Mr. Speaker, again I am up on the SARS issue. I have had a number of questions, including an emergency debate, on this issue in the House. To put it very bluntly, I am not completely satisfied with the way the federal government has handled this issue and specifically, the Minister of Health. I am not alone in this. A number of people are saying the same thing. In fact the Canadian Medical Association has come to the same conclusion, that the Government of Canada has done a very poor job in the containment of this disease.
As we sit here this evening there has been a further outbreak in Toronto. It has not been contained. Again I think it lies directly at the doorstep of the Minister of Health.
I want to quote from the edition of Canadian Medical Association Journal which just came out. Most of the major newspapers today have reported what the Canadian Medical Association Journal has said regarding SARS and the responsibility of the government and the way it handled that responsibility. The journal said that politicians responded to the “epidemic of fear” unleashed by SARS by “dining out conspicuously in Toronto's Chinatown”. It went on to say that there is “a real lack of sophisticated health leadership nationally” within the federal Department of Health to deal with that issue.
What we have to be concerned about is that we are coming into another potential crisis. That would be the West Nile virus. On top of that, mad cow disease is another raging issue across the country.
The question would be, does the Minister of Health understand what her role is? If she does have a role in this issue, I wish she would let us know what it was, or at least that she understood what her role was.
One of the lines I used the other night is that the first line of defence in any war should be leadership. There has been no political leadership in the government on this issue. I have suggested that the Minister of Health and the Prime Minister have been partners in neglect on this issue.
The question I put to the minister a number of weeks ago was responded to by her parliamentary secretary. Early in March, this is how the government responded to the SARS issue, and I am quoting directly from the parliamentary secretary:
We know that it is not a real threat because the virus has been traced back to Hong Kong. There have only been a few cases in Canada that have come from there.
That clearly indicates that from the outset the government was not prepared to do what was necessary to contain this disease. There are only two things basically we can do. There is no cure, so we have to contain it. We have to not allow the disease to be imported and not allow it to be exported. That is where the government fell short. That is why I am taking the government to task on that very issue again here tonight.