Government Operations Committee on April 24th, 2020

[Bill Matthews]

I will give the 10-second attempt, Mr. Chair.

The responsibility for the levels of supply in the stockpile, as well as their upkeep and currency in terms of expiration dates, is 100% in the domain of the Public Health Agency.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I look forward to having the Public Health Agency before us some time in the near future.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Colleagues, I will now excuse all of our witnesses, with our thanks for participating virtually. We will go directly into the last few minutes of our committee meeting, which will be held in public. Colleagues, we are not in camera. I just want you all to realize that.

The purpose of these last few minutes is to discuss our future meetings. We have a work plan that has been developed, which was sent to all of you, I believe, yesterday.

Perhaps, Mr. Clerk, we can invite Raphaëlle to present the work plan. How would you like to do it, Mr. Clerk?

[The Clerk]

I would suggest Raphaëlle take the lead on this.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Raphaëlle, please.

[Raphaëlle Deraspe, Committee Researcher]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As you mentioned, committee members should have received a copy of the work plan. We included all the suggestions from all parties as well as some of our own. We tried to group them under several themes.

We had the first meeting today with PSPC. As members can see on their work plan, the second meeting is with the federal departments supporting businesses. The third meeting would be about medical sector businesses and a research hospital. The fourth meeting will be on the distribution of medical supplies. The fifth meeting will be on cybersecurity, and the sixth meeting on the allocation of emergency benefits and on federal employees who are all teleworking—or most of them. The seventh meeting will be on emergency benefits. The eighth meeting will be on the oversight of government activities. The ninth meeting will be on representatives from Alberta and not-for-profit organizations. Finally the 10th meeting would be on industry groups. I believe some members would also like to have the Public Health Agency of Canada added to it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

I will entertain questions.

I see Mr. McCauley has his hand up. Colleagues, perhaps you want to participate in questioning as well.

Raphaëlle, near the top of your screen, you have an icon saying “Participants”. If they click on that, there is an opportunity for them to raise their hands. That way I can take a look virtually and see what everyone is doing and who might have questions.

Mr. McCauley, I saw you first, so you're up.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

There are a couple of things, and I'd love everyone's feedback.

I think we should invite Mr. Matthews back. I don't think we need Mr. Muldoon necessarily, or Mr. Vandergrift, but certainly Mr. Matthews. I think there are a lot of outstanding questions. We could have him.

My only other thought is on the lineup. Maybe the issues with CERB—some of the eligibility issues and so on—and some of the others should be moved up closer, so we're doing them sooner rather than on week six. I know it might be difficult, but I just thought maybe some of those items should be moved up a bit sooner.

Thanks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Are there any other questions or comments from committee members?

First I have Mr. Drouin and then we'll go to Mr. MacKinnon.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I have just a couple of comments, and I would ask the opinion of the committee.

I noticed some names where they may not be the proper people. Especially when we are asking departments to appear before the committee, I would hope that we would allow the deputy minister to decide who the best person is to answer.

Just to give you one example, Paul Girard, for instance, is the CIO for the Treasury Board but only internally. He wouldn't know necessarily the IT policies of the other departments. He only deals inside Treasury Board, so unless that were the intent, I'm just not sure how COVID-related that would be for this particular committee. I would ask that we allow deputy ministers the liberty to decide that, yes, this is my point person on COVID-19, or no, this person has nothing to do with COVID-19.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you.

We'll go now to Mr. MacKinnon.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Hello, everyone. My question is also a comment.

The proposed list is very long. Normally, I would say that many of the proposed witnesses are outside the mandate or authority of our committee. I also remind the committee that we are in a time of crisis and that appearing before a parliamentary committee often requires a great deal of preparation, especially for people who are not used to it.

Perhaps we should look at the proposed list, remembering that we are in the midst of a crisis and that many people inside and outside government are very much involved. If those people are called before this committee and before the health or industry committees or any other committee that is meeting right now, that could be a lot. I would like us to be able to clarify the situation or coordinate with other committees to divide the appearances of these witnesses among the committees.

I would ask you to consider this concern, because I think our plan is very ambitious.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you, Mr. MacKinnon.

We'll go now to Mr. Green.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much. Certainly I don't think any of us on this committee needs a reminder of the emergency we're in or the seriousness of the work we are undertaking, but having said that, I'm seeing here some sections that are heavily dominated.... For instance, if you were to look at the third meeting for the medical sector and the business research hospital, you would see it's almost exclusively dominated by folks invited by the governing party.

I'm wondering where the representatives are for some of the workers, in order for us to get first-hand, lived experience and not necessarily corporate reporting on what people are facing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Raphaëlle, before I put it back to you because I don't see any other hands raised, I have a couple of questions for you.

Mr. MacKinnon's point, if I'm interpreting him correctly, was asking if it would be possible for you, as analyst, to coordinate with other committees to ensure that we are not duplicating efforts in terms of witnesses coming to testify. The second thing that Mr. Green asked is whether or not we would be able to get, for the lack of a better term, real people, perhaps front-line medical workers to testify as opposed to government officials and bureaucrats.

Now I see we have a couple of other questioners, Madam Vignola and Mr. McCauley.

Do you want to finish off your thoughts, Mr. Green?

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Yes, if you don't mind, I do. I respectfully just want to make sure that we are also including unions and union reps. They're certainly very active on the file, and we want to make sure, as was identified today, that as with programs that are being offered to the broader public, as employers, we're taking care of our workers in the same way, with the same considerations and the same compensation, or better.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Yes, and I would point out, Mr. Green, and to all committee members, that if you have any specific suggestions for witnesses, you can submit them to our clerk, who will get them to our analysts.

The analysts can only propose a lineup of witnesses based on the information they receive from the committee, so should you have specific union representatives you would like to appear, please get those names in through the clerk. The analysts will then obviously take that under consideration.

Madam Vignola, you're up.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

I quite agree with Mr. McCauley about faster processing of everything related to the CERB. In our ridings, we get a lot of questions about that. We have to avoid duplication, but we also have to make sure that people are comfortable with the committee's approach. We need to respond quickly and have workers on the ground, because they are better placed to see what is going on.

The three proposals made are all very interesting and I support them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you.

We'll now go to Mr. McCauley, followed by Madam Block.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I take Mr. MacKinnon's comments, and I understand. There are a couple of things that maybe you can share with us, not right now but by email, about who you might think is overlapping or redundant.

My concern with not having the deputy ministers there, as we may have listed, is that we've seen repeatedly in the past that we get people who show up and their only answer is, “Well, that's really not me anyway; that's someone else within the department.” We've seen already a lot of passing the buck on issues. I'd hate to see a continuance of that.

We can certainly go back, those of us who have put deputy ministers on the witness lists, or perhaps if it came from the analysts, they could have another look to justify it, but I'd be very wary about having deputy ministers not show up in order to have other people who could not answer questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you.

Kelly Block.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'll just make three points. First, to Mr. MacKinnon's intervention, witnesses may decline, and I'm sure that if we were hearing from some of our witnesses that they have attended many committee meetings and are not able to focus on the job they need to do, we would probably be gracious enough to accept that. I think even though—

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Kelly, if I could interrupt just for a second, and I'm sorry, the volume on your microphone is very low. I don't know if it has been disconnected from your laptop or if you're just a very soft speaker. I know that normally...but I'm having some difficulty hearing you. I wonder if you could just increase the volume somewhat.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Let me try again.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

That's perfect. Thank you.