Madam Chair, as I have said on a number of occasions in the House, we were, I believe, one of the very first countries to act upon the WHO recommendation in relation to screening. We acted immediately. The WHO has, throughout this entire process, indicated that it approved of the screening processes we put in place.
I will quote Dr. David Heymann from May 1, just two weeks ago, in Toronto. When he was asked directly, in relation to the travel advisory, he said:
We did not make our decision based on something that Canada was doing wrong. Canada was doing everything right, including screening passengers as they left.
The hon. member can make as much of this as he wants but we took the WHO recommendation seriously in relation to screening. We did a risk assessment on a daily basis as to what we thought was required, both for importation and exportation. Every day we addressed the question of whether our screening measures were sufficient in relation to the risk assessment on that day. Those measures were progressively increased as the public health challenge of SARS moved forward in the City of Toronto.
We continue to enhance those procedures because, first and foremost, after the great job Ontario has done on the front lines, we want to catch any individuals coming into this country. We do not want the importation of SARS into this country after our control and containment measures have worked.
The WHO is quite rightly concerned about exportation in terms of the rest of the world. We have progressively enhanced these procedures. We also have offered to share what we learn, in terms of our screening procedures, especially as it relates to technological tools of control and containment, with the WHO and the rest of the world.
We do not know how effective infrared machines will be as a matter of public health. Therefore we will be doing that analysis over the coming weeks and months and we will share that with the rest of the world. That is how we learn. We take our obligations seriously, which is why we perform the daily risk assessment and enhanced screening procedures, as needed, on the basis of the risk assessment.