TORONTO - The actions and "bad faith" of the Ontario government during the SARS outbreak of 2003 show health-care professionals must be better protected for the next pandemic, lawyers argued Wednesday as the province's highest court heard arguments about five lawsuits Ontario faces.
The lawsuits -- launched by nurses, hospital patients and families of victims who died -- allege the province failed to do everything it could to stop the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome, which killed 44 people in the Greater Toronto Area.
It's also alleged the province prematurely declared the crisis over so the World Health Organization would lift a travel warning that halted tourism.
Fifty-one-year-old Neila Laroza, who was the first nurse to die of SARS, loved her job and was committed to taking care of other people, but the province let her down by telling her it was safe to work when it wasn't, her 21-year-old son Kenneth outside court.
"I want to make sure once something like this happens again, the people who are taking care of us are being taken care of," he said.
He recalled how during the outbreak his mother refused to immediately greet her family when she returned home from work and would only see them after washing up.
But her biggest fear was realized when she not only contracted SARS, but then also passed it on to her son. They were treated in the same hospital but were quarantined in different rooms and could only communicate by phone.
"My mom and I made a pact to each other than once I get better she'll get better as well -- she never kind of finished that one," he said.
Family lawyer Lisa Miron called the case "SARS-gate," and said the province acted in bad faith by putting economic concerns about tourism ahead of public health.
"If you're saying there's no SARS when there is SARS, and you're making nurses go in without masks to face a dangerous pathogen that can and did kill them, that is bad faith," Miron said.
Crown lawyer Lise Favreau dismissed suggestions that the province made inappropriate decisions to protect its economy, and she defended worries about tourism as "part of the basket of concerns the government has."
"These are the considerations the premier of government has to take into consideration in making decisions for the benefit of the public," she said.
Another case launched by 53 nurses makes similar allegations that the government failed to provide them with timely information about precautionary measures that could have better protected them and even gave them the wrong masks to wear on duty.
Lawyer Douglas Elliott, who is behind the nurses' class-action lawsuit, said the province has the mandate to protect public health and must be responsible for ensuring that its directives are seen through.
The Crown is asking the Court of Appeal to throw out the five lawsuits, which a lower court refused to do.
Elliott said his client Andrea Williams, who contracted SARS during the second wave of the epidemic, just wants a chance to be heard.
"All she asks of this court is she be allowed her day in court."
