Madam Speaker, they call it the isle of tears. It is also called the island of death. It is an island in the St. Lawrence, 50 kilometres downstream from Quebec City, called Grosse Île. This island was Canada's quarantine station from 1832 to 1937. It is where all the immigrants coming to Canada had to spend a quarantine period before they went on to Canada proper.
I mention this because I believe this debate on foot and mouth disease, and the problem and indeed crisis we are facing now, actually signals a larger issue, an issue that is going to perplex the next generation of Canadians. Indeed I think what we are facing with foot and mouth disease today is a symptom of a hazard that is the result of this global village that is occurring.
Let me first, Madam Speaker, just give you a little bit of history of Grosse Île. Grosse Île was set up in 1832 as a result of a cholera epidemic that broke out in India in 1826 and spread across the Middle East, arriving in Moscow in 1831. By 1832 it had reached Great Britain.
In those days people did not know much about disease. They only saw the impact of disease. It was called Asiatic cholera and people died in the thousands. The Canadian authorities faced with the great ships and sailing vessels that were coming over with the great waves of immigration were faced with the dilemma of immigrants coming into Canada who may or may not have been carrying diseases that may infect the rest of the population. What they did was erect at Grosse Île facilities for holding immigrants for several weeks and for sterilizing their clothing.
Madam Speaker, you can visit Grosse Île today. It is now being turned into a national park. You can see at Grosse Île the installations where the immigrants came. They were in a large building. They were forced to strip, take all their clothes off. Through one door they walked through a series of hot showers to wash them clean. Through another door their luggage was carried into a primitive autoclave in which their clothing was sterilized with hot steam.
Despite that many people sickened and died at Grosse Île. They estimate about 20,000 Irish alone died as they tried to enter Canada in the years between 1832 and 1937.
The worst time was in the 1840s when this time it was typhus. Typhus is carried by lice. They did not realize at the time that this was the problem. They did know, however, that certain primitive sterilization procedures seemed to combat the disease.
The reason that story, this little bit of history, is significant is we move forward 60 years and what we find is that people come to Canada through our ports, but mostly through our airports with no quarantine period, with no thought of sterilization, with no concern up until this foot and mouth disease crisis that they may be carrying infectious diseases.
What this foot and mouth epidemic tells us is that we now have a situation in the global world we are living in, this global village, where diseases are worldwide. Today we are facing a crisis with respect to an animal disease which threatens to kill a large quantity of our agricultural industry. It has the potential of devastating our cattle industry. We have seen the pictures of course in Britain of thousands and thousands of animals being slaughtered and buried.
I must take a break and note that I am splitting my time. It is such an engaging topic that I actually would like to speak at some length because I am an historian and I am interested always in the way the past has instruction for the present and future.
The point I am trying to make is now suddenly Agriculture Canada, suddenly the government and suddenly the public are activated by this need to look at the security of our ports of entry when it comes to the possibility of infectious diseases arriving in the country. Suddenly we have an emergency on our hands.
I have listened to the earlier speakers and I am confident the government is doing all it can under the circumstances. I think what we are faced with now is a harbinger of further dangers to come, other dangers that may affect our food crops but other dangers that may also affect our people.
In my riding just recently we had a terrible scare where a person had come in from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and suddenly became ill. She showed all the symptoms of Ebola virus. She bled out of her pores and every symptom indicated that she was carrying one of the most highly infectious and most fatal diseases known to man.
The happy story is that after she was put in isolation and all the medical expertise was applied to the situation, it was discovered that whatever it was, and they still do not know what it was, it was not this particular infectious disease.
What this says to us and what the foot and mouth crisis says to us is that we as a nation, we as a government and we as a people have to be aware of the fact that we are moving into a new century in which there is a new type of threat to national security. It is not enough to suddenly put together defences which involve mats on the floors of airport corridors that sterilize the soles of shoes.
We have to create a game plan that puts us in a position where we are prepared to respond to another crisis that might affect our food crops. There are diseases that affect rice and there are diseases that affect wheat. I do not want to sound alarmist, but there are also very scary diseases out there that affect humans.
I think one positive thing we can get out of this crisis that is facing us today is that we as parliamentarians and we as the Canadian public should support our government in setting up long term strategies that look at this problem in a long term fashion, and looks at it not only in terms of the agricultural industries but in terms of national security in the broadest sense.
We have to co-operate not only with other government agencies. It should not just be the department of agriculture because it happens to be a disease that affects cattle. It should be co-ordinated by Emergency Preparedness Canada and it should embrace all departments including Health Canada. It also should affect of course the way we train our customs officials. Even more than that, it is not just a national issue. It is not just a federal issue. It is a provincial issue.
I think the time has come when the provinces and the federal government have to get together. They have to talk and they have to develop strategies between them and share the costs that look to the security not only of our food supply, not only of our agricultural industries, Madam Speaker, but also to the security of the generation of Canadians to come.