TORONTO - Ontario residents should have confidence in the province's ability to respond to a possible swine flu pandemic because of what it learned from the deadly SARS outbreak in 2003, health officials and the Liberal government said Monday.

However, the opposition parties said Ontario had not acted on the lessons learned from SARS, which claimed 44 lives, and was ill-prepared for any similar disease outbreak.

There were a total of six cases of swine flu in British Columbia and Nova Scotia on Monday, but no confirmed cases in Ontario, said Dr. David Williams, the province's acting chief medical officer of health.

Between 10 and 12 suspected cases are under investigation in Ontario, he said.

"My advice is that there is no need to panic," said Williams, who insisted "there is a major difference" between how the province reacted to SARS and how it is dealing with the swine flu problem.

An integrated public health information system created after SARS means health officials are no longer "using sticky notes on the wall" to relay patient information, said Williams.

"That helped us with our listerosis outbreak and is helping in this case as well so we have up-to-date, current information," he said. "We're way ahead of where we were with SARS, and of course we'll be using this as a good exercise to test the systems."

Health Minister David Caplan said the province was better prepared for patients with swine flu because of its experience in 2003.

"Our ability to be able to respond, to identify, to contain and to be able to control these kinds of situations is increased because of our understanding of what happened during SARS," he said.

A commission into the SARS outbreak suggested the first wave of infections starting in March 2003 -- known as SARS 1 -- was unavoidable but likely could have been controlled more quickly if public health systems for disease surveillance had been in better shape.

The report said it was impossible to know whether a second wave of SARS infections in May and June could have been prevented, but found the devastating second phase could have been caught sooner.

On Monday, the opposition parties claimed Ontario was not ready for a possible pandemic because some local health units still did not have a pandemic plan.

"It was quite shocking personally, particularly when it was pointed out in the auditor general's 2007 report, that one-third of the units did not have a local plan in place," said Conservative health critic Elizabeth Witmer.

The New Democrats warned that the government still doesn't have a proper method to communicate the latest news on swine flu to the public, saying it did a poor job of communications during the Listeria outbreak last summer that killed 21 people nationwide, the majority of them in Ontario.

"The government has on two occasions shown that it is not prepared, both with SARS and then with listerosis," said NDP Leader Andrea Horwath.

"Three times and you're out, and I think this government is not doing what it needs to do to keep Ontarians informed, and not making sure that the things that need to be in place at public health units are in place."

Horwath said it's clear "that we have not learned the lessons from SARS."

However, medical experts disagreed with the opposition parties.

Eleanor Fish, who heads the Toronto General Research Institute's division of cellular and molecular biology, said people should be confident that the best experts are working hard to prepare for a possible pandemic.

"I think any fear mongering is really out of place and inappropriate," said Fish.

"There is activity -- which I'm participating in right now -- which demonstrates to me that there are individuals at every level of government and indeed in hospitals, public health and research laboratories who right now have put their lives on hold and are moving forward for preparedness."

The swine flu virus is suspected in up to 149 deaths in Mexico, but Williams says the cases in Canada and the U.S. appear to be much milder than the ones in Mexico.