It is exactly 71.6%, I am informed by the member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, who knows the Criminal Code backwards and forwards and who is as knowledgeable about opinion polls.
That said, the Jean Charest government is challenging the reproductive technologies bill in court. This is nothing to sneeze at, for this is not a government particularly known for standing up for the interests of Quebec. WIth all due respect, one might in fact call it somewhat spineless.
This is a kind of repeat tendency by the federal government to wish to interfere in areas not under its jurisdiction. It is not surprising to see them doing so in connection with health, since that is still the area of most concern to our fellow citizens.
I do not want to stray off topic, so let us get back to Bill C-12. As I have said, when it was introduced by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, it was Bill C-36. This bill concerns both human rights and public facilities.
It has been clearly established that the way people move around has changed, and people are in closer contact, so the potential for infection is greater. I am talking about mere proximity, nothing extreme. In public places, even this one, we are seeing requests to wash our hands.Every time we go in or out of the House, we take great precautions. We now realize that even shaking hands can transmit certain things, though not the flu. According to scientific knowledge, influenza is not transmitted by human contact, but is a virus that can remain active a long time.
Let me not get off topic again. Back to the bill. It will give the minister the authority to designate quarantine areas anywhere in Canada. We in the Bloc Québécois, our colleague from Laval in particular, brought in a dozen or so amendments so that the government would never be able to do this without consultation and input from the health authorities, those of Quebec in our case, but those of the other provinces as well.
Unfortunately, I regret to inform the House that our amendments were not adopted by the parliamentary committee. I do regret that. The bill would have been strengthened, without our challenging the federal government's jurisdiction, if a real partnership like that could have been established.
The bill contains another important provision: it creates quarantine officers. These are people found often, but not exclusively, in airports. They will carry out investigations and verify whether someone is a source of infection. I will come back to this issue later, but it looks like an intrusion. The potential for violations of privacy in this bill was quite real. It was so real that the members of the committee felt the need to have the Privacy Commissioner testify. That was the Conservatives' idea. It was not a bad idea and we supported it. We did obtain a number of amendments, particularly concerning detention periods.
Happily or unhappily, I shall conclude by speaking of the number of quarantine officers and we will also look at some criminal law concepts. The hon. member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin will have some good memories of that.
The House will be pleased to learn that there are two quarantine officers in Halifax, four in Montreal, three in Ottawa, six in Toronto, three in Calgary, two in Edmonton and five in Vancouver, for a total of 25. The committee had this confirmed. We had debates on the issue. For example, the Association des infirmières et infirmiers du Québec could have seen health professionals as quarantine officers. Nurses could have performed the function, since they are familiar enough with the early signs of an infection.
In the bill, the minister chose to state that quarantine officers must be physicians. Is that a corporate bias? I shall refrain from judgment and each member can make up his or her own mind on this. Still, the fact is that quarantine officers, in terms of professional qualifications, must be physicians recognized by their own provincial governing body.
There also will be officers of various kinds, including environmental health officers. We understand that the Quarantine Act obviously applies to people entering or leaving Canada.
There will be an obligation, which already exists and has been confirmed, for all Canadian airports to be equipped with a site for examining people who may be infected or contaminated. This is nothing new. It is and will be the responsibility of airport authorities to provide space for this purpose.
At first glance, one might think this is a technical bill that has nothing to do with human relations or rights and freedoms. One might think the bill is not covered by the charter. We know we have a system that protects human rights. In 1982, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was adopted in Canada. René Lévesque was opposed to this charter for two reasons. I do not want to get off topic, but Mr. Lévesque said that section 27 on the enhancement of multicultural heritage went against our plan for integration. Quebec has always believed in a common public culture, which, incidentally, began with the late Gérald Godin, MNA for Mercier. Mr. Lévesque was opposed to the charter, the constitution that was imposed on us. Remember the unilateral patriation, the night of the long knives, and all that? The constitutional context is indelibly marked on the collective memory of Quebeckers.
Mr. Lévesque was opposed to this charter, specifically section 27 on the enhancement of multicultural heritage. However, he feared for the linguistic rights of Quebeckers. When we look at the Ford ruling and all the rulings—let us be frank—the Quebec clause has been invalidated. That is what happened with the charter.
Potential access to school was expanded for minorities, but not only for minorities. When a parent did his or her primary school in English in Canada, it was the Canada clause that applied, not the Quebec clause enacted by the National Assembly.
Mr. Lévesque was a visionary. I ask my colleagues to applaud Mr. Lévesque for, without his visionary side, without this grasp he had of the Charter, I think that the history of Quebec would have been different.
Let us not digress, however: back to the quarantine bill. This is a bill which concerns human rights. Why? Because the quarantine officer, to be designed by regulation, will have a power of detention. We know that he will have to be not only a health professional but a physician. In a certain number of cases—I grant you that this will have to be with court authorization—he will be able to detain for several hours, or several days, persons who he has reason to believe are infected to some degree. It is here that the parliamentary committee has shown vigilance in adding the legally sanctioned notion of reasonable doubt.
As the hon. member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin knows, it has been clearly established by the courts that one cannot cause bodily harm to a person. One cannot even compel a person to receive medical treatment. With regard to the Rodriguez case—whose connection to the Quarantine Act will be clear to everyone—and the issue of assisted suicide, it is important to know that the Supreme Court has said that section 7 on the right to life, liberty and security of the person does not imply the right to quality of life. The Supreme Court refused to declare invalid section 241 of the Criminal Code concerning persons who assist with a suicide.
Let us not forget the essential thing: all of this is to point out that Bill C-12 allows considerable powers of detention. The committee wanted to mark out those powers to some degree, and to ensure first of all that the trigger mechanism can be activated only on the ground of reasonable doubt and after an investigation.
A final note on travellers. To make it very clear to everyone, clause 28(1) of the bill creates very specific obligations for travellers. Indeed, under the Quarantine Act, when on Canadian soil, a traveller arriving from Paris, London, Berlin or anywhere else around the world, will be required to undergo a health assessment. This traveller will have to agree to the treatment identified by the quarantine officer. This is still subject to the qualifications I made earlier.
Let us look at another aspect of the bill, namely the whole issue of compensation. As we know, this issue took up a lot of the committee's time.
As I have less than a minute left, I shall conclude. In a nutshell, Bill C-12 is constitutionally valid, because it falls under the government's jurisdiction. It is a technical bill which, in some regards, should raise concerns about human rights.
We would have liked the BQ amendment calling for provincial jurisdictions to be respected and for no quarantine areas to be established without the prior consent of the province concerned. We would have liked a little more compensation. But, overall, this is a bill that deserves to be passed. The Bloc Québécois will support it.