Health Committee on Nov. 16th, 2010

[Irene Ryll]

I was there.

[Dr. Françoise Baylis]

Well, there you go. I didn't remember that.

So all three of us were there.

It was an interesting meeting. To my knowledge, the media was not there.

I do not know what it cost. We did not in advance of the event say it was an important event and we should allocate a certain percentage of the budget, and after the fact, I still don't know what it cost, and so I can't answer the question about value for money.

It was an interesting conference to me, as a researcher. I certainly think there are very important questions that need to be thought about and addressed, but I think the most critical and interesting question is how do you think about something like international travel in a context where people might be pursuing that to avoid legislative constraints. That is an interesting and important question. It may be that we decide there is nothing you can do, but it may be that we decide, as in other areas—for example, child pornography—we don't care that it's illegal in Canada and not illegal somewhere else. We actually choose to pay attention to that. So all I'm saying is that, to me, there was an interesting question. The one question that I thought was most interesting got set aside on the grounds that we would deal with matters of health and safety, and I don't know that there has been enough follow-up to make that useful at this point in time.

In terms of the budget, I have no idea what it cost.

[Barbara Slater]

To add to that, I know that the report we saw from it was pretty useless.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Okay. Thanks.

I was wondering if one of you could tell us a bit more about your communications with the PMO. You said you asked for an exit interview and that didn't happen. Can you describe what happened?

[Dr. Françoise Baylis]

I'll answer that, because I was the person who drafted the letter and signed it.

I want to say publicly that when I made the decision to resign, I did not communicate that to anyone. I did not communicate it to a single member on the board. I sent to the chair a professional, or what I thought was a professional.... You'll see from my letter it's one word: it simply says thank you very much, I'm resigning.

I made a decision, having done that, that I would not engage in conversation with any board member, and my secretary can confirm that. I engaged in no phone conversations, no e-mail conversations. I did not want it to ever be able to be said afterwards that I orchestrated anything.

After Barbara made a decision to resign, I resumed conversation with her but did not speak at all with Irene in the interim. Once Irene decided to resign, I resumed conversation with her.

At that time, we were all sharing different perspectives and concerns. We thought that a reasonable thing to do, given that this was a Governor in Council appointment, was to ask the government for an exit interview, where we would be able to come forward. Certainly in terms of how I thought about it, I thought the government ought to hold me accountable. I've made a decision, and they ought to want to know.

I wrote a letter. It was reviewed by my two colleagues to make sure that they were comfortable with the content. I signed it on behalf of the three of us. I sent it by e-mail and I sent it by regular mail to ensure it would be received.

About a month later I did receive an e-mail correspondence that was a follow-up. And given that I sent my letter in August, it's perhaps not surprising, with the summer, that there was a delay.

At that time I explained, via e-mail, that we would like to be able to come to Ottawa, the three of us together; that we thought we should have an opportunity to share with the government what had happened and what, in our view, had gone wrong. We specifically made reference to the fact that we expected to come before this committee and that we would like to come to the all-party committee and be able to report on progress. That's how we framed it. We really didn't want this to either get played out in a political way or get played out in the press.

The response we had, after a bit of back-and-forth e-mail, was that they did not have the resources to pay for the three of us to fly to Ottawa to meet with them, and so could we please do this by teleconference. At this point I conversed again with my colleagues to ask them if they would like to do this, and we decided that we didn't feel comfortable, given the nature of what we thought we wanted to share, the complexity of the issues, and the kinds of questions we anticipated. To be perfectly frank, we had lived an experience whereby issues that were really important were relegated to teleconferences rather than the face-to-face meetings, and time for face-to-face meetings was taken up with busywork.

I wrote back a second time and said, look, under the circumstances, given what we would like to be able to say, etc., we are reiterating our request to please meet with you in person, and if not, we accept that the consequence would be that we would have our first opportunity to speak with this committee.

So we specifically said that this was how we would interpret a decision not to bring us forward. And then, indeed, there was silence.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you, Ms. Baylis.

Now we'll go to Dr. Carrie.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for being here today. I think everyone around the table has sat on boards before and are very interested in some of your comments specifically with this board.

Particularly, Ms. Baylis, you said that you felt you operated under “unnecessary secrecy”. I was just wondering, did you sign a confidentiality agreement when you joined the board, and were you comfortable signing that agreement?

[Dr. Françoise Baylis]

The very first day that we met, we were given a piece of paper with this confidentiality agreement. I asked if I could bring it home. We were told, no, we had to sign it there. So I did. I read it. I didn't see anything that I thought was unacceptable. And I signed it in good faith.

Once things kind of fell apart and I wanted to know what I could or couldn't do, I showed the confidentiality agreement to a colleague in the law school. Her first words to me were, “Why did you sign this?” I said that I had no reason to doubt that I was being asked to sign something that was appropriate. I've only later come to understand that it might have been very sweeping relative to what would be appropriate.

I can't comment on that any more than to say I signed it. I signed it freely. I signed it at the very first meeting that we attended and left the copy there.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

You've expressed a number of different concerns here today. Did you bring up those issues with the board, or did you express any of these difficulties you had before you accepted your reappointments? I understand you did accept reappointments, Madam Baylis and Ms. Slater. Did you bring up these issues before you accepted the reappointments?

[Dr. Françoise Baylis]

I did not perceive the systemic nature of these issues until after my reappointment. Had you asked me at the time, one year in, whether I thought there were these problems and issues, I would have said no. Many of these issues unfolded over time, and it was only over time that I saw a pattern.

A very specific pattern, which I found very distressing and continue to find distressing, is that I don't believe--it is my opinion--that there has been adequate engagement and respect shown towards the users of these technologies. I can say that I repeatedly, repeatedly asked that there be appropriate representation on various committees and subcommittees that were struck. I was even the first board member at the first board meeting to say that we don't have a patient representative as a member of the board and we need to correct this immediately. That suggestion met with resistance.

Subsequent suggestions that I made repeatedly, to include members of the infertility community on various committees, met with resistance. To my knowledge, to this day, those committees are clinician- and scientist-only committees.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

You have mentioned over and over again that you had problems with the direction of the board and with where the board was going--

[Dr. Françoise Baylis]

I don't believe I used the word “direction” of the board; I said specific examples, such as contracts that I thought were inappropriate in terms of their orientation, things like that. I don't know what you would mean by the overall “direction”. The overall direction of the board is to support the legislation, and I would like to believe that all board members are trying to do that to the best of their ability.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

All right. Well, I may be mistaken. I thought in your opening comments you did mention that there were issues with direction.

When you were on the board, did you ever vote against some of the motions that were brought forward, as far as governance went?

[Dr. Françoise Baylis]

There were very few votes. The chair specifically encouraged what he described as consensus. In fact, I have copies of minutes in which it's documented that we won't typically be voting and we do not expect that there would be dissenting views. In fact, anything that would have been contentious never would have come to a vote, so there would be no record of many dissenting votes.

One thing that was voted on was the budget. The 2009-10 budget was voted on. I was not at that meeting. I did not vote in support of that budget.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

So you weren't there.

Madam Slater, were you at those meetings? Did you ever—

[Barbara Slater]

Yes.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

—vote against a motion?

[Barbara Slater]

The vote for the 2009-10 budget was done on a teleconference, and as I said in my resignation letter, I did vote in favour of that budget. I did it with some misgivings, hoping that the scrutiny that was given to the budget would ensure that the agency would be more forthcoming with information. You know, I was trying to reconcile figures that were given in the powerpoint presentation with those in the other one. I did vote in favour of it. Yes, I did.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Now, did you bring up some of these issues--again, you did accept a reappointment--as you went through and—

[Barbara Slater]

I brought up the issues all along. I have them all documented in e-mails.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

And some of these things were never voted on or discussed at the meetings?

[Barbara Slater]

I'm sorry?

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Were these issues voted on and discussed during the board meetings?

[Barbara Slater]

Things were discussed. It was hard sometimes to discuss things, because there was sometimes an atmosphere of intimidation when you brought up things that weren't generally accepted. Sometimes you were a lone voice, or sometimes you had a little bit of support. It was a difficult atmosphere in which to go against the president.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

I have another question, too. I'm curious--what were some of the challenges you found in waiting for the Supreme Court decision on Assisted Human Reproduction Canada?