino. Various species of tiger: the Bengal tiger, the Sumatran tiger and the snow leopard. If we name it, there is a trade in it: the orangutan, low land gorillas, bonobos, chimpanzees, all of which are being driven to extinction, including, of course, elephants, which we thought were in good shape, but now we see there is a dramatic upsurge in the poaching of elephant.

We saw destruction in Chad, in the Central African Republic, in the Congo and in other areas. This, of course, is driven by primarily domestic wants, not needs, in the developing world.

We are guilty of importing these animals and animal products, which is driving these species to extinction. I do not think the Canadian public would be proud to know that our country is one of the top destinations in the trafficking of endangered species. That is absolutely appalling but have we heard anything from the government to address the problem? We have heard nothing.

What does it mean? If we look at what happens to these birds, amphibians and mammals, these creatures are packed into appalling circumstances and 80% of them die somewhere along the route under terrible situations: dehydration, starvation, disease, abuse, killed or die of shock. The 20% that survive come to our borders as pets.

People can buy, for example, a pink macaw in Brazil for $15 and sell it in Italy for $2,500. The mark-up is huge. Those so-called pets are actually taken by people who have no idea how to deal with them. Little pets that were formerly small become big and difficult to manage and sometimes they fall into terrible circumstances.

We can stop some of those things and I am advocating that the government should do the following: first, anyone wanting to import a wild animal should have an import and export permit and must have the import permit before they can acquire an export permit; second, only designated entry points should be used so that trained specialists would be available to examine the species; third, rescue centres must be identified so that species that are coming in that should not be here or that are ill can go to these rescue centres and receive the care they require; fourth, individual traders should be licensed and they should be the only ones able to bring these species into the country. This is important with respect to our obligation under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Lastly, our Canadian wildlife service officers should have the resources to do the job.

Unfortunately, the government is utterly neglecting this area. It sounds small but it is important with respect to the bill because, if we connect the dots back to where I started, these species can be traced back to the diseases that are brought into our country and affect humans.

As I said before, there are 20 to 30 HIV-like viruses residing in mammals but primarily primates in Africa that will some day cross the species barrier from primates into humans and, in doing so, we will have a virus that can then jump the species barrier as the human immunodeficiency virus has done with devastating results.

As a country it is important that we deal with our area of responsibility. As I mentioned, if we continue to allow people to bring in endangered species, we are allowing destruction at the other end of the chain in countries that can ill-afford to do this. The outfall of this is the destruction of environments, which results in the destruction of species and the destruction of biodiversity. We all lose.

How can we address this? I have proposed in the past that CIDA should be involved in developing sustainable environmental protection. What Canada should be doing in sub-Sahara, Africa and also in South America where this is a big problem, is ensuring that these countries protect their biodiversity and that it is done in such a way that the people who live in the surrounding areas will benefit. I will give some examples.

I used to do a fair bit of work in conservation in South Africa, particularly in the area of KwaZulu-Natal in Zululand. At the beginning of the 19th century that part of South Africa had the second largest land mammal in the world, the white rhino: 6,000 pounds, six feet at the shoulder for a male, and 1,500 pounds less for a female. Only 60 of those animals, the largest land mammal in the world behind the elephant, were left in the whole world and they resided in one place, Hluhluwe Umfolozi Park.

What did the South African government do? It realized that it had a priceless treasure and it wanted to do everything it could to protect the mammal. It also said that it would protect the area so the animals could thrive and produce but it also recognized that humans needed to benefit from it too. We cannot just protect an area of habitat without ensuring the people in the surrounding areas also benefit from that protected habitat.

The South African government was very clever. It developed a system so people in the surrounding areas could benefit from the protected game reserves. What did people do? If poachers went into the area, the people warned the authorities because they knew that if the poachers were allowed to go in they would kill species and that would affect their future.

The reserves are also used to generate funds through low impact environmental ecotourism, which can generate a lot of money. In doing so, these moneys can be used for primary health care, primary education and water and food security for the people who live around the reserves.

I do not understand at all why CIDA has not caught on to this and used this as a way by which we can all benefit and preserve critical habitat. We could also use those habitats as a way of generating resources that could benefit people living in the surrounding area. In doing so, the critical habitat could be expanded and the people would benefit in terms of primary health care, primary education and so on. Human needs and species' needs would both be met.

Unless we can benefit people, wild spaces cannot be protected. Alternatively, if we do not protect our wild spaces and species' biodiversity, we negatively affect our future as one of the species on this planet.

As part of its agency, CIDA would be very wise to work with other countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo and Botswana, which has done an excellent job, Zambia, Uganda, Tanzania and others to help them preserve their wild spaces, their incredible biodiversity. This would generate a grassroots economic advantage for the people who live in these areas. By doing that, we would preserve forevermore these species, areas and biodiversity, which are a part of the future of all of us and our collective history.

The alternative is not to do this. If we do that, we will see what has happened now. I will use the Democratic Republic of Congo as an example. We have seen widespread destruction of habitat, lowland gorillas, bonobos and other primates for the bushmeat trade and plant life, the benefits of which we do not know because we have lost them. The destruction of critical habitat, including trees, will result in a wasteland that will not benefit the people of the Congo who desperately need it.

In essence, in a country like that, of which there are many in the developing world, its vast natural resources are being destroyed for short term gain, benefiting countries primarily in the west, many in Europe. The people on the ground are losing their future, their heritage and their hope.

Some of the developing countries in Europe, which include Norway and to a lesser extent DFID and Great Britain, have adopted this in a small way. What if we as a country were to be the champion of this? If were, we could do something that no one else has done before. Canada would be the intersection between sustainable development and human development. It is something that we can do.

Canadians are disturbed by the destruction of the environment, by the loss of biodiversity and by the loss of species. They want to ensure that we can preserve them not only here at home but also abroad. This is a collective part of our common heritage.

I encourage the government to do this, not only for the benefit from a health care perspective but also from a development perspective. A friend of mine, Mike Fay, who is the National Geographic Society explorer in residence in New York, has written some excellent pieces on the destruction of endangered species. He and others are fighting hard to preserve these areas, not only abroad and in Africa but also North America.

We have great a opportunity in the west, in my province of British Columbia, to have a consistent area between Canada and the U.S. In Southern Africa it is called a peace parks process. This process could occur, connecting wildlife habitat from Canada all the way through the United States so species would have a contiguous area of protection and for ranging. In doing this, we would do things that would preserve their future.

We have great opportunities. Unfortunately, the government has not chosen to embrace those opportunities at a time of great surpluses. Because of that it makes itself less than what it could be and it makes Canada less than what it could be.

I encourage the government to seize the day, carpe diem, and adopt some solutions that could have a huge impact on the lives of our fellow citizens here at home as well as those who live far away. We live on one planet, which, in essence, is a borderless planet. What happens half a world away affects us. For these reasons, the government should have a much broader, holistic and wider view and exercise its responsibility to act as a leader.

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

Mr. Speaker, before giving direction to the government, the member should really focus on the debate at hand, and that is Bill C-42. I just heard for the last 20 minutes, which seemed like a lifetime, about primates, habitat and so on. We are talking about Bill C-42, the Quarantine Act, with a minor technical amendment, which we need to move forward on, and the member started talking about things that have nothing to do with the issue at hand.

The issues he raise are important, but I encourage him to raise them at a time that is appropriate. I also encourage him to participate in the debate on the issue at hand and prepare for the debate on the topic that we are supposed to discuss.

There have been some questions from members on the opposite side, who were prepared for this discussion, dealing with conveyances and the duties to report coming over land. I want to reassure the members that there are two provisions in the act that allow operators moving vis-à-vis land. They are subsection 15(2) and section 38 in the act . Also, subsection 34(2) in the act allows for any kind of conveyance to be dealt with in an appropriate manner when entering the country if a quarantine issue is in play.

I also will put on record that there is a portal on the government website. It is pandemic.gc.ca. Perhaps the member could visit that website and find out more about Bill C-42 and the implications?

In the future could the member please talk about, or even pretend to talk about, the issue at hand, which is Bill C-42. This is an important issue, we want to get on with it and the member is delaying us.

Will the member confirm that his party is supporting Bill C-42?

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, what I was giving the hon. member and his government is something called leadership.

It should be embarrassing on the part of the government that it has chosen to take up the time of the House on Bill C-42, which we support. To use the member's own words, it is a minor technical amendment.

The Canadian public should be asking themselves why on earth the government is using a bill and all this time in the House on a minor technical amendment rather than implementing solutions and bringing them to the House, solution of a much larger nature that would affect more people in a bigger way, in a positive way.

Why I brought up the issue of primates is the bill deals with significant public health risks, including SARS, as the member I hope knows. I also brought up the issue of HIV and primates. Why? Because human immunodeficiency virus, of which we are all aware, has been the single most devastating pandemic ever to affect our species. It is one of many viruses that are harboured in primates in Central Africa. HIV came from there. That is why I brought this up.

This is why I have asked the government to do something more than deal with a minor technical amendment. Rather it should deal with something more substantive, something that should and would have a greater impact upon the lives of our Canadians at home.

Canadian taxpayers should ask why the government did not take the type of leadership role, as we did when we were in government, to do such things as the 24 hour op centre, the development of regional op centres in every province, the development, the production and the deployment of portable hospitals, mobile hospitals, across the country in case of an outbreak of SARS or some other emergency.

I could go on about all the things we did. Those, I would argue, are substantive things; they are not a technical amendment.

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, MB]

Mr. Speaker, if the member is so keen on moving the debate forward, he could have stood and said that his party supported Bill C-42 and end his speech there. That way we could move on to more important issues.

The member brought up HIV and AIDS. This government has done a huge amount in this area. We had the announcement with the Bill Gates Foundation a few weeks ago. It is partnering with expertise in Canada, with my university, the University of Manitoba, and with David Butler-Jones and Dr. Frank Plummer. This will be revolutionary for AIDS prevention and hopefully a vaccine. This government did that. We are also partnering with international leaders in the field. This government is very proud of the tremendous amount of work that we have done in the area of AIDS research.

We are here to talk about Bill C-42, a technical amendment. The member is complaining. Why does he not encourage his party to pass this bill as soon as possible, perhaps through unanimous consent, in the next little while? I am sure we can arrange it with the House leaders office to do that. Will the member do that?

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member is obviously suffering from suspense with respect to the bill. I inform him, with great pleasure, that we support the bill. However, I find it almost laughable that the member had the audacity to say in the House that the government has done things for HIV-AIDS.

I am so angry about what the government has done to the Insite safe injection site in Vancouver. The Insite safe injection site is part of a system that saves lives. Even the police, the mayor, the premier and the medical personnel want it in Vancouver. It reduces crime, saves lives and money and reduces health care costs. Why do we know this? Because it has been peer reviewed and published in The Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine, not once but several times.

What do the Prime Minister and the Minister of Health say about that? They say “we don't have the evidence, we don't know if this works”. That is bunk and it is nonsense. If the government has an ideological approach to saving the lives of people who have substance abuse problems, it should come right out and say it, rather than trying to maintain some sort of fiction that it cares about these people.

If the government were interested in these people, who live in east Vancouver and across our country and who have substance abuse problems, in particular injectable drug problems, and if the government wants to reduce the incidence of death, mortality, morbidity, HIV, hepatitis C, hepatitis B rates and other problems in this population, then why does it not extend for five years the Insite safe injection site?

Why do the Conservatives not put this in as part of an integrated harm reduction policy across the country and work with other cities that want to have this? Why did they close it down? Why did they not support the access health care system in my city of Victoria, British Columbia? Why did they not give the $150,000 to a program to deal with the inner city problem in Victoria and with a situation that affects individuals who live on the street, have psychiatric problems, substance abuse problems, brain injury problems and others? The provincial government of British Columbia has given a couple of million dollars to it.

Why did the government not put a pathetic $150,000 aside to help these people in an access health care system that does not have a safe injection site involved in it? We have a huge problem in Victoria of people living on the street, people who have substance abuse problems, people who are homeless, people who are brain injured, people who have psychiatric problems. It is an embarrassment that the government rejected this. I ask that Conservatives change their mind and invest in this and support the Insite safe injection program.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to address the Quarantine Act within the context of both its urgency and its relevance in terms of the concerns of Canadians.

I do not see this as just a normal technical amendment. I think that Canadians view their members of this House as their last bastion of support when it comes to protecting them against the kinds of epidemics that are global in nature, pandemics that are possible at any time, and against the magnitude and enormity of the issue with respect to possible pandemics and how they would affect our society. I think it is important that from time to time we assure Canadians that we do not take this trust for granted.

To give this a little context, it has been my experience in the House that nothing is self-evident. I remember when, in the name of making our electoral system more accountable and more secure in terms of those who might abuse it, we had a huge debate here when amendments were made to that electoral system as to whether it was a right to privacy to have one's age kept secret. We spent many hours on that. That was in looking at our basic democratic process of a vote in making sure it was secure against those who would abuse the franchise. We spent hours on whether it was an invasion of privacy for age to be one of the necessary requirements in order to make the system secure.

I do not mean to digress, but that was an example of where we spent a great deal of time on what could have appeared to be a technicality. That was to protect the right to privacy of individual Canadians.

However, this particular amendment is much more than just elementary and technical in nature. What it does is that if there was not an accountable regime in place it could place at risk our whole concept of human rights, the rights under the charter. With respect to border security where challenges are made, there could be a period of time, whereby under the old Quarantine Act a great deal of harm may have been done while legal technicalities, not medical ones, were being used as the parameters for assessment. That might be critical in terms of the potential harm that might be done at a border crossing.

To give a little context for those who may be listening, the objective of the bill is to create at the border two new classes of inspection, so to speak, and two new classes of officials: environmental health officers and screening officers. These officials, along with quarantine officers, would make the decisions based on total information that is available to them as to whether someone should be detained and in fact put in quarantine because of a possible risk to society. That is a very incisive and deep intrusion into what we have been used to having in terms of the flexibility to move across borders and within the global community. It has become a more urgent matter to deal with.

The amendments that are being provided have a history. When the SARS epidemic occurred, the government of the day saw fit to bring together the best health specialists in the country. In 2003 we established the National Advisory Committee on SARS and Public Health. That was placed under chairmanship of an esteemed Canadian, Dr. David Naylor.

That particular committee made some recommendations. One of the fundamental ones is what provides the root of the government's amendments today, that is, to set in place these two classes of health officials and to work in close concert with provincial public health officials in order to tighten up the Quarantine Act and in order to take immediate action and not get embedded in technical, legal and more immigration related issues.

It is hard to believe that back in 2003 Dr. Naylor and his associates and colleagues were reviewing an act that had not had any substantive amendment since 1872 or 1873. I am sure that Canadians are going to be extremely surprised with respect to that, especially if they draw the broad context of how much medical challenges have changed from 1873 to 2007 and the experiences we have had with respect to pandemics.

If this were characterized in terrorist terms, and we indeed have been more shocked in terms of our susceptibility to acts of bacteriological terrorism and so on, if that were the issue, there would not be anybody who would apologize for standing up in this House and talking about that particular threat and having a substantive debate on the views that would be put forward by this government or any other government. All parties would be interested in that.

This is another aspect of what could constitute not terrorism but an international and global threat, whereby we have to bring our institutions up to date and have the capacity to respond to a very wide variety of threats. My colleague has expanded the debate to some extent. I do understand the concerns that he has raised and I do not think this debate is finished. There will be many other opportunities to expand the nature of the Quarantine Act in keeping with what Canadians' expectations are of us.

I would also just like to mention that I heard one of the speakers suggesting that to some extent we are violating provincial authority and so on. Canada, the federal government, has absolute responsibility at borders. We have heard a great deal of debate with respect to new security measures that our American friends are bringing in, but I have to say that here in the province of Ontario there is a major initiative to update our public health card to include a picture and the necessary information in keeping with the complexity of health care, health related issues and so on.

Therefore, it should not be any surprise that, while this matter of provincial jurisdiction and public health is important to keep in mind, it is important to strengthen the bridge of federal cooperation with provincial public health authorities in terms of the whole matter of quarantine.

That is important, because it would seem to me that in the regime that clicks in at the border when there is a detention because of issues related to health risk, provincial authorities are going to be extremely important in the health care system in terms of the follow-up that takes place with respect to those who are coming from other countries who may be returning to Canada, those people who have visited other countries and who may have been exposed to a health related risk. It is the total health care system, not just the federal Quarantine Act, that is being integrated by this amendment to the Quarantine Act.

I would like to close by saying that Canadians expect us, as a matter of accountability and responsibility, to make sure that there is no part of health care or the international regime that is loose and open, and that it is totally tight and coordinated with respect to global threats that may come as a result of health implications.

I think the government should be congratulated for bringing Bill C-42 forward, because it maintains the continuity that was established by a previous government, and this is not a partisan issue. Every single Canadian would agree that it is in our higher interest, in the common interest and the public interest, that on matters of health we work closely together and make sure that Canadians can rest in the notion that we are doing the job they want us to do with respect to health and the possibility of pandemics in this country.

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

I declare the motion carried. Accordingly, the bill stands referred to the Standing Committee on Health.

(Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and referred to a committee)