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.