Health Committee on March 21st, 2017

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

That's a private member's bill we're talking about. What I was thinking is that this committee is master of its own business.

It's always been my understanding that government legislation takes priority. Even then, it's still up to the committee to decide. By convention, government legislation would certainly take priority over studies, but I'm not so sure that a private member's bill takes priority over a motion of this committee that we could determine is of broader significance.

In my opinion, we should be looking at which motion we think is of more serious implication for health in Canada, which may be more timely.

I want to say that the story I heard on the radio a couple of weeks ago was extremely alarming. There is some talk that there are now bacteria that are resistant to all forms of antibiotics. If they make their way into Canada, we could be seeing a widespread public health emergency.

With great respect for Todd's PMB on post-traumatic stress disorder, of course that's important and we should get at it, but I don't see it necessarily taking priority.

I would also point out again that my motion is a year old, so something has to wait. I don't see why Mr. Doherty's bill can't wait an extra few months. There is no reason we couldn't pick that up and study it in the fall.

We also have to be very alert and alive to the fact that there could be government legislation that comes to this committee that we would have to put in front of other business. I think that the study of antimicrobial resistance should commence.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Dr. Eyolfson.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

I have to add to what Mr. Davies said. That was one of the things that was constantly in the medical literature for everyone in my profession. We're seeing more and more reports of emerging antimicrobial resistance. We're seeing newer, more dangerous resistance patterns. You're right, we've talked about that in the profession. In Asia, for example, there are bacteria that are resistant to literally every known antibiotic, which means that if you get this infection, you die. If these get a foothold in Canada, this is a potential public health catastrophe.

I don't minimize the importance of PTSD. I worked in a profession whose members had it. I worked with EMS, another profession with a lot of PTSD, and my father was in the RCMP, so I do not underestimate the importance of PTSD. However, in regard to the overall public health impact of antimicrobial resistance, I think we have to make it a priority because this has the potential to affect the largest number of people—not just Canadians, but everyone.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Mr. Oliver.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

I don't think we're facing an either/or situation here. As I understand it right now, on April 13, we don't have anything planned. It was going to be a steering committee date. On May 4, there is the pharmacare update from the PBO. I think you just said that if they have sufficient information, then we don't need to meet with the PBO. We have four potential meetings in May, and two more potential meetings in June.

By my tally, we have somewhere between six to eight meetings that we can do. We're talking about four for microbial resistance and probably two for PTSD, and I still think we have some slack left.

There are two openings. If I'm right, April 13 is free. We could hear from Mr. Doherty at that time and have his bill introduced and get an understanding of what we need for witnesses. We could still launch the microbial resistance starting on April 16 and run four weeks of it and get that report finished and done before we break.

It's just a matter of some scheduling here, and we can do both of these and have another two reports before the end of the session.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

We just discussed doing the sickle cell bill on April 13. Again, the PBO's update on pharmacare might not be necessary.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

So you have at least one meeting, and seven potential ones.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

The sickle cell one should not take a whole meeting, I don't think.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

I'm wondering if you could combine them both on the 13th, doing the sickle cell bill and also have Mr. Doherty present his bill.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Would that work?

I have a pharmacare meeting on international best practices on May 2. I have the steering committee meeting on the 4th, and the analyst and the clerk need some guidance at that meeting. Is that correct?

[Karin Phillips]

It's mainly with regard to M-47. The motion says that the committee is to report by July, which would mean that we need some drafting instructions. Then you would also need some time in your calendar to consider that report.

I would just caution with regard to the antimicrobial resistance study that you could probably start the study, but that given the timing you may not get a report out by the end of June—depending on the kind of report you want out, especially because so many reports come out.

That said, a report on M-47 is definitely possible, but the sooner we can get drafting instructions on that, the better.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

At that point, I think we originally decided at the steering committee that we would talk about M-47 again, and get an update, see where we go, see if it needed more work, or if we had enough report time. That's what I had on the 4th.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Mr. Chair, I think maybe between you and the clerk you could map it out. We're looking at four meetings on antimicrobial resistance. We're looking at potentially two meetings on PTSD, half a meeting on the sickle cell bill, and maybe we could just work from that and map out our meeting dates to the end of June. I don't know that we need to chew it over at committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

We also have the thalidomide study. On this schedule we have that on the 9th and the 11th. Is that still there for you?

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

I think the only condition there is that we're looking for those two pieces of information to proceed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Yes, right.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

I have one last one comment.

At the last meeting, we had some tension at committee. We had broken down our witnesses into two sets. We would have two witnesses, a break, and then two more, which led to concerns about the time we would have questions. I think Mr. Webber raised some concerns about not feeling that he had ample time to ask questions and to direct them.

The pharmacare study seemed to work well for us; we would have four presentations and then go to our full cycle of questions, and we often would have 15 to 20 minutes left over at the end.

I'm wondering if we could adopt that model for M-47. We have 40 minutes of presentation. We run through our seven-minute, five-minute, three-minute cycle of questions, and then if there's any time left, generally we use it up. That way, we don't have a break in the middle of our meeting that leads to lost time, as we welcome new people and say goodbye to people leaving.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

I'm so glad you brought that up.

The reason we did it that way was that two presenters had slide show presentations, and two didn't. We broke it down into two groups that way, and it didn't work very well. But we'll work around it and we certainly respect what you're saying and will try to do that for sure. But as I said, that was the reason we did that differently at that meeting, because two had slide shows.

The other thing, Len, is that you questioned me on cutting somebody off. She had taken 13 and a half minutes. We had four witnesses with four opening statements, and if I don't stop them, they go on forever, so I have a new system now. I'm going to use this red flag at nine minutes, so they know they have one minute left. I did cut her off, and I hated doing it, but if you give four or five minutes extra to each of four people, we've lost 15 or 20 minutes.

However, I'm glad you brought that up, Mr. Oliver, because I'm going to try to keep them at 10 minutes with this system. I do this and everything else, but they just keep on, and finally I have to interrupt them. I don't like doing that, because they usually leave their best points for the very end, and I end up cutting them off, so at nine minutes now they're going to get the red flag.

Dr. Carrie.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I also want to acknowledge the willingness around the table to work together to get some of these priorities through, because I think we all agree they are worthwhile but that, respectfully, because of parliamentary timetables, we all acknowledge that sometimes we have to get things done.

Mr. Doherty's bill, I believe, passed in the House unanimously. It has to be put through by September 28, but if you look at the parliamentary schedule, sometimes committees don't even reformulate until after that period of time.

I'm thinking of Mr. Oliver's suggestion that perhaps we could give you some time to see if you can reformulate the calendar and bring it back to us maybe at the next meeting, or something like that, to see if we can get to these priorities. If we don't get this through, I think it would be perceived by those in the post-traumatic stress community that we had the opportunity to get it through, but we just didn't schedule it. I don't think that would be well received. If we could make sure that that gets completed, I think everyone around the table who has post-traumatic stress disorder sufferers in their community could say that we had followed through on it and are making a commitment to these people. This bill was supported unanimously and I think it is something that we do all want to complete. But with the schedule we have, I think it does have to be done before we break for the summer.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

I think we're going to find a way to do that thanks to Mr. Oliver's proposal If we can do Bill S-211 very quickly, we're going to try to do that.

Also, we all seem to be operating with different calendars here. I've got my own calendar, but I'm going to share my calendar, for what it's worth, with everybody henceforth so you can see what I'm working with. Sometimes it doesn't coincide with others'. I'll work with the clerk to come up with a calendar to accommodate everything as best we can.

Mr. Davies.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I'm sorry, Colin, but why does it have to be done by September 28?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

That's what the bill says.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

It says that right in the bill.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

All right.

The clerk is asking me some very good questions. He wants clarification. We just passed Ms. Sidhu's motion and he's asking if he should contact the parliamentary budget officer, or are we going to start with the analysts' work first. I think in the end we agreed that the analysts were going to prepare as much information as they could for it, and then we'll have the parliamentary budget officer after we get going.

Thank you, Dr. Carrie, for your expression of co-operation, which I appreciate very much, just as I appreciate Mr. Oliver's proposal to move the PTSD study up. We're going to find a way to get it all done and it will all work. We will report back next week on our new schedule that fits everybody in as best we can.

I have nothing else at the moment. Does anybody else have anything they want to bring up?

The meeting is adjourned.