Health Committee on June 23rd, 2020

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Mr. Chair, I'm very happy to respond to Mr. Genuis on that.

When the issue of an investigation of the WHO was first put forward, our Australian colleagues reached out to us. We have been front and centre in the discussions around that. As I said, I don't think it is wise to undermine the work of the World Health Organization at this time. They're doing important work in many parts of the world. I've been talking with about 130 of my colleagues around the world, and they're saying that at this point in time we need to work with the institutions that we have.

Definitely, there will be a time when we need to ask hard questions about the leadership, the financing, the mission and the alert system. I can assure Mr. Genuis that Canada is front and centre in all these discussions, because colleagues around the world call us when these discussions are happening.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Minister, that wasn't my question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Genuis.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

My question was about the response of the Government of China.

Mr. Chair, you've been repeatedly interrupting my time. I think I have at least another minute because there's been so much back and forth where you—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Mr. Genuis, I stopped the clock when we were dealing with the points of order. You're a minute past your time, so thank you for your interventions.

We will go now to Mr. Fisher.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Chair, before we do that, because I don't want to interrupt Mr. Fisher, I do have a point of order that I think will be helpful for future questioners.

I agree with you generally that, although I believe there's wide latitude for questioning before a committee, when the minister comes before a committee on COVID and spontaneously in his opening statements raises issues of Canada's rejection for a UN Security Council seat and his two mortgages, neither of which have to do with the COVID-19 study, he has obviously waived his right to restrict questions to COVID. A witness can't selectively decide which non-germane issues he wants to talk about and then restrict committee members from going into those. Just as a matter of policy, he's the foreign affairs minister; he has clearly raised issues beyond the COVID-19 issue, and I think committee members should be free to explore issues as they see fit. I think we should have that clarified before anybody goes further.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Davies.

Whether the minister speaks to these issues is not a matter of the rights to the minister; it's a matter of what the committee is studying. We need to be relevant to what we are studying. The plight of the Uighurs is not part of the minister's statement, for example. Whether the minister was present or not for the COVI committee is not relevant to our study. I give very wide latitude for questioning, but I do think we need to stick to the subject matter of our inquiry, which is the government response to COVID-19. I accept that the minister did introduce these other matters, and I think that it's fair to respond to them, but I really hope we can focus our interventions on the COVID-19 response.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

I have a point of order as well.

I'd like to concur with Mr. Davies that if he's going to bring up these other issues, we should not have people's questioning being constantly stopped when we are asking questions on a different matter.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

On a point of order as well, Mr. Chair, on that, Mr. Davies made his point. It sounds as though you've made a ruling that you don't want to allow those kinds of questions to take place, and if that's the case, I'd like to move to challenge the chair on that. I think we need to hear the view of the committee as to whether the minister should have to answer questions that respect his opening statement.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I have not, in fact, made a ruling; I'm just encouraging the members to stay on topic.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

If I might, Mr. Chair, just very briefly, if the Minister of Foreign Affairs raises the rejection of Canada's application in a bid for a UN Security Council seat, then I think he's left it wide open to explore what the reasons for that might be.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I've already granted that point, thank you. He did mention it in his statement, so fair enough, but let's try to bring it back to COVID-19. If you want to address matters brought up in his speech, then by all means, but let's really try to focus on COVID-19. Thank you.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Chair, on my point of order, it sounds as though you're either making a ruling, which is subject to a challenge, or you're not making a ruling and you're just making a friendly recommendation. If it's just a friendly recommendation, then members are welcome to proceed to ask whatever questions they want. If you're making a ruling, then I'd like to proceed with a challenge.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

As I've said, I have not made a ruling—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Okay. Great. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

—but it is something I would encourage. If we get off topic, I will try to bring people back to the topic.

Thank you.

Let us continue with Mr. Fisher.

Mr. Fisher, you have six minutes.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Minister, welcome to you and your team.

I think I can speak for every MP on this committee, and all the MPs in the House of Commons. We had so many constituents who were stranded all over the world due to the pandemic. I can speak for Dartmouth-Cole Harbour. We had young firefighters in Peru, we had seniors struggling aboard the MS Zaandam, and I think, again, we can all agree that it was a very challenging few months.

Back home, we had families who were, rightly, very scared and nervous for their loved ones. The borders were closing, airlines were shutting down and it was a scary time. I want to take a moment to thank Global Affairs staff, consular staff and your team. Specifically, I want to thank your Parliamentary Secretary, Rob Oliphant, and his team.

Our office, much like the offices of the other 337 MPs, was inundated with these calls and requests from these frantic parents and constituents. What your group managed to do was absolutely incredible. I also want to thank my constituency staff for the work that they did, basically working from home. It was absolutely incredible.

Thinking about just how difficult this process was with all hands on deck, what was it like negotiating safe passage and eventual disembarking of passengers to get these Canadians home from dozens of countries from around the world? Tell us a little bit about some of the challenges that you and your amazing team encountered.

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Fisher, for that.

I think it reflects on the team—this was a team effort like we've never seen before.

As I said in my opening statement, this was the largest repatriation effort in Canada's history in peacetime. We never thought that we would experience border closure, airport closure, airspace closure and martial law being imposed in a number of countries where we needed to bring people in.

I just want to give numbers that will make you reflect. Since March 13, we received 104,000 calls and 200,000 emails. This gives you a sense of perspective about the scope and magnitude of what we've done. I think there are a lot of lessons learned. We'll have to reflect on how we operate, what the role of honorary consuls is and how we've been able to do that.

I must say that Heather Jeffrey, who is here, and my deputy, Ms. Morgan, have been extraordinary. We've done things like we never did before. We did diplomacy by text message. I managed to get people out of Peru by texting my counterpart there and negotiating landing rights. We got people out of Morocco by texting the minister and saying we needed one more flight.

When I created the COVID ministerial group, it was really to try to tackle those challenges together. I invited Morocco and Peru to join our group. We, the European Union and many countries around the world were finding the same struggle.

Again, I want to say thanks to the front-line people and to our embassy staff. Everyone became a consular officer. We turned this around and I'm extremely proud of the work. We had 600 people at a time in our operations centre. This has been truly extraordinary and it just shows that when we want to, we're able to do big things together. All the merit and credit goes to the front-line people who spent countless hours helping other Canadians.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank them for me, if you would, please.

The numbers suggest that the measures we have in place in Canada are working. Of course, we're not out of the woods yet. People are starting to talk about international travel. We had airlines here yesterday.

I'm starting to think about business and pleasure travel again. I'm interested in your views on when that might be appropriate and what that travel might look like in a post-COVID-19 world, or in a potential second wave. Perhaps we're always going to be in a COVID-19 world.

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Thank you for that question, Mr. Fisher, and thank you for the work of all the parliamentarians.

To go back to your earlier question, this was really team Canada. I received the same number of questions from all sides of the House. We have helped all MPs. I think at some stage I was receiving 600 messages a day from MPs who were asking us to intervene to help their constituents, and I must say this was probably one of our proudest moments, when we, as parliamentarians, came together to help Canadians.

To your question about travel, I was in touch as recently as yesterday with my German counterpart. I've been talking to the High Representative of Foreign Affairs of the EU, Josep Borrell, who is my colleague. We've talked many times about what, for example, the EU is doing with respect to reopening borders.

Obviously, when it comes to us, our geography here requires us to take measures to protect the health and safety of Canadians—that's obviously paramount—but we're looking at what others are doing. We've been in touch, as you know, with our U.S. counterparts and with our European counterparts. We're looking at some of the best practices that have been put forward, for example, in the Nordic countries and in the Baltics, to see what measures others have been taking.

I'm also in touch with the airlines. I understand that for them resuming international travel is important, so we're trying to balance all that, and I can assure you that first and foremost is the health and safety of Canadians, making sure we have all the processes in place and looking at a gradual reopening when the time comes, but this is a very live discussion between foreign ministers around the world.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Minister, my time is up. I do wish you a very happy birthday this Thursday—your 50th birthday. I hope you have a chance to get a little downtime.

Thank you so much.

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Thank you, my friend.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

We go now to Monsieur Thériault.

Mr. Thériault, you have six minutes.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Let me switch to French, if you don't mind, Chair.

I've mastered French pretty well, so I want to get it in French, but my system it is a bit slower.

Merci.