Evidence of meeting #5 for Health in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was health.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Tamara Jansen Conservative Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
We've been talking about how broad these studies all are. This is extremely broad. I don't know if we want to think about that. Each of us is throwing forward something that could take years to study. Is there any way that you could focus it on something?
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Robert Gordon Kitchen Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
Basically, I'm wondering if Mr. Kelloway might want to respond to that first. He might solve what I'm about to say.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Mike Kelloway Liberal Cape Breton—Canso, NS
Sure. I think MP Jansen makes a good point. It's something we can probably do a deeper dive on to narrow its scope and come back at a later time, if that's acceptable to everyone.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Robert Gordon Kitchen Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
I appreciate hearing that because I was looking a motion along those lines that would break it down into demographic gaps amongst Canadian physicians, access to family doctors and primary health care teams, hospital wait times, and federal-provincial-territorial roles, to try to isolate that. I was going to propose that, but I'm just throwing that out there.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Mike Kelloway Liberal Cape Breton—Canso, NS
That's absolutely great to hear. I think it's something that the analysts and some others could perhaps work with us on to maybe put a tighter motion on the table that reflects some of the elements you have and some of the elements I'd like to tease out, if that's acceptable.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Mike Kelloway Liberal Cape Breton—Canso, NS
I would say it's probably best, since I think we have a growing consensus that we have something similar to work on, that we maybe put it on the shelf and attack it from a different perspective very quickly.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Is this a time when we should suspend for five minutes and have a chat amongst ourselves?
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Robert Gordon Kitchen Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
How about having a chat after the meeting, and then we report to our subcommittee members and ask them to...?
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
4:15 p.m.
A voice
Just one second, please.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
I guess we need to pass the motion, and then we can discuss the details in committee.
Mr. Fisher.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I think the idea was to come up with broad ideas about what the committee might want to study. We can figure out what those studies would look like, and how in depth they could or could not be, after we agree on the things we want to consider in a study and then prioritize them. I think this gives breadth. It offers what a lot of members want to do, and then we can flesh that out. We can work with the analysts and figure out what the study would look like.
4:15 p.m.
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
Well, I think I'm in agreement with everything we're saying, but for us to function well as a committee, I think we need to get clarity, which will maybe take some time. I do think that we need to pass motions here at committee with sufficient clarity that we know what we're voting on. If it's too broad and we don't know what we're voting on, we can't say that we'll let the subcommittee determine what we're to study, because then it's rendering the vote at this committee kind of meaningless.
I suspect there's already consensus that perhaps we could amend the motion to read “undertake a study on Primary care models, including examining”. Then I thought Dr. Kitchen's items were perfect: access to family physicians, rural-based care, and whatever it was; I didn't get them all. If we just include them as a focus, that gives precision to the committee but it's not closed-ended.
That's what I would suggest.
4:15 p.m.
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
I would move an amendment that after the word “models” we put the word “including”. I would defer to my friend in the Conservative Party to read out the issues he stated.
That's if it's okay with Mr. Kelloway. I don't know if that's getting at what he wants.