Health Committee on April 4th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Yes, you certainly may.

[Dr. Kim Roberts]

I very quickly want to talk about education of children. At the moment, I think sex education is a “thing”. When kids get to grade 6, they know know that it's coming, Sometimes the kids are separated, so a male teacher teaches the boys and a female teacher teaches the girls. I think we should stop it from being like that and just make it something that we return to continuously throughout education, because it relates to all aspects of our being and not just our bodies, but also our psychology, our relationships, and so on. I think you mentioned that from kindergarten, they should be able to use the right names for body parts. That should not be a problem. At no age should that be a problem. Start in kindergarten and just build on it year by year, so it's not a “thing” anymore and it's something that everyone's comfortable with. I think that will help with the teachers' comfort. The other thing is empowering parents to get involved as well. Parents have to be on board. All educational studies show that the best outcomes occur when parents are involved in school life.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Thank you again.

Dr. Fisher, just a minute ago, you said that this is not simple. I think you're quite accurate in that assessment. I want to thank you for all your work on this subject. It isn't simple. It is complicated and it's a moving target.

I want to thank the committee members for great questions and the witnesses for great answers.

We want to suspend for a minute. We have a few committee business details to work on, but I want to excuse the witnesses and, again, thank you very much for coming.

Dr. Malamuth, in Arizona, thank you.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

We'll resume our committee work. It will only take a few minutes.

Yesterday in the House, a motion was passed to assume that Thursday is Friday and that Thursday will have the same hours as a normal Friday. Therefore, we have to decide whether we want to have our committee meeting on Thursday. I think we do or I'm assuming we do. Do we want to continue our committee meeting this Thursday?

[A voice]

It's next Thursday.

[Chair]

Right, it's next Thursday. Sorry. It's a long weekend, so that's the thing.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

What time is question period?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

I assume that question period will be at the normal time it is on a Friday.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

That would be 11 o'clock, which is right when we meet here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

It's complicated. Does anybody want to make a proposal?

Go ahead, Mr. Davies.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I'm agnostic about it. I'm happy to go with what the majority of my colleagues think, but it strikes me that, given that question period is at 11, we probably would have to cancel the committee meeting.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

We could move it to 12. That's an option.

Yes, Mr. Oliver.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

I'm confused. So if Thursday will be a Friday, that means that those of us who don't have House duty won't here. Are you saying that we would stay here for the committee meeting, even though we would not be on House duty?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

I can't answer for House duty. Thursday will be treated as if it were a Friday with Friday hours. Will we have the committee meeting an hour later after question period?

Go ahead, Dr. Eyolfson.

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

I'm thinking that the logistics of that might be really complicated. If we're going to Friday hours and it conflicts with question period, I think it's probably best to cancel.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Are there any other comments?

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Again, regarding House duty on Thursday, I, and I assume others, will have to work around that and find either a replacement here or a replacement there, so that's an issue.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Yes, Mr. Davies.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I'm going to move that we cancel the Thursday meeting.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

All right. We have a motion on the floor to cancel our meeting. All in favour?

(Motion agreed to)

Go ahead, Mr. Kang.

[Darshan Singh Kang, Liberal, Calgary Skyview, AB]

I have a comment on that. According to my calendar, our meeting is at 11 o'clock, question period is at 2 p.m., and at 3 p.m. is House duty on the 13th.

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

There was a motion yesterday. It passed to change it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

We have passed a motion now. That meeting is cancelled, so we'll have to adjust our schedule on that.

We have to take our meeting from the 13th and we're going to move it to.... Are you proposing that it be May 4? That means our sickle cell study and Bill C-211 will be moved to May 4.

We'll move on to the next thing. We've passed around a budget for M-47 that totals $27,700. I need a motion to support that.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Mr. Chair, are we discussing the schedule at all today? I ask because I have a question with regard to a couple of proposals, but they're not solidified within this schedule.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Yes, let's do this budget first and then we'll come back to the schedule.