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.