Evidence of meeting #32 for Health in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was information.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Mr. Chair, my hand has been up for a while here. I'm not sure whether you've seen it.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Sure. I'll just respond to Mr. Davies, and then I'll give you the floor.
Mr. Davies, the motion you made is not in order at this time. What would be in order is a motion to adjourn the debate on this.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Okay. We have a motion to adjourn the debate.
Before we entertain that motion, I wonder if Mr. Jeneroux has a comment that would help us in this matter.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Yes, Mr. Chair.
Obviously, I want to make sure we get in as many people as possible. At the beginning, I tried to play nice with the government and move this along. Unfortunately, going after the one key aspect of the motion isn't playing nice, at the end of the day. I would respectfully ask, with I guess two motions now on the floor—so I'm not sure whether this would be in order—if perhaps we were to look at....
I don't feel that your original suggestion of being in camera is the right suggestion, Mr. Chair, but I do feel that perhaps we could entertain half an hour or an hour after this particular meeting. I know that there are no meetings after ours. I believe the clerk can confirm whether or not we still have the room. If we could debate these motions in public, I would certainly be happy to do that, to table these now and move to that. However, I'm not sure if that is in order. I will leave it up to you to determine whether I can withdraw a motion or not at this point in time.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, Mr. Jeneroux.
Mr. Davies' motion is in order. However, if we are in unanimous agreement to move to set up a separate meeting for this purpose—
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Chair, but on a point of order—I don't know the committee stuff like you do—Mr. Davies was talking about moving a motion for a separate meeting, but then he moved a motion to adjourn debate.
I think I would like to ask the clerk, perhaps, what happens when that has been moved. As I understand it, there is no discussion after a member has moved to adjourn debate. I'm just seeking clarity.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
That is correct; however, for us to execute Mr. Davies' motion to adjourn debate, which we can certainly do, we will then have three other motions to deal with. I am proposing that if we have unanimous consent to withdraw Mr. Davies' motion, if he wishes, and unanimous consent to withdraw Mr. Jeneroux's motion at this time, and to take it up at another time—
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
We can do things by unanimous consent, but if we have no unanimous consent to act in this way, then we will deal with Mr. Davies' motion and take the other motions as they may come.
Mr. Davies, would you be in agreement with such an approach?
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
I would, Mr. Chair.
I mean, it seems to me that we might be able to short-circuit all of this, as I hear Mr. Jeneroux's very generous and reasonable suggestion; I think I heard him say that we can withdraw everything, at this point, and simply deal with these motions after we hear the witnesses in both panels today, which I think gets everybody to the point that we're agreeing on.
Perhaps if you seek unanimous consent we can agree to table all of these motions to the end of this meeting.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
All right. I will ask if we do have unanimous consent....
I'm sorry; that was after the end of this meeting? We don't have time today to deal with all of this stuff. We will have only 20 minutes for an in camera meeting, if we still have time even for that. I'm proposing that we set up a separate meeting, perhaps next week, to deal with this. I'm asking if we have unanimous consent to do that.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Mr. Chair, I have just a quick point of order on that. I do believe there is no meeting after ours. I think that was part of my request, to confirm with the clerk that we could continue on, if we wanted to, for that extra half hour or not.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
My information is that we have a hard cap at 2:40 eastern time.
In any case, we're getting a little involved here. Do we have unanimous consent to withdraw all the motions now on the floor and to take them up instead at a meeting to be called for this purpose, at a time to be arranged with the clerk but possibly early next week? Is there unanimous consent for that?
In fact, I'll ask the clerk to take a vote on this, just so we're clear.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
Mr. Chair, I'm wondering if you are going to give a time cap as to when we have to have this extra meeting. You're saying it will possibly be next week, but what if that doesn't happen?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
I'm just saying that we will ask the clerk to arrange a time for the meeting that is suitable for all of us. I don't know what the schedule is like next week, but we will have a separate meeting for that.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
I just wonder if we could make sure there's a time limit so that we don't wait a month.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
We're not going to wait a month. The whole business of unanimous consent is a matter of achieving some consensus. We understand that it's an important matter that we need to deal with. We will deal with it in a proactive way. We just don't want to deal with it now. We want to get back to our witnesses.
We don't have a specific date or time—
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
We put our trust in you, Mr. Chair, to find it sooner than later.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Very well. I appreciate that.
That being said, let's find out if we are in agreement.
I'm asking for unanimous consent to deal with these matters in a separate meeting called for that purpose, to be arranged with the chair and the clerk at a suitable time in the near future.
Are we in unanimous agreement on that?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you. We have unanimous consent, and the motions are deemed withdrawn.
We will schedule a meeting for the purposes of dealing with Mr. Jeneroux's motion as originally moved today, as well as the other motions he had wished to move today, and we will carry on with our questioning. Thank you very much, everybody, for your co-operation.
With that, we will return to our questioning.
Mr. Jeneroux, your time is up—
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Mr. Chair, I do believe I have some time, because the time stops when you call a motion, as you well know, but in the interest of the committee's time and wanting to make sure we give the NDP and the Bloc opportunities to ask questions as well, I will cede the rest of my time back to the chair.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, Mr. Jeneroux. You are correct.
We will go now to Mr. Fisher. Please go ahead. You have six minutes.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank the witnesses for being here. I also want to thank Mr. Jeneroux. This is part of the process of committee, and he has every right to move those motions, and we could sit here and talk about those motions and hash them out for the full couple hours of the meeting.
So thank you, MP Jeneroux, for agreeing that we could seek some type of discussion at a later date.
Dr. Siddiqi, first of all, I just want to say that both of you gave so much wonderful testimony that is so valuable. One of the MPs, I think Mr. Van Bynen, commented about the importance of having this testimony in our report. This is our last meeting to get your testimony into this report, so that makes it so important that we get this testimony. If I ask you a question that you feel you've already sort of touched on, feel free to broaden those comments if you wish, because you gave so much stuff and I was trying to scribble things down and it just wasn't possible.
I'll start with you on this question, Dr. Siddiqi. The pandemic, we agree, has disproportionately affected vulnerable communities. How can we do better going forward to address this disproportionate effect?