House of Commons Hansard #90 of the 37th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was sars.

Topics

Severe Acute Respiratory SyndromeEmergency Debate

10 p.m.

Liberal

Art Eggleton Liberal York Centre, ON

Mr. Speaker, the member can ask me a question afterward if he wants to have me say something other than what I am saying. I would be happy to answer that further.

There will be an attempt to get the travel advisory lifted. It was over the top and an overreaction by the World Health Organization. Some evidence of that is the fact that officials from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta went to Toronto to study the situation and quite appropriately said it was not a matter of avoiding the city. They indicated there was no reason to avoid the city. If people were going to avoid being in contact with SARS they should avoid those health care institutions where there have been patients with SARS. That was a reasonable approach.

Nevertheless the World Health Organization is concerned about the spread of it in other parts of the world. I can appreciate that if this disease got into developing countries that do not have the health care system that we have in Canada it could be catastrophic.

Hopefully the team that is going over there will be able to persuade the WHO that the travel advisory needs to be lifted. When that is done, and with the cooperation of the three levels of government, people in the international community will be told that the advisory has been lifted and that Toronto is a safe place to visit. This should restore some of the large revenues lost by the tourism and hospitality industries in Toronto.

Tomorrow the greater Toronto area caucus will meet again on this issue. It will look at several recommendations that came from the summit today from the Chinese business associations and from the unions representing those in the hospitality industry in Toronto and will make further recommendations to the government. Ministers will be attending the session tomorrow. This will give us an opportunity for a fulsome discussion.

The bottom line is that the governments at all three levels are pulling together to resolve this issue. There has been some question about leadership. I think the media has distorted and exaggerated that issue considerably. There is always room for improvement in leadership, but in this particular case people have done what was necessary for them to do.

In the early stages of this it was necessary to hear from the medical profession. They were the ones giving the daily advisories on this matter and appropriately so since it was a medical concern. Now we all need to be engaged in terms of a recovery plan. We have to get the Toronto economy and the Ontario and national economies which are all affected by this, moving again. We have to get people to come to our country, our province and our city.

Severe Acute Respiratory SyndromeEmergency Debate

10 p.m.

NDP

Yvon Godin NDP Acadie—Bathurst, NB

Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure that I rise tonight to take part in this debate on the SARS problem in Canada.

I must say at the outset that I have difficulty with the position of the government that is almost saying that we do not have a problem in Canada. As my colleague from Burnaby—Douglas pointed out earlier, the Government of Canada itself has issued a travel advisory for Taiwan, even though there has not been a single victim there. Nobody died in Taiwan, and yet people were told not to travel to that country. In Canada, SARS has already claimed 21 lives in Toronto alone.

The government is being totally irresponsible when it says things like that; human lives are at stake. In Canada, the economic aspect will come first, but without any concrete measures. By concrete measures I mean ways to help our small and medium size businesses in difficulty, ways to help workers and, above all, ways to help people fight this problem that has occurred in our health care system.

Tonight I would like to congratulate the Canadian Labour Congress. I would like to read the message that it issued today, April 28, on this National Day of Mourning for workers. I think that it is important to send this message to all our governments, all Canadians and all workers.

Today, April 28, the National Day of Mourning for Workers Killed or Injured on the Job, the Canadian Labour Congress recognizes the health workers that have suffered or died of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). A statement issued today by Ken Georgetti, president of the Canadian Labour Congress, reads as follows:

“The idea of the National Day of Mourning for Workers Killed or Injured on the Job, was conceived as a challenge to dangerous workplaces, as a solemn highlight of our continuous and perpetual struggle against those bosses and authorities who still gamble with the lives, the health and the safety of workers.

“That is why on this day, we often repeat: We mourn the dead and we fight for the living. Today, with this slogan, with this sentence, our thoughts must go to the health workers who, selflessly, attend to those who have or are suspected of having contracted the SARS, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.”

Our sentence, “We mourn the dead and we fight for the living”: somewhat summarizes some working days for many health workers.

“But this sentence also creates obligations for us all. When we say “We mourn for the dead, and we fight for the living”: today we must acknowledge and recognize these workers who put their health and their lives on the line, not just to heal others but to prevent the spread of disease to our communities, to our home.

“We must acknowledge and recognize, with gratitude, that well over one quarter of all the cases and suspected cases of SARS are health workers.

“We must acknowledge and recognize, with gratitude, the dedication and competence of these workers. For our sake, they have achieved some impressively successful outcome, despite years of cutbacks, downsizing, restructuring, privatization and other forms of dismantling of their work, their working conditions, their workplaces--in truth, the slow dismantling of our public medicare.

“We say thanks to all health care workers. We owe a great debt to the victims of the disease. We mourn their sacrifice, but we must also honour their sacrifice with a commitment to continue to fight for them, their working conditions, their working environment, our public medicare.

The press release also says:

Because of the SARS outbreak, this year, the National Day of Mourning for Workers Killed or Injured on the Job must be in defiance of all political agendas that gamble with the health of Canadians.

The Canadian Labour Congress, the national voice of the labour movement, represents 2.5 million Canadian workers. The CLC brings together the majority of Canada's national and international unions along with the provincial and territorial federations of labour and 137 district labour councils.

I took the time to read this press release by the Canadian Labour Congress because today is the National Day of Mourning, a day to commemorate the dead and to fight for the living. I think that this message is very appropriate in our country today, especially with this disease that has come to Canada from China.

Forty days have gone by, and I still have difficulty with that. Frankly, I have difficulty with the fact that the Prime Minister thinks that everything is all right, and that going to a Chinese restaurant in Toronto to drink tea or taking the whole Liberal cabinet to Toronto will solve the problem. This is not the kind of leadership that we expect from the government.

What we want our government to do is to begin to find solutions, to begin to prepare itself. What will happen if it spreads to another city? What will happen if it spreads to another province? How are we preparing those who work in health care? Preparedness is at zero now. Yes, it is true, Toronto's economy is taking a heavy beating. But if we do not solve the problem across Canada, the whole country will suffer.

We must give attention in coming days to how things can be administered. We see that today WHO lifted the travel restriction on Vietnam. People can now travel to Vietnam. I think we should take our hats off to the government of that country and acknowledge that they did what was necessary right away, rather than trying to say there was no problem.

The hon. member from Toronto, the former mayor of that city, told us just now that it was no worse than the flu, which people die from. That is not the point. With the flu, at least, we know we can treat it; we have experience. Our health experts already know something about flu, but SARS is an unknown. We cannot just say we will wait, that there is no problem. That is not how things happen.

It is disappointing to hear representatives of the government speak. We heard the Minister of Heritage say today that the government and the Minister of Health did not do their job. They are now trying to develop a policy. There is dissension within the Liberal Party. Not only dissension within the Liberal Party but also within Parliament about how the government handled its responsibilities in terms of this disease in Canada. This is totally unacceptable and should not be tolerated.

We need a program and a vision from the government as soon as possible. The government needs to sit down with health care experts throughout Canada and set up a team to work on an action plan. It is not just Toronto that needs an action plan; a national action plan is needed for each province, for everywhere there is a hospital, so that people know what to do if this happens.

We must not wait for SARS to arrive in a place and all of a sudden say that it has come to Bathurst or Chatham or Hamilton or Vancouver or elsewhere, like Thunder Bay or Cornwall in Ontario. We must not wait for this to happen. The government must be able to set up an action plan, not just hold a cabinet meeting in Toronto. That is not what we need. We need to know how the government will talk to experts.

I was pleased when the government announced that people with SARS would not have to wait two weeks to get employment insurance. I was happy to hear that.

But more needs to be done. We must remember that because of the cuts made by the government in 1996, there are people who do not even qualify for EI. How many people lost their jobs today, in tourism, for example, because of SARS in Toronto, employees in small and medium size businesses, that were forced to lay off people who do not even qualify for EI?

How many self-employed workers are there who do not qualify for EI, who do not pay EI premiums? There needs to be an emergency plan, not only for people who have contracted SARS, but also for workers affected by job loss.

The government has the responsibility to deal with this, too. It must not just sit and wait. It will be too late.

It is strange that the government thinks that the situation is not serious here in Canada. It warns against travel to Taiwan, where not one person has died of SARS, whereas 21 people here have died of it, and it says that it is not that serious, that it is no worse than the flu.

I will say it again: the government must show leadership.

It is totally unacceptable that the government turns around and says that it is not that bad, that the flu is worse, that more people have lost their lives because of the flu. In our country 21 people have lost their lives. The government has issued a travel advisory saying that Canadians should not travel to Taiwan. Taiwan did not even have one death but it is dangerous to go to Taiwan, but not to Canada. It is not that I do not want people to go to Toronto, but I do not want us to take it lightly, thinking that we do not have a problem in our country. We do have a problem.

The Liberal government has to show leadership. It has to put a plan together. It has to speak with the health experts and come up with a plan not just for what is happening in Toronto but for what could happen all across our country. We need to have a national plan on health care.

With all the cuts the government has made to health care since 1994, this is where we are at today. We have a health care system that is sick itself. People have to wait in the hallways and cannot even get served. Imagine what could happen, in Quebec, in New Brunswick and all across the country, because of all the cuts the government has made. If SARS spreads across the country, imagine what will happen.

That is why I say it is important for the government not to just say “It is not that bad, we are doing a good job”. As I said, they are fighting among themselves now. The Minister of Canadian Heritage said today, and I think it will be the news headline tomorrow, that the health care minister did not do the job.

It is not by bringing the cabinet to Toronto that the problem will be resolved. It is not by the Prime Minister going to Toronto and drinking a cup of tea at a Chinese restaurant that the problem will be resolved. What will resolve the problem is putting a plan together for Canadians, doing what Vietnam did. The World Health Organization has removed the travel advisory to Vietnam. People can go there now.

Canada could be more proactive. We are supposed to be the best country in the world. A Liberal member tonight was talking about having the best health care in the world. The best health care in the world and we cannot handle the problem that we have in the country now. The government has a responsibility, when there is a surplus of $42 billion in the employment insurance fund, to look at the workers who are losing their jobs over this. Now is the time to take the money and instead of paying down the debt and balancing the budget with it, give it to the workers who are in need.

In Toronto the people are in need. The business people are in need. The small and medium businesses are in need. The people running restaurants are in need. The workers are in need. The workers need the help of our government.

We need a plan like we had with the ice storm when the government came in and helped the people. When we had the problem with the flood in Saguenay, the government came in and helped the people. When we had the flood in Manitoba, the government came in and helped.

The government is not saying anything about this. It is being quiet, hoping it will go away and it does not have to spend a cent on the working people or on the people who got sick. That is a shame. Canadians do not agree with the position of the government. It might brag that it is doing a good job, but that is not a good job.

The health care community wants to meet with government and come up with a plan that will look after Canadians not only Toronto, but a plan for all across our country and to be prepared. We need a national plan so that if it hits Bathurst, New Brunswick, the people and the hospitals are prepared for it; that if it hits Caraquet, they are prepared for it; if it hits Tracadie, they are prepared for it; if it hits Cornwall, Ontario, they are prepared for it; if it hits Thunder Bay, they are prepared for it; if it hits Yukon, they are prepared for it. We cannot wait until it happens there and we lose brothers or sisters, uncles or aunts, or our children. That is not what we want from our government.

We want to be prepared. We do not want to see someone having a cup of tea in Toronto. That is not what we want our government to do. We want our government to meet with the experts, to make a plan together, to make sure the plan will work to save lives, to be the top in the world to show how we handled the problem. We do not want to just sit and wait for the problem to get worse. That is not what needs to be done. It is leadership that we need.

We need leadership from the government. The government has the responsibility to do it. Do Canadians have confidence in them, in democracy? It has to act now and not wait. It is not the time to wait. It is not a joke when people lose their lives. It is not a joke when people lose their jobs. It is not a joke when businesses close because of this. That is where leadership has to come in. There has to be a plan of action.

The government has over $43 billion in surplus which it took away from the working people of our country. Just last year the government had a $14.8 billion surplus. Today it is sitting there saying it will put a couple of million here and a couple of million there. That is not what needs to be done. A real plan of action is needed.

Jack Layton, the leader of our party, has shown leadership by saying that a plan needs to be put together and not just let it go by. The plan needs to be something that Canadians can look at and say that the government or Parliament has done something.

I am pleased that Parliament agreed to have this emergency debate because it is an emergency when Canadians are losing their lives.

This is an emergency. You can call it what you want. You can use nice words and say this infection is not creating a health care crisis in our country. It is all very nice, but Canadians are not crazy. They know full well there is a problem and they want the government to show some leadership. The kind of leadership that would result in an action plan under the direction of the health community and health professionals.

We must work with them and, at the same time, listen to the workers. We need a plan for them so that they do not lose their houses and are able to make their payments; they must be able to go through all that as Canadians and in full solidarity.

Severe Acute Respiratory SyndromeEmergency Debate

10:20 p.m.

Liberal

Paul Szabo Liberal Mississauga South, ON

Mr. Speaker, I share the views of most of the speakers who have addressed the House tonight. I had an opportunity to watch much of the debate. There is no question that the issue of SARS has seized Canada, that it has international implications and that it should be dealt with in a very serious manner.

It has been well laid out by hon. members the important steps the Government of Canada has taken to ensure that the support is given, as appropriate, but also to be responsible and not to be too alarmist about the situation. In these delicate matters we have to rely very heavily on the expertise of the health care providers in Canada and those who are trained and knowledgeable about disease and disease control to provide the assurances and the information that Canadians would like to have with regard to this situation.

I spent some time last week in Toronto. I was at a large function at the Air Canada Centre, a skating exhibition. I spent some time walking the streets. I did not see anyone wearing a mask in the area of Toronto in which I happened to be. Canadians should be aware that this is not an alarmist situation with regard to the people who live, work and recreate in the Toronto area, that there is a great deal of confidence in the health care providers, in the excellent work that they have done and that they are confident the steps that have been taken carefully and jointly with other levels of government are in a manner in which to the greatest extent possible protects the health and well-being of Canadians and all residents in the areas affected now.

I also had the opportunity to travel to Michigan on Sunday to visit my son who lives there and also to meet with his father in law and mother in law. We had lunch together. I asked them about the impression they had with regard to SARS. I had told them that when I crossed at the Sarnia border, the U.S. customs and immigration gave us a multilingual flyer which laid out the SARS situation in the Toronto area, that there was an incubation period of some 10 days and that people should monitor their health over the next 10 days just to be absolutely certain. Therefore there is some concern across the border.

However when I spoke with my son's in laws, quite frankly they said that SARS was not a major story. In fact they said that the people who lived in the Canadian border area, such as the state of Michigan, knew Ontario very well. Many of them have business relationships and many of them have travelled there. They understand that Canada is a country which is at the top of the game in terms of caring for its citizens, its health care system and is well able to deal with the situation that is challenging us right now, particularly in the Toronto area.

Interesting enough, as an aside, they raised the fact that SARS had come up in some of the conversations by state authorities who were concerned about the trucking of garbage from Toronto to Michigan. I think they are playing politics with SARS and it is a good segue to suggest that this is not a subject matter with which one should play politics.

This is a very sensitive matter for those who would suggest alarmist activity or somehow make some cheap political points at the expense of alarming the citizens with rhetoric that is unsubstantiated by the facts, not only from the health care system in Canada but verified by international authorities such as the Atlanta Center for Disease Control.

It is an important time for us to rely very heavily on the system that we have put in place. This is not a time when we can ask politicians to simply come up with simple solutions to complex problems. There is support for people who have to be under quarantine. The waiting period for employment insurance benefits, for instance, has been waived. The federal government has contributed money to the Toronto area to match with moneys from other levels of government to deal with the issue of the economic impacts for those who have some concerns and who have been impacted maybe not so much by the knowledge of what is here but the fear of what might be here. It is that sensitive an argument.

The government also has to work very carefully with other levels of government because the delivery points are not the direct responsibilities of the federal government. They are indeed the responsibilities of the provincial governments. We have worked very carefully with them.

We are very hopeful that the resolution of the facts becomes very clear and that the situation with regard to the WHO travel advisory will be resolved very quickly. Then we can take some comfort that the system is working in terms of the reduction in the number of cases and that there are no new cases outside of the net which has been put around it.

I am a realist as well with regard to SARS. This evening I was advised by my wife, who is a secretary in a grade school, that a child in that school was sent home with a fever. It turns out that child's mother is a nurse in a hospital which is taking care of a large number of SARS patients. There are procedures they have to follow. It is not a matter of anything but the protocol is they must advise the parents. We now have a whole school of children whose parents have now been advised that a child has been sent home and there is possibly a link to the SARS situation.

This made me think that this child has been in contact with other children, certainly with my wife and myself. We travelled and we met many people last week. When we were in Michigan, we met many people closely. People have to understand that if we have a disease which is readily transmittable and has an incubation period, then there are possibilities, however slight they might be.

We have to be sensitive to the fact that many Canadians will look at even the slightest possibility as being more than a remote possibility. We all have to do a better job of giving them the assurances about the net which has been established to deal with this situation. We have to assure them that the precautions have been taken. As members know, our caregivers have escalated the protection they have in the hospitals from what they previously had as a necessary precaution simply because, as they have learned more and more about the patterns of SARS, this is responsible action for them to take.

My message to Canadians is to listen very carefully to the advisories and to the information being given by the health care system in Canada. Canadians should make themselves aware of the resources and contacts available to them should they have any questions so we can help them have a comfort level that there is someone they can talk to if they have questions or concerns.

Through the media and other forms of communication, Canadians have had a wealth of information and knowledge available to them. We have to be very sensitive to the fact that there are some sensitivities. We should continue to take every opportunity to communicate with Canadians in the vehicles available to us as parliamentarians about the safeguards, about the information they need to know. We must keep them informed on a current basis so that we address those sensitivities. It is extremely important. We should take nothing for granted, particularly as it relates to the more vulnerable in our society who may not be as easily informed as others. I would encourage people with family members who may not be aware for one reason or another of the current information or some of the safeguards that should be taken, that they take their family members under their wings and inform them and give them the comfort and the confidence of the information that is readily available.

I raise that simply as a call to Canadians to rely on our health care system and our health care providers. All Canadians who are concerned about this should be especially vigilant for members of their own family and to take necessary precautions until this matter is resolved, which we hope will be very soon.

Severe Acute Respiratory SyndromeEmergency Debate

10:30 p.m.

Liberal

Larry Bagnell Liberal Yukon, YT

Mr. Speaker, every time a great emergency comes up, whether it is September 11, the Iraq war or SARS, it does not mean that there are not a lot of other Canadians in need in various ways. I do not want those Canadians to think that we have forgotten them, even though Parliament, the media and all of us are concentrating our efforts on the SARS emergency, which we should do. We still recognize that there are many other Canadians in need. For instance, we can see by this ribbon that it is cancer month. As a former cancer canvasser, I am very appreciative of the people who worked so hard this month to help those other people in need. My thoughts and prayers are with some of my close friends: Keith, Jim, Barb, Al, Claudia and Sandy.

However, tonight we are here to talk about SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome. Obviously in some parts of the world, although not in great numbers yet, this is a human tragedy. Taiwan just had its first fatality yesterday. It is a tragedy especially for those people in the health care system, the heroes who have gone out to help people and have themselves become afflicted or died. We think of the people going through such intense tragedy and of their families and friends.

Under those circumstances this is obviously not something to play politics with. I have not been able to listen to most of the debate and I hope that my colleagues here have not tried to play politics with this but have tried to offer positive suggestions to help us deal with this crisis.

Of course these evening debates, which I think are excellent, will work only if the people in the ministers' offices, the offices of the Minister of Health, for instance, and of the minister responsible for emergency preparedness, those bureaucrats who have these responsibilities, are listening, sift through these debates, take all of the positive suggestions, evaluate them and put them into play so that these debates will be productive and useful.

As usual I am here again as always to speak of the north, and in particular my riding of Yukon, and to outline some of the unique differences that we have in such a situation. Of course, there always seem to be unique differences that have to be pointed out so that those situations are covered and dealt with appropriately. In particular, we have one major hospital in Yukon. It is the same in the other territories. Yellowknife, Iqaluit and Whitehorse each have one major full service hospital. That puts us in a situation that is entirely different from that of other parts of the nation.

When we go to Toronto we see hospital beside hospital beside hospital. In Yukon and in each of the three northern territories, each of which are larger than any country in Europe, there is one hospital to go to and that is it. The next one could be 1,000 miles away. This adds a very important dimension to planning and precautions. When these situations happen in our society, health care is concentrated in hospitals, and this particular affliction has had a severe effect in hospitals. If that were to happen in the territories in the north there would be far more of a crisis than in a city setting where people just go to the next hospital, because there is not a next hospital.

Fortunately we have taken excellent precautions in the north. I have been through our hospital because I was visiting patients there. Even to get into the hospital one must go through a screening and receive a card. One will not be allowed in if one is a risk to that hospital. I commend the people who have made the plans for our hospital. There is a special outside ventilated room if we were ever to get someone with SARS. There is no one in the northern half of Canada yet afflicted, but if there were to be there is an isolation ward with the particular ventilators that would be needed.

The point I want to make is crucial. If we do get an infection in one of our hospitals in the territories everyone in the territory is at risk, because everyone who would be going to the hospital for an emergency or for any other disease or any other accident would not have any place to go to if a hospital had to be closed, as has occurred in some locations.

The second point that is unique to the northern half of our great nation, which is probably about the size of all of Europe, is that for very serious surgery and other ailments all the people have to be medevaced out in small or other planes. It is a very important fact when planning for emergencies and health. Our hospital, although it does some surgery, does not do major surgery and there are certain very severe conditions it cannot cover.

Therefore, each and every citizen in the northern half of this great nation, if they are in a severe situation, has to be taken out by specially equipped and usually small airplanes. This is a very important factor to consider for emergency preparedness and health care planners, as they conceivably could have to medevac huge quantities of people in a few small planes. Of course the planes themselves are a very confined environment if one happens to be in a situation where the affliction is communicable. We are very lucky in our situation that our medevac plane is a King Air plane. All the air circulation vents to the outside. There is no internal circulation in that plane, so in that respect it would be quite safe if we ever had to use it.

Another unique quality of our particular area of Yukon, I think, is that we travel more than most. There is a lot of travel done by our few citizens compared to citizens across Canada. In fact, this week there are probably at least two dozen Yukoners in the nation's capital. There is a student I met with tonight for a forum. There will be another student here Wednesday for the Encounters with Canada group. Gary Lee is here from the Yukon Chamber of Mines. The president of the Yukon placer miners, Tara Christie, is here with another official. The Yukon Chamber of Commerce's Rob McIntyre is here. Grand Chief Ed Schultz is in town. Delegates from the Kaska and Kwanlin Dun first nations are in town, as are delegates from the association of municipalities. They are all here for valuable input to the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act, which is going before the Senate tomorrow. We also have people here for forestry and I am sure for a number of other reasons. We have three of the 737 type of jets going in and out of Yukon every day to places all over the world, so it is critical for us that these precautions continue and are researched and that people are handled appropriately.

The president of the Association of Yukon Communities, the mayor of Dawson City, is also in the nation's capital and he has pledged any assistance that Yukon and the federal government need, because his organization covers all the municipalities in Yukon. I also want to express my appreciation to Dr. Bryce Larke, the Yukon medical health officer, and Dr. Wayne MacNicol, the president of the Yukon Medical Association, for the information and cooperation they have provided to me and for the tremendous work they are doing in protecting our citizens.

Something else that is unique to Yukon, my area, is that the biggest private sector employer at the moment is tourism. It may be the only province or territory where that is the case. Of course a crisis like this one, which affects tourism, has a huge effect on us. I was at the Tourism Industry Association of the Yukon conference on the weekend and I want to commend the management, staff and the delegates of the association for being so positive and creative and trying to work through these tremendous challenges they have.

The president wanted to remind us of the size of this great nation when we are dealing internationally, to remind us that if something happens to one part of this nation to make sure that in the future it does not affect the entire nation of Canada. Most of my colleagues here know that I go home every weekend. It usually takes me two days to get home, so something that is happening around this part of the nation is not necessarily going to have a negative effect on our part of the nation. Hopefully in any tourism marketing people will realize how isolated, protected and beautiful the northern part of this nation is.

As I am sure others have done today, I would like to commend health care workers around the world. These are the real heroes, putting their own lives at risk to help and comfort those who have been afflicted with this new disease.

I would like to commend the northern pilots who have agreed, if it were to occur, that they would once again be prepared to be in a confined environment in order to Medevac these people to hospitals in the south which could save their lives or at least give them comfort in their last days.

In closing, I would like to make a plea to those people in the world who have been asked to stay home to quarantine themselves because they may be at risk. I would ask them to follow those demands. I know it is not easy. If someone is a rebel like I am, we do not like to be told what to do, and we do not like to be confined or ordered around. But every law, every regulation, and every quarantine in our society is a constraint on our personal freedoms. Hopefully people can see that in this situation when these laws and regulations for quarantine are put into effect, it is indeed for the common good and the good of those people we care about and love.

I know that if we were to walk into a store and then find out later that a person who had been asked to stay home with some affliction had inflicted us with something that would end our life or a family member's life, that we would not appreciate that. It is a terrible inconvenience, but it really is a great duty to society that we protect our fellow citizens if there is a chance that we could pass that disease on.

I ask for everyone's cooperation and help, and continued care for those in need. I want to express, on behalf of Parliament, our tremendous appreciation and thanks to everyone for what they have done and will do until this is conquered, and for putting in the extra effort such as those health care workers on 12 hour shifts in heavy, hot uniforms which are almost unbearable. Because of these efforts we will surely win.

Severe Acute Respiratory SyndromeEmergency Debate

10:45 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

I believe the debate is over. I declare the motion carried.

It being 10:47 p.m., the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m. pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).

Severe Acute Respiratory SyndromeEmergency Debate

10:45 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

Is it agree?

Severe Acute Respiratory SyndromeEmergency Debate

10:45 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

Severe Acute Respiratory SyndromeEmergency Debate

10:45 p.m.

Some hon. members

No.

(The House adjourned at 10:47 p.m.).