Yes, and I think Canadians remember most the SARS virus, which has now been eliminated from the human population through a global effort.
In Beijing, China, the SARS virus came from infected laboratory workers who infected their family members. So if that type of situation isn't contained, the SARS virus could re-emerge in our population, and nobody wants to repeat that scenario.
That is something that luckily has not happened in Canada. But let me stress that after the elimination of SARS circulation in Canada, there are probably a number of laboratories that host the SARS virus. We would like to know which laboratories these are, but there's no formal, systematic mechanism to find that out. You can do surveys and things, but we have no authority to ask who possesses the SARS virus.
On another example, salmonella is a risk group 2 pathogen, but in Oregon it has been used to spike salad bars. Someone put salmonella in the salad bar, and that is an act of bioterrorism. Another example is the anthrax letters in the United States. But in the former Soviet Union there was a release of anthrax that not only affected lab workers but was distributed in a plume because of the winds, and it infected people outside the laboratory in the community itself.
So many of these agents are in the risk groups 3 and 4. They are the ones we worry about the most, but people can use salmonella, E. coli, or other viruses.
Another thing that people may know about is the polio virus. The polio virus is undergoing eradication. It has been eliminated from the Americas. As part of our responsibility to the World Health Organization--and we signed on to this--we should know where polio viruses are in Canada. Save trying to do some surveys, we have no authority or ability to actually figure this out. So we were not able to complete our reporting to the WHO to the extent we would have liked. We did the best we could, but this bill will allow us to really track who has the polio virus, the SARS virus, etc.