Health Committee on Dec. 7th, 2017

[Simon Kennedy]

The funding we would be providing would be funding that we would be providing, as the minister explained, to provinces and territories. They, in turn, would be making those sorts of allocation decisions.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

There's no direct funding.

[Simon Kennedy]

Not that I'm aware of, sir, no.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Okay, your time's up.

Thank you very much, everybody. That concludes our session.

We're going to suspend for a few minutes and then go into committee business.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

I have a point of order, or I think it's a point of order. I want to reflect on the sort of boondoggle we had in the first hour with the minister in terms of timing of questions. With the questions we have, the way they time out, and the 10-minute introduction, we have, within one minute—if people respect it—sufficient time for everybody to have their questions asked and answered. That's if people respect it.

To be fair to you, Mr. Chair, I know that generally as a committee we're pretty relaxed on this. We often have time left over, so you're very lenient, and sometimes you let people ask their questions after their minute, their time frame, is up, or you let the person responding go on, because they're good questions, we want to hear the answers, and we're interested.

But when we have the Minister of Health here and we have exactly one hour, I think it's important that you keep everybody to their exact time frame. We had one member who framed a question almost 30 seconds after their time ran out. We had another member who framed a question a minute and a half after their time ran out. We had another member who framed a question exactly as their time ran out. We were almost 15 to 18 minutes short of time. Mr. Davies' point of order was not that long. He was on his point of order for maybe two minutes. We really lost close to 15 minutes of committee questioning for those who didn't get on, because there were two five-minute blocks and a three-minute block that didn't get up.

When the Minister of Health or any minister is here and we have a one-hour time block to pose our questions, I'm going to ask that you keep us rigorously to those time blocks. If members want to make a long statement, great, but they're not going to get an answer.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

That's their time.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Their time has gone to their statement, and they can pose a question at the very end. I've been at other committees where the chair says, “Sorry, time's up. There's no time to answer the question”, and we move on.

For these important sessions where we have a minister at the committee, we all have things we want to ask and talk about, and I think you need to keep us to our time blocks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Just to answer that, we've previously discussed this. My policy is that if there's time left for a member to ask a question.... I never allow a question to be asked after the time is up, but if there's time left, I let the question be asked. Mr. Davies started his question within his time, but it was a long, long question and that took a lot of extra time. He's not the only one—

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

That goes to my point. I think that in these—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

I know. I hear you.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

I understand that's your practice—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

I'm at the will of the committee. It's if you want me to, however you want me to do it.

I have found that has worked, but I agree today that it didn't work. If the minister is here and we only have an hour, then I'll keep at the time, if that's the wish of the committee. I think it's a good suggestion.

Mr. Davies.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

I want to somewhat apologize, because what I thought, Mr. Chair, when you were interrupting me was that I was still within my seven minutes. That's what I thought.

I have been at other committees where the chairs—you've never done this—try to interfere with the questioning by directing. I have actually had chairs say, “Put the question, put the question.” I was standing up for the principle that each member of this committee can do what they wish with their time, and that's on all sides of this.

I was going to say that I think you've done an excellent job in using your judgment, and I think everybody goes over.... Every single member of this committee has gone over at one time—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Like today.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

—or the witness has been allowed to go over. You've been very fair about that.

What I would say is this. Quite honestly, I think the minister should be asked to come for two hours next time, not one hour. Surely the Minister of Health has two hours every six months for the Standing Committee on Health. I would rather see that happen so that members would actually have a chance to put their questions more fulsomely to the minister.

Some of my questions to the very able staff quite rightfully were deferred, as in, “You should have asked that to the minister.” I would like to have the chance to put those questions to the minister. The next time we ask the minister to come here, rather than try to truncate seven minutes or three minutes, I would rather ask the minister to come for two hours.

Finally, what I would say is that I also think the practice of the minister asking her officials to answer questions when she's here is inappropriate, because the staff usually stays after. Usually they stay for the second hour. That's when we have a chance to direct our questions to the departmental staff, but we only have limited time to put our questions to the minister. If the minister doesn't want to answer or wants to defer it to later, that's her prerogative, but to have our time taken up with the minister deferring to the ministerial staff takes the five minutes or seven minutes and makes it even less.

Those would be my suggestions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

The last thing the minister said was that she'd be glad to come back any time, so when we invite her back, we can ask her to come back when she can have two hours, if that's the wish of the committee.

Ms. Gladu.

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

Thank you, Chair.

On that same point of order, I want to say that I enjoy your usual collegial latitude with respect to the way we answer questions, and I would just provide some sage wisdom that I gained on the status of women committee. I found that over time the more latitude that was provided, the more likely it was that people were going to ask a question with zero seconds left, so that they could then hear the answer. Sometimes we began to chop them off at the knees and not allow the answer if they used up all their time asking the question. That could be a tactic you may enjoy.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

I'll take that under consideration.

Mr. Oliver.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

I just wanted to be clear again regarding the way we normally run our committee process and the latitude you show. You're fairly generous with people answering once the question is put. That's fine for our general purposes, but when we have a time-limited window with our main minister, then I think the rigour of holding answers and questions to it.... Most ministers generally come to committee for an hour. I think that's generally the rule. We've only had our minister here for one hour.

What I would like to see is a full round of questioning with the minister and then a full round of questioning with the executive branch and the others, so that we can do one round with one and one round with the other. That would be a more robust approach.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

I found the answers long today too, not only the questions.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

You had to cut the answers.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Mr. Van Kesteren.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

One simple solution, when we know we have the minister for one hour, would be to just get a consensus to go to five-minute rounds. Part of the problem is the seven-minute rounds.

You do a great job, but you're absolutely right, oftentimes the answers get a little long. Maybe at the beginning of the meeting we could just remind everybody that opening statements, whatever they are, would be followed by questions and answers, and that we're trying to stay within five minutes. Whoever is answering the question sees the clock there as well. It's just co-operation between everyone, but if we went to five minutes—if we had that consensus—that would free up enough time that everybody would have time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

We have established a set of rules, but if we're going to change them we have to do that through a proper—

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Before the meeting...yes.