Mr. Speaker, I know he is a person who has been committed in his service to the health committee for a long time, although committed almost sounds like a sentence.
On the question of compensation, we talked about that in terms of conveyances already, and airports, hotels, et cetera. The form of compensation is a measure of accountability. When we give great powers to officials to inconvenience and affect public activity, we need to be careful that there are some accountability measures.
Specifically, I believe, the hon. member is referring to compensation for individuals. It concerns me when we have an official who may be overzealous. I have had some run-ins with officials who are rather zealous in applying their responsibilities, such as the CFIA in my own riding, for example, sometimes overriding the edge of what is reasonable for people to respond to in another area of responsibility. I am concerned that if there is no measure of accountability, these things can be applied because they are driven by other agendas, fear, “might be” or “what if”, rather than reality. I certainly felt that we should explore whether some mechanism of accountability could be applied.
If people are sick and confined, we expect they are receiving good care and the public is being protected. We understand that. However, if they are not sick and are inconvenienced for a week or held back, then there is a very serious reason to be concerned about that, and maybe they should be compensated.
The regulations need to be reviewed by the health committee, as we have in other areas like reproduction technology. We want to review those regulations.
As far as appendix 1, the minister has the power to add or to subtract diseases to that list. There are many on it that probably should not be on it. We could probably have a more refined and tighter list, according to some of the experts from whom we heard. I am not aware that there are others that should be added at this time, but it is something that should have been updated. I think it is a little antiquated.