Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House today to address Bill C-5, an act respecting the establishment of the Public Health Agency of Canada. If anything demonstrates the need for the position of a chief medical health officer at a public health agency to deal with these types of concerns, it has to be the former administration's response or, more appropriately, lack of response to a SARS outbreak that is behind the creation of this agency.
By acknowledging that the Public Health Agency of Canada was created in September of 2004 through orders in council, Bill C-5 represents housekeeping legislation from the last Parliament as the new agency lacks parliamentary recognition in the form of its own enabling legislation. As such, the legislation would provide a statutory footing for the Public Health Agency of Canada and gives the agency and the Chief Public Health Officer, the CPHO, the parliamentary recognition they need.
Canadians will recall that the previous administration, as part of the democratic deficit that led to its eventual defeat, routinely organized and reorganized federal government and then sought retroactive approval from Parliament after the fact. In one of the worst examples of the democratic deficit that existed in the House prior to the last election, this was done to provide a cabinet spot for the member for York Centre, who was encouraged to move from the hockey arena to the political arena. This was after his predecessor was encouraged to leave elected politics and took a patronage appointment to the other place to create a seat vacancy.
The proper sequence would have been for the appropriate legislation to come before Parliament. That should have been the case with this legislation. However, this is housekeeping legislation, as the new government works to restore the confidence Canadians will have in their public institutions.
As my colleagues have indicated, this legislation represents a key piece in supporting the federal government's efforts to promote and protect the health of Canadians. The need is there and I support that need.
As everyone may know, following the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak, known as SARS, there were discussions and debates on the state of the public health system in Canada. As a member of Parliament from the province of Ontario in the 37th Parliament, I participated in the emergency debate in the House on severe acute respiratory syndrome as an important independent voice.
It was clear from the outset, when SARS was first identified that leadership, was evident on the benches of what is now the government of today. My colleagues and I were very careful in our approach, allowing the old administration latitude on how it dealt with SARS. Our questions were constructed to provide information to the public. It would have served no purpose to unduly alarm the Canadian public or the international community.
In that regard, the Conservative Party was very responsible in its approach to the SARS crisis. The tragedy of that case was the total lack of leadership from the federal government. The people of Ontario suffered. First, there was the West Nile virus to scare away the tourists. Then, because of the incredible incompetence on the part of the old government, the World Health Organization, the WHO, issued a travel ban against Toronto, Ontario based on the lack of information it had at that time.
The tourism industry, which is important for jobs and our economy took a hit as a consequence. The economic losses to Ontario alone were in the hundreds of millions of dollars. If the province of Ontario, under the firm leadership of the new Minister of Health acting in that capacity for the province of Ontario, had not acted decisively and displayed the leadership necessary to control this spread of SARS, it is clear that Canadians could have been faced with a full-blown epidemic.
Canadians will probably never know how serious the threat to the health of Canadians SARS posed. What is unfortunate is that it took this crisis for the old government to finally grasp the need for a public health agency and a chief medical health officer. Canadians who watched the emergency debate on SARS were surprised to learn that Canada had a minister responsible for emergency preparedness. That minister, who had a mandate to deal with national emergencies, went missing and was totally invisible as the events unfolded regarding SARS.
Canadians should not be surprised to learn that the minister responsible for emergency preparedness at the time was the same individual who had the dubious distinction of shutting down the Emergency Preparedness College in Arnprior at precisely the time Canadians would have benefited from over 50 years of experience in training for emergencies and emergency first responders for Canada.
I had the opportunity to question Assistant Deputy Minister Jim Harlick, in committee, about the government reaction. In responding to a question from the member for Compton—Stanstead, Mr. Harlick stated the following:
We only have one minister at the federal level really designated as Minister for Emergency Preparedness although all ministers under the statute have responsibility for it.
Too many people being responsible led to the confusion where no one stepped up to assume the leadership that was needed in the SARS crisis. The Office of Critical Infrastructure Protection and Emergency Preparedness, OCIPEP, was described in the media as a secretive emergency agency and the decision to split up that office, which Bill C-5 effectively does in this legislation, will allow the Canadian public a clearer view of the role of the various government agencies and how we prepare for an emergency with clear lines of communication for people to understand who work in government also.
In the 9/11 budget, OCIPEP received $396 million to prepare for emergencies. For Canadians to understand why the old government was so inept at handling SARS, a look at the old administration's own internal analysis on how it responded to 9/11 as informative.
In the federal government's own internal assessment of how it responded to 9/11, it found the following. There were concerns with fluctuating requests, multiple players, problems with the available and capacity with ground transportation, with special blame directed at Health Canada. There was a lack of clear coordination within the Government of Canada. There was no declaration of a lead department, no standard coordination mechanism and a lack of clarity around OCIPEP's role.
The creation of the Public Health Agency and a Chief Public Health Officer is a direct response to that internal assessment.
The internal analysis then identified immediate steps to be taken such as properly trained personnel, the need for strategic airlift and the need to develop a permanent pie level interdepartmental body responsible for planning, directing and coordinating federal and national operations during a crisis.
The most scathing criticism was reserved for the $396 million that the OCIPEP received. This is the same agency, I remind Canadians, that discarded all its institutional memory on how to deal with an emergency when it made the decision to close the emergency preparedness college in Arnprior.
OCIPEP was characterized as having inadequate internal operating procedures and a workforce with little relevant experience or specialized training. These inadequacies generated confusion, slow responses and disappointed stakeholders. The OCIPEP assessment went on to confirm that Emergency Preparedness Canada had a limited capacity to maintain extended operations that would be required in a crisis.
The headquarter staff, many of whom have been OCIPEP for less than six months, displayed “a lack of knowledge and awareness of policy and operational procedures”. The new Chief Public Health Officer will have the expertise to deal with this crisis. I have no doubt that the next health crisis is waiting to happen and we will be better prepared for it.
As an example of what may occur when a potential threat is not properly identified and analyzed, just looked back to that great blackout of 2003. The old office of critical infrastructure, protection and emergency preparedness produced a threat analysis to Canada's infrastructure. Under the section “Impact and Accidental Threats on Canadian Critical Infrastructures”, it has this to say about power failures, and I quote from its website.
The North American hydro grid is more interconnected today than it was at the time of the Great Northeast Blackout. "This interconnectedness has increased the ability of the grid to withstand unexpected disruptions as managed by coordinated real-time monitoring across North America."...This work is therefore making the possibility of another massive blackout that would leave large areas of North America without power, remote.
In hindsight, it is now clear from this faulty analysis by OCIPEP that the federal government totally underestimated the potential threat to the power grid, just like it underestimated the threat from SARS. The OCIPEP assessment concluded, and I will continue to quote from the federal government's own internal assessment to handling emergencies, that the Government of Canada paid insufficient attention to emergency planning.
In many respects, Canadians were very lucky that SARS was contained the way it was. This is a disease that on average claims 4% of its victims. Imagine what would have happened if we had a disease such as smallpox, which takes 30% of its victims. If that had hit instead of SARS, the consequences would have been far more serious for the health of Canadians.
SARS was a disease that was unintentionally introduced at a couple of sites in Canada. Again, what would have happened if a contagion had been deliberately introduced, carefully planned so the infected persons went to several major cities across Canada or North America for that matter? A pandemic. There would not be enough people on this continent to battle against such a case of biological warfare.
A nationally coordinated plan with a clear and rehearsed protocol for all the relevant stakeholders and departments of government that would take in all the information from the World Health Organization is what Canadians can expect from this new agency.
We recognize that health care is a provincial responsibility, but responding to international health bodies like the World Health Organization is a requirement of the federal government. I am confident that this new agency will complement the role of health care in Canada and our ability to respond to the next health crisis in a timely manner.