Health Committee on June 15th, 2017

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Thank you very much.

I certainly echo what my colleague Colin Carrie just said.

Mr. Oliver, I would like to come back to the time frame. It seems now that perhaps you are amenable to breaking up those four-hour sections into two sections of two hours at the discretion of the chair, which I think is really wise, if for no other reason than the physical space involved. Just to get nine witnesses in here is rather a task, so that's worth considering.

In addition to that, though, I would like to look at this list. One of the things that isn't included here is international impact, and that is certainly worth considering. What will it be like to cross the border into the United States by vehicle? What about the different agreements we've signed with other countries that will be impacted by this law coming into effect? None of those things are being considered within this existing list.

I come back to my point that it doesn't seem that you're friendly, Mr. Oliver, to adjusting and including municipalities. At the end of the day, this legislation doesn't stay with the federal government. It gets moved over to the provinces and the municipalities. It will become their responsibility to implement and come up with policies and bylaws and laws around it. It's very important to hear from municipalities with regard to this piece.

Those are my suggested amendments.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Mr. Kang.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think when we are doing two-hour blocks, instead of having four witnesses we could probably have six witnesses. That would give 12 witnesses in four-hour blocks. Then we could hear 24 witnesses in one day, if bringing in more witnesses is a concern.

How many did we have here today?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

We had four groups. One group had two people.

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

Yes.

Those are my comments. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Mr. Oliver.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Thank you for the feedback on the motion. I appreciate it.

I want to reiterate that my goal here was to get all of us to agree that we would be back a week earlier to dedicate ourselves to long days of studying Bill C-45 to get us started on the bill. I would be happy if we could move the week to run from September 11 to September 15, which gives us two additional four-hour blocks. We could invite the ministers to come the following week and have them come to a session the week after. I do think that we need to hear from the ministers at some point in the process.

That would give us an additional two four-hour blocks on the Friday, and we could add—

I'm sorry, Ms. Harder, but I didn't mention municipalities because they are a construct of the provinces, so they really fall under provincial/territorial jurisdiction. We could have a municipality in that block.

There's a question I want to come back to. We are either going to mandate the chair and the clerks to do this and come back to what they've set up, and stay with these general themes, plus the ones that have been added, such as labelling and packaging, edibles—

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Medicinal.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

—and medicinal.

[An hon. member]

International treaties.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

For the international treaties, I had them lumped in with other jurisdictions' experiences, but that's fine. That's international treaties, so there are those three additional topics.

Then we would try to submit our witnesses in a way that is organized around those topics and, if you have a general witness, which of those categories you think they would be best suited to so they can be slotted in, so that we give.... We're all going to be submitting massive lists and they need some structure. We can do it this way or we can reconvene the subcommittee and mandate it to set up the meetings. We would do that sometime in that first week of August, but in neither one are we going to be requiring a report back to the committee. If it's the chair and the analysts, or if it's a subcommittee, we have to mandate them today so that we can come to work that week and get working on this bill for Canadians.

I'm happy either way on this motion. Can we be a bit loose on order? Do you want to do a subcommittee or do you want to have the chair and analysts setting up the meeting?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

I'd just like to throw this out here. It's a big test, but if you feel comfortable with me, the clerk, and the analysts taking in all the information we have here today, we'll put together a proposal or a schedule based on Mr. Oliver's motion, with all of the things considered, because I think they're all good arguments. On the municipal one, I agree with Ms. Harder, because those who have approached me the most are the municipalities. If you trust us to do this, based on that, we could be done with it, and we'll get it back to everybody.

I believe—I've been here long enough to know—that we have to do this right. If we do this wrong, this side will pay a bigger price than that side, but we have to do it right. I'll do the best I can to do it right and to make sure that we hear all the witnesses we need to hear. There's no limit on the witnesses. We're not limited to six, or to 72, or to anything else, but if you let this end of the table put something together, based on what everybody has said, and pass Mr. Oliver's motion with flexibility, then we'll work it out.

All in favour?

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Mr. Davies.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

I'm almost there, Mr. Chair. I agree with almost everything except when you say “pass Mr. Oliver's motion”, because I'm not exactly sure how the motion would read right now, given the discussion. I'm happy to have you, the analysts, and the clerk work out what you heard, if you can incorporate the sort of flexibility that John has expressed. What I would almost suggest is that we rewrite the motion now. Not right this minute, I mean, but I think we could rewrite the motion honing it now to reflect where we're going with this.

Some things I think we do have to figure out, and one is the number of witnesses, for instance. If we're calling for five eight-hour meetings, split up the way you're talking about now, it was 72 witnesses before, and adding another day would be—

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

It would be another 18.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

—another 18, so you're at 90, plus the three ministers. If you're going to do that, then I would suggest that the witnesses be apportioned to the parties in proportion to the seats in the House Commons, which is 13% for us, 30% for the opposition, and whatever the balance is, 50%, or whatever, for the Liberals—that's typically the practice—and let us propose the witnesses that we have. I would suggest that we rank them. So let's say that for 13%, that would give us about 11 or 12 witnesses. I'll give you 20 witnesses and rank them so that the analysts can call them, because, as we know, some people can't come, and they will call in the order that you submit.

I propose that to free us from that sort of strict categorical thing. If I can get only one per category, then I have to really work on the categories. It sounds as though we're agreeing on the general categories here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

That's fantastic.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Then let us fill those categories with witnesses as we see fit.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Dr. Carrie.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

If you do want to get something passed today, if you look at the top part of the motion, and if we put a period after “task”, and then just state what we spoke about today in regard to the timelines—I actually put in two blocks, from 8:30 to 10:30, 10:45 to 12:45, 2 to 4, 4:30 to 6:30—it would give us the breaks and a lunch for those dates.

As far as the prescriptive part here goes, I think there's going to be some continued debate on that. Maybe we could put that towards a planning committee. We are going to be around next week, I think. Maybe we can have a conversation next week, a more fulsome one, on the details. If we passed a motion that allowed us to do that, to put a prescriptive time in so we would have our dates in there, and give us a little bit of time to think about the actual prescriptive stuff, I would be happier with that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Dr. Eyolfson.

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

[Inaudible—Editor]

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Ms. Sidhu.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

I think it's a very important bill. I agree that we should have breaks, but we would have to see how many witnesses we have. We have nine witnesses, if they fit in that. If we had half as much time for lunch, that would give more space and we could put nine witnesses in there. I'm in favour of that.