Health Committee on Dec. 13th, 2016

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Following up on Ms. Harder's point, would the committee have the capacity to require this information to be provided from the Quebec government? Is that part of our authorities?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

We have that power.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Would that be an appropriate exercise, or is it mostly done through contractual....

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

I assume the request would come from the PBO and we would get the information you need.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

I'm wondering how we move from preliminary to final terms of reference. Mr. Davies identified some changes to the exemptions, just to make sure we had the same list of exemptions as the U.K. Are there any other specific items that need further input from the committee, besides the decision on the cost, to move this from preliminary to final terms of reference? What else are you looking for?

[Carleigh Malanik]

I guess it's all in this discussion, basically. Mr. Davies pointed out some changes to the exemptions, but we presented this to the committee to incorporate what we thought we could from your letters detailing some of the parameters and also based on our research on which data are available and what is out there and what our stakeholders believe we can do with these data. Now it's presented back to the committee, and I suppose it will be up to you to agree to this so we can continue on this path of continuing this research.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

I'll just ask again: other than the list of exemptions, I'm not hearing anything from around the committee that disagrees with these terms of reference, so if we get back to you with that, can we view the terms of reference as finalized?

[Carleigh Malanik]

If that is your wish.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

If the decision is made in the end that we need to spend $100,000 and need to purchase it, would a letter from the committee chair to the deciding body that would allocate resources be of benefit to you in seeking funding for the study?

[Jean-Denis Fréchette]

That's an excellent question. As I mentioned, the approval in principle must be done by the two Speakers, the Senate Speaker and the House of Commons Speaker, so I refer to the clerk of this committee and the administration of this committee to decide whether or not they want to send something. I assume there is no problem to send a letter to the Speaker of the House of Commons. I'm not sure about the procedure on sending something from this committee to the Senate side.

If I may, I want to come back to what you mentioned about the department. What we can do is put an information request to the department about whether or not they have the information, which is a normal procedure. We often mention the committee for which we are doing an analysis and for which we need that kind of information, and then we wait for the reply from the department.

The difficulty would be to see if the department is willing to share in advance, or at least to look at the data they have to see whether it is too old or whether it's appropriate for the kind of study we're doing for this committee. There will be, I'm pretty sure, some negotiation in regard to looking at the information in advance.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Are you going to be the lead to sort through these questions? If we can bring the price tag below $100,000, then we can proceed with the study, and we're moving forward. I'm not sure how it comes back to the committee to make sure we're ensuring that the study is getting done.

[Jean-Denis Fréchette]

I assume the best approach will be to keep this committee informed of our most recent developments, to go ahead with the request for information to the department to cover your request, to continue our negotiations about having access and paying for the data from IMS Brogan to see how much that could cost, and to provide that information to the committee.

Of course a contractor would prefer that it remain between the committee and the PBO, because I'm not sure a private company would want how much they sell the data for to be known, and so on.

That would be the process. We will keep the committee informed of all the developments and maybe provide a status report when Parliament comes back.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

We have Ms. Harder, from the Conservatives.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you. I have a question I'm hoping that someone here can answer.

With regard to a cost for a study, who goes about approving that? Do we just have money at our disposal and we can just say “Yes, go ahead, make the study happen”, or do we have to go back and get approval for financing?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. David Gagnon]

Normally when we do committee studies, it goes to the Liaison Committee. If it's under $40,000, then usually it's approved. If it's not under $40,000, then it's a different process. The chair usually has to present the budget to the Liaison Committee for approval, and that's the usual process for studies that we follow.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Okay. How long a process is that?

[The Clerk]

Do you mean the one that I just described?

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Yes.

[The Clerk]

If it's a study under $40,000, then it's usually very quick. The committee has to adopt the budget we present, and then usually it's approved, so it could take a couple of days, but—

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

In this case it's over $40,000, so the chair will have to take this and present it.

[The Clerk]

I think this one is different, as the PBO has explained. From what I could understand, right now it's more in their court, and he described the process. Maybe the PBO can answer that better than I can, because it's part of their mandate. They have a different process than we have.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

If we say that we want this study done, then the PBO eats that cost without any further discussion necessary or approval required?

[Jean-Denis Fréchette]

It's the plan and we will absorb it—of course we cannot absorb, you know, half a million dollars—but if it's something a little over $100,000, for example, then we plan to absorb the costs, do the study, and own the data, eventually.

There is this threshold at which I don't have the authority to sign for this kind of contract. The contract will have to be presented to the Speakers of the Senate and the House of Commons—

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Okay.