Madam Speaker, my colleague from the Bloc raised an important question that we are concerned about relating to compensation. Not only can conveyances be held up but a hotel, an arena or a curling rink could be commandeered for an extended period of time by Health Canada. The current bill before us says that the minister “may” compensate.
We would have liked to have seen that amended to say that the minister “shall” compensate because there could be a huge loss to a private operator who had scheduled events cancelled and perhaps hundreds of people booked into a hotel that suddenly have to be cancelled, conventions and so on, that we are expecting the private enterprise owner to absorb in the interest of public health. Surely, if it is a public health concern, the government ought to have an interest in covering those conveyances. As a first question and as a supplement to my colleague from the Bloc, I wanted to raise that.
My second question is a follow up to the question on which diseases were mentioned. I remember some discussion at committee regarding the list of diseases, many of which are, according to the discussion from the experts, rather antiquated. The list contains diseases like tularemia; typhoid; yellow fever; the plague, which has not been around for centuries; measles; and Marburg hemorrhagic fever. There was some discussion with one of our experts, Dr. Donald Low, a respected microbiologist very much involved in the SARS debate, and I thought we would get some recommendations on updating that list.
Could the minister of state comment on why we are still faced with this new bill but with these antiquated diseases, many of which do not require quarantine with today's technologies?