Health Committee on Dec. 7th, 2009

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

Then we can't. We're not going to win the next one either, Judy.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Monsieur Dufour.

[Nicolas Dufour, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

If I may say so, Madam Chair, and with all due respect, I believe it is much more important to talk about ethics than human resources. The situation is really circumstantial and circumscribed in time; this is why I believe we should spend more time ensuring integrity and respect for ethics in the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

We have another motion in front of us. We'll go to that motion and go to that vote.

No?

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

Just to follow up on Judy's point, this committee still has concerns about this.

Is there a way, Judy, that we could at least ask Dr. Beaudet to come back in January and explain what the recusal process will be and maybe have an ethicist as a way of continuing to express our concern?

This isn't going away. We haven't sorted this out. There are still lots of concerns out there. So if we can't report our concerns back to the House, even though we still have lots of them, this may be another way for us. The least we could do is to bring Dr. Beaudet back here to explain how he's going to sort out the recusal on this rather new approach of having somebody from pharma on the board.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Mr. Malo.

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Madam Chair, my colleague is right: we should bring to this table people who will be faced with these concerns in carrying out their duties. We need to determine what the process will be, if it will happen often, under what circumstances and how people will act in such a situation and so on. It could be very interesting for us to find out, but also for all those who expressed these concerns.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

I would comment that the first meeting back after the break was going to be all committee business, and at that time we were going to arrange what we wanted to do from there on in. We have one more meeting, and we still haven't even touched our HHR report. We have a final meeting on Wednesday and we have that agenda set, but I've put aside the whole two hours for committee business. So can it be agreed that we can make those decisions at that time?

All in agreement?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you.

Now we have this motion. Do you want to withdraw the motion, Ms. Wasylycia-Leis?

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Considering it's going down in defeat anyway, I guess I'll withdraw the motion on the understanding that this committee will agree to come back to this issue in the new year, with Dr. Beaudet as a witness so we can sort out how he will deal with this issue.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

We haven't decided that. We need to decide that during committee business.

Dr. Carrie.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

That is what I was going to state, Madam Chair. We as a committee should take the first meeting when we come back to decide these things before we jump.

I think it would be helpful to understand how the governing council actually works and what gets done, if that's the issue. Whether we have to do that in a committee meeting, I don't know. I don't think we do, but perhaps some people would like to look at that. I think Dr. Rouleau explained that it is very high-level, and despite all this talking we're doing about him having to recuse himself, this is all hypothetical, according to Dr. Rouleau.

My understanding is that all the members of that committee have conflicts of interest. They deal with them. They deal with them professionally. They hold each other accountable in that situation. What we were supposed to be doing today was looking at the candidate's credentials and his competence. Nobody said that he wasn't credible or competent to do the job. The problem appeared to be with his employment, as somebody brought forward. But I think we should wait until that meeting before we decide what we would like to do.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

I'll also ask the analysts to prepare something for the committee on that issue.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

How the governing council actually functions to see if it's even appropriate that we go that way?

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Yes, absolutely.

Ms. McLeod.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I appreciate your comment that come the new year we'll be looking at committee business in detail.

There are a lot of thoughts about looking at it in January, but it might turn out that we want to look at it in four or five months to see how it has been going. I would suggest that when we come back in the new year this be one of the items on the agenda. At this point I would suggest that we look at moving on to our HHR.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Ms. Wasylycia-Leis, I'll give you the last word, and then we're going to close this.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

I appreciate the discussion. I'm looking forward to our first meeting back when we can discuss the business of this committee, with the hope that we will come back to this issue.

As a concluding remark, I want to say I don't believe we can conclude under any circumstances that this committee has decided that Dr. Prigent is absolutely competent and able to do the job, given his conflict of interest position. I don't think it's fair for Dr. Carrie to conclude that all is well on that front. In fact, the essence of this discussion was how his abilities and competencies might be compromised by the fact that he has employment responsibilities with the largest pharmaceutical company in the world.

We have heard from dozens and dozens of people through their letters and e-mails, and we've had our fair share of them. This is not an issue that's been treated frivolously by anyone. It's been taken seriously by Canadians across this country, with thousands of people having signed a petition and many having written letters. It's a serious issue that must be addressed.

It's not fair for anyone to conclude that we as a committee think all is well with Dr. Prigent's appointment. In fact, the fundamental issue of conflict of interest as a result of his ties to a major pharmaceutical company, to any pharmaceutical company, is still the issue at hand--and what it may do in terms of shaping the research agenda of this country, or shaping the work of the pre-eminent organization, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. That must be addressed by our committee--

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you, Ms. Wasylycia-Leis.

At our first committee meeting, I would ask the committee to come prepared. I'm going to send you a review of what we said we were going to do and what was intended. We have to balance the weeks. We have to balance what we need to do.

We're now going to come to a conclusion here and go in camera, so I will excuse our guests.

Thank you.

[Proceedings continue in camera]