Debates of April 28th, 2003

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome

[Greg Thompson, Progressive Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Mr. Speaker, why did it take this long for the minister to come into the House of Commons and address this issue? As I said, during question period there are 30 second responses but should she not have invited participation by members of Parliament to help her, the ministry and the country deal with this?

Why so late coming into the House? Why was it up to the opposition parties to suggest this emergency debate?

[Anne McLellan, Liberal, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I was in the House every day until the beginning of the break. During the first week of the break, I was available to the media two days for full scrums. Last week I was available on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. In fact, my scrums were 15 or 20 minutes long and covered live, I believe, on all three major networks, as well as excerpted widely in the pages of the papers.

My key message during that time to Canadians was that people were working on the ground to control and contain this disease. They were doing an effective job. It was being controlled, it was being contained and Toronto was a safe place to go. I was in the House this afternoon for question period. I answered a number of questions in relation to this issue.

This is the first day back from break. If people want to discuss this further, be it in this context, during question period or at other times, I am available and I think there are a number of members of Parliament and colleagues from this side of the House who take this issue very seriously and would be more than interested in engaging in this important debate.

[Rob Merrifield, Canadian Alliance, Yellowhead, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure finally to be able to talk in some sort of substance with regard to this emergency debate on SARS, a virus that has gripped the nation, that has gripped the attention of the world and that has the potential of great harm. We understand that. I do not think anyone is fooling themselves by thinking anything different.

I am absolutely amazed when I see how the health workers in Ontario have dealt with this issue. They have dealt with it in a commendable way. They were absolutely stretched to the maximum even before the SARS virus came upon them as a challenge for them to control it and deal with it. I can only imagine just how intense it would be for the health care workers.

We know the most unhealthy workplace in Canada is in our hospitals which are stretched to the maximum. Nurses take more sick time off than people from any other workplace in Canada because they have a very intense job and they are very stretched. The lack of dollars in our health care system has allowed it to erode over the last number of years. We have talked a lot about this but I am not here to talk about it. I am talking on top of that. We have a situation now with this virus and they have been called upon to do extraordinary things. It is very intense. I just cannot impress upon the House enough how much gratitude we owe them.

I believe on Sunday five nurses said that was it, that they could not handle any more and they decided to quit. I can understand their frustrations. I talk to nurses all the time, and they were frustrated before this.

This is where we needed a national quarterback and some national attention to bring together as many resources as we possibly could to assist in areas such as Toronto, where the virus exploded and got out of hand for a short period of time. To contain that, we had to add resources to it. We should have intensified the workplace force there so they could deal with it in a most effective and efficient way as possible. Unfortunately we saw lack of leadership in the area of dealing with the containment side of it. Although there was no hesitation whatsoever on behalf of Tony Clement, the health minister of Ontario. Very quickly the Grace Hospital was quarantined. Shortly after, the York Hospital was quarantined. It was done very quickly and there was no hesitation to deal with the virus.

It was somewhat different as to how this all started; the Vancouver situation compared to the Toronto one. Both had patients who came from overseas and brought this to our borders. They were allowed through our airport and screening systems. We did not know really with what we were dealing.

However we have to compare how the hospitals dealt with this. Why did the virus get out of control for a short period of time in Toronto but not in Vancouver when the same warnings were given to both? I think because of the proximity of Vancouver to Asia, officials were really looking for flu-like symptoms. They had been alerted to it. As soon as patients came in they were isolated immediately. Officials in Toronto however were not aware of with what they were really dealing. I do not fault anyone for that. I just say that we are all human. What we can learn from that is how important it is to act quickly.

When all is said and done, one thing we absolutely have learned is we cannot hesitate when it comes to dealing with the safety of the people of Canada. We have seen the results of what happened when we hesitated to deal with leadership issues and protect Canadian population because of this. Therein lies the reason for an emergent debate in the House tonight so we can talk about what has happened, what we can learn from it and where we go from here. It is very important we do that.

One thing we can say is that no matter how we can applaud the workers in the containment side of it to deal with it nationally, all of that is for naught if we turn around and allow the SARS virus to be imported to our nation by other carriers from other countries. That is the reason why the WHO was so adamant that countries exporting this virus to other countries had to be stopped. That is how we contain it.

Whether issuing the travel alert was premature, and we can argue I suppose whether the facts were there, the WHO obviously felt the virus was being exported. Whether it was exported to Australia, we do not know. There was a case of a couple of children whom they thought had SARS. They got better before they were diagnosed, so it is hard to say. There was a nurse in the Philippines who died. She passed it on to her father and he passed away. There was one in Bulgaria who had pneumonia and they suspected SARS. The other one is in the United States. We are exporting this virus to other countries so we should not be so alarmed about what the WHO says.

The WHO issued a travel advisory because the screening process was not in place. If the screening process is not in place, we have to ask why it is not in place. I asked that question this afternoon in question period, and the minister's reply was that the WHO had said everything was going fine. I do not buy that. The WHO was saying that it was going to issue a travel advisory to Toronto because we were exporting the virus. Whether we were or were not does not really matter. The issue was the WHO felt that we were. It said that the screening was not appropriate.

Some colleagues are saying that was not why the travel advisory was issued. I do not think it would have a case to stand on if we were not suspected of transporting SARS to other countries. The WHO would never have issued the travel advisory. I say that very clearly because when this first started there were four different places in the world that were hot spots: Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore and Toronto. That is where the SARS virus broke out but a travel advisory was not issued for Singapore.

One might ask what Singapore did that it was not issued a travel advisory. It had 19 deaths and an even higher number of individuals who had contracted the disease, so it was not the containment side of it. We are pretty much equal on that. It was not the death side of it. It was the exporting of it. The WHO felt that the screening at the airports was sufficient enough and that it dealt with the issue of transporting the virus other countries, so there was no reason to issue a travel advisory to Singapore.

That is how I would assess the facts of the case. The problem we have in Toronto is that we should have been doing a similar job there. The WHO on March 27 said that we should be screening and it recommended the screening process was to be an interview. I challenged the minister at that time, on the 26th and 27th of March, why we were not screening as the WHO had recommended. The comment came that the voluntary pamphlet was appropriate enough. That was a terrible decision made that day. We are feeling the repercussions of that decision today.

It is very fortunate in some ways that other countries were doing their jobs and we did not have more transported into Canada during that time period when we were inappropriately screening those incoming passengers. That could have made the Canadian population more vulnerable than it already was. However it was as important not to export this to other nations.

Because of that, we are in a situation where Toronto unjustifiably is now seen as a place that is a risk for travellers and a travel advisory is now in place. The world, regardless of the facts, believes that Toronto is not a safe place to visit. Concerts are being cancelled, hotel reservations and meetings of all kinds are being cancelled. It is a devastating blow to the economy of that area in particular.

I live in a constituency that actually is in the Rocky Mountains. Jasper Park is in my riding. I asked the people of Jasper Park if they were being affected. Some of them said yes, that they were having some problems with what they expected to see this summer. Some said no, that it was not quite there yet. There is a possibility that perhaps, if we can get on top of this in time and we can advertise that Canada is as clean and pristine as it was once known, we can recoup the damage that has been done. Nonetheless, the damage which has occurred is very significant, particularly for the Toronto area.

We are having this emergency debate so we can see if we have dealt with this yet. Is there still a problem at our airports?

I was reading an article on the front page of, I think, the Edmonton Sun about an individual who tried to test the system from Toronto to Great Britain. He actually put on a lot of layers of clothing so that he was sweating profusely and he faked a cough. He was coughing intensely when he went to the wicket. There were three pamphlets there, whether people voluntarily picked them up or not. He jumped on the plane and was coughing intensely up and down the aisle waiting to see if someone would stop him and check to see if he had SARS. The problem was that the plane ended up landing in Montreal where he thought for sure he would be escorted off and asked some questions about it. Nonetheless, the comment, and I am reading from the paper, was that the individual continued on to Great Britain with not a word said to him. This is the sort of thing that happened.

What alerted me to the entire issue of the screening process not being appropriate was when an individual sent an e-mail to my office saying that his business had called him back from Hong Kong because of the fear of SARS. The problem was that he was not asked one question during his trip from Hong Kong to the Toronto airport about SARS. He actually could have contracted it there and imported it here and no one would have even known.

That was why we said there had to be appropriate screening at the airport in Toronto. Screening was not being done on passengers coming into the country or passengers leaving the country. We encouraged the minister to invoke the Quarantine Act and to say to Canadians, “We will stand between this virus and the health of Canadians initially”. The minister said no, that it was not needed and that we did not have to worry about that.

However we must understand that the protection under the Quarantine Act goes both ways: protection from incoming passengers so they do not carry disease and protection for other countries on outgoing passengers. The power to contain both is in the act and it is spelled out very clearly.

[Anne McLellan, Liberal, Edmonton West, AB]

We have quarantine officers at each airport.

[Rob Merrifield, Canadian Alliance, Yellowhead, AB]

The minister is saying that she has quarantine officers in the airports. That is a very interesting thing to say because I checked that out and there is a difference between what Vancouver is doing and what Toronto is doing when it comes to quarantine officers and screening. For the number of quarantine officers in Vancouver they look to the local authorities, as well as the federal authorities, to make sure they have enough quarantine people in the Vancouver airport to deal with it. There are fewer quarantine officers at the Toronto airport which has many more passengers going through it. It is those officers who are not appropriate in number, nor are there appropriate screening to even identify anything to do for those officers because passengers are not questioned when they go to the wickets.

The other questions asked of individuals when they check their bags are whether their bags had been left alone or whether they had packed them themselves. Those are the two standard questions asked. They do not make much sense but nonetheless we are asked them every time we go through the airport. I do not think there are many people in the House who do not go through the airport on a regular basis. Those two questions could have been replaced very quickly and easily with the following questions: “Have you been in contact with SARS? Have you had a fever? Do you suspect you might be coming down with any kind of illness?” It would not have slowed the process down at all. Yet the minister has said that we cannot ask those questions because there are 36,000 individuals leaving the Toronto airport on a daily basis and it would retard the process. I am sorry but I do not buy that.

My frustration is in seeing how this whole case has been handled from the beginning until now. We say that when we must deal with a crisis like this we must look at it as a three-pronged approach. First, it must be contained nationally. Thank goodness we have great workers doing that job. Second, to ensure we do not reinfect we must protect the nation internationally. Third, we must work on a vaccine to protect Canadians in a long term way so that somewhere in the future, regardless of where this virus goes, we are dealing with it.

My frustration was being contacted by the media saying that the government was not sure whether it should put $10 million or $100 million into research for a vaccine because it was an international problem and perhaps the whole international community should deal with it. I suggest there is absolutely no way that should even be a question. We should automatically be dealing with the health and safety of Canadians in the long run.

When we have a government that is about to spend $131 million to continue running a gun registry program next year that will not save one life in the country, its hesitation about putting money into a vaccine should not even enter its mind. It should be automatic.

Nonetheless, there has to be a three-pronged approach when dealing with this virus if we are going to deal with it in the long term.

I am frustrated because I see a government that has failed to act. This is the history of this government. It fails to act when it comes to emergency situations. It is just sort of the character of the government. It did the same thing with September 11. It did the same thing with the Iraq war situation. Now it is doing the same thing with SARS. Hopefully we can learn something: that we have to deal with this in an aggressive way. We cannot hesitate. If we are going to err we should err on the aggressive side not on the other side.

The people on the other side will say that we are just fearmongering, that we are trying to scare the nation. I will tell members something about fear. Fear usually comes when one does not understand or know something. When we are straight up with the population and tell them the truth the fear erodes. They do not have the fear because they are part of the process and they have the information to deal with it. That is how the government should have dealt with the SARS virus instead of telling us initially that we had to be coughed on for a significant amount of time before we could catch the virus, and then coming out four days ago and saying that the virus could actually live on an object for up to 24 hours.

Some people have said that the government just did not know, that it was too new a virus and that it did not understand for sure. If it did not understand then it should not have said that we had to be coughed on for four hours before we could contract the disease.

The government should be straight up and aggressive and tell everyone that it is prepared to screen people appropriately at the airport so that SARS can be contained. Canadians would accept and approve of that.

Unfortunately, because that was not happening, we have a significant hole to dig out of in this country. Thank goodness it looks like SARS has been contained.

Here we are today looking ahead and asking for the facts. Hopefully tomorrow the travel advisory to Ontario will be lifted, no thanks to the health minister because she is not over talking to the WHO right now. She sent Tony Clement. I do not understand that. This is an international organization and we should have some federal representation there. She should not be sitting here. She should be sitting over there, which is unfortunate.

Nonetheless, hopefully the advisory will be lifted tomorrow and then we can advertise that Canada is the pristine country that it once was, and that it is safe to come here and enjoy life and to enjoy the benefits of Canada. It is a vast country with wonderful people, a wonderful health system and a weak health leader, but we will work at fixing that.

However we have a situation where we can move from here in a positive way. I would like to end by saying that positive tone is what I would like to leave us with. We do have opportunities to move forward.

We do have another cloud on the horizon which is West Nile virus. I hope we have learned because this is the second time we have had a major illness that we fell asleep on. The first one was West Nile last fall where we thought there were only 11 cases and it ended up to be over 200 cases. Hopefully we will not approach the West Nile virus with the same apathy that we have with this one.

The upside to the West Nile virus is that it is not the pandemic bug that has been forecast for many years. If there is another upside to this it is that we hopefully have learned not to be passive when these situations come along, that we become aggressive. That is the approach we need to have as we move forward to protect this nation and to deal with viruses and diseases that come along.

It really is frustrating that we are having an emergency debate after the disease has been contained and after things have been almost wrecked. We should have had this debate early on when the WHO on March 27 said that we had to screen at the airport. That was when we should have realized this was serious and that we should have had a debate on it to give some direction and move on it as aggressively as possible.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this evening's debate. I say pleased because it is certain that as members of Parliament we are in the habit of giving speeches and we enjoy taking part in this kind of discussion, even when the subject is basically very serious.

Naturally, I will begin by offering my sympathies to the victims of this terrible disease, another plague touching the human race. We have seen wars, we have seen AIDS, which has been around for some time, and now we see a new kind of pneumonia—very severe, with respiratory problems, and possibly deadly. Of course, not everyone will die from it, but society will pay a high cost. I believe we should make every possible effort to try to limit this disease, to avoid its spread.

First of all, we must think of the victims. They need care and their families also need our sympathy. Imagine having a relative or close friend in one of these hospitals. Imagine the psychological conditioning of the people who support these friends and families within the hospitals. These are worried people and they hope that the virus does not spread through the rest of the hospital, as it seems to have done in Beijing, where entire hospitals have had to be put under quarantine.

I also feel special sympathy for the health care workers looking after these people. I am a former health care worker. Before going into politics, I worked in a centre for mentally handicapped young people. A disease of this kind, not as brutal or deadly, but just as contagious, appeared in the centre. We had to put whole units into quarantine. I have been through this and it was not easy. There is always the feeling that no matter how much attention is paid to hygiene, no matter how much is done to ensure that the nursing staff can continue its work, we ourselves might fall victim to the disease.

I have a lot of sympathy for these people, especially since the disease with which we are dealing now is even more serious. We must put ourselves in the place of these workers who, day after day, put their health at risk to help those who are sick. I think that it is worth mentioning. I understand the kind of psychological pressure that they must feel and I know how difficult it is for them and for their families.

Last weekend, I saw on the front page of a Quebec newspaper a nurse who looked exhausted and a little desperate. These people work in difficult conditions. They have to work overtime and spend all their energy fighting this infection during so many hours, days and weeks. They certainly deserve our admiration, and I wanted to let them know that at the outset.

It seems that this disease originated in China, which I think is a well-known fact by now. Political measures have already been taken in that country. Of course, the political system there is not the same as ours. It is often the president of the republic who makes decisions like removing the minister of health or the mayor of Beijing. That is what happened. Some people were removed in China precisely because they acted without any concern for transparency and because they minimized the impact of the disease. They did not know what they were supposed to do and they probably did not have any contingency plan. When they realized how serious the problem was, it was already too late and the disease had already spread, which makes the present situation in China extremely serious.

Fortunately, we reacted more quickly here. It is likely that Ontario, Quebec and all the Canadian provinces have better medical services than those in China. I am not saying that China is completely lacking in resources. It has hospitals. But, in terms of the professionalism of medical personnel and the availability of tools to diagnose and treat this disease, I must salute Canadian health care workers.

So, there are always political consequences. China is experiencing political consequences, but so are Ontario and Canada, with regard to what happened and who is responsible.

It is great to be a minister or prime minister, but the job comes with responsibilities. Now, there is some confusion, perhaps not about the origin of the disease but whether it has been contained.

The WHO is telling Ontario that it does not believe SARS has been contained. It is not true that just one person arrived and contaminated everyone else, that this is the full extent of it and that it has been contained to Toronto. Apparently, some cases went through Toronto and spread the disease elsewhere, including in the United States.

People are wondering, then, if SARS has been contained or not. It is dangerous because this creates a psychological climate that has an impact on society as a whole, particularly in Ontario, because this province was the one hit.

Many of my colleagues talked about the economic impact, and I am going to do so shortly, but there is also a psychological impact. What does this lead to? People tend to stay home with their families and go out as little as possible. This slows down the local economy and also the social vision.

So there is currently some uncertainty. I am drawing the connection with the political leaders in China. An emergency situation such as this requires a certain type of action.

I remember what happened in my riding during the ice storm. I was in Mexico at the time. As soon as I learned how serious the situation was, I naturally hopped on the first available plane. I spent 24 hours on board different planes, making connections right and left in order to get back home. I think it is important to be in the field, where things are happening, to show the people that we know what we are doing, that we care and that we are fighting on their behalf.

That is not what happened in China, and we might have concerns about how things were done here in Canada. At the beginning of the crisis, the Prime Minister showed up in Chinatown, in Toronto, to have dinner. Is that enough? It was a first step. A message. The Prime Minister goes to Chinatown to show that it is not dangerous or at least not as dangerous as some might believe and that we will get this disease under control.

We might criticize the Prime Minister for not cutting his vacation short when the disease started to spread. It is important. His decision can be examined from different viewpoints. If the current Prime Minister had been involved in a leadership campaign, would he have come back? Why do we not hear more from the leadership candidates on such fundamental issues? These are very important political issues.

Tomorrow, cabinet will be meeting in Toronto, hoping to send a signal. I think it is important for the cabinet to meet there, but it would be much more important to give health professionals what the need to be able to fight this disease. It is not enough for the Prime Minister and cabinet to show up in Toronto and say that everything is fine.

We can also talk about the mayor of Toronto, who is more or less filming a video clip on the city of Toronto to show how great things are there. This is inappropriate because people can tell that it makes no sense with everything that is going on. Authorities must face the situation and recognize that there is a problem. When they show someone walking on the beach in Toronto, near Lake Ontario, pretending that everything is fine, some say that this probably produces the opposite effect to what was intended.

We must also talk about the whole political approach at the WHO. It is the WHO that issued a travel advisory, telling people that they should not travel to Toronto unless they absolutely had to. What was our ambassador in Geneva doing? He must have heard about that at some point. Why did he not call the government to say “Listen, we have a problem”. Did our ambassador, Sergio Marchi, go to the WHO when he heard about that to tell them, “Listen, do not move too quickly on this; why would you put Toronto on such a list”?

Some people have started to say that if we want the WHO to revise its decision, it is because it was made for a political reason. Some even said that it was made so the world would not point the finger at eastern and Asian countries. It meant “Look, Toronto also has that problem, and that is why we have put it on the list of places to avoid for a while”.

What was our ambassador in Geneva doing? One may wonder. It might be too early to point a finger at those responsible. For the time being we are wondering. We can wonder whether this crisis has been properly managed or whether we let things go too far only to wake up suddenly when we saw that the issue was becoming national in scope?

We have questions regarding all these approaches, the fact that the Prime Minister had dinner in Toronto, that cabinet will meet there tomorrow, that the Prime Minister decided not to cut his holidays short. We have a lot of questions so far. I have the feeling that if things were to get worst we will have to probe much deeper and there will be some finger pointing.

I will not raise the issue of jurisdiction in the area of health, an area under provincial jurisdiction--I believe the provinces are responsible for health--but this is another example of the number one priority of voters in Canada, namely the health care system. So why is the government, which has surpluses, not giving more money to the provinces to provide quality health care?

What does the government want to do? It wants to put $10 million in a tourist ad campaign. This is not what we need. We need quality services in every province. Everybody is saying that the health care system is underfunded.

Do you not believe that what we need right now in Toronto is more nurses, more social workers to provide psychological support to people, more front line workers in those hospitals? We need this money, but the government knows that it most likely will have to foot the bill since we cannot say whether or not $10 or $20 million will be enough.

Once again, the province will have to absorb the cost and it will have an impact on the budget. We might be able then to look at the alternative: providing emergency disaster relief funding, as was done in the Lac-Saint-Jean area and during the ice storm.

But there is no sign this will be the case. For the time being, Canada is saying it will try to help Toronto through an ad campaign to attract tourists. It is questionable in the present context.

There will certainly be economic costs. Many people have mentioned this. Some economic institutions have even said that Toronto might be losing up to $30 million daily at the present time. It is certain that all Canadians and Quebeckers—for we are their next door neighbours—are following developments.

It is very important to us that every effort be made to contain this crisis and I am certain that Quebeckers are sympathetic to the cause of the health workers and to the political leaders of Ontario. We are, of course, not anxious to see the disease spread to Quebec as well, which could happen at any time.

Every effort must therefore be made, and I think that the people of Quebec would not hesitate to help out their colleagues in Toronto if they were asked, because we understand that this disease, this atypical pneumonia, must be stopped from spreading further in Canada or elsewhere on the continent, not only out of feelings of solidarity but also out of pure self-interest. I think that Quebeckers would be prepared to make that effort.

I also want to congratulate the federal government on the initiatives it has taken. It was, for instance, very important as far as employment insurance was concerned for the minister to lift the two-week waiting period requirement for EI.

There are potential dangers related to this, because a person with symptoms might not want to report them for fear of being laid off and forced to wait two weeks before seeing any money. I therefore think this measure is an important one. It may not look that important but workers must be helped, especially those in direct contact with victims, who might be affected by the disease. Everyone must therefore understand that, if symptoms are reported, the minister has said that she was lifting the two-week waiting period. This is, I believe, extremely important.

Summarizing then, I believe it is very important at this time for politicians, health care workers and all other workers in these hospitals to combine their efforts. Nurses and orderlies are not the only ones involved; there is the housekeeping staff, who have a huge task as well in containing this virus.

It requires a lot of cleanliness and disinfection. That is the job of the cleaning staff. These people are also subject to quotas, to restrictions, and to the danger posed by their work. We should recognize what they are doing. At the moment, it may be too soon to begin to say, “We should have done this; we should have done that”.

To me it is important that, when disaster strikes, we ask, “Where was the emergency plan?” We may wonder where it was. Where was the emergency plan before the aircraft hit the World Trade Center towers? Perhaps there was no plan. But now there probably is one.

Still, there was probably no emergency plan for this type of disease. But it must be a lesson to us. Once we are in a crisis situation, it is not the time to assess blame and make decisions about what to do. First, we have to make sure the virus is contained. First, we have to contain the spread of the virus. Once that is done, and once the storm is over, the reliability of the plan's preparation will have to be evaluated.

Last week, or two weeks ago, I was questioning witnesses appearing before the defence and veterans affairs committee, on the topic of critical infrastructure. I was worried about the way it is being done. There seems to be no emergency plan if a nuclear reactor were attacked. I do not think that there was an emergency plan ready to handle this kind of disease.

Research will have to be done on diseases. People may say that this disease was unknown until now. That is true. Still what would happen if another disease appeared and struck in the same way, and it was unknown to us? Who are the first to respond? How do you work with the levels of government? How do you work with the municipality? All of these things are extremely important to assess and to prepare for, and conclusions must be drawn.

As I was saying, now, the virus needs to be contained. Health care workers must also be given support and encouragement. We often sing the praises of war veterans, who represent a country and defend its interests. Now, we must sing the praises of the health care warriors. They too are risking their lives, perhaps not in the same way as soldiers, but they put in long hours, in their theatre of operations—to use an expression often used in connection with the military—in hospitals, which are dangerous places to be right now, and where there can be serious consequences. These people deserve all our respect.

In closing, I want to reiterate that Quebeckers have great sympathy for this situation, for the health care workers in Ontario and for the victims. They would not want this to spread elsewhere. Quebec is Ontario's primary and closest neighbour. It is therefore important for Quebeckers to send a message. That is what the Bloc Quebecois is doing today and intends to continue to do. The Bloc is sending a message to say that this situation has elicited its sympathy, that it wants to help these people and will do so any way that it can; they can count on the generosity and the solidarity of Quebeckers. We all live on the same planet and on the same continent, so we must help each other in times of crisis such as this. The solution lies in our solidarity. Health care workers are our best guarantee of the solidarity required in times like these.

[Svend Robinson, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for New Brunswick Southwest, the spokesperson on health for the Progressive Conservative caucus, for having joined with me in seeking this emergency debate today on this profoundly important question of the response or the absence of an effective response by the federal Liberal government to the outbreak of SARS.

It is sad that it was the two smallest parties in the House that had to take the leadership on this issue. This is leadership that has been shamefully lacking from the federal government from the beginning of this crisis.

I want to start out by extending condolences to the families, friends and loved ones of those 21 Canadians who have been victims of SARS so far. I wish to extend those condolences on behalf of the federal leader of the New Democratic Party, Jack Layton, and all of my caucus colleagues. We can only imagine the anguish and pain that their families are feeling at this time.

At the same time I want to join with members on all sides of the House in paying tribute to the extraordinary leadership, heroism, dedication, and tireless commitment of the front line workers across this country, but particularly in Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg, and a number of other centres in the fight against SARS. I am speaking here of health care workers, researchers, public health professionals, and others who have worked tirelessly day in and day out to do whatever they could in an extraordinary and courageous effort to stop the spread of SARS.

It is particularly appropriate that we acknowledge and pay tribute to the workers on the front lines today because April 28 is also the national day of mourning for workers killed or injured on the job. The Canadian Labour Congress has reminded us that well over one-quarter of all the cases and suspected cases of SARS are in fact health workers. We should join in expressing our gratitude as Canadians for their dedication, competence and professionalism.

We should also acknowledge the tremendous obstacles that health care workers have had to face in recent years: cutbacks, downsizing, privatization, restructuring, and other attacks on our public medicare system. Unfortunately, we are seeing some of the implications of those in the total absence of any meaningful and significant leadership by the federal Liberal government in the response to this SARS crisis.

Many Canadians are asking themselves where has the leadership been of the federal Minister of Health and the Prime Minister who after all speaks on behalf of all Canadians? Why did it take the Minister of Health a month to convene a meeting with her provincial and territorial colleagues? It was only on April 13 that she finally moved. We as New Democrats say that that inaction was shameful. It is shameful and there is no doubt whatsoever that the lack of federal leadership may have led to a situation which ultimately resulted in the World Health Organization issuing its travel advisory.

Canadians share this sense of anger and outrage that their federal government has not been there on the front lines. We have not had the kind of national leadership that Canadians are looking for on a crisis such as this.

In fact, there was an Environics poll conducted last week on the evening of April 24, only a few days ago. When Canadians surveyed in the greater Toronto area were asked what the response was like of the different levels of government, 53% of them said that they thought the city of Toronto had done a good job. Certainly, when we look at the dedication of the chief medical health officer of the city of Toronto, that remarkable woman and others on the front lines in Toronto, we understand that kind of response. I will remain silent about the spectacle of Mayor Mel Lastman, but certainly with that notable exception we have seen significant leadership there.

Regarding the Ontario government, there was a lot of concern. Only 43% said it was doing a good job and 52% said it was doing a poor job. It is no wonder that my provincial colleague the Ontario New Democrat Leader, Howard Hampton, has continued to speak out strongly for a real economic relief plan from the provincial government. It took far too long for Ernie Eves to finally act on this important question.

Yesterday Howard Hampton called for Queen's Park to top up employment insurance for SARS affected workers to 100% of income and to fund retraining for hospitality workers so they can upgrade their skills during the period of reduced demand. Hampton also said that the Conservative government should be working cooperatively with Ottawa in the event we finally see a real federal assistance plan and supplement those federal dollars which hopefully will be coming with provincial dollars.

However, here is the most glaring statistic. Only 31% of the residents of greater Toronto said the federal government was doing a good job. Over twice as many, 65% said that the federal government was failing Canadians. That is a damning indictment of the failure of leadership and the failure of federal Liberal members of Parliament from across Canada, but particularly Liberal members of Parliament from the greater Toronto area. Where have they been as this crisis unfolded?

I see a member here from Toronto who actually asked his own government to do something in terms of a financial aid package for businesses. That member was just laughed at by his own Minister of Health, by his own finance minister and by his Prime Minister. That Liberal member was completely ignored. In fact, to date there has been absolutely no response at all to the cry of smaller businesses in the Toronto area who are desperately looking for some support from a federal government that is sitting on a surplus of $14.8 billion. Not a penny out of the federal government to support businesses and workers who are hurting in the greater Toronto area.

Jack Layton, the federal New Democrat leader, has called as recently as yesterday on the federal government to stop and end its shameful silence with respect to the importance of responding to businesses in the greater Toronto area. The Prime Minister said that there are ups and downs in business. What a pathetic response. What an abdication of leadership not only of this country but particularly of the greater Toronto area.

Where are the silent, invisible greater Toronto Liberal MPs? There is not a peep out of them and when they actually stand up and try to get some support from the federal government, they are just slapped right down by their own ministers. They tell them to forget it and ignore them completely. Those of us on this side of the House are saying it is time that the federal government did ante up.

We briefly heard from the Liberal leadership candidate, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, who said this is a national epidemic and that we should pony up 90% of costs to assist in responding to this epidemic. There has not been a peep out of her since then nor any of her colleagues because the reality is that we know that she was speaking off the top of her head and not speaking on behalf of her government.

As Jack Layton said yesterday, Toronto does not need damage control from the Prime Minister. It needs damage assistance. Why has it taken over 40 days into the SARS epidemic before there is any relief package? There is still no relief package. It is all well and good to hold a cabinet meeting in Toronto but what the heck difference does that make to the businesses and to the workers who are suffering from this epidemic? There is no leadership, a shameful absence of any effective leadership.

Jack Layton and the federal New Democrat caucus have been calling for changes to EI eligibility and waiting periods to allow laid off workers, especially hospitality workers, to qualify for EI. We have been calling for an income support package for quarantined part time contracted and self-employed workers who are ineligible for EI benefits. We have also called on Ottawa to deliver a compensation package for Toronto's businesses, a package which could include a deferral of GST payments.

Jean Chrétien was golfing down in the Dominican Republic--

[The Speaker]

Order, please. The hon. member for Burnaby--Douglas is referring to the Prime Minister, but he knows he cannot refer to members by name. His own party leader may be able to do that because he is not a member of the House yet. The member for Burnaby--Douglas knows very well he has to be very careful. He will not want to break the rules of the House in this way.

[Svend Robinson, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, no indeed and I should have referred to the Prime Minister who was golfing in the Dominican Republic while Canadians were looking for that leadership which was totally lacking from both the Minister of Health and the Prime Minister.

As New Democrats what we are saying is that the front line workers, the health care workers have put their lives on the line, tragically in some cases have given their lives, in the fight of this epidemic. The research workers and others, their dedication should be matched by leadership at the top. Instead we have had a complete vacuum; we have had a shameful and complete vacuum of any leadership whatsoever.

I want to suggest as well that the lack of leadership may indeed have contributed to the fact that the World Health Organization issued a travel advisory. I as a Canadian frankly was embarrassed when I heard the head of the World Health Organization heaping praise on Vietnam. The World Health Organization actually has removed the travel advisory from Vietnam because it brought together leadership at the most senior levels of government, at all levels. It came together with a national plan and fought successfully against SARS to the point that the World Health Organization actually removed the travel advisory.

What an embarrassment that instead of Canada showing that kind of leadership, which hopefully would have led to the travel advisory never having been imposed, it was Vietnam that showed that leadership.

I want to mention another country, Taiwan. The Government of Canada should be absolutely ashamed of itself for how it responded to Taiwan by issuing a travel advisory telling Canadians that they should not travel to Taiwan. The World Health Organization said not to travel to Guangzhou, not to travel to Hong Kong, not to travel to Beijing, but the World Health Organization did not say anything about not travelling to Taiwan. What did the Canadian federal Liberal government do? It told Canadians not to travel to Taiwan.

That kind of travel advisory obviously has a devastating impact on the Taiwanese economy. Fortunately many other countries, including Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, Ireland and Israel removed Taiwan from their travel advisories. Canada did not. I have to ask, what on earth was the problem? Why was it that Canada failed to respond to Taiwan's call to lift that travel advisory?

More important, a broader question, why is it that the Canadian government is still refusing to support Taiwan's application for observer status at the World Health Organization? There is an upcoming meeting next month of the World Health Assembly. The foreign affairs committee just a couple of weeks ago passed a motion calling upon the Liberal government to do the right thing, to support observer status for Taiwan. I call today upon the government to respect the will of Parliament, to respect the call from the Standing Committee on Health and to support Taiwan's application.

Taiwan has shown real leadership in the fight against SARS. Certainly we regret the fact that it has imposed a ban on travel for Canadians, but given the absolutely appalling decision of our government to impose a travel advisory on Taiwan for no reason whatsoever, I do not think any of us should be surprised that Taiwan responded in the way it did. Let us only hope that when the World Health Organization lifts its travel advisory that it will in fact follow suit and respond, but shame, shame on the Liberal government for its response to Taiwan, both here and in failing to support it at the World Health Organization. What do they think?

The Minister of Foreign Affairs says that China speaks for Taiwan, that we have a one China policy. China's response to the SARS epidemic has been a bloody disgrace, a shameful disgrace. China knew back in November about this new illness and did not do anything at all, quite the contrary. So why should the people of Taiwan have to rely on China, of all countries, to speak on their behalf in the World Health Organization?

Jack Layton as our federal leader, and my colleagues in the New Democrat caucus have called for leadership in a number of areas. I have already made reference to the importance of emergency funding and disaster relief. I would note that it is particularly the hospitality, tourism, retail and transportation sectors that are taking a huge financial hit and the government is doing nothing at all to respond to that.

I want to address another issue and that is the ongoing failure of the government to move ahead with a national public health strategy. We are not just as New Democrats highlighting this today. My colleague from Winnipeg North Centre has been up in the House from the time she was first elected calling on the government to finally move ahead with a comprehensive public health strategy. Instead we have seen massive cuts by the former Liberal finance minister, now the leadership candidate, the member for LaSalle—Émard, who is travelling around the country talking about visionary leadership when he was the minister of finance responsible for huge cuts to public health.

These were identified as a concern long ago by the Auditor General. The Auditor General has pointed out in a number of reports that we have to see serious action on a public health strategy. Here is what the Auditor General said back in November 1999:

Health surveillance is particularly critical now, when globalization has created an environment for disease and its transmission that never existed before. Sound surveillance information can save lives.

The Auditor General went on to say that we did not have that national public health strategy. In December 2000 the Auditor General once again called on the federal government to move ahead on a public health strategy and pointed out:

For these reasons, it is in the interest of all parties to work together and to participate in the development of a national health and safety regulatory plan.

Then just last September once again:

Gaps and weaknesses in the way Health Canada tracks diseases leave Canadians vulnerable, says Sheila Fraser, the Auditor General of Canada.

That was in September of last year and there is still no public health legislation.

Where has the federal Liberal government been? It has been cutting back on our public medicare system. It has failed to move ahead on a public health strategy. As my leader in the House, the member for Winnipeg—Transcona, pointed out earlier today, the lead Canadian researcher in the fight against SARS, Dr. Frank Plummer, the head of the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, has been calling on the government for a national public health agency, for performance based investments in public health, including training of public health professionals in emerging infectious diseases, community approaches to chronic disease prevention, reducing health disparities, biosecurity, migration, aboriginal public health, food and water safety, and for a public health innovations fund to put emphasis on cutting edge research in public health.

Where is that leadership? Again it is totally lacking from the federal government.

Another concrete example of the failure, the bankruptcy of the federal Liberal government's policies, is in the area of research to find a vaccine. Just a few minutes ago during this debate I asked the minister whether she would support the call by a coalition of 24 respected scientists from across Canada, led by Robert Brunham, the medical director of the B.C. Centre for Disease Control. They are asking the government for $500,000 to jump start the development of a SARS vaccine.

The government still has not agreed to that request. This is a government that is sitting on $14.8 billion in surplus and it cannot come up with half a million bucks for scientists to do the work they have to do on a vaccine. I say shame on the Minister of Health. She has been a disgrace. There has been a total failure of leadership by the government.

I once again want to call for the kind of leadership that the government should have been bringing forward for some time. I also want to remind the House that April 25 was Africa malaria day. While we mourn the deaths of those who have died from SARS and call for much more action in this area, let us also remember the global fight against malaria, against AIDS, against tuberculosis as well. Our government should be doing far more on those struggles also.

I call on the government to show the kind of leadership that is long overdue.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Scarborough--Rouge River.

I also want to join in on this urgent debate on SARS. My prayers and thoughts are with the families who have lost loved ones and who have seriously been affected by the killer virus SARS. My thanks and appreciation go to the front line staff of our hospitals, clinics, emergency units, the police, fire and ambulance departments and their families who are stressed to the limit in coping with this killer disease.

People talk of ground zero in New York after 9/11. I want to talk about ground zero in Toronto and the effect SARS has had on my community.

The first case to be diagnosed in Canada was at Scarborough Grace Hospital which is located in my riding of Scarborough--Agincourt. The first school to be placed under quarantine was David Lewis Public School also located in Scarborough--Agincourt. Two schools followed later on, Stephen Leacock high school and John Buchan Senior Public School, also in my riding of Scarborough--Agincourt. Later, people attending a funeral at Highland Heights Funeral Home, again located in Scarborough--Agincourt, were quarantined.

Some people are saying that Toronto is ground zero. In New York City the whole city was affected and there was a ground zero. Similarly there is a ground zero in Toronto and that is Scarborough--Agincourt. My whole community is affected. Businesses in my constituency are feeling the effects first hand.

In the early stages people thought this would go away very quickly. Knowing the effect this virus was going to have on my community, I contacted the Minister of Human Resources Development and at my request she put a plan into effect that the two week waiting period for employment insurance benefits for the people who were quarantined would be waived. I thank the minister from the bottom of my heart. I also want to thank the Minister of Health who upon my request assisted the riding of Scarborough--Agincourt early on.

The waiving of the two week period by HRDC addressed the issue of working people and put money in their pockets and food on their tables. There is still a larger question. Small and medium size businesses are going to get hurt. Usually on Saturday nights in many malls in my riding there are arguments over parking spaces. However this has not been the case in the last few weeks. The malls have become ghost towns. People are afraid to go out and shop.

A fear overcame my constituents that they would be overcome with this disease and would die. SARS is a killer disease. There are other viruses that have the same overwhelming effect as SARS, but SARS is an unknown virus to date. SARS is able to become airborne and can be transmitted through various means very quickly. It has deadly effects. A patient who had been in the same room as the first person infected died. We have heard of many other examples.

Were it not for the World Health Organization putting Toronto on a watch list, we would not have acted. I brought this matter to the attention of my colleagues almost three weeks ago when I asked that we act immediately. Unfortunately I was dismissed. I tried getting the unanimous consent of the House for a motion asking our government to act quickly on this virus and again I was dismissed by many parties. It took the WHO to put us on the map in order for us to act. I did ask for special measures and for special means to be put in place in order for the House to respond to SARS and again I was dismissed. Now that this is biting us, we are here to deal with the matter.

Businesses are hurting. The hospitality industry is almost dead in Toronto. Hotel occupancy is down by 80% to 90%. Related businesses are also hurting. Just yesterday I was talking to a travel agent who expressed to me that he was ready to declare bankruptcy.

As a collective body we have to move to in order to address this issue quickly and effectively. Finger pointing must be put aside. Political bickering and differences must be overcome in order for us to deal with this issue. We are losing many businesses and we will be putting people out of work.

Last week in my riding, which is ground zero, I took the initiative and put together a task force in order to deal with this monster. In order to get a grasp on this issue, I brought together business leaders, chambers of commerce, banking institutions, mall managements, the hospitality industry, labour unions and representatives of all three levels of government.

I want to share a few comments that were made. Toronto Catholic school board trustee Michael Del Grande stated, “Virtually every home should have a 'welcome to my home' banner. We also need welcome back discounts throughout Toronto to generate people coming back. We should also have a celebration party or a parade to identify the heroes in all this”. Horace Chan, district vice-president of Canada Trust, stated, “We haven't seen a problem yet but that might still come. Right now we are working on a short term strategy to help customers financially. Our biggest concern is the small business owners”. Ian Raynor, first vice-president of the Scarborough Chamber of Commerce, stated, “We have to deal with this on a business level but we can't do this on our own. We have to do our best to get through this and get back to work”.

Overwhelmingly, this is not an issue for just one community. This is an issue for all communities. We started a process of rebuilding in my riding of Scarborough--Agincourt, ground zero. We are putting together a blueprint for other communities to follow and soon we will be reporting our thoughts and ideas for others to share. Are we hurting? You bet. Are we beaten? Are we licked? No way. We have the will and energy to move forward. And yes, we will persevere.

However, we cannot do it alone. We all need to be in this together. A few matters that we can certainly look at in the House are the means and methods by which we can assist the businesses of the country. Possibly we can defer the collection of taxes for a few months and ask businesses affected by SARS to pay their taxes over a 10 month to 12 month period. We can ask the Business Development Bank to defer the collection of interest on loans for a few months and have the affected businesses repay over eight to twelve months. We can encourage other levels of government, both municipal and provincial, and lending institutions, mall owners and landlords to follow our example. Together, we can overcome this killer disease of SARS. We can lead by example or we can bury our heads in the sand and point fingers as some political parties in the House want to do. At this point there is no right and there is no wrong. There is SARS and its effects and we must deal with it.

Having the Leader of the Opposition walk through terminal 2 in the Toronto airport and criticize the government does not help. He might want to come and visit ground zero and offer support to Canadians. That will help. Having the Leader of the New Democratic Party take cheap shots at the government certainly does not add to people's will to go on with their daily routines and their businesses.

Yes, we have failed as a whole to grasp the severity of what SARS did to us. We failed to understand this when I brought it to the attention of the House and was the lone voice asking for immediate action to deal with the severity of this disease. That is all history now. We must, as a collective, put a plan in action to deal with future diseases and other emergencies that might knock on our door. This nation demands of us to look after all our people, not to turn our backs on them. The House cannot turn its back on my constituents. We must move forward and provide the assistance that is required, and quickly, and we must overwhelmingly stop the finger pointing and the name calling.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to join in this emergency debate tonight. First I want to recognize that there are Canadians out there who have been hurt. They have been hurt physically and they have been hurt financially. Their numbers in comparison to the 30 million in our country are fortunately relatively small, but they are real. They are not just in Scarborough or Markham, but that is the focus of where, as my colleague has just pointed out, the SARS outbreak began. I want to extend condolences to the families of those who have passed away and the families of those who have endured the difficulties associated with this disease.

In the beginning, this was a health care issue. It was that on day one and it grew from one case of the virus entering Canada. In the early days, most of us looked upon it as a simple health care issue and we asked health care professionals to deal with it. As they always do, they did. There never was a time when a person sick with SARS was not attended to. In the early days before we realized the virulence of the disease, how communicable it was and how long it could live outside the human body as a virus, health care workers jumped in and worked hard. Many health care workers succumbed to the virus. Some have died. We want to recognize that.

In the beginning it was quite appropriate to view it as a health care issue. At the time we even called upon health care professionals to deal with it. I remember daily press conferences given by health care professionals about a health care issue. The containment was not successful in the early days. It is now, but in the early days it was not. As one case grew to 250 or so, it was unreasonable for us to expect that health care workers could manage the entire file.

This thing grew beyond a health care issue and became a political issue, a communications issue, a financial issue, an economic issue, and an international issue. Yet we continued to give the file to health care professionals and ask them to manage it. This was wrong. This was wrong in the city of Toronto, it was wrong in the province of Ontario, and it was wrong for us to expect that health care professionals, as good, as well trained, as dedicated and professional as they were, could manage this whole file. In the end, we know that we were in error is asking them to carry the whole file.

The World Health Organization--again, health care workers--has made a decision, but we cannot ask health care workers to run our country or manage the globe. They are limited in their mandate and in their skills. The finest ever doctors are not necessarily the greatest communicators. I look upon this government, the Government of Ontario and the government of the City of Toronto to be communicators. Perhaps we as elected members were not there as soon as we should have been and in the way we should have been.

I look at the WHO decision of the last few days. It appears to have made a decision without all of the information, without objectivity and without a view of all of the other impacts, political, economic and international, that flow from the decision. It makes me very uncomfortable.

Now we know that this issue is bigger than just a health care issue and that we have to break out of the silos: federal, provincial, municipal, health care, employment insurance, Department of Foreign Affairs, Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, Immigration Canada and Transport Canada. We have to break out of the silos and have some leadership. I think we are beginning to see it. I certainly hope we are.

I live a few hundred metres from what my colleague has described as ground zero, Scarborough Grace Hospital in Scarborough. During most of this period I had a cold and I was coughing occasionally. I must say that I restrained my cough as much as I could. But I just had a cold. I am sure there were many other people who had colds over that period and were a little nervous about their condition. But an entire series of communities had to bear the brunt of this and we got through it.

There are not a lot of masks being worn in Scarborough and Markham. I live there and I see that, but when I see the issue on the television screen, I see masks. I see people wearing masks. On CNN, I saw on the television screen the little line,“Toronto gripped by fear”. That is wrong. What a slander. What a libel. My community was not gripped by fear. My community was getting on. We were getting on with our lives as best we could. Yes, there is less traffic in the malls. Yes, there are some businesses significantly affected in the short run by this. We are concerned. But this was yellow journalism. Some of my political supporters told me about a television crew taking newscam videos who brought along masks to give to the people so they could show masks on the television screen. What hypocrisy. I have been out to the malls. I have been out to the schools. My colleagues have too. There are no masks there: just people.

As I say, we are getting along with this. We are just looking for a bit more leadership. I am a little bit angry at the media. As they fan the panic, as they fake the panic, there are other communities around the world that have a greater problem with this than we do.

As we deal with it now, it is perhaps natural to want to reach out and blame somebody. This is a disease. It was not a conspiracy. It was a virus, a communicable disease. We did not plant it. No one planned the whole thing. We have to get a grip on this and understand what we are dealing with. Fortunately, our health care professionals have managed to deal with it in such a way that we think we are just about at the end of it. There is no point in trying to blame somebody for a disease showing up in our country. That is pointless. Let us simply deal with it. Turning on people in the House or out on the street is rather pointless. I think we ought to work together and focus on the positive things and work out of it.

We have work to do. We have to improve our communications. Tomorrow in Geneva there will be some decisions made. It is to be hoped they will be positive decisions that we as a country can build on. We have to break out of the health care silo. There are economic and financial implications. The tourism envelope is somewhat in tatters. Who knows how that will turn out? In terms of financial impact, there is pent up demand. Someone who was going to buy a car two weeks ago perhaps did not buy it two weeks ago. Hopefully they will buy the car two weeks from now. I hope the travel will begin again. Hopefully people will get into aircraft and come out to shop again. I was there on the weekend and I watched the traffic on the streets. People actually were out shopping again. We have managed to put this by us, I think. We are a big country, a big province and a big city. If New York City can get through 9/11, Toronto and Markham and Scarborough can easily get by the SARS challenge. Our people are fair-minded, they are tough and they are resilient. I know we will get through it just fine. Give us a bit of time, give us a bit of leadership and give us a bit of support and we will get through it.

Right now in Ottawa I know that the Prime Minister has made a number of significant communications. I know the health minister has too. The same thing has happened with the Ontario minister of health and the Ontario medical officer of health. Hundreds and hundreds of health care workers are all doing the right thing. I should also mention the Toronto medical officer of health and the medical officer of health for York Region. They have all done outstanding jobs in managing this very difficult file.

In the end, as I said, I carry a bit of resentment. Perhaps other Canadians do. Perhaps I am not all that happy with how the media handled this, but we are a free country and the media has free speech. Perhaps the media ought not to stick a microphone in front of me over the next few days because I might lash back verbally. However, I hope I am in a position in the days to come to congratulate all of the governments involved for the work they have done and will be doing over the next weeks to address the fallout and the implications, bring us back to normal and hopefully learn a few lessons.

[Carol Skelton, Canadian Alliance, Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Lakeland.

I have sat here and listened to the debate. I heard the member from ground zero, as he called it, speak about how Toronto was affected and how the people had been affected. I want him to recall and to think back to when we asked for the help of the government last year. I want him, when he talked about the lack of leadership tonight, to remember that Canadians in western Canada did not get leadership. That is why we are asking the government to give us leadership on this whole SARS problem in Canada.

Ironically, the fact that we have waited until today to have this debate is just proof of some of the points that I will be making. We have been aware of the problem since March yet it has taken until today for the Liberal government to finally let us have time to discuss the problem.

When the virus and deaths came to Canada in March, it threatened to disrupt the vacation plans of the Prime Minister but we need not have worried, he went anyway. While the Prime Minister was travelling abroad to watch golf at the edge of the ocean, health workers and customs officers were bracing for a tidal wave of disease.

The health minister was invisible at the time when Canadians needed reassurance, information and direction. I attended a briefing by her officials but the minister was not there. She did not have anything to say. Who knows where she was but she definitely was not on the job.

Many experts and those with common sense have said that a global viral outbreak poses more threat than a nuclear war. Modern trade and business patterns, increased globalization and the increase of international vacations has made it a certainty that a virus can circle the globe in a matter of hours. Are we prepared? SARS has brought us that test of our system and I do not think that we have stood up too well.

First indications of the handling of the SARS outbreak strongly suggest we were not prepared for this or even something worse. Save for the tragic deaths that have taken place, we should consider ourselves lucky at this time. Luckily the worst things most Canadians have been exposed to is leadership vacuum.

Just this weekend in Saskatchewan, the NDP government decided to advertise for a pandemic influenza coordinator. In the first line of the job requirements it said that it needed a person with “skills to complete Saskatchewan's contingency plan for a pandemic influenza”.

Imagine, Saskatchewan does not have a plan for influenza after the many decades of its existence. Heaven help us if we are hit with influenza of pandemic proportions.

The crisis has exposed the lack of leadership at several levels of government. It has shown that the federal government is not prepared to handle incoming threats in our airports. It has shown that our governments are not willing to make life and death decisions. It has shown that vacations and golf are more important than death and disease. Shame on the Liberals.

We should be doing more than handing out pieces of paper to prevent the spread of disease. We should be willing to question those coming into our country and those going to infected areas and prevent travel if necessary.

Last week many Canadian families went happily to China to pick up adopted children for return to Canada. Why were they allowed to go and why did the government not prevent them from going for their health protection and ours? Was a formal decision ever made or did the health minister just cross her fingers and hope for the best? Did she even know?

Hoping for the best seems to be the modus operandi for the Liberal side of the House. Instead of screening outgoing passengers to prevent the spread of disease, it downplayed the threat under the cautionary watch of the World Health Organization. The result has been disastrous.

The Liberals think that CNN is going to cover their caucus meeting in Toronto, the same way as it did the World Health Organization travel warning. They think health experts will be convinced by their public luncheons instead of concrete health precautions.

Imagine if the World Health Organization extends the travel advisory? The lack of proper screening process for incoming and outgoing travellers has increased that risk. Toronto and the economy of Canada cannot afford to gamble on this matter again.

If there is one silver lining to this issue, it is the stellar work of our health care workers, the frontline workers. They have stepped forward into a realm of uncertainty without the resources and support they need from their leaders. They have protected the public health interests of all Canadians when their leaders have run the other way. They have taken life and death risks to protect us when the government will not even take a political risk to do the same. I cannot express my gratitude in any way that truly demonstrates my appreciation for their efforts.

Like most MPs, I fly several times a week and usually I go through Toronto to do so. I flew from Ottawa three weeks ago to go home. My colleague from Edmonton North had mentioned something to me so I watched very closely as I went through security. I want to tell my colleagues in the House about this.

Like most travellers, I have a cell phone. Those phones are usually swiped, especially when we go through Ottawa. They check them all the time with a swab. It is used for explosives detection. The swab is rubbed over the telephone on several parts including the mouthpiece. Unfortunately the same swab is used on numerous phones before being replaced. Is there a risk of passing SARS with this method? When I questioned the security officer, she stated that she had received no direction to change the swab for each phone and had not actually considered the threat of passing germs in this fashion. Once again, we see the lack of leadership in this crisis.

If SARS cannot be spread in that way, I am sure other things can. The people doing this important work should have the facts before them to answer this uncertainty. Until we hear otherwise, I encourage those travelling to clean their phones after they are handled by others as a precaution and ask that the swab be changed before their equipment is checked.

The world will never be free of germs, disease and deadly viruses but it should not be free of leadership either. Our government should be ready, willing and able to step forward to meet these challenges when they come. Our military should be able to contribute more than two doctors and one nurse when called upon. It is unthinkable that a military of 45,000 plus cannot muster more than three trained medical people in peace time. Has this government cut our military so thin that it cannot even find people to help in a domestic emergency? In fact, the Canadian Alliance caucus has two doctors. It is a shame that our military does not have more at a time of crisis like this. What would happen if we had a bioterrorism attack? What then?

We will always assume the U.S. will be there to help us but the government has put that at risk too. Let us stop taking risks, it is costing lives. Let us be prepared. Let us see some leadership from this Liberal government.

The Liberal government's lack of leadership was the best kept global secret. Unfortunately, the WHO was all too willing to expose this problem for the world to see. The WHO's reaction is a clear indication that it does not see leadership in Canada and had to step in. Canadians are demanding it but they are not getting it. If the Liberals are not willing to do the job, they should say so. The WHO has taken over.

Once again, I thank those frontline health workers and I want to let them know that it is their competency and not that of the leadership that is preventing public panic.

It is the men and women who stood in front of the microphones and explained things to Canadians, things that people in western Canada and across the country could understand. It was the health care workers who did that. Their work is so vitally important, and thankfully they are meeting and exceeding expectations.

[Leon Benoit, Canadian Alliance, Lakeland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak on this issue, although of course I wish there was no need for it. It is very unfortunate indeed. What we are facing with SARS is a very serious national issue.

I would like to start tonight by thanking all the people involved in the health care system, the health care workers, doctors, nurses, other frontline health care workers, as well as public health officials, for their response to this issue. They have done an awful lot to help contain this very serious problem and deserve recognition for that. I would like to sincerely thank these people for the truly wonderful work they have done during this very difficult time. They have done a tremendous job and they should be recognized for that.

I and my party colleagues certainly would like to extend our sympathies to the families who have lost family members or friends to this disease. We know there have been many already. Certainly not only the thoughts of family members are with these people but the thoughts and prayers of people across the country are with those individuals who have lost family members and close friends to this disease.

I have heard some government members say that we should not be making a partisan issue out of the whole situation surrounding SARS, and I fully agree with that. We all have to work together to do what we can to deal with this very difficult situation. However, as a member of the official opposition, I also feel it is my responsibility and the responsibility of my colleagues to talk about some things that have happened on this issue which should not have happened and to talk about some things that have not happened which should have happened.

It is important to talk about the lack of leadership on this issue. It is not only on this issue where there has been a lack of leadership. The lack of leadership on the military and on health care have also contributed to the situation we are facing today.

I hear members of the government party over there heckling me. They can heckle if they like but it is important that they listen to the opposition on this issue, maybe learn a little and certainly take some responsibility for what they have not done regarding leadership instead of heckling on the issue.

Because the government has not taken the leadership with the military, when the military was asked to provide doctors and other medical personnel to help deal with the situation, how could it respond? I was asked, as the defence critic for the official opposition, whether the military should be providing doctors, nurses and other frontline health care people. I said that ideally it should but the reality was that the military had been so mismanaged by the government that it simply did not have the doctors, nurses and other frontline people to contribute. Realistically it does not have enough medical personnel to meet its own needs. The one area of mismanagement has led to a problem in the second area of mismanagement.

Second, the government has mismanaged health care generally across the country for the 10 years I have been here. We have seen it go downhill and deteriorate more and more. Because of that and the poor leadership on that issue, we see a shortage of health care people. They are stretched so thin that it is very difficult to find enough people to deal with the very serious situation we are facing now.

Government mismanagement is not only directly on the issue of SARS. It is in other areas as well. That mismanagement has led to a problem in dealing most effectively with this issue.

I want to talk directly to the issue, to what, unfortunately, has not happened and to the lack of leadership on the part of the government. Government members can tell us not to get partisan but I do not believe this is partisan. I believe this is just the Official Opposition members, including myself, carrying out our responsibility as members of the Official Opposition.

Health Canada issued its first public advisory on SARS on March 16. Since last week the federal government has been virtually invisible on this important national and international issue. The Prime Minister was off golfing somewhere. The health minister has not been available. In the U.S., on the other hand, early on in the outbreak we saw President Bush, who so many government members like to criticize, announce quarantine measures would be put in place if needed. He took a very firm, very public and very definite stand on the issue. That certainly helped Americans deal with the issue.

In Canada, the government's response has been timid at best. I think I am being very generous in saying that it has been timid. The government has said there is no need to invoke the Quarantine Act. The United States certainly took a different position and I think it was the right position.

I have talked about the fact that the Prime Minister certainly has not been here. The health minister cancelled a press conference last week because journalists wanted to discuss SARS. Surely when something like this SARS outbreak goes on in our country the government should expect that on a daily basis the health minister and the Prime Minister would answer to the public and answer the public's important questions on this issue. That is leadership.

Liberals take the time to speak to the public when they want to promote some cause they feel is important. Why, on this issue, when the public is so desperately looking for leadership, have they not been providing that leadership? That is the question with which members of the government simply have to deal.

The heritage minister declared a national emergency and said that the government was pledging emergency assistance even though the Prime Minister and the health minister were not available. When they have said things they have said there was no national emergency and that there was no need for any emergency assistance, although they finally offered $10 million, but the heritage minister was saying something entirely different. We have to wonder who is in charge of this. It certainly shows a problem with leadership.

On the other hand, the Ontario health minister has gone to Geneva to talk with the World Health Organization on this issue. What about the federal health minister? Not yet as far as I know. The World Health Organization is an international organization. It has made its statement on this issue but who speaks for Canada? Is it the Ontario health minister? Why would there not be a Canadian government minister or prime minister speaking to the World Health Organization on this? So far we have not received answers on that.

On March 27 the World Health Organization recommended the interviewing of outgoing passengers. The Canadian Alliance at that time said that the government should comply. The federal government was very slow to respond and when it did the results were inadequate. The results were pamphlets, posters and self-screening, which simply was not what the World Health Organization had called for and not what was reasonable. Unbelievably, there were no direct questions at airport checkouts for passengers getting on and off planes. It would have been very simple for passengers going through the checkouts to add one or two questions.

Some members of the Liberal Party said that was what should have happened. Why then did the leadership in the party not make that happen? Even after Health Canada put this measure in place there were several reports of travellers returning to Canada through the Pearson and Vancouver airports from SARS hotspots, sometimes through the U.S. on the way, who were not asked a single question on SARS and who never saw a poster or any other information on SARS.

How about other countries? We know the President of the United States took some quick action. Singapore, which I do not think would be any more progressive than Canada in dealing with health issues, put in place infrared screening and tough quarantines some time ago. Vietnam and Hong Kong put in place temperature screening, something that surely we could have had in place in Canada some time ago and yet for some reason we did not. The government has to answer very honestly to Canadians now why in fact these things have not happened in Canada.

I hate to have to say this but I feel I must, again as a member of the Official Opposition whose job it is to hold the government responsible, but the refusal to fully implement the World Health Organization recommendation may have contributed or helped to contribute to the export of SARS from Canada. Again, for obvious reasons I do not want to say things like that, but I believe, as a member of the opposition, I must. Now I expect some answers from the government on these issues.

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

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Vancouver Centre.

The debate tonight is hugely important in that what we should be getting out tonight is a good news story. This disease, which we knew nothing about a couple of months ago, is now under control because of the kind of learning that has happened in the trenches of health care and the kind of cooperation that has happened between all levels of government in an unprecedented way.

The sad story tonight is the politics that have gone out of control and the disappointing lack of responsibility that we have seen in terms of mixed messages as to whether people should be scared or not scared. What actually happens when fear is augmented is that we end up with empty Chinese restaurants in Montreal because people are scared.

This is a story that is disappointing in terms of what actually is the role of an opposition and the role of leadership candidates in the party. This has really not helped. Fearmongering does not help. Frankly the media is not helping by the pictures it chooses to put in the papers. It is not helping when the CBC actually puts out a directive of a travel advisory to its employees. We actually have to first understand the facts. When a cabinet minister can call this a national emergency or an epidemic when it is not, it is extremely dissatisfying.

When the leader of the NDP can write an op-ed piece that actually questions a previous medical officer of health, Dr. Richard Schabas, and makes one think that the leader of the federal NDP knows more than the previous medical officer of health and questions, do we hope Dr. Schabas is correct or do we put in place a plan. It means do we hope he is correct. Of course he is correct. He is dealing with the facts.

What has happened over the last couple of weeks is a miracle in terms of what our health care workers on the ground have done. We have seen unprecedented cooperation between the ground and the medical officers of health for Toronto, Dr. Sheela Basrur, Dr. Jim Young and Dr. Donald Low.

There was an opinion piece in the Toronto Star by Rick Anderson, a previous policy adviser for the Reform Party, lamenting the approach of politics to this. He actually was quoting Tony Clement, the minister of health for Ontario, about our Minister of Health, saying “Anne's there day after day asking always what more Ottawa can do to help. She's easy to work with, responding positively to suggestions”. That was said by the Ontario minister of health.

One would never have thought after the first ministers meeting that we could get this kind of commendation to actually the way that the politicians working on this file know what has been working well.

I will go on to quote Mr. Anderson who said:

Behind-the-scenes efforts seem uncharacteristic of politicians, especially to the cynical and hungry media who cover politics. But solid and steady support for front-line, round-the-clock efforts of thousands of health professionals is probably just what the SARS doctor ordered. Certainly more helpful than political grandstanding and self-promotion.

He further states:

If and when Toronto completely contains SARS, it warrants treatment as a success story, a saga of prompt response, quickly marshalled resources and collaboration across professional, jurisdictional and bureaucratic lines. Not the sensationalistic [opportunistic?] “vacuum of leadership” cry arising this week from the usual suspects, and from a few who may know better.

It is disappointing that we now have a crisis of confidence in the system when actually it is so important that every single Canadian know that those of us who live in Toronto are going about our business every day. We are not wearing masks. It makes me feel that even in terms of someone who has never been a cheerleader for the provincial government in Ontario right now, that I myself would have walked up to Ernie Eves and asked him politely to take the mask off his face before he spoke on University Avenue last week because we knew that optic would be bad and that no one would hear what he had to say. Again, it is the kind of cooperation we should have had and that I wished his handlers had at that time.

When Professor Harvey Skinner, the chair of the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Toronto, says that the mounting evidence is that the SARS virus is under control in Toronto and when the headlines are signalling that we have won the battle, it is extraordinarily important to understand that the prime enemy is fear.

He has elaborated many times that the two concepts to understanding the public's fear of a health condition are perceived threat and control. First, he feels that it is important to acknowledge that maybe we were not perfect in dealing with the perceived threat. Confidence will be the most important thing and the unknowns are the most inherently scary.

What we did not know about this virus at the beginning has meant that the learning has had to take place in the trenches. What has been learned every day in Toronto from those health care workers in terms of incubation and in terms of appropriate quarantine measures and safety precautions for health care workers has been a work in progress. It has been a culture of learning and of disseminating information. That has been the important role of the federal government.

It is important for people to understand, as Dean Naylor once said to me, that his job as the Dean of Medicine at the University of Toronto is the same relationship with departments as is the federal role in our relationship with the provinces. It must be one of coordination in synergy and harmonization, and a conscience. It means that our job cannot be command and control from the centre, particularly with these new emerging conditions where the learning is happening in one locus. Our job is to make sure that the best and the brightest are brought together to actually share information and implement and use the new knowledge.

I think we have learned a little bit on the communication file that we could have done better. As Dr. Don Low said this morning, by publishing cumulative data it unfortunately means that the graphs are always going up. If we were better able now to publish data on new cases we would perhaps be better able to reassure Canadians that the new cases are definitely going down. If we were able to disaggregate the data to the hospital acquired infections and the community based infections, we could show the World Health Organization and anyone else who wants to listen that this is definitely a disease that is in hospitals. This is not a disease out in the community as the CDC came to our defence after the WHO ruling last week.

The CDC was very clear in its alert that it was a hospital problem in Toronto and that the community control of the disease was well done. Everyone will learn from what Toronto has done. It will be our job together as Canadian politicians to tell that story. We have to ensure that in the next chapter we can go forward having taken note of the lessons learned and having tried to ensure that everything we have done puts in place some of the most important things that all of us are fighting for in health reform.

We know that 1% of health care dollars is not enough for public health. With the provinces downloading and public health being downloaded to municipalities the municipalities are having to decide between TB inspection and potholes. That is not the way to run a public health system. I think the downloading from the provinces to the municipalities has been the problem. We as the federal government need to look at this.

The Montreal media is starting to question whether mega hospitals are a good idea. When we see a hospital such as Sunnybrook in Toronto having to shut down its urgent care and all of those processes maybe we do need a more distributive model or a more federated model for our hospitals.

I think the main take home message from this has been that the collaborative approach we have learned from this is better than anything we could have predicted from the first ministers meeting. It is about the need for an integrated system and a learning culture. I hope we will go forward in a constructive manner and put the politics away.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to deal with the facts of this issue. We have heard so much from members across the way about the disaster that is occurring and about the national crisis. Members have been ratcheting up the heat on this issue. There is a lot of rhetoric. There is a great deal of heat. However, very little light has been shed on this issue, and I intend to shed some of the light on it tonight.

This is a public health issue. There are some clear and specific responses to a public health problem when it occurs. There is the initial and immediate emergency response that public health officials put into place. There is the long term response as well as the preventative response. Research work must be done. There are ways of advising and assisting the public to understand what is going on, and ways of advising them to take precautionary measures to prevent them from becoming infected. If they believe they are infected or if there is a suspicion of infection, there are techniques for isolation or if there is a probable case, quarantine.

We have heard members saying over and over again that the Prime Minister could not be bothered to cut his vacation short. Members have talked about leadership. Let me talk about leadership.

Three weeks ago, before anyone else thought about it, the Prime Minister was in Toronto having dim sum at a Chinese restaurant. Let us talk about who is showing leadership. Every single day the Minister of Health has been getting briefings, and not only from her own officials. She has been in contact with public health officials across this country ensuring that she has her finger on the pulse. The Ontario government has taken a very responsible stance on this issue in a similar manner as the Prime Minister and the Minister of Health.

There are a couple of things I want to ask. First and foremost, because this is a public health issue, did the politicians that I spoke about have the ability to do anything? They have done exactly what they should have done. They have left it up to public health officials, to experts who know exactly what to do in these cases. They have allowed public health officials and front line workers to take the ball and run with it. They have stood back and allowed them to take the initiatives while at the same time providing support and the facilitation necessary for them to do their job.

Let us talk about the facts of this issue. Members have talked about this being a national epidemic. It is not. There have only been four cases of SARS in Vancouver. Toronto has had about 134 probable cases and 21 deaths. Let us put this on the scale. No other provinces have had any actual cases of diagnosed SARS. Let us put this into perspective. This is not a national emergency and it is not a national crisis. However, at the same time we must be careful that it does not become one.

Let us talk about what the government has been doing on the advice of public health officials to deal with this crisis. Members have said there is no emergency response and no public health strategy. There is a public health strategy. There has been constant contact with Toronto officials and other public health officials in every single province since the start of this disease. At the request of the World Health Organization Canada is the first country to send officials to Hong Kong to look at the risk factors associated with this disease.

On the advice of public health officials the Minister of Health has set up guidelines for blood donors or for people who have been in contact or have been in an affected area. She has told them not to donate blood. Research components moved into place immediately. The Winnipeg national microbiology lab has sent out diagnostic tests and vaccines are being worked on. The Canadian Institute of Health Research has already put out protocols for work on vaccines. The genome lab at UBC has set up the sequencing for the virus.

Canada's workplace health and public safety employees were dispatched immediately when SARS began to Pearson, Vancouver and Dorval airports. They have been doing training, they have been doing inquiries, and they have been doing ongoing occupational health advice for all of the workers at these areas and training them to do the right thing. Health Canada sent staff to Toronto, Dorval and Vancouver airports to act as quarantine officers.

The department activated its emergency response team so that 10,000 class N-95 masks be sent out with money for 1.5 million more to be sent as needed. The economic response has been put into place with changes to EI so that financial assistance can be provided to those who have either been quarantined or have been asked to stay away from work because of various protective mechanisms.

An emergency response is in place. It has been moving forward. Everything that the public health officials and the experts have asked the Minister of Health to do, she has done.

We have heard my hon. colleague from St. Paul's say that the Minister of Health has acted in an exemplary manner in terms of the way she has managed to deal with this disease. Politicians are not public health officials. They are doing what they are told and that is how it should be. However, what we hear across the way every single day is this ratcheting up of rhetoric creating fear among people so that they are walking around with masks. We know that SARS has been contained. It has been contained in Toronto and Vancouver, which are the only two areas with SARS cases. Let us get that clear and straight. Nowhere else in the country do we have any reported cases of SARS.

We have seen that the right advice given by public health officials has been taken. Each day this disease is changing. Each day we are learning what new things we should do. Each day the Minister of Health, the Government of Canada and the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia are given advice by the people who know what to do, the public health officials. They have been moving forward and doing it.

Emergency response teams and readiness have been there from day one. Let us forget the rhetoric and let us not listen to people who know nothing about public health who sit on the opposite side of the House and just continue to scare everyone. The reason we have an economic fallout, the reason that people are walking around the streets with masks over their faces, and the reason that people are wondering whether Toronto is a safe place to go to is because of this kind of irresponsible rhetoric that we hear coming from across the way, and the kind of irresponsible charges that people have been making. This is not the way to handle a communicable disease and I wish members would butt out and let the people who know how to handle a communicable disease do their job.

There have been comments that if there is one thing that Health Canada did that probably it should not have done was that it was upfront. A decision was made that Canada would be completely upfront and honest with Canadians. Therefore, we decided to name suspected cases. Anyone who knows anything about public health knows that there is a difference between a suspected case, a probable case and an actual case. Suspected cases have within their mix anyone who has a fever, anyone who has been sweating, or anyone who has a cough, a cold and a sneeze.

There has been no suspected case in this country that has been moved into probable or that has turned out to have SARS. We wanted to be honest and upfront. We did not want to hold anything back. If Health Canada is guilty of that I would say that it erred on the side of caution. It erred on the side of being upfront and honest with Canadians.

One of the things we want to talk about here is responsibility among our politicians. We have seen that the federal government has acted in a responsible manner. I would like to ask my colleagues and all of the opposition members to remember that this is a public health crisis. Members should stop ratcheting up the heat on this. They should try to be calm and let everyone know that all of the right things are being done.

We have been seen in Canada a good example of how we should deal with this particular disease. Everyone is working on the immediate short term and on the long term to develop a vaccine. I would ask my colleagues in the opposition to behave in a responsible manner.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Beauport—Montmorency—Côte-De- Beaupré—Île-D'Orléans, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise tonight for this emergency debate on a very important subject, the SARS epidemic, an issue that transcends partisan politics.

I think that the most important thing we need to keep in mind when it comes to this tragedy is that people have been affected. Some are sick and others, unfortunately, have died. Families have also been affected by these deaths. I am fortunate in that my parents are still living. I have never lost a close relative, but we know that under the current circumstances, it must be terribly difficult to lose a loved one to this epidemic, to this invisible enemy that is SARS.

I would like to remind the House that the SARS epidemic continues to be a very serious situation that deserves a great deal of attention. And while prudence is called for, we must not give in to panic, but instead concentrate on appropriate measures to safeguard public health.

This tragedy, which has already claimed a number of victims around the world, must be brought under control as soon as possible in order to minimize its spread. The Toronto area has unfortunately been hit hard by this epidemic. The Bloc Quebecois sympathizes with those who have been affected, directly or indirectly, by the situation. We in the Bloc Quebecois are convinced that it is vital to take all necessary measures, and the government can count on our full cooperation to that end.

Right now it is 9:13 p.m. in Ottawa, and while preparing my speech, I watched the 9 o'clock news. The first item on the news was a squabble: the Minister of Canadian Heritage—and Liberal leadership candidate—said plump and plain that the Minister of Health had completely absented herself from the debate and that she was totally incompetent in dealing with the situation.

I do not mean to say that the Minister of Canadian Heritage is wrong in describing the Minister of Health in this way. The issue is not whether she is right or wrong. However, in the grips of this epidemic, we would expect that our government would act responsibly, rather than dissolve into petty political bickering.

I said that I am not playing politics. But I believe that the government side would be well advised to reassure everybody. People are quite worried.

Next week, as you know--if you do not, I am telling you now, Mr. Speaker--I will be hosting seven or eight groups from my riding in Quebec. Unlike yours, my riding is not located in Cornwall, at a one hour and fifteen or thirty minutes' drive from Ottawa. For one of the groups coming to pay me a visit it will take five to five and a half hours by bus. I host groups like that seven or eight times a year; half are senior citizens groups and the other half are student groups, from primary school or high school. All this to say how tense the situation is because fear is a difficult thing to control.

One of the groups from my riding, l'Âge d'or de Montmorency, in Beauport, was supposed to come and see me in Ottawa next week, on the 5 and 6 of May I believe. On Friday I got a call from the organizer saying that these elderly people were afraid to go to Ottawa; they feared that the epidemic had spread to Ottawa.

I am not saying this to blame those who are afraid but to illustrate a situation. When psychosis takes hold of people, fear becomes hard to control, especially when dealing with older people, 75, 77 and 79 years of age, who are a bit afraid, who are a bit more concerned about their health; it is difficult to control.

Instead of barnyard squabbles and street fights between the Canadian heritage minister and the health minister, we expect some leadership from this government. Showing leadership is doing a lot more than announcing that the next cabinet meeting will take place in Toronto tomorrow. It is a lot more than announcing that the wife of the Prime Minister will go shopping on Thursday in various department stores in Toronto. A government that shows leadership would do a lot more than that.

The money that the federal government is about to spend to encourage tourists to come to Toronto—about $10 million, according to what we heard—would be much better invested in Ontario—the situation being more critical in that province with 21 or 22 deaths so far, if I am not mistaken—to hire new hospital workers to replace those already exhausted by the work overload and the stress, and also to compensate people who must be quarantined so as to encourage self-identification. In my opinion, this would be money much better spent by this government.

Again, we must applaud, in a non-partisan way, the initiative taken by the government in changing the employment insurance regulations. The Bloc Quebecois believes that it will encourage people to remain quarantined without being penalized financially. The question that people who think that they may have contracted the disease may ask themselves is “Without any income, can I afford to stay home and take the antibiotics that the doctor prescribed?” Or they may say “If I feel well enough to work, I will go, even though I risk exposing my co-workers and others around me to the disease”. We applaud this initiative by the government with regard to employment insurance.

I remind the House that, on April 4, the federal government abolished the two week waiting period for those who might be suffering from this disease. We are glad that the government has agreed, in this instance, to amend the employment insurance legislation. But we would also like to remind the government that it could take similar measures in other areas where workers are not quarantined, but are affected by decisions made abroad.

Let us take Quebec's lumber workers for instance. Over 7,000 workers have been affected by the softwood lumber crisis generated by the U.S. The same thing goes for the cod fishery. The House will be holding another emergency debate tomorrow to discuss the crisis in the cod industry, which might bring the government to consider new improvements to the employment insurance legislation.

So, on the one hand, the measures that were taken were fine, but on the other hand the government should try to be a bit more sensitive to the needs of other sectors where workers are hurting.

However, if we need to suggest some kind of enhancement to help the government consider this issue, we in the Bloc Quebecois would like the self-employed to be covered by the current employment insurance scheme.

It is sad to see the government spend money on ad campaigns but do nothing for the self-employed who are as much at risk as any other worker. I hope nobody believes that union members in a company or in a hospital are less likely to suffer from SARS than the self-employed. Anyone can catch this disease, whatever their employment status. I think we all agree on that.

The government should look for a way to provide coverage for the self-employed and for some income support measures for these workers who often rely on short-term jobs. We realize that self-employment is not always the ideal situation.

In closing, I would like to say that we hope the federal government's recent actions will help stop the spread of the disease. We need to point out, however, that the federal government's efforts are uneven. Considering the number of cases and of fatalities in Canada, this is cause for concern. We even wonder whether the measures taken to detect the disease were effective at the start of the outbreak.

Unfortunately, I am running out of time. We could also talk about airport surveillance. Unlike the contagious diseases that were around in the 1700s or 1800s, with the means of communication and of travel that were available at that time, now we are in the era of the jet plane and distance no longer matters.

To take the example of someone who is infected and has visited a market and then takes a plane. It appears that the thing started somewhere in China in some kind of bazaar or public market with infected poultry or snakes. The disease was then transmitted to humans. It would take just one person, someone from Toronto or Vancouver who had travelled to Hong Kong for a nephew or niece's wedding, to get on a plane, and the virus would be here in eight, ten or twelve hours.

This is how diseases are spread now, unlike the Spanish or yellow fever of the 1800s. The spread of disease was far less an issue in the days of horse-drawn carts, the Pony Express and so on.

Once again—and I am sure that you are delighted, Mr. Speaker, although you need to remain neutral, and do not have to agree or disagree with me—I have tried to rise above partisan politics. When we make speeches that are not too partisan, I hope that the government members can take their earplugs out, and hear our constructive comments.

[Paddy Torsney, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Erie--Lincoln.

Let me say that the debate this evening is a real opportunity to talk about a Canadian success story. That success story is that we have right across the country an amazing public health infrastructure that has been mobilized on a moment's notice to protect all of us who are working here tonight, who are working right across the country, to make sure we are not affected in any greater way by the SARS outbreak.

In my own community of Burlington, the staff at Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital have been exemplary in dealing with this emergency for over a month now. The executive director, Donald Scott, and the incredible team of individuals who have been working under very difficult circumstances are to be commended for their incredible efforts, the nurses and doctors on the front lines, the cleaners, the telephone operators. It has not been easy for them to work under these conditions and our hearts and prayers go out to them. We know it has been difficult. We thank them for what they have done. Certainly right across the GTA and Ontario, people have really shown what tough stuff they are made of to be able to deal with this outbreak.

The families of those who have been affected by SARS, by the scare of SARS, certainly are in our thoughts and prayers tonight as well. For all those people who are waiting for surgeries, who are waiting for medical tests to find out if they need further assistance, I know it has been incredibly difficult on all of them. Just the other night coming into my own home I bumped into someone who needs hip surgery and of course it has been delayed. Everyone has really demonstrated that they understand this problem and that they are able to deal with this problem. They really have been aided by this incredible infrastructure that we have developed through the years in Canada.

It is a great opportunity in this debate to congratulate the Minister of Health and her incredible team, her staff both on the political level and in the bureaucracy, for all the work they have done to support the province of Ontario, to support the people in Vancouver who are dealing with this crisis, and to reassure the rest of us that we are prepared and that the proper measures are being taken. They are not reassuring just because; they are actually reassuring because they know we have dealt with this and that we have the systems in place.

Health Canada has been collaborating with all the medical officers of health right across the country to make sure that the proper procedures are being taken to contain this, that proper procedures are being taken to prevent an outbreak somewhere else. An outbreak of this scope calls for national guidelines. Health Canada has lent its expertise and advice to ensure that all of us in this country are in fact as safe as we possibly can be, that we are equally protected and that we benefit from the experience of other countries and other parts of Canada.

All of us, instead of scoring cheap political points or creating more scare, should be saying that this is an amazing opportunity, that this is what people have worked so hard in public health to deal with, to make sure that we are limiting the number of people who are affected.

We have guidelines in this country for infection control and for public health in a variety of settings. They are being utilized in this present situation. We have a federal-provincial pandemic influenza committee, something I did not know about before the SARS outbreak. I know that we have been dealing with the provincial and territorial ministers at the federal level to make sure that we are putting together the right measures, the right surveillance, and addressing the clinical issues and the laboratory and infection control issues.

It is quite terrific that in spite of some of the difficulties that the various levels of government have had over the last couple of years, they are working collaboratively to make sure that everyone has the information, everyone has the tools to deal with this and everyone can disseminate that information. The right people are on the job and they are taking care of it.

In Ontario where the largest number of cases has occurred, health care professionals and the staff at the bureaucracy in the province of Ontario are to be commended for their outstanding efforts. I read about Dr. Sheila Basrur in Toronto who has done an amazing job. She even sent herself home one day because she was starting to come down with something. We appreciate all their efforts and hope that they get relief soon.

Early on in the struggle Health Canada was able to deploy 13 epidemiologists. They went down to Toronto and were able to help the ministry of health with the investigation of the SARS cases and work with the senior executive committee in the provincial response. We were able to send machines and processors for the two isolation units that were being set up in a non-hospital environment.

This outreach team that is in Ottawa has been in constant contact with provincial colleagues and colleagues in Toronto in particular to make sure that the right systems are there and to respond as new information comes on line. This is not a static situation. This is where the best minds have to respond to the issues and deal with the occurrences as they come up. We have expert advice and support. Disease control in all its conceivable settings is taking place. I was at the chiropractor this morning. The staff had the information. They were asking me if I had been exposed. They are doing their jobs. All of us are becoming much more aware of the impact of our actions and the need to protect ourselves and our neighbours.

We have been able, at the federal level, to supply masks to Toronto, to make sure that they were accessible through the emergency stockpile system. It is great to know that we have put it together and invested in the systems and that this is how we are able to respond.

I think that this again is a great opportunity for us to congratulate those making the efforts, to encourage the people who are dealing with it on the front lines to keep up the good fight and to make sure that in other issues we will be faced with in this increasingly globalized world we have the systems in place for the future. We have had an amazing test run here. We have the systems in place for the future and they will make a difference for all of us. It is not a time for cheap political points. It is a time to say, “Way to go. Keep up the good fight and let us know what other support is needed”, so that we will get it in place as people realize there are further needs, to make sure that all Canadians and citizens of the world are protected. We want to make sure Canada is doing the right thing and setting the example for other countries as they deal with the SARS outbreak.

[John Maloney, Liberal, Erie—Lincoln, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk tonight about a topic that has not really been canvassed this evening, and that is screening at airports. The government recognized early on that SARS is a global disease and that swift, proactive measures were required to limit its spread. As soon as the first cases of SARS were recognized, Canada undertook immediate efforts to address the threat of transmission of SARS, both domestically and internationally. We did this in an organized and thorough manner, addressing both inbound and outbound flights and then implementing inflight measures.

We are convinced that we have an effective series of measures in place and we will continue to improve our approaches as necessary to help contain the spread of SARS. Quarantine officers from Health Canada are on site at our main international airports in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. These health professionals monitor incoming passengers for signs of illness. In addition, any airline passengers who are discovered to be ill en route to Canada are assessed immediately by a quarantine officer and, if necessary, are referred at once to a medical facility for diagnosis and care.

Health Canada nurses are available at Toronto's Pearson airport to answer questions about SARS. The Health Canada SARS team of professionals will provide information to airline and airport staff. In very limited circumstances, they will assist individual travellers and, if necessary, arrange for the transportation of individuals to local medical facilities.

Health Canada has instituted a series of health alert notices intended to reach both incoming and outgoing passengers. The yellow health posters and cards alert passengers to the symptoms of SARS and inform them of what to do if they begin to exhibit the symptoms. These posters and cards are available at all major airports across Canada. In addition, airlines flying to Canada from SARS-affected areas are also passing out the cards inflight to make sure that all passengers are reached. A system to collect contact information from passengers coming into Canada from affected areas has also been instituted to ensure that there can be swift follow-up should a case of SARS be detected after a flight has landed in Canada.

The government also takes seriously its responsibilities to ensure that cases of SARS are not unwittingly exported from Canada. Bright, cherry-coloured posters and cards, referred to as health alert notices, inform passengers departing from Pearson about the symptoms of SARS and direct people not to travel if they are exhibiting these symptoms. Some airlines are asking passengers if they have read the cards as they check in for their flights. Airlines also have a responsibility not to board the seriously ill.

The government is in regular communication with airport authorities and airlines and understands the importance of measures to contain the spread of this disease. Information booths, distribution of cards, informed ticket agents and health resources in airports as necessary are ensuring that travellers can make informed and appropriate decisions. We all have a responsibility, Mr. Speaker: you, I, all members of the House, and all members of the Canadian public.

We believe our airport screening measures are effective. We are committed to reviewing those measures and strengthening them if necessary. To ensure that every possible measure has been taken, Health Canada officials are currently exploring options for introducing other measures such as temperature monitors at airports. We are also investigating the use of infrared technology, among other things, and may have a pilot project this week.

The government's efforts have not gone unnoticed. I would like to refer members to a comment made on April 3 by Dr. David Heymann, executive director of the WHO communicable diseases unit. He said:

Canada is doing an exemplary activity and much of what has been going on in Canada, including the system [of] notifying airline passengers and screening airline passengers, has been shared with other countries as an example of best practices.

Those are excellent words complimenting our country for its initiatives.

I would also like to refer to SARS precautions that have been implemented all across the country, as well as in the Niagara region area where I come from. The Niagara health system has acted quickly to monitor entries into Niagara regional hospitals and has set up a special SARS unit at one of the facilities, Welland General Hospital. If SARS, and fortunately this has not happened, comes to the Niagara region, they are well equipped to deal with those people exhibiting symptoms. As I said, fortunately this has not happened, and I think that is testimony that in fact the battle has been won and SARS is on the decline. This is positive news for Canada, for the Canadian economy and for the Canadian tourist industry.

[Cheryl Gallant, Canadian Alliance, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, at the outset I would like to extend our thanks for the dedication and the hard work of the first line responders who came to the call when this crisis emerged and to the families of these first line workers who have gone without them and supported them through these long hours.

As a member of Parliament from the province of Ontario, my participation in this emergency debate on severe acute respiratory syndrome, SARS, is an important independent voice compared to what people will hear from the government benches. It was clear from the outset when SARS was first identified that the leadership was evident here on the benches of the official opposition. My party, the Canadian Alliance, was very careful in its approach, allowing the federal government latitude on how it dealt with SARS. Our questions were constructed to provide information to the public. It would have served no purpose to unduly alarm the Canadian public or the international community. In that regard, the Canadian Alliance was very responsible in our approach to this crisis.

The tragedy of this case is that because of the total lack of leadership from the federal government, the people of Ontario will suffer. First, there was the West Nile virus to scare away the tourists. Then we had the disgraceful decision by the Prime Minister and his party to support Saddam Hussein in the Iraqi conflict instead of our traditional allies, Great Britain, the United States and Australia. And now, because of the incredible incompetence on the part of our federal government, the World Health Organization, the WHO, has issued a travel ban against Toronto, Ontario.

[Paddy Torsney, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I may have actually misunderstood what the member opposite just said, but I believe she just suggested that this government, or any Canadian, supported Saddam Hussein, which is an absolute falsification of what occurred. It is absolutely irresponsible for any member of the government, including the opposition--

[The Deputy Speaker]

I think we are getting into a debate rather than a point of order, but certainly the member for Burlington has it on the record.

[Cheryl Gallant, Canadian Alliance, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, because of the incredible incompetence on the part of the federal government, the World Health Organization, WHO, has issued a travel ban against Toronto, Ontario. The American tourist has become an endangered species in Canada thanks to an uncaring, insensitive, corrupt federal government.

To add insult to injury, the Prime Minister has offered $10 million, probably for an ad campaign, probably to a Liberal ad agency on an untendered contract knowing that the economic losses to Ontario alone will be in the billions of dollars. There is no doubt that every member of the Liberal government shares in the blame of this fiasco. If the province of Ontario had not acted decisively and displayed the leadership necessary to control the spread of SARS, it is clear that Canadians would have been faced with a full blown epidemic.

Given the current government's penchant for secrecy, Canadians will probably never know just how serious the threat to the health of Canadians SARS posed. What is truly unfortunate is that the government has learned nothing since 9/11.

Canadians who are watching this emergency debate on SARS will be surprised to learn that Canada has a minister responsible for emergency preparedness. This minister who has a mandate to deal with national emergencies has gone missing, totally invisible during the events as they unfolded regarding SARS. Canadians will be surprised to learn that the member for Markham is the minister responsible for emergency preparedness.

On behalf of the official opposition to the large Chinese population in Markham, Toronto and the rest of Canada, please accept our apologies for the fear and uncertainty their community has been put through because of the lack of leadership on the part of the federal government. They have suffered because of the government's insensitivity and I encourage them to hold the government accountable now and in the upcoming election.

The events of 9/11 should have taught the government a few lessons. Unfortunately, the minister responsible for emergency preparedness who should have been in charge has been so consumed in his other role as an apologist defence minister for the federal government's lack of support of Iraq, the events of SARS has completely overtaken him.

On April 3, I had the opportunity to question his assistant minister, Jim Harlick, at defence committee. In responding to a question from the member for Compton—Stanstead, Mr. Harlick stated the following, “We only have one minister at the federal level really designated as the minister for emergency preparedness although all ministers under the statute have responsibilities in it”. It is too bad the assistant deputy minister did not tell the minister what his role was.

This is not the first time the Office of Critical Infrastructure Protection and Emergency Preparedness did not tell the minister what he was supposed to know. It was not until I questioned the minister in the House that I am even sure he knew that the Emergency Preparedness College in Arnprior even existed let alone the bureaucrats and the PMO that decided to shut the Arnprior college down.

What we are witnessing today is a department out of control and a minister who is out of touch.

The Office of Critical Infrastructure Protection and Emergency Preparedness, or OCIPEP, was recently described in the media as a secretive emergency agency, its public affairs officials known not for returning phone calls from journalists or politicians.

During the April 3 defence committee meeting, when I attempted to question Bill de Laat, whose title is director general of external relations and public affairs, ADM Harlick instructed him not to speak. His presence was a joke to committee members, a public affairs bureaucrat who was not allowed to speak to the public.

In the 9/11 budget, OCIPEP received $396 million to prepare for emergencies. What has the public received for these dollars? For Canadians to understand why the government has been so inept in handling SARS, they only need to look at the government's own internal analysis on how it responded to 9/11 to see that nothing has changed.

In the government's own internal assessment of how it responded to 9/11, it found the following. There were concerns with “fluctuating requests, multiple players, problems with the availability and capacity with ground transportation, with special blame directed at Health Canada and a lack of Canadian Forces aircraft”. Is it not interesting that for 9/11 Health Canada was singled out for special criticism and here we find two years later that nothing has changed? There was a lack of clear coordination within the Government of Canada, no declaration of lead department, no standard coordination mechanisms and lack of clarity around OCIPEP's role.

The internal analysis then identified the immediate steps to be taken: properly trained personnel; the need for strategic airlift; and the need to develop a permanent, high level, interdepartmental body responsible for planning, directing and coordinating federal and national operations during a crisis. It is clear that not one of those recommendations have been followed.

The most scathing criticism was reserved for the $396 million that the OCIPEP agency received. This is the same agency that has discarded all its institutional memory on how to deal with an emergency when it made the decision to close the Emergency Preparedness College in Arnprior. OCIPEP was characterized as having “inadequate internal operating procedures and a workforce with little relevant experience or specialized training” and that “these inadequacies generated confusion, slow responses and disappointed stakeholders”.

The OCIPEP assessment went on to confirm that Emergency Preparedness Canada had a limited capacity to maintain extended operations that would be required in a crisis. The headquarters staff, many of whom have been with OCIPEP for less than six months, displayed, and I quote the report, “a lack of knowledge and awareness of policy and operational procedures”.

The complaint was charged to the Prime Minister's office, or central agency control, that it prevented the public and the stakeholders from receiving this information. Interdepartmentally, OCIPEP identified a lack of agreed upon and tested procedures to guide central agencies, lead departments and senior officials during emergencies and crises.

The OCIPEP assessment concluded, and I continue to quote from the federal government's own internal assessment to handle emergencies, that the Government of Canada played insufficient attention to emergency planning. OCIPEP must improve its relationship with the voluntary sector in Canada and with the international bodies.

Imagine, if that recommendation had been followed, would we have the problem today with the WHO? The government needs a new federal policy and related operational documentation and standards on emergency management, including crisis communications management, critical infrastructure protection, network security, business resumption planning and a rejuvenated vital points program.

The government contributes too little to national capacity building, for example, training of first responders at the Arnprior college exercise programs. All these came from OCIPEP's own internal assessment.

OCIPEP on its website has different patches for computer viruses. We have been unable to find a single word on how to cope or protect against SARS.

The $10 million that has been allocated to help out with the fallout from SARS does not buy the government absolution from its responsibility. This is a disease that on average claims 4% of its victims. Imagine what would have happened if we had a disease such as smallpox, which takes 30% of its victims? If that had hit instead of SARS, there would be far more deaths across Canada.

This was a disease that was unintentionally introduced at a couple of sites in Canada. Again, what would have happened if the contagion had been deliberately introduced, carefully planned so that the infected persons went to several major cities across Canada, or North America for that matter? A pandemic. There would not be enough people on this continent to battle against such a biological case of warfare.

We need a nationally coordinated plan with a clear and rehearsed protocol for all the relevant stakeholders and departments of government that would take in all the information from the WHO, heed its recommendations, take the information from the CDC, collate it and act responsibly.

[Art Eggleton, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I only heard a little bit about what the previous speaker was referring to with respect to emergency preparedness. As the former minister who was in charge of that, I think she has it completely wrong. The appropriateness of the handling of this particular case lies with the Minister of Health and the Minister of Health has carried out her responsibilities appropriately.

There has been a coordinated effort from Health Canada, the provincial and local health authorities. There has been the provision of equipment and support in many other different ways. I talked with the Minister of Health this morning in Toronto as she was talking with health officials in that city. She is carrying out the appropriate function, which in terms of emergency preparedness is properly assigned to the appropriate minister, she being the appropriate minister in this case.

I rise with two perspectives on this issue. One is as the chair of the greater Toronto area caucus of some 40 MPs, all Liberals of course, and some senators who have been seized of this matter for the past few weeks and have been dialoguing with officials as well as ministers with respect to the handling of this issue. I also come at it from the perspective of being a lifelong resident of Toronto and one who spent some 22 years as a member of the local government, 11 years as the mayor of Toronto. I can frankly say that never in that period of time have I ever seen a health challenge quite the same as this one.

As it is turning out, the health challenge has been handled enormously well by the professional health care staff in Toronto, in Ontario and in Canada. We are now getting to a point where the cases of SARS are on a downward curve. It is contained. It is controlled.

Certainly the praise for the front line workers is very well deserved. Doctors, nurses and many other health care workers have gone above and beyond in terms of the performance of their duties. I know the people of Toronto are very grateful, as indeed we should be right across the country for what they have been able to do.

We are coming into a period of time where much of the focus will now shift to the economic damage that has been done in the city, the province and the country, first and foremost to the tourism industry and the Chinese businesses that exist in the Toronto area.

This morning the Minister of Transport and I were at city hall in Toronto in what was called a SARS summit. It was brought together by various Chinese business associations who felt the initial impact. In fact, they said this morning that 50% to 80% of their business had been lost in this period of time, that people were not shopping and were not going to restaurants. We do know that a number of members of Parliament, our Prime Minister and others have gone into Chinese restaurants as a demonstration of just how safe it is.

Indeed I spent the last little while during most of the recess in Toronto. Life is going on in the city and has been going on in the city. There are not people walking around with masks. Rarely would people see that. The containment is within the various health facilities that have been dealing with the SARS outbreak. I say outbreak but we all know that more people die of flu and there are more people who are stricken with other kinds of diseases than this. It has been very well contained.

The mystery of it has added to the anxiety, quite naturally, not knowing exactly where it has come from or exactly how to treat it. I hope we can continue to work on that. There has been some suggestion of a vaccine. That certainly is worth exploring.

The Minister of Health said today that we need to study the lessons to be learned in terms of this particular problem. We definitely need to do that to see if there are ways we can tighten up the things we do and the procedures we carry out to help ensure that we are prepared if this kind of thing should ever occur again. We certainly hope it will not.

With respect to the economic concerns, business associations from the Chinese community have asked for some financial aid. Many of their businesses are on the verge of bankruptcy. We certainly need to look at what can be done to help them. Last week the Prime Minister announced $10 million which would match the provincial $10 million and the city of Toronto's $5 million. This would help to provide a recovery program for Toronto. This would give back to Toronto the reputation and image it deserves as a world class city.

The WHO travel advisory needs to be lifted. The Ontario minister of health and representatives of the federal Minister of Health are going over there hoping to—

[Greg Thompson, Progressive Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I hate to interfere with the member's speech, but I was hoping that he would specifically address the lead story in tonight's news and that is the issue of the minister of heritage taking exception to the Minister of Health and her mishandling of that file. I want some answers on that one.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bagnell)]

I appreciate that intervention but it is not a point of order.