Health Committee on Sept. 21st, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

We will start the meeting. Welcome to meeting number 70 of the Standing Committee on Health. We're going to have all committee business and no witnesses today.

The first thing we have on our agenda is the election of a new vice-chair. The chair has received the resignation of Mr. Webber.

I want to thank you for your exemplary service as vice-chair. You made no mistakes and did everything really well.

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

I don't think that's correct, but thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Thank you very much on behalf of the committee.

Mr. Clerk, I turn it over to you.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Pursuant to Standing Order 106(2), the first vice-chair must be a member of the official opposition.

I am now prepared to receive motions for the first vice-chair.

Mr. Webber.

[Len Webber, Conservative, Calgary Confederation, AB]

I'd like to make a motion that we elect Marilyn Gladu as the vice-chair of this committee.

[The Clerk]

Are there any further motions?

(Motion agreed to)

I declare Marilyn Gladu duly elected first vice-chair of the committee.

Congratulations.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you, Clerk. Thank you, Chair.

I promise to try to do my best, as good a job as Mr. Webber did.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

All right. I hope everything goes as well as that one did.

Now the second thing on our agenda is the budget concerning the Bill C-45 study. We have gone overboard. We have a deficit and we need a new motion. We need approval of the new budget, which is an additional $33,800, or our witnesses who have already been here will not get paid for their expenses. This is a reflection of our 100 witnesses or so.

Do we have a motion to approve the budget? Thank you, Mr. McKinnon.

Is there any discussion?

(Motion agreed to)

All right. That's good.

Are there any other motions? I think, Mr. Oliver, you have a motion.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

I have two motions. I'll deal with them one at a time.

Just by way of introduction, in dealing with Bill C-45, I realize that the expert task force instructed part of Bill C-45. They travelled for six months across Canada listening to Canadians, and they received 30,000 submissions in the course of that work. Our committee, when we received the bill, heard from over 100 witnesses and received over 100 submissions. I think that was the count I had. Because of the efficient and, I think, very effective way that we dealt with it, we consolidated what would have been about four months of committee work into that one-week period. By my count, we as a committee in this sitting have not yet heard from 100 people on any other study. Even for our study on national pharmacare, we haven't heard from this many witnesses, so we have done extensive work.

We also heard that it was important that we get moving with the legislation. We heard from municipalities, police, and from one province that they really need to understand the federal legislation in order to do their next level of government work so that they can be ready to roll out in July 2018, which is the government's committed date to enact the legislation.

With that preamble, I would make the following motion:

That, the Committee, in its consideration of the Bill C-45, An Act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts proceed as follows: a) that the Committee proceed with the clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-45 no later than October 2, 2017, provided that the Chair may limit debate on each clause to a maximum of five minutes per party, per clause; b) that amendments be submitted to the Clerk of the Committee no later than 5:00 p.m. on September 28, 2017 and distributed to members in both official languages; and c) that if the Committee has not completed the clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-45 by 6:00 p.m. on October 5, 2017, all remaining amendments submitted to the Committee shall be deemed moved, the Chair shall put the question, forthwith and successively, without further debate on all remaining clauses and amendments submitted to the Committee, as well as each and every question necessary to dispose of clause-by-clause consideration of the Bill, as well as all questions necessary to report the Bill to the House and to order the Chair to report the Bill to the House as early as possible.

I would so move.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Is there any debate? Mr. Davies.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

Just from a structural point of view, I appreciate the desire of the government to move quickly, but I want to put on the record that I think this is moving too quickly. I won't belabour the point or repeat points made before, but I do think that carefully considering this bill is the proper way to go. I think we can all say that we learned a lot from the witnesses last week. I know I did. There were a number of issues that I didn't think of and a lot of points made that I wasn't aware of, so I would anticipate that if we heard from more stakeholder groups, we would probably continue to hear things that we weren't aware of, and learn things that we should know.

Having said that, I can tell that the government is obviously locked into an approach on this bill to rush it as expeditiously as it can through this committee and get it into the House.

I would point out as well that we have a full parliamentary year to get this bill passed by July 1. I've been in Parliament for nine years and I'm aware of the cadence. With the power of a majority government to impose time allocation when it wishes to, there's really no reason, I think, that we have to, as Mr. Oliver said, compress four months' work into one week. I don't think that's a healthy way to legislate and to properly consider this bill. We're going to move forward without hearing from a lot of groups that we should be hearing from, and without considering things that we ought to.

I also was going to move a motion that we tour, as committee travel, to visit a Canadian licensed producer of cannabis, a cannabis dispensary, a cannabis compassion club, and a producer of edible cannabis products so that we could actually have first-hand knowledge of what's going on in the real world, but I'm not going to move that motion because I know the Liberals will oppose it and won't do it given this timeline. That being the case then, with the motion before us, which I understand is going to be pressed by the government regardless of what the opposition has to say on it, I will make a couple of small suggestions.

October 2 is the day the Governor General is being sworn in at the Senate. My understanding from our House leader and whip is that the parties have secured unanimous agreement that we're going to be treating that Monday as a Wednesday, meaning that there will be no sitting of the House. We're treating it as if we have caucus meetings. I think it would be both inappropriate for us to be meeting at the same time that every other member of Parliament is invited to go see the swearing in of the Governor General and disrespectful, frankly, to the Governor General's office, for us to schedule work at the same time that important transition is taking place.

I also would propose that we start on October 3, which is the Tuesday, so we have October 3 to October 5, which is three days. I know John hasn't indicated in the motion how the committee will sit, unless I missed it. We haven't decided yet, but I'm in John's hands on that. If we want to go for eight hours a day, as we did before, or have multiple meetings, that's fine.

Of course, it's all moot at the end of the day anyway, because the text of the motion will deem the bill passed at a certain point on October 5, regardless of where we're at, so the motion takes away any attempt by the opposition parties to try to hold up the bill or be deleterious, which, for the record, the NDP has no intention of doing in any event. We have about, I'd say, probably somewhere around 10 amendments. I plan on speaking briefly and effectively to each one of those, not with a motive to hold things up but just to get our reasons on the record, so I see no reason why we won't be able to move through the clause-by-clause easily within the three days in any event.

It also, frankly, gives us one more day to get ready. We have a lot of material to go through, and I want to take a moment to congratulate all my colleagues on this committee on all sides for what I thought were a lot of penetrating questions on a lot of different issues. I've started the process of looking through the evidence that we heard, and there's a lot of it. A lot of it was very good.

One of the reasons I don't think we should start this clause-by-clause quite so quickly is that it forces us next week to have to process all of that information we received, analyze it, internalize it, place it into effective amendments, work with legislative counsel, make sure it's within the scope of the bill, and then have it translated in both languages, all within the next seven days. That's very tight for an important bill of this magnitude, but if we're going to do that, then at least we can have Friday and the Monday to get prepared for the clause-by-clause.

I'm going to speak to this a little bit later, but I do think we cannot adequately plan for the clause-by-clause study of Bill C-45 without also knowing our schedule for next week, so I'll take the opportunity now to say that it will be my suggestion—and I will move this at the appropriate time—that we don't sit on Tuesday or Thursday. I know that the PBO is planning to release his report on pharmacare, I think, on the Thursday, and I'll speak to that when it comes to that. But these two—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

I think he's releasing it on Wednesday to us.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Yes, I heard he's releasing it Thursday, but Wednesday an embargoed copy will come to us, which gives us, I don't know, 18 hours to internalize the PBO's report that they took months and months to write, costing out the largest social program envisioned by the federal government in a generation. We will not be in any position whatsoever to offer meaningful comment on that PBO report on the Thursday, if the PBO comes. It will do injustice to the PBO, frankly, to invite the PBO here on a Thursday, with that level of preparation.

I'm happy to co-operate with this sort of expedited process on Bill C-45, but I hope the Liberals will work with us in a good-faith attempt to make sure that we have time next week to really work on the amendments to Bill C-45, and then we can invite the PBO back in a couple of weeks.

I see John nodding. If that's the case, and I don't want to put words in his mouth, but—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

I just need a clarification. What are you proposing for October 2?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

That we don't meet. I think we should meet on October 3, 4, and 5, and we'll easily pass this bill by the deadline that the government has set in the motion.

I look forward to hearing from my other colleagues. I don't know if the Liberals have any amendments, and if my colleagues on the Conservative side do, but with 20 or 30 amendments we can pass that bill in clauses of 10, like we often do. There's a lot of this bill that is not controversial, a lot of it's regulatory and only enabling, so I think we can meet the government's objective and also, I think, take a rational and reasonable approach to scheduling.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Are you moving an amendment to the motion?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I guess I would. I guess I would move that we amend this to “no later than October 3”. Again, that's purely so we'll have the ability to get ready, and also to respect the Governor General's swearing-in, which some of us around this table would like to see. I know I would.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Ms. Gladu, did you want to speak to this or speak to something else?

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Yes, I'd like to speak to this. Thank you, Chair.

I would agree with many of my colleague's comments. I do feel the government is rushing this bill and I would have liked to have seen more witnesses, but we won't belabour that point.

My real disappointment is that the clause-by-clause stage is going to be done in a week when Mr. Davies is going to be out of the country, and I am previously committed to go and be a speaker at a palliative care conference. Knowing that, and knowing that this government is choosing this week anyway, I think that's a bad idea and it does indicate that they're rushing.

I would say, further, that I do want to start on October 2, because I'm not going to be here on October 5 and October 6, and I think if Mr. Davies is not here, then he can pick anybody who can be flexible to attend that day. That would be my suggestion.

The only thing I would say is that I don't intend to be deleterious either. Certainly, we want to move through the amendments. We don't have a lot of amendments from the Conservative side, but I wouldn't want to come to 6 p.m. on October 5 and still have things outstanding. I can't imagine we would, but I wouldn't want to arbitrarily cut it off. I think it's really important to make sure we look at this bill and get it right.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

I'm not clear. On October 2 your proposal is that we do meet on—

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

My proposal is to keep your language, but this subamendment has been made so we'll have to vote on that first.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Okay.

Mr. Oliver.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Thank you for that discussion around the motion.

We didn't know the Governor General's swearing-in was coming. I would think we should begin our clause-by-clause after QP on Monday. If it's a Wednesday, we could begin our clause-by-clause at 3:30 p.m. and commence on the Monday. I think that might then allow a bit more flexibility on the amendments being in. I know it's important to the clerk that he has time to organize them and coordinate them. I was going to suggest maybe noon on September 29 for the amendments to be in. We'll have a bit of time, then, to get them distributed on the Monday morning.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

What's your vision for the meetings on October 3, 4, and 5? Are these two-hour meetings or all day?