Mr. Speaker, this is important legislation and I think we all appreciate that. The response to last year's SARS outbreak was of great concern to Canadians and caused a great disruption to society. The public is expecting the government to respond appropriately.
We have had the Naylor report. We are promised the new Canada public health agency, headed by a new chief public health officer. We understand the minister is moving to establish that new agency. We hear it will be in Winnipeg, and that is good. We need to centralize our information gathering and coordinate our efforts in this regard.
We are still waiting to hear on the appointment of a new chief public health officer, but it has been some time in coming together. I think that Canadians will probably welcome those developments. Hopefully they will fall into place soon.
It is surprising that legislation as important as this would be tabled on what probably is the last day of the 37th Parliament.
There are some members protesting, saying that they do not know. For the skeleton crew that is left defending democracy here, it seems quite clear that we are on the edge of an election.
We had a request come forward from the government side that perhaps the legislation might be considered as having come from committee, as if it had been through second reading and returned from committee without amendment. I can assure everyone that we are not prepared to make such a rapid response on legislation as important as this. It is very complicated legislation and it would give extraordinary powers to health authorities and health officers to detain, to hold up equipment, to quarantine and isolate people for extended periods of time on a suspicion that they may be carrying something, even if they are healthy.
There are some very alarming components to this. Under the proposed legislation, people have the right to be examined again by an independent doctor within seven days if they have been put into quarantine and then again in another seven days. However, there is no provision for compensation. People have to pay for their own medical examinations. I do not know if there is any discussion in the legislation about who will pay for the accommodations where people are quarantined.
An aircraft, for example, can be put it into isolation, or quarantine or some place for disinfection. The government proposed that it would be willing to compensate the aircraft carrier for the damages to its equipment, but there is no compensation for the loss of that equipment, which may be millions of dollars for who knows how long. There are some serious issues associated with the regulations. We will want to talk about some of the provisions in a cursory way because it is far beyond what we can discuss in the limited time available.
I want to raise another issue relative to this. It comes out of the fact that the quarantine act was part of a comprehensive health legislation review that was promised by the government, which included radiation emitting devices, the Food and Drugs Act, the quarantine act and the Hazardous Materials Information Review Act. We understand the need for urgency on a quarantine act, but I want to protest on another aspect of this.
We had six years of work going into revisions on the Food and Drugs Act to create a new third category for natural health products. We worked all those years on this program to bring in regulations for natural health products, an issue that is important to many Canadians and that affects the whole range of building health and bodies, including one's ability to respond to infectious disease. Yet when the government brought in all these regulations on natural health products in January of this year, it used as a pretext for the reason that there was this new comprehensive review coming of health legislation for not creating a third category in the middle for natural health products. Therefore, it was not practical or possible to provide the simple change to the Food and Drugs Act that would have created a new third category for natural health products so they would be regulated not as food and not as drugs.
On the one hand, Canadians were led to believe, after six years of review and promises to Canadians, that a third category would be created in law so natural health products would be regulated not as food and not as drugs, but as physiologically active agents, natural components that promote health. However, they would not be regulated as drugs. The government reneged on that promise because this comprehensive legislation was coming. All of a sudden it can pull the quarantine act out and in one day bring in legislation and expect it to go through the House.
It is disappointing for Canadians, certainly the ones who are interested in natural health products, to feel embarrassed and betrayed by a government that does not want to give them the legislative framework that would allow natural health products to take their rightful place, but it can fire in a quarantine act on the last day of Parliament which has extraordinary powers to isolate Canadians and take them right out of circulation, even if they are not sick.
Maybe I should read some of the language. Clause 29(2) states:
The quarantine officer shall provide the traveller with the opportunity to undergo a medical examination by a medical practitioner at least every seven days after the day on which detention begins.
Going back to clause 21(1), it states:
A quarantine officer who, after a health assessment, has reasonable grounds to believe that a traveller is infested with vectors may require the traveller and their clothing to be disinfested.
If someone is required to have this examination, clause 23(3) says:
The examination must be at the traveller’s expense and conducted in the place where the traveller is detained.
Clause 26 of the act states:
If a quarantine officer, after a medicalexamination, believes--
I do not think that is proof, it is believes and is kind of open to interpretation. It goes on:
--on reasonable grounds that the traveller has a communicable disease or is infested with vectors, or has recently been in close proximity with a person who has acommunicable disease or is infested with vectors, the quarantine officer may order the traveller to comply with treatment or any other measure for preventing or controlling the spread of a communicable disease.
It does not define how this belief is arrived at. It may be that someone has a fever. I am rather concerned that the Minister of Health considers that anyone with a fever is a danger to public health. I do not imagine there is anybody in this room, either in the gallery or in the chamber, who has not had fevers multiple times in their lives. It is the body's normal defence mechanism. Everybody has had a fever, a mild febrile event. It does not define that. Is a fever 98.8
o
or 99
o
, or 99.5
o
or 100
o
? It is not defined.
The parliamentary secretary is suggesting it is 37
o
. We are going to centigrade here and that is another debate.
Whether it is centigrade or Fahrenheit, it does not define where that fever begins. That leaves it subject to interpretation. Is everybody who has a mild flu or sniffle going to be declared a public health threat? Are they therefore going to be vulnerable to being put in a slammer for seven days? That might be an inconvenience to someone going on their honeymoon or on a trip they have been planning perhaps for a lifetime.
There are some very serious aspects to the bill that impose on the civil liberties and the right to travel of Canadians. I think the health committee will want to look at these provisions very carefully. I hope that along with these discussions of public health, we will look at other measures to improve public health and air travel and improve the security of aircraft.
I hope somebody is talking to engineers of aircraft about how they might, for example, install an aircraft duct ultraviolet light, which might eliminate pathogens in circulation. That could be a good public health measure and reduce the risk to all air travellers. I hope somebody will talk about more practical means and not just about incarcerating people with a mild fever.
There are some serious issues associated with the bill. We will want to look at it closely. I am sure the health committee in the new Parliament will examine this in detail. I hope to have an opportunity to be on that committee. It will be a very interesting discussion I am sure.
I hope for the sake of Canadians that all avenues of approaching these things will be looked at very carefully before we commit to what can amount to very draconian measures. If they are applied the wrong way, they could be a terrible infringement on the rights of Canadians. It will need to be examined carefully by the health committee. I am sure there will be a call for amendments on this very complicated legislation.