Health Committee on June 6th, 2017

[Sue Faber]

I know that Dr. Hawkins is very interested in medical education, and that is something that he is highly qualified to discuss. I'm sure he would be more than happy to be involved in the development and design of proper modules to train our upcoming medical students as well as current physicians, both family doctors and specialists.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

I want to thank the witnesses very much for coming. We have the most interesting meetings at this committee. You talked earlier of the voice of victims not being heard, but your voices were heard today. You've been broadcast all through this on the Internet, and you will be on CPAC, as well, and reruns, so you're voices are starting to be heard. That's part of our process in the committee.

I think when I met with you earlier, I told you that things take a long time here, but they do happen. I believe that process is under way, thanks to Bill C-442.

I want to say thank you very much to Dr. Lloyd. I notice you broke your pen about three times during the meeting. I'm going to make sure you get a new pen from the Parliament of Canada. I'd like you to just quicky tell us what your work is in this area, in Lyme disease and ticks. I just know you've worked on it for some time, but I don't know what your work has been; and have you had any funding from the government?

[Dr. Vett Lloyd]

I've worked primarily on ticks, so figuring out what diseases they have and essentially supporting communities so that, when people find a tick on them, we test it, because that's not necessarily available in all parts of Canada. In some parts of Canada, a tick can get tested through the National Microbiology Laboratory, but in other places it cannot.

Sorry, what was the second part of your question?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

It was about government funding: have you had funding from any level of government for this?

[Dr. Vett Lloyd]

Yes, I'm funded by both the federal and provincial level, as well as by the Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

I want to say thank you very much, and in a second I'm going to give Ms. May a minute. I just wanted to say thank you for the good work that you've done and thank you to the other witnesses. We look forward to Thursday, which will be an interesting day, as well.

Ms. May.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

I just wanted to ask Dr. Lloyd something.

You mentioned earlier that you had lists and you thought they'd be boring, but if you have lists of factual errors in the current framework, if they haven't been tabled with the committee—I'm not a member of the committee, so I don't have it, but I'm hoping—can you make sure we have them? I respect you so much, Dr. Lloyd, and I know I gave a fairly favourable view of what we could do with this framework—it may be silk purse out of sow's ear time. I think the framework dodged the bullet of being really unacceptable, which was what the draft looked like, and I think we made some progress between the draft and final. But I would like very much to know of all the specifics, particularly factual errors, that you've spotted in the framework. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Okay, thank you.

Again, thanks to all the witnesses. We appreciate your time very much. Thank you.

We have the thalidomide letter to deal with. We're going to go into committee business. I don't think it will take long.

We will suspend.

[Proceedings continue in camera]