Health Committee on Oct. 26th, 2006

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

I still haven't got an explanation from Ms. Dhalla on the objective of her motion. Unless you're trying to do a revision in committee, what is the objective of doing the officials' business?

I'm disappointed that we didn't deal with Madame Demers' motion first. It is the most important of the three motions.

Madame Gagnon, you have a motion that is almost the same as Ms. Dhalla's.

[Christiane Gagnon, Bloc, Québec, QC]

We want to stop prolonging the debate and vote?

I simply want the preliminary draft, which could be presented once again at the next meeting.

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

But what about your motion?

[Christiane Gagnon, Bloc, Québec, QC]

We are prolonging the debate for nothing, because even if we were to continue to discuss it for another hour, we would not be able to convince you. You do not want to vote for the food guide for the time being. In another week, you will still not want to vote for it.

We need to vote immedaitely.

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

I just want to know the answer. I want to know the answer to the question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Through the chair, so....

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

Sorry.

I have a question for Ms. Dhalla. What's the objective? If you're not going to do the officials' work, but yet you want to see it before the final copy, then the only reason you would want to do that is to do the officials' work.

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

All of us on the committee have enough work to do on our own, but as we study the issue of childhood obesity, I think it's the responsibility of members of the committee to ensure proper consultation and dialogue has been done. As Ms. Gagnon said earlier on, when people from Health Canada spoke, they said there are no opportunities for any further revisions of this draft. I would suggest we have always worked in cooperation and collaboration with the health committee and recommend we discuss this next time. We'll spend another two hours and we will not be able to move forward on our agenda.

I request the chair call the question. After hearing the debate of how we are going to move forward, we all know by this point, and I don't think Canada's food guide is a partisan issue. It's a non-partisan issue, and we have to ensure that the food guide reflects the needs of Canadians to send out the best possible message. So I would once again request that the chair call the question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

I'm going to do this one more time. I see one more hand. If there's another hand after this, I'm going to call the meeting over. If not, we'll go to the vote.

Mr. Lunney.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

I'd like to know from Ms. Dhalla if she wants the food guide...we can ask for things. It doesn't mean it's going to be...we have no mandate for this to be provided. It would be very irregular for Health Canada to respond to this, but if they did, are you asking if we have time for the committee to review this, or take committee time to study this issue? How many committee meetings will we commit to studying Canada's food guide before we get back to our study on obesity, or are you suggesting that we add ten more meetings to our childhood obesity study to study Canada's food guide? What exactly is the suggestion? Shall we add two or four or six meetings to study the food guide and to bring in more witnesses on that subject? Is that part of the intent?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Okay, I see more hands going up. I'm going to call the meeting over and we'll take this up next time.

Go ahead, if it's a point of order.

[Christiane Gagnon, Bloc, Québec, QC]

We could filibuster, Mr. Chairman.

[Lui Temelkovski, Liberal, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Either we deal with it now or we set up the agenda for the following meeting to deal with this motion at the beginning of the meeting rather than at the end.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

That's exactly what I said. The next meeting is wide open for at least an hour.

[Lui Temelkovski, Liberal, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

It was said earlier we would deal with it later; we want to deal with it at the beginning of the next meeting.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

We have a very short--and I explained this--delegation on childhood obesity, the special meeting that Mr. Batters had asked for. Half of that meeting is open for debate on this, so certainly there is no problem.

The meeting is adjourned.