Health Committee on Oct. 9th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Yes, certainly.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Chair, I have a point of order as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Yes, go ahead.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

It's more of a suggestion. I'm just wondering if we can get unanimous consent from everybody on the committee to adopt the routine motions as a whole. They were distributed to members, and if we don't have any objections to them, we can adopt them all at once and save time. Maybe you can test the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Is it the will of the committee to proceed this way? Do we have any dissent?

I recognize the will of the committee. I think it's appropriate in this case that we do that. I would caution, though, that on an ongoing basis we should make sure to do motions one at a time. I think there's less confusion that way, but with routine motions, we'll be fine.

Once again, I'll test the will of the committee. Is it okay if we pass all the routine motions in one fell swoop? Is there any dissent?

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

Mr. Chair, are you talking about passing every motion in the routine motions as we did prior to virtual Parliament?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

That is correct. That is Mr. Davies' suggestion.

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

I only have one concern. I remember that when we were doing these things, there were hiccups with technology. There would be 10 minutes with some of our witnesses, and then we would go over our time. Quite often there were times when a member who was going to speak near the end wouldn't get a chance to speak. I don't know if that's a concern of other members on the committee, but I think it's important that everybody and all parties have a chance to speak.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

One of the routine motions says that witnesses will be given 10 minutes for their opening statements. I think if we're going to modify that, we should deal with that separately.

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

Mr. Chair, I'm okay if you use chair management on that, but we should make sure that all members are okay with that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

All right. The suggestion is that we adopt the routine motions from the previous session as is, except that the motion that the witnesses be given 10 minutes for their opening statements would be amended so that witness statements can be shortened at the discretion of the chair.

Mr. Fisher, do you have a suggestion for what—

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

Actually, I would say keep it the way it is, if all members on the committee are okay with the chair using his discretion to ensure that all members get a chance to ask all the questions they want to ask.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

I have a comment on this point, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Yes, go ahead.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

From my understanding, now that all committees are going to be meeting virtually, it is not likely a possibility that committees can extend past their original slots, which would preclude members of the opposition from asking questions, depending on the speaking order. It would be the preference of the Conservative Party that witness statements be held to five minutes to allow time for technical difficulties. I believe the PROC recommendation was that witnesses submit their written statements to members ahead of time.

I look to some of my colleagues for thoughts on that, but I don't think it's technically possible for the meetings to go over time so that everybody can speak. I'd hate to see us in a situation where members don't get their speaking slots because we've allowed witnesses, especially department officials, 10 minutes when they could have submitted statements ahead of time.

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

I think that's an excellent suggestion, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

The suggestion I'm hearing is that we adopt the routine motions as is except that witnesses not be given 10 minutes, as previously, but five minutes for their opening statements. All else will remain the same.

Are we in agreement on that?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Chair, I have a comment on that.

It's not a hill that I would die on, and Michelle makes a good point. My only concern is that we're adopting routine motions for this entire session. We might or might not be operating under virtual guidelines for the entire session, so the real question we have to ask is whether five minutes is sufficient for a witness.

In times when we've had people come to Ottawa or when we're inviting experts and people who are very busy to come to committee, quite honestly five minutes is not very long for someone to be able to make a meaningful contribution to the committee. I don't know how much time we'd gain. Generally, we have two witnesses per hour, so you're talking about gaining 10 minutes.

Again, if it's the will of the committee to reduce it to five minutes, so be it. However, we've all spoken in the House, and it's very difficult to express a well-developed position or to give information in that time, so if we're asking people to come to committee, five minutes is too short. That's my sense of it. I don't think we gain too much as a result of that. That's just my two cents.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Okay, let's do this: Let us propose to adopt all the routine motions except the one regarding opening remarks and questioning of witnesses. We can adopt all of them in one block, and then we can deal with this and amend it appropriately as a second step.

Would it be acceptable to proceed in that way?

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

I still think we could use good chair management and get through this and make sure that everyone gets a chance to speak. If we had four witnesses, perhaps the chair could say you get five minutes, or six minutes; and if there are two witnesses, maybe....

That way, we get what Ms. Rempel Garner has suggested, but we also cover what Mr. Davies has suggested.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Let's get on with the other motions and sort it out. There doesn't seem to be any disagreement or discussion on the other motions. Let's pass all the other motions, and then we'll deal with this particular motion separately.

Don, go ahead.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Sorry, Mr. Chair. I don't want to get bogged down here in too much minutiae, but quite honestly, I think you misinterpreted what Mr. Fisher was saying.

I think what Darren was talking about was giving you discretion to extend the meeting so that we could get all the questions in, and you've interpreted that to mean a limitation on the speakers' time. Maybe I'm misunderstanding that, but the thing is, if you start changing one part of the routine motion to limit it to five minutes, it could affect other things as well.

One thing I was going to suggest that maybe can solve this is to do as you say, by adopting all the routine motions except the one on the witnesses' length of time, and just amend that to be “up to 10 minutes”. I think that meets what Mr. Fisher was talking about.

I don't think this is a routine motion issue. It's more a question of practice. It's that if we are allowed to extend the meetings and we have that time, then as we did last session, we can continue the meeting past the two hours in order to get more questions in, if that's technically feasible. As Michelle said, maybe it's not, but in the event that it is, we always have the ability as a committee to agree to extend the meeting to get the last couple of questioners in and give everybody a chance to ask the questions they want.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I'm seeing that you're in favour of dealing with this particular motion separately and passing all the other routine motions in one fell swoop.

Again I ask, is that the will of the committee? Is there any dissent?

Seeing none, I declare that all the routine motions, except the one regarding opening remarks and questioning of witnesses, are passed.

(Motions agreed to)

I welcome our analysts to the meeting as well, formally, because now they get brought into the picture.

Now let us carry on with the final routine motion, which is the matter of time for opening remarks and questioning of witnesses.

The motion as it existed previously was:

That witnesses be given 10 minutes for their opening statement; that, at the discretion of the Chair, during the questioning of witnesses, there be allocated six minutes for the first questioner of each party as follows: Round 1: Conservative Party, Liberal Party, Bloc Québécois, New Democratic Party.

For the second and subsequent rounds, the order and time for questioning be as follows: Conservative Party, five minutes; Liberal Party, five minutes; Conservative Party, five minutes; Liberal Party, five minutes; Bloc Québécois, two and a half minutes; New Democratic Party, two and a half minutes.

Would somebody like to move that motion?

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

Mr. Chair, I liked what both Ms. Rempel Garner and what Mr. Davies said.

Mr. Davies' suggestion that you just make it “up to 10 minutes” for the opening statements gets us to where all the members would feel comfortable. That's how I saw the situation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Let's move the motion, and then we can entertain amendments to it.

Mr. Kelloway, you were moving routine motions. Would you like to move that motion as it stands?