Health Committee on July 13th, 2020

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

Mr. Chair, sorry to interrupt, but also as a point of order, Mr. Kelloway asked if it was an appropriate time for him to move...as he had another amendment. You said that we were still on the previous thing, so he held back.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Mr. Chair, this meeting has been going on for two and a half hours. I think he's had ample time to debate his particular amendment, so I don't see that logic.

Mr. Kelloway, perhaps, dropped the ball and wasn't able to bring his motion forward, but that's the way things go. There are three other motions. I would welcome his bringing forward some other sort of—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

We're getting into debate on an important—

[Mike Kelloway, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

I have a point of order. I assure you that no balls were dropped, and I think—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Let's all maintain some decorum here. We're not going to debate the point of order. The ruling has been made.

We are now debating the amendment proposed by Mr. Kelloway.

Ms. Sidhu, you have the floor.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Mr. Chair, I support Mr. Kelloway's motion. Why? We are finding, from other committees, that it is essential to narrow the scope of what we are trying to get at. That is why I'm supporting this amendment; it will help to narrow the scope.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, I'm not hearing her at all. I'm hearing a lot of static. Is anybody else hearing that static? It's not coming through very clearly here for me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I'm hearing that your audio feed is broken up, so I suspect that there's a problem on your end. I would suggest, perhaps, that you deny us your face and try without video to see if it works better. That will cut down the bandwidth a little bit.

I'm sorry, Ms. Sidhu. Please go ahead.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I support Mr. Kelloway's motion. Why? We are finding, from other committees, that it is essential that we narrow the scope of what we are trying to get at. I think that, with this motion, we are aiming at that. I think it's a good amendment; that is why I'm supporting it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Ms. Sidhu.

We will go now to Mr. Fisher.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

When you have a memo going from one place to another, having that memo and having that memo are exactly the same. I think this is just a little bit of redundancy. You have your Public Health Agency in there. You have all the other groups in there. I think it makes sense that you don't necessarily have to have the “to” and the “from”.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Fisher.

We will go now to Ms. Jaczek.

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Yes, I'm also concerned about a lot of duplication. I think the memo is pretty inclusive, including, as it does, all the documents, briefing notes and memorandums between Health Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada and the Privy Council. Between these three, it's hard to imagine there would be any further documents that could be of interest from the Ministry of Health or from the Prime Minister's Office. I would expect that they would be the duplicates forwarded to them.

We're very mindful of the time taken by staff in preparing all of these documents, which takes them away from other tasks they're responsible for.

I think the amendment proposed by Mr. Kelloway is sensible and will result in getting documents that are interesting. We obviously want to see those documents. I think that what we have is quite sufficient.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Dr. Jaczek.

We will now go to Ms. Jansen.

Please go ahead.

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

I'm absolutely gobsmacked at the suggestion that we at the health committee decide not to have any documents from the PMO or the Minister of Health. If we want to dispel the fear that Canadians have right now about these issues, we need to show them that we have turned over every rock to ensure that we have done our utmost to protect them.

Any obfuscation on the part of the committee further harms the levels of trust that Canadians have in our institutions. I do not understand why we would want the motion to not include the Prime Minister's Office and the health minister's office. It makes no sense. Gain their trust, open up, be transparent.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Ms. Jansen.

Mr. Fisher, please go ahead.

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

When you talk about transparency and opening up, that's what we've done in this committee. On every motion that has come forward, this committee has worked very well together to come out with an outcome, so I take a little offence to this “open up and be transparent” thing when there's no lack of transparency here.

There's no need to have the "to" and the “from” in the same memos and briefing notes, to have it all and to put these public servants to this level of work and effort to get a carbon copy of what we're getting from another group. Also, a lot of these things are going to other committees as well.

I think it's relatively reasonable to think that we.... We just voted. The Liberal side didn't vote to support MP Kwan's motion. However, the rest of you voted to support MP Kwan's motion to narrow the scope, while we are trying to open it up to actually get to where people were wanting us to go. I think that what you'll see when things come out is that narrow motion is going to get you maybe less than you thought, but I could be wrong. We'll see when that comes forward.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Fisher.

We go to Ms. Sidhu.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

That is what we are proposing, to remove transactional communications between these two offices, along with other minor amendments, while maintaining the advice prepared by officials. It is a priority for a government department to respond to these production orders as quickly as possible. That is why I am supporting the amendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Ms. Sidhu.

Is there any further discussion?

I see Ms. Kwan. Please go ahead.

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

On this amendment I would argue that it would be important in fact to get the documents to the Minister of Health and to the Prime Minister's Office. At the end of the day, ultimately those are the two political masters, if you will, to whom things are put.

Therefore, I think we should be accessing that information. This really follows the government's perspective as well. In 2015, the Prime Minister wrote an open letter that said, “Government and its information must be open by default. Simply put, it is time to shine more light on the government to make sure it remains focused on the people it was created to serve—you."

“You” was the word used by the Prime Minister.

I think in that spirit we should apply the motion we are speaking about to the Minister of Health as well as the PMO. We are the health committee here, and these decisions are ones that are before the Minister of Health, and perhaps in some cases before the Prime Minister's Office as well.

I would not support the amendment proposed by MP Kelloway.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Ms. Kwan.

We go now to Mr. Van Bynen.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm leaning on my experience as a municipal official when we had an opportunity to look separately at each of these issues.

I think that it would be good value if we did the following with a subamendment I am proposing that we delete the “Prime Minister's office” in order for us to deal with the question of whether or not the Minister of Health's office should be included.

During my municipal experience, we divided the question. I don't know what the process is here. If that requires a subamendment, I would certainly propose it, but I think we should consider each one of those offices individually because each of them has different roles in this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Mr. Van Bynen, are you moving such a subamendment?

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Yes. The subamendment that I'm moving is that we delete, for the time being, “the Minister of Health's office” from the amendment.

What I'm trying to accomplish is that we first vote to leave “the Minister of Health's office" in there and delete “the Prime Ministers Office”. I'd like to first deal with deleting “the Prime Ministers office”, so the amendment would only include the Minister of Health's office.