Health Committee on Oct. 5th, 2006

[Geoff Trueman]

No, but if you have one or two eggs per week, it's an excellent source of protein, and as a parent, those are some of the things I consider.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

The point is well taken.

Our time is gone, and we have to move on to a bit of a planning session, so I want to thank the witnesses again for coming forward, and the Department of Finance for being here. You've added a lot of food for thought--pardon the pun--for the committee on this issue, and we'll take it under serious advisement as we consider our report.

Thank you very much for being here.

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, MB]

Can you remind everyone that the GST is going from 7% to 6% to 5%?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

For the committee, we are distributing a sheet for future planning. As soon as it's in everybody's hands, we'll discuss the future agenda. We have to make a quick decision on what we want to do until the end of this study on childhood obesity.

You have before you a list of the names of 72 witnesses that were submitted. Some came directly to the clerk, but most of them actually came through your offices and then directly to the clerk. That's an awful lot, and I think it's going to be very difficult to hear those witnesses. I wouldn't even recommend that we hear all of them. But to try to make some sanity out of what we're doing in this study, we had decided to go to eight meetings. We have those laid out, and the three further meetings on October 17, 19, and 24. The witnesses are called for those.

But there are four areas we haven't heard from, if we're going to break it down into areas. We have to discern whether we want to cut it off where we are or if we want to hear from these other areas. These are health, first nations--the second meeting that we had talked about--infrastructure and built environment, you might say, and what the provinces are doing.

Before we get into any kind of discussion on that, I want to ask Nancy to comment on these four categories and what the researchers have come up with.

[Nancy Miller Chenier, Committee Researcher]

Do you mean the four categories that we haven't heard from?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

That's right.

[Nancy Miller Chenier]

The original work plan talked about a session on health that would include health professionals, physicians, dieticians, and some of the special disease groups. It would look at the impact of obesity in terms of chronic disease.

You as a committee had asked for a second panel on first nations and Inuit.

In terms of the infrastructure and built environment, that is an attempt to look at how community design might affect childhood obesity and, in particular, to look again at what the federal government's role might be there.

The provincial one was something that the members had suggested would be a useful addition as a panel, because there are so many initiatives in the provinces that are helpful.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Those are the four.

If we went with just the subject matter and went with those four, it would add four more meetings. We went around this battle once and we said we had determined there would be eight. We have the eight there. If we want to cut it off there, we will eliminate those four. I believe that will be difficult to do. I said that the last time we went around, but we really need a consensus of opinion here.

If we want to add the four, we'll do it. We can take them one by one and decide if we want to hear from the doctors and the medical field or not, and then if we want to hear from the first nations or not, and then if we want to hear infrastructure and provinces, and so on.

That's the way I think we should proceed, unless there's a consensus to go with all four. Then we can do that. If there's a consensus to go with no more, we can do that. But somehow we have to decide. We have to put some parameters around what we're trying to do as a committee, and the timelines on it, and still have a full enough study on childhood obesity for our report to have validity.

That's the problem I have as a chair. The research team has done a terrific job, I believe, with the panels we've had so far, and it's really hats off to them, because they've put it together in a very productive way.

[Tina Keeper, Liberal, Churchill, MB]

It was my understanding that the aboriginals would have two sessions--

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

The second one.

[Tina Keeper, Liberal, Churchill, MB]

--out of the eight. Yes. I'm wondering why the second one has been bumped off the scheduled meeting.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

There was a discussion at that time to have the one and then to try to incorporate first nations in every one of the others that we could, and we did that all the way through.

[Tina Keeper, Liberal, Churchill, MB]

You see, I understood it was two and that we would try to incorporate. That's what I understood, so I would like to--

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

No, that's why we tried to do it...and we have no problem putting the second one in there, but--

[Tina Keeper, Liberal, Churchill, MB]

But not in the scheduled eight.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Not in the eight, no.

[Tina Keeper, Liberal, Churchill, MB]

So it was bumped.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

It wasn't really bumped. There was a discussion about whether we should have it in every one.

[Tina Keeper, Liberal, Churchill, MB]

I thought the discussion was that there would be a focus on aboriginal youth, and so because of that there would be two sessions incorporated as part of the eight. And then where we could incorporate them in the other categories, we would have presenters in those other categories.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

If you noticed, the panel that we had on the first nations was actually too large. It was very large. We tried to jam in as many as we could.

[Tina Keeper, Liberal, Churchill, MB]

I'm just saying that's how I understood it. I thought that's what the decision was, that the two would be of the eight, and then we would incorporate presenters into the other categories as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

We'll open the floor to a little debate on this, but I don't know if we need a lot of debate. The decision is simple. We either go with them or we don't go with them. We will open it up for debate.

Carolyn.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

I'm of the view that we should just try to do what we can with the time you structured.

And on the social perspectives, I don't know who you were going to call--the health people or somebody--but could you just blend it a little bit, instead of having the--

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

But these witnesses are lined up already.

[Ruby Dhalla, Liberal, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

It says “to be confirmed”.