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.