Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure finally to be able to talk in some sort of substance with regard to this emergency debate on SARS, a virus that has gripped the nation, that has gripped the attention of the world and that has the potential of great harm. We understand that. I do not think anyone is fooling themselves by thinking anything different.
I am absolutely amazed when I see how the health workers in Ontario have dealt with this issue. They have dealt with it in a commendable way. They were absolutely stretched to the maximum even before the SARS virus came upon them as a challenge for them to control it and deal with it. I can only imagine just how intense it would be for the health care workers.
We know the most unhealthy workplace in Canada is in our hospitals which are stretched to the maximum. Nurses take more sick time off than people from any other workplace in Canada because they have a very intense job and they are very stretched. The lack of dollars in our health care system has allowed it to erode over the last number of years. We have talked a lot about this but I am not here to talk about it. I am talking on top of that. We have a situation now with this virus and they have been called upon to do extraordinary things. It is very intense. I just cannot impress upon the House enough how much gratitude we owe them.
I believe on Sunday five nurses said that was it, that they could not handle any more and they decided to quit. I can understand their frustrations. I talk to nurses all the time, and they were frustrated before this.
This is where we needed a national quarterback and some national attention to bring together as many resources as we possibly could to assist in areas such as Toronto, where the virus exploded and got out of hand for a short period of time. To contain that, we had to add resources to it. We should have intensified the workplace force there so they could deal with it in a most effective and efficient way as possible. Unfortunately we saw lack of leadership in the area of dealing with the containment side of it. Although there was no hesitation whatsoever on behalf of Tony Clement, the health minister of Ontario. Very quickly the Grace Hospital was quarantined. Shortly after, the York Hospital was quarantined. It was done very quickly and there was no hesitation to deal with the virus.
It was somewhat different as to how this all started; the Vancouver situation compared to the Toronto one. Both had patients who came from overseas and brought this to our borders. They were allowed through our airport and screening systems. We did not know really with what we were dealing.
However we have to compare how the hospitals dealt with this. Why did the virus get out of control for a short period of time in Toronto but not in Vancouver when the same warnings were given to both? I think because of the proximity of Vancouver to Asia, officials were really looking for flu-like symptoms. They had been alerted to it. As soon as patients came in they were isolated immediately. Officials in Toronto however were not aware of with what they were really dealing. I do not fault anyone for that. I just say that we are all human. What we can learn from that is how important it is to act quickly.
When all is said and done, one thing we absolutely have learned is we cannot hesitate when it comes to dealing with the safety of the people of Canada. We have seen the results of what happened when we hesitated to deal with leadership issues and protect Canadian population because of this. Therein lies the reason for an emergent debate in the House tonight so we can talk about what has happened, what we can learn from it and where we go from here. It is very important we do that.
One thing we can say is that no matter how we can applaud the workers in the containment side of it to deal with it nationally, all of that is for naught if we turn around and allow the SARS virus to be imported to our nation by other carriers from other countries. That is the reason why the WHO was so adamant that countries exporting this virus to other countries had to be stopped. That is how we contain it.
Whether issuing the travel alert was premature, and we can argue I suppose whether the facts were there, the WHO obviously felt the virus was being exported. Whether it was exported to Australia, we do not know. There was a case of a couple of children whom they thought had SARS. They got better before they were diagnosed, so it is hard to say. There was a nurse in the Philippines who died. She passed it on to her father and he passed away. There was one in Bulgaria who had pneumonia and they suspected SARS. The other one is in the United States. We are exporting this virus to other countries so we should not be so alarmed about what the WHO says.
The WHO issued a travel advisory because the screening process was not in place. If the screening process is not in place, we have to ask why it is not in place. I asked that question this afternoon in question period, and the minister's reply was that the WHO had said everything was going fine. I do not buy that. The WHO was saying that it was going to issue a travel advisory to Toronto because we were exporting the virus. Whether we were or were not does not really matter. The issue was the WHO felt that we were. It said that the screening was not appropriate.
Some colleagues are saying that was not why the travel advisory was issued. I do not think it would have a case to stand on if we were not suspected of transporting SARS to other countries. The WHO would never have issued the travel advisory. I say that very clearly because when this first started there were four different places in the world that were hot spots: Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore and Toronto. That is where the SARS virus broke out but a travel advisory was not issued for Singapore.
One might ask what Singapore did that it was not issued a travel advisory. It had 19 deaths and an even higher number of individuals who had contracted the disease, so it was not the containment side of it. We are pretty much equal on that. It was not the death side of it. It was the exporting of it. The WHO felt that the screening at the airports was sufficient enough and that it dealt with the issue of transporting the virus other countries, so there was no reason to issue a travel advisory to Singapore.
That is how I would assess the facts of the case. The problem we have in Toronto is that we should have been doing a similar job there. The WHO on March 27 said that we should be screening and it recommended the screening process was to be an interview. I challenged the minister at that time, on the 26th and 27th of March, why we were not screening as the WHO had recommended. The comment came that the voluntary pamphlet was appropriate enough. That was a terrible decision made that day. We are feeling the repercussions of that decision today.
It is very fortunate in some ways that other countries were doing their jobs and we did not have more transported into Canada during that time period when we were inappropriately screening those incoming passengers. That could have made the Canadian population more vulnerable than it already was. However it was as important not to export this to other nations.
Because of that, we are in a situation where Toronto unjustifiably is now seen as a place that is a risk for travellers and a travel advisory is now in place. The world, regardless of the facts, believes that Toronto is not a safe place to visit. Concerts are being cancelled, hotel reservations and meetings of all kinds are being cancelled. It is a devastating blow to the economy of that area in particular.
I live in a constituency that actually is in the Rocky Mountains. Jasper Park is in my riding. I asked the people of Jasper Park if they were being affected. Some of them said yes, that they were having some problems with what they expected to see this summer. Some said no, that it was not quite there yet. There is a possibility that perhaps, if we can get on top of this in time and we can advertise that Canada is as clean and pristine as it was once known, we can recoup the damage that has been done. Nonetheless, the damage which has occurred is very significant, particularly for the Toronto area.
We are having this emergency debate so we can see if we have dealt with this yet. Is there still a problem at our airports?
I was reading an article on the front page of, I think, the Edmonton Sun about an individual who tried to test the system from Toronto to Great Britain. He actually put on a lot of layers of clothing so that he was sweating profusely and he faked a cough. He was coughing intensely when he went to the wicket. There were three pamphlets there, whether people voluntarily picked them up or not. He jumped on the plane and was coughing intensely up and down the aisle waiting to see if someone would stop him and check to see if he had SARS. The problem was that the plane ended up landing in Montreal where he thought for sure he would be escorted off and asked some questions about it. Nonetheless, the comment, and I am reading from the paper, was that the individual continued on to Great Britain with not a word said to him. This is the sort of thing that happened.
What alerted me to the entire issue of the screening process not being appropriate was when an individual sent an e-mail to my office saying that his business had called him back from Hong Kong because of the fear of SARS. The problem was that he was not asked one question during his trip from Hong Kong to the Toronto airport about SARS. He actually could have contracted it there and imported it here and no one would have even known.
That was why we said there had to be appropriate screening at the airport in Toronto. Screening was not being done on passengers coming into the country or passengers leaving the country. We encouraged the minister to invoke the Quarantine Act and to say to Canadians, “We will stand between this virus and the health of Canadians initially”. The minister said no, that it was not needed and that we did not have to worry about that.
However we must understand that the protection under the Quarantine Act goes both ways: protection from incoming passengers so they do not carry disease and protection for other countries on outgoing passengers. The power to contain both is in the act and it is spelled out very clearly.
