Health Committee on Feb. 7th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Ms. Sidhu.

Mr. Thériault, you have the floor.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

With respect to the urgency of what needs to be done, I can't help but make a comment to my colleagues who received the documents but were not present during the previous meeting. Quebec and the provinces are well aware of the labour problem. They have been dealing with this problem for a long time, and they don't have the financial resources to deal with it.

During the first wave, all health stakeholders, whoever they may be, came to tell us that the chronic underfunding of health networks over the past 30 years had weakened them, to the point where it was very difficult to overcome the pandemic. We have seen the consequences of the precariousness of the jobs of some health care workers in Quebec. The Government of Quebec had to adapt to the situation, provide training and try to hire 10,000 people.

With all due respect to my colleagues, Quebec and the provinces know very well that the urgent need right now is to provide structural and recurrent funding to those who have been struggling with access to care problems for 30 years. These people know very well how to invest this money in to take structural action that will help them improve the situation.

We can do a study on the complementarity of the immigration component. My colleague Mr. Davies talked about that, which is very relevant. At the same time, we see every year that the government has trouble getting our foreign workers into the fields, and we are still experiencing the same problems. So I'm a little skeptical about the effectiveness of the state of emergency.

That being said, I understand that this motion will be adopted, regardless of what we say, particularly to change the order of priorities. So let's get to the vote as quickly as we can, and we'll point out the consistency or the inconsistency and the jurisdictional issues at the right time. I think some of my colleagues who have very good intentions are sometimes mistaken about Parliament, and the issues they address are more those of provincial elected representatives.

So I'm ready to vote.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Mr. Thériault.

That exhausts the speakers list.

We are now ready for the question on the amendment. The amendment is to remove the prioritization of this study.

Do we have consensus, or do we need to proceed to a standing vote? Can we get some indication in the room as to whether we're all on the same page?

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

We're against it. I request a recorded vote, please.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Mr. Berthold.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Chair, can I just withdraw the amendment, or is that not allowed because it has to be voted on?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

You want to withdraw the amendment?

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Absolutely.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

The amendment has been withdrawn. The debate is now on the main motion.

Mr. Davies, please go ahead.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to move an amendment. Near the very end of the motion after the words “on this study”, I think it's the second last part of the motion, I wish to add the words “and each party be entitled to an equal number of witnesses”.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Mr. Davies.

I was just alerted by the clerk that we require unanimous consent for Mr. Berthold to withdraw his amendment, so I might have been too quick.

Do we have unanimous consent for Mr. Berthold to withdraw his amendment?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

(Amendment withdrawn)

We now have a new amendment proposed by Mr. Davies with respect to an equal number of witnesses.

The debate is on the amendment.

Mr. Davies.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Chair, it may make more sense for me to throw this in now in case Mr. Hanley or the others speak.

There were different versions of this motion. I think the last one talks about doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners and other health professionals. I just want to be clear that the motion is broad enough for the committee to be able to examine shortages in professions and areas of—

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

I have point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Dr. Ellis, go head on a point of order.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think the member has already put forth his amendment proposal. I thought we needed to move on to debate with respect to that and not continue to add to it. I think we need to clean up what we're doing here and get moving forward, as opposed to adding.

That's my suggestion, sir. I appreciate your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Okay, thank you, Dr. Ellis.

Mr. Davies can speak to his amendment. I hope that's what he's doing.

Go ahead, Mr. Davies.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

That's exactly what I'm doing. Obviously, the number of witnesses we call and who we call is dependent on the scope of the study. I thought I could wait until later, but if Mr. Hanley speaks to my motion later on, it would be helpful for me to clarify that the health care human resource shortage will apply to people beyond those three categories mentioned. If we want to look at shortages in, perhaps, MRI technicians, physiotherapists or other health care-allied professionals, the study is broad enough to look there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Mr. Davies.

Next is Mr. Lake, please, on the amendment.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, AB]

I said this earlier in the last meeting. I can't tell you how many problems there are with this idea of apportioning equally the numbers of witnesses by party. First of all, we could get into taking a look at the math around the election campaign. In the amendment, he doesn't reference, for example, the Green Party. He doesn't even reference official parties or members of the committee, I don't think. I'm not sure if every party that ran in the election gets a chance to have an equal number of witnesses. I'm not sure what that means.

Secondly, since when do we specifically assign witnesses to specific parties? What party does the Canadian Paediatric Society belong to? Do our witness groups want to be assigned to a specific party? What party does the Canadian Medical Association get apportioned to?

Typically, we have a conversation by consensus on our witness list. Yes, we all suggest witnesses, but, typically, one organization might be on three different parties' witness lists. We have a conversation, as we organize for our committee hearing, in terms of what witnesses as a committee we're going to choose to have come. Generally, it's worked well over the years to do that.

Again, I don't really understand this idea of apportioning witnesses by party.

The other thing is that the beauty of this system is that Canadians are allowed to write to the chair of the committee through the clerk and ask to appear before the committee. Do they have to declare an affiliation with a party, so that they know what party's witness list they're going to be a part of? I don't understand why this would even be considered.

As a committee, surely we can all suggest witnesses. Witnesses can apply to come before the committee and then we can have a conversation by consensus to decide who the witnesses are going to be.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Mr. Lake.

Monsieur Berthold, s'il vous plaît.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I had an opportunity to talk about this motion during the other study, where we got as far as finding out how many witnesses there would be.

Mr. Lake raised a very relevant point. Witnesses won't necessarily want to be associated with one of the political parties here. How can you say that a witness has a specific political affiliation? You will take away people's right to speak and to testify before the committee because, unfortunately, they asked to appear before the committee without being associated with a party. How can you sincerely say that those people will automatically never have the right to be heard by this committee owing to this? Is that really what you are trying to do?

I don't think that is the right way to proceed. As Mr. Lake said, we have a great tradition. The precedent Mr. Davies is talking about concerns a specific and very broad study that was adopted by the House of Commons owing to the exceptional situation caused by COVID‑19. Every meeting lasted two hours: one hour during which each party could present a witness and one hour during which we heard from officials, be they from Health Canada or the Public Health Agency of Canada. So there were many witnesses, and the situation was exceptional. I said I was ready to accept that for the study on children, as that is a cause that brings all of us together, but we cannot make this proposal into the norm for this committee's every meeting.

I was ready to try this formula in the study on children, but I unfortunately must oppose us using it for our current study. That is why I wanted us to begin the study on children with a pilot project, if we can call it that, to determine how we could do this.

Mr. Lake is completely right. He has brought up things I was absolutely not aware of. We cannot ask people to align themselves with a political party in order to testify. That is not fair for them or for the people they represent. We must all take this into account.

As for our witness list, we can work together to ensure that every party can have representatives, but by consensus, as we do in other committees. I have never had any issues doing this in other committees, and it has always worked well. We should continue proceeding in this way. As I said, I was ready to try it, but unfortunately, the negative impacts of this proposal clearly outweigh the positive ones.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Mr. Berthold.

Dr. Ellis, please.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Certainly, I want to echo the comments of my colleagues. This Westminster system that we have is imperfect. Democracy is messy. However, it appears that around the world this is one of the best systems we actually have. I think we need to respect those traditions. Not to be too coy, but if Mr. Davies would like to join our party, then he could have more witnesses. That's just the way it works—and he could have more time.

Again, I don't mean to be nasty, but we need to get on with the business, Mr. Chair, and trying to rig the rules and gerrymander certain things so that we can get more time is just utterly ridiculous in my opinion, sir. Therefore, I think we need to stick to the traditions we have, get on with Dr. Hanley's study, and get this committee moving because we're mired up to our necks in ridiculousness.