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.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Arjumand Siddiqi  Associate Professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, As an Individual
Kwame McKenzie  Chief Executive Officer, Wellesley Institute
Clerk of the Committee  Ms. Erica Pereira
Kathleen Morris  Vice-President, Research and Analysis, Canadian Institute for Health Information
Scott Jones  Head, Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, Communications Security Establishment
Jeff Latimer  Director General and Strategic Advisor for Health Data, Statistics Canada
Colleen Merchant  Director General, National Cyber Security, National and Cyber Security Branch, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness
Marc Lachance  Acting Director General, Diversity and Populations, Statistics Canada
Superintendent Mark Flynn  Director General, Financial Crime and Cybercrime, Federal Policing Criminal Operations, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Karen Mihorean  Director General, Social Data Insights, Integration and Innovation, Statistics Canada

11 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome, everyone, to meeting number 32 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health. Pursuant to the order of reference of May 26, 2020, the committee is resuming its briefing on the Canadian response to the outbreak of the coronavirus.

To ensure an orderly meeting, I would like to outline a few rules to follow. Interpretation in this video conference will work very much like in a regular committee meeting. You have the choice, at the bottom of your screen, of floor, English or French.

As you're speaking, if you plan to alternate from one language to the other, you will also need to switch the interpretation channel so it aligns with the language you're speaking. You may also want to allow for a short pause when switching languages. Before speaking, please wait until you are recognized. When you're ready to speak, you can click on the microphone icon to activate your mike. As a reminder, all comments by members and witnesses should be addressed through the chair. When you're not speaking, your mike should be on mute.

Please note that I will be very strict on time today, given the fact that we have to move in camera later.

I would now like to welcome our first panel of witnesses. Appearing as an individual is Dr. Arjumand Siddiqi, associate professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. From the Wellesley Institute, we have Dr. Kwame McKenzie, chief executive officer. Welcome to you both.

We'll start with Dr. Siddiqi.

Please go ahead. You have 10 minutes.

11 a.m.

Dr. Arjumand Siddiqi Associate Professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, As an Individual

Thank you very much.

Thanks for the opportunity to speak with you today. I come here with a deep sense of gratitude for my parents and all the others who have made this possible, a strong sense of responsibility that comes with my position as a scientist, and a burning desire for my country, Canada, to do right by all its people.

I am associate professor and division head of epidemiology at the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health, where I hold the Canada research chair in population health equity. I am a social epidemiologist and I study health inequities and the social determinants of health, with a particular emphasis on the social policies and other societal factors that are ultimately responsible for giving everyone a chance at health.

Since the gravity of the COVID-19 pandemic became apparent, Canadian officials have assured us that we are all in this together. Indeed, daily briefings have impressed upon us a sense that the overall number of cases and deaths in our cities and provinces is a good proxy for how worried each of us should be about our risk for COVID-19, or how confident we can feel about returning to some of our pre-COVID activities.

However, in late May came a stunning report—if entirely predictable by those of us who study these things and those of us who live them—which suggested that the city-wide numbers we were receiving in briefings from Toronto Public Health concealed enormous differences in the burden and risk of COVID-19 across Toronto neighbourhoods. A similar phenomenon has also been noted for Montreal. Toronto's northwest neighbourhoods, which are heavily black and working class—areas such as Jane and Finch, Rexdale, and Weston—have been hardest hit. The latest figures suggest case rates in excess of 450 per 100,000 in those neighbourhoods.

Meanwhile the downtown core and central areas, which are heavily white and wealthy, have barely been touched. For example, Yonge and Eglinton has a case rate of 14, and Beaches has 15 cases per 100,000.

This means that the overall figures for Toronto have been obfuscating a more than 40 times greater risk of COVID-19 between Toronto's black working-class neighbourhoods compared to its white rich neighbourhoods. While the coronavirus itself does not discriminate, our society unfortunately does. Canada is structured in a way that has placed the burden of risk for COVID-19 squarely on the shoulders and in the lungs of the black working class and to a lesser extent other non-white working-class people.

The spatial distribution of COVID-19 across Toronto neighbourhoods is less a reflection of neighbourhoods themselves being risky, and more a reflection of the fact that the black people in Toronto tend to live in a small set of neighbourhoods, the ones in which they can afford housing and avoid housing discrimination, while rich whites live in a set of neighbourhoods that offer the most convenience and comfort.

Why are we using neighbourhood data if neighbourhoods aren't really the heart of the matter? Unfortunately, those are the best data we have available for understanding the social characteristics—race, income and so on—that carry risk for ill health, including COVID-19. We are effectively using neighbourhood characteristics as proxy for individual characteristics and because Toronto is so starkly and structurally segregated, and people are so clustered by race and income into various neighbourhoods, for now this is sadly a reasonable proxy to make, even if it's imperfect.

My initial plea to you, then, is to think long and hard about better collection of race and socio-economic data whenever we routinely collect data in Canada on health and other matters in our health care system, our schools, the labour market and so on. This is critical for understanding our country and holding our government to account for racial inequity in the same way gender data is used to tackle gender inequity.

If not the neighbourhood itself, what then is creating greater risk for black working-class people? Because the data is lacking, it's difficult to be unequivocal about the answers to this question; however, there is a very large and robust body of research from other countries on which we can draw, as well as indirect evidence from Canada.

The strongest explanation—though there are others I am happy to discuss—is that essential service jobs that have continued during the stay-at-home orders are largely occupied by black and other non-white working class people.

They are our long-term care and personal support workers. They clean our hospitals and shuttle patients around. They stock our grocery stores, drive our delivery trucks and work in the fields to harvest our produce. Conversely, jobs that afford the opportunity to stay home—along with the peace of mind about one's job security and income—are largely occupied by wealthy white people. They are our bankers and financiers, lawyers, and, yes, our professors.

The obvious consequence is that jobs occupied disproportionately by black and other non-white Canadians force them into environments that carry high risk for exposure to COVID-19, while jobs disproportionately occupied by wealthier whites offer protection from exposure to COVID-19.

At the end of the day, knowing that low-wage black and other non-white workers have little choice, we are sacrificing them so that the rest of us can cocoon in the comfort of our homes and wait this thing out.

This racial job sorting is clearly not a function of chance or choice. It is the outcome of a confluence of Canadian policies and systems in which racial discrimination is so persistent and pervasive that it cannot be regarded as an isolated incident or even as an add-on to understanding our system of institutions and policies. Rather, it is an integral part of the systems themselves. Various scholars have used terms such as systemic racism, structural racism, institutional racism and racial capitalism to refer to this deep embedding of racism in our societal policies and systems.

Beyond jobs, systemic racism is more generally the major factor that determines who has economic security, wealth and income. It can be even more powerful than gender in this respect. In turn, economic security is the main predictor of health because it facilitates the everyday living conditions that are foundational for health: jobs that don't expose us to health risks, plenty of money to pay the bills, comfortable housing, lovely neighbourhoods, good food and low stress.

And this is true whether we're talking about COVID-19 or cardiovascular disease, depression or diabetes. At the end of the day, you need economic security to have a good chance at living a healthy life, and that is precisely why economic security is so crucial and it is precisely why racial and health inequalities are so pervasive and so persistent. Racism limits black working-class people's access to wealth, jobs, income and so on. As horrible as it is that we have racial inequities in COVID-19, this is really just another manifestation of a deeply entrenched system of racial inequity.

So it's the root cause—systemic racism—that we really need to fix in order to address COVID-19 inequities. In what follows I will outline what the science tells us are our best options for doing so.

The first is to deal forcefully with racial wealth inequity, inequity in stocks of money and assets.

Economists such as Miles Corak in Canada and William Darity Junior and Darrick Hamilton in the United States have made a jarring discovery about wealth inequity which, as I will explain, is arguably even more critical than income inequality. It turns out that the largest source of racial wealth inequity is not racial differences in education or even in jobs and income. Those things matter but they are the consequences, not the causes of racial wealth inequity.

The biggest source of wealth inequity is what economists refer to as intergenerational transfers and what the rest of us would call gifts from Mom and Dad and Grandma and Grandpa. That's right: the white wealth advantage is not an earned advantage. Gifts are what allow whites to pay for advancing their education and thus income, and what allow them to put down payments on homes early in life.

This is unfair for many reasons, perhaps the greatest of which is the historic injustices that have allowed whites but not others to accumulate wealth over generations.

So it is these wealth transfers that create opportunity for income, rather than income creating opportunity for wealth. That means that black Canadians have already fallen behind at birth. This is unacceptable, and Canada must consider, as the United States is doing, a system of baby bonds or something similar in which young children from black and other groups that have historically faced disadvantage are provided a sum that matures as the child ages and that in adulthood can be used in the same way that family gifts have been used by rich white families. Economists have even calculated how long such a policy would take to create wealth equality.

In addition to resolving wealth inequity, we do need to address income security for every Canadian. We need to design a labour market in which every job is a high-quality job.

We need to ensure the wages, benefits and working conditions of all jobs meet a high minimum standard and that employment discrimination is more rigorously penalized.

We have strong randomized trial data that tell us a very disheartening tale of racial discrimination in the labour market that cannot be accounted for by differences in foreign degrees or lack of Canadian job experience.

We have to stop taking comfort in the fact that people are somehow managing to survive and create the conditions to let them thrive. There are countless examples we can take of ways to implement this. For example, a universal job guarantee would put an end to involuntary unemployment and create good jobs to do important work sorely needed by Canada. It would also put pressure on the private sector to compete on wages and job conditions.

Finally, we must universalize access to basic services that create high quality of life: child care, education, health and pharmacare more broadly defined, elder care, and so on. We can't limit opportunities based on race and economic position any longer. It's so unjust and so unbecoming of a country with so much to offer.

There you have it. There's no half-hearted way out for resolving COVID-19 inequities. Even if we developed band-aid policies, we'd be right back here talking about this or another racial health inequity soon, because that's how it works. Without resolving the fundamental structural issues of systemic racism and its impact on economic security, nothing ever changes. That's simply not fair for any Canadian to be subjected to.

While the policy solutions I've laid out are bold, they are very doable. Many scholars have highlighted how these policies can be designed and paid for. It's our responsibility—

11:10 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon

Doctor, pardon me, if you could wrap up, please.

11:10 a.m.

Associate Professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, As an Individual

Dr. Arjumand Siddiqi

Sure.

It's our responsibility to do better by all our people, and I certainly hope we do so.

Thank you.

11:10 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon

Thank you, Doctor.

We go now to Dr. McKenzie for 10 minutes.

11:10 a.m.

Dr. Kwame McKenzie Chief Executive Officer, Wellesley Institute

Mr. Chair and honourable members, thank you for inviting me to speak to the standing committee.

I am a physician and also the CEO of Wellesley Institute, a think tank that aims to improve health and health equity through research and policy development focused on the social determinants of health. This morning you should have been given the executive summary of the briefing note we submitted to the standing committee. The executive summary gives more detail on the recommendations I am making today. The full briefing note goes into background and gives references for my comments.

I'd especially like to thank Erica Pereira, the procedural clerk, for getting the executive summary translated so quickly.

Survival for those on the Titanic over a century ago was directly related to their social status: 60% of those in first class lived, while 42% of those in second class and only 24% of those in third class lived. The Titanic’s escape plan was the same for everyone, but third-class passengers were in lower internal berths and had difficulty getting to the lifeboats. The huge death toll was because there was not an adequate plan for them, though they were the passengers most in need.

Fast-forward 108 years to Canada’s COVID response. This has actually been very good. We've done really well. But like the Titanic, we have not developed an adequate plan for our highest-risk populations, such as people living in congregate settings, those with lower incomes, and of course our racialized populations. Our initial response was focused on flattening the curve, not on who was under the curve. If we'd focused on both, we would have had a better response and we'd have saved thousands of lives.

We now need four groups of actions to ensure that our current and future responses to pandemics are equitable and better. First, we need legislation that ensures that our public health responses, our health response and our social policy responses produce equitable outcomes. Second, we need equity-based federal and provincial COVID-19 health and public health plans. Third, we need equity-based social policy and recovery plans that ensure that the most hard-hit populations are served properly. Last, we need data streams, research and capacity building to ensure that we have good socio-demographic, race and ethnicity information on which to build and monitor public health, health and social policy interventions. I'll go through each of those in a little bit more detail.

Recommendation one is for legislation. We've actually seen racial disparities in infection rates and deaths in previous pandemics. During the H1N1 pandemic in Ontario, the Southeast Asian population was three times more likely to be infected, the South Asian population six times more likely to be infected, and the black population 10 times more likely to be infected than anybody else. Despite this, we did not change our systems to collect socio-demographic data. We did not do research or sit with communities to try to find out why the disparities exist. We went into COVID-19 without the surveillance systems or knowledge that would help us identify and deal with racialized health disparities. Then we set up a Titanic response—a one-size-fits-all, colour- and culture-blind pandemic plan that was predictably going to lead to health inequities. Some have argued that this was negligent. I just say that it shouldn't be legal. We have legislation for things we care about. We do not leave them to the largesse of professionals, public servants or politicians. If we want public services to produce equitable responses, we should enshrine this in enforceable law.

Recommendation two is for equity-based federal and provincial COVID-19 health plans. We would have a fairer response if we took a health equity approach to what is left of the first wave, to the second wave and to the recovery. A health equity approach aims to decrease avoidable disparities among groups. It ensures that people with similar needs get the same pandemic response and people with greater needs get a bigger response.

There are lots of evidence-based tools out there such as health equity impact assessments, which could be used to build these sorts of responses, and they have been shown to be effective in public health in Canada. But when we build equitable plans we also have to work with communities to develop strategies that allow them to protect themselves from COVID-19.

Recommendation three is saying let's have those equitable plans, but also let's link to what Dr. Siddiqi was talking about, because health equity recognizes that the risk of illness and the ability to recover are not just linked to health interventions, but also to the social determinants of health.

The Canadian Medical Association has calculated that 85% of our risk of illness is linked to these social determinants such as income, housing, education, racism and access to health care. This offers significant policy opportunities for improving health, because many health disparities are avoidable.

COVID-19 harms health in four ways: through the disease itself, through the side effects of public health response, through health care changes such as cancelled operations, and by the downturn in the economy. These interact with the social determinants of health so that some parts of our population are harder hit than others. As Dr. Siddiqi said, Canada's black populations have been hardest hit by COVID-19.

Our pandemic social policies and recovery plan need to be developed so they decrease inequality and reach the hardest-hit people. Decreasing differential risk linked to social determinants of health is an important intervention here, and probably one of the most important interventions. The idea of a focused recovery plan for the hardest-hit populations would not only improve our response, but would make those populations more resilient to future pandemics and future waves.

The last is numbers and data. I'm a researcher and I'm in a think tank. We think numbers and data are vital, and they have been vital in the fight against COVID. We've relied on the number of cases, the number of deaths, and suddenly everybody understands what an R number is, which I never thought would happen in my lifetime.

Numbers are also useful in indicating whether our interventions are working for everyone, and to do this we need disaggregated data. We desperately need better data streams on race and ethnicity and other social determinants of health for COVID-19, and for health in general. We need similar data, of course, for social policy. These data need to be good quality and there needs to be good data governance and accountability. Communities increasingly want a say in and control of the use of their data.

Wellesley Institute recommends that Canada collect individual-level associated demographic data for COVID-19, including race and ethnicity, and that Canada urgently undertake innovative analysis using existing data to get as accurate a picture of disparities as possible. Also recommended is that Canada develop a strategy for ongoing socio-demographic data collection for health and social policy, including race and ethnicity.

But data is not an end in itself. Data has to be linked to meaningful strategies to decrease disparities. This will mean engagement with communities, research and action to develop equitable public health and social policy interventions.

In conclusion, public health is the art and science of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts of society. Health equity interventions and the concept of social determinants of health are important tools in helping us to organize the best pandemic response. They are also a sound basis for health and social policy.

The one-size-fits-all strategy actually led to a huge death toll on the Titanic, and so far it's led to a significantly increased death toll for some parts of the Canadian population during the COVID-19 pandemic.

If we want a COVID-19 response and health systems to be more fitting for the 21st century, we need legislation that ensures equity; we need equity-based COVID-19 pandemic plans; we need social policy and recovery plans focused on decreasing current inequities and we need data streams and research that allow us to properly identify risk groups, build appropriate interventions and monitor their impact.

If we can put all of these in place, we'll move Canada's good response to being a great response, and we'll save lives.

Thank you very much.

11:25 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon

Thank you, Doctor.

We'll start our questions. We will do two rounds of questions and we will start the first round with Mr. Jeneroux.

Mr. Jeneroux, please go ahead. You have six minutes.

11:25 a.m.

Conservative

Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here today. It is fascinating testimony indeed.

Dr. Siddiqi, just to follow up on something you said, have you had success in obtaining some of the demographic information that you've talked about outside of just the greater Toronto area? More specifically, is there data on the location of cases available across Canada?

I know, for instance, that Ontario has a map that highlights COVID clusters, but is there anything being provided at the federal level that would be helpful to you?

11:25 a.m.

Associate Professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, As an Individual

Dr. Arjumand Siddiqi

There are two parts to it, and I might defer to Dr. McKenzie to help me out with his understanding of what data are available.

There are actually two issues. The short answer is no, I haven't, but there are two reasons why. One is that it's unclear to me the extent to which the data that are available—which tend to be area-level socio-demographics that we collect from the census, so when the census is done we get a sense of how Canadians are distributed across socio-demographic factors. We don't release that information, at least at all readily, at the individual level, but we do allow people to access area-level information. That needs to be linked right now to COVID cases, which is how we figured out what was happening in Ontario, without understanding what individuals look like. What I'm not sure of is whether other provinces have done that to the same extent, but it would be doable.

The second part of that is that it's worth stating that I, personally, have not accessed any of this data because we have a system in Canada in which agencies and institutions hold the data and they decide who gets to access it. That's very unlike, for example, the situation in the United States where we can download these things off the Internet. There is a lot of research activity that's happened there, a lot of information and analyses that have been generated about that society precisely because independent scientists can readily ask these questions of the data rather than relying on agencies and institutions that have a lot of barriers for doing so.

11:25 a.m.

Conservative

Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB

Great. Thank you.

I interpret from that answer that it would be helpful to have some of that national perspective data. Perhaps that's one recommendation we can give to the department.

Mr. Chair, seeing as this might be one of our last meetings, I do want to use my time to proceed with moving four motions. I'm certainly happy to read them. I have the four in front of me here, but I will ask you if you'd like me to read through each one. I know we all have them in front of us, but I would like to move those four motions at this time.

11:25 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon

Thank you, Mr. Jeneroux.

You have the floor, so you can, in fact, move the motions. If you do move them, you need to move them one at a time, and we can deal with them one at a time.

I should also advise that we are going to an in camera session after our second panel, so perhaps you might wish to choose to move them there instead.

11:25 a.m.

Conservative

Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB

I appreciate your advice, Mr. Chair. I'll proceed with moving the first motion. I'll start with the longest motion. If you want me to dispense at any time, please let me know.

I move that:

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(1)(a), the committee send for the following documents to be provided by the government by Monday, August 3, 2020 and that the documents be published publicly on the committee’s website by Monday, August 10, 2020: All documents, briefing notes, memorandums and emails, regarding the emerging evidence that altered the government’s advice on the wearing of masks referenced by Dr. Theresa Tam, Chief Public health Officer, at her appearance before the Standing Committee on Health on Tuesday, May 19, 2020, including all documents, briefing notes, memorandums and emails to/from/between Health Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada, the Minister of Health’s office, The Privy Council and the Prime Ministers office regarding the management of the National Emergency Strategic Stockpile from 2015-2020, including supply inventory broken down by number and all updates sent to the government and the Government of Canada’s contracts for PPE since January 2020.

11:30 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon

Thank you, Mr. Jeneroux.

Is there any discussion? Please signal your wish to speak by raising your hand.

Dr. Jaczek, please go ahead.

11:30 a.m.

Liberal

Helena Jaczek Liberal Markham—Stouffville, ON

Thank you very much, Chair.

I'm wondering if Mr. Jeneroux would consider possibly amending part of his motion, in particular the reference to emails. As you will no doubt recall, when we did pass a couple of motions previously, I think it was the decision of the committee that it would not in fact be particularly helpful. It would obviously be a huge amount of work in terms of collecting those emails. It would not necessarily substantively assist in what is really the goal of the motion, which is to find substantive documents in relation to government action.

I would like to make what I consider to be a friendly amendment—to delete the requirement that emails be included.

11:30 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon

Thank you, Dr. Jaczek.

Mr. Jeneroux, I see your hand up.

11:30 a.m.

Conservative

Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I guess I was anticipating something along those lines. I would indicate to the member and to the other members that emails obviously are important in the back-and-forth of this, because we know that's one way in terms of how they communicate. We also want to make sure that [Technical difficulty—Editor], because nobody here is in the government. Nobody here knows what those emails say. So it's helpful to the entire committee. Also, with reference to the last minister we had before us, Minister Champagne, he referenced text messages as being important. I know we've ceded on text messages before.

That all being said, I know that these are important witnesses that we all want to get to, so for this particular motion, we'll agree to the friendly amendment, I guess, Chair, if that's what it's called, to replace “all documents, briefing notes, memorandums and emails” with “all documents, briefing notes and memorandums”.

11:30 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon

Thank you, Mr. Jeneroux.

Do we have unanimous consent for that change? For that, I'll just ask anybody in dissent to please speak up.

Hearing no dissent, I think we shall deem the motion moved as Mr. Jeneroux has just signified....

Mr. Fisher, please go ahead.

11:30 a.m.

Liberal

Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS

Sorry, Mr. Chair, but can you just...?

I was going to agree to the removal of emails, as Ms. Jaczek and Mr. Jeneroux had suggested. Are you suggesting now that we're voting on the motion or that we're voting on that unanimous...and then, if there are other possible amendments to this motion, they would come after that?

11:30 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon

We're not actually voting. I'm just asking if there is unanimous consent for us to consider that Mr. Jeneroux has moved his motion without the reference to emails.

Any further discussion on the motion is in order.

Mr. Webber, are you dissenting from the unanimous consent?

11:30 a.m.

Conservative

Len Webber Conservative Calgary Confederation, AB

I am, Mr. Chair. I understand a bit more work is involved but I think these emails are important. It will not be unanimous. I will dissent. Thank you.

11:35 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon

Since there is no unanimous consent, if we wish to make that change it will have to be done by an amendment. Does someone wish to move such an amendment?

11:35 a.m.

Liberal

Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS

I move that we remove the word "emails" from the motion.

11:35 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon

Very well. Is there any further discussion on the amendment?

Seeing none, Madam Clerk, will you please call a vote on the amendment, which is to remove the reference to emails and, of course, make any appropriate grammatical corrections?

11:35 a.m.

The Clerk of the Committee Ms. Erica Pereira

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The vote is on the amendment. If you are in favour, say yea. If you are opposed, say nay.

(Amendment agreed to: yeas 7; nays 4)

11:35 a.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon

We will now continue our discussion on the motion as amended.

Mr. Fisher.