Mr. Chair, nothing could be further from the truth. I guess the hon. member will say what he wants.
What is really interesting is that when SARS came here nobody knew anything about the disease. In terms of infectious disease control, it is remarkable how quickly everybody put in place the public health control and containment measures to succeed.
It is people like him who create the problem. They talk of failure, whereas everybody else in the world talks about the success story. This disease, which no one had control over and which no one knew anything about, landed here and within weeks we had it under control and contained. We are a model to the rest of the world. People, such Dr. David Heymann, have said that Canada did everything right, including the screening of passengers as they left.
He can talk about failure and he can denigrate all the work that everybody did at all three levels of government but the rest of the world is not with him. The rest of the world, the CDC, the WHO and others, are saying that in a terrible, tragic situation of a new disease nobody knew anything about that we were amazingly successful in relation to control and containment.
Yes, tragically some people lost their lives. However no one is perfect and we will learn important lessons and build for the future.
However, because of the degree of readiness and the degree of co-operation among the three levels of government, we are able to say that only 24 people died. Those 24 deaths are a tragedy but, thank goodness, more people did not die because of the level of preparedness and the ability to put in place a plan to control and contain the disease.