Evidence of meeting #1 for Health in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was chair.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Mike Kelloway Liberal Cape Breton—Canso, NS
I suppose it's a point of order. I'm going to make the motion that we adjourn debate on this one. I think it's essential that we have time and not have to do it within an hour. It's not a game show. It's not a time-limited thing.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
If you wish to adjourn the debate, you need to move to adjourn the debate and say nothing afterward. Do you wish to move to adjourn the debate?
Conservative
Liberal
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
On a point of order, Mr. Chair, I believe Mr. Kelloway moved this motion on a point of order, which he can't do. Can I just get the clerk—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
I believe you can't move a substantive motion on a point of order. I will ask the—
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Could I get a clarification from the clerk on what happened there?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Please go ahead.
Actually, I didn't recognize him on a point of order, but he did say “point of order” when he spoke—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
—but he was not recognized on a point of order. I'm going to say that despite his saying he was bringing a point of order, he was not recognized as such, so we will carry on with the vote.
Carry on, Mr. Clerk.
(Motion negatived: nays 6; yeas 5 [See Minutes of Proceedings])
The motion to adjourn debate is not adopted, so we will carry on.
I am going to rule the motion out of order at this time—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Ms. Rempel Garner, I'm still speaking.
I'm going to rule the motion out of order at this time, pending the opportunity to review it—
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you.
Mr. Clerk, the motion is to sustain the ruling of the chair.
Conservative
Karen Vecchio Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Can we have a recorded vote, please?
(Ruling of the chair overturned: nays 6; yeas 5 [See Minutes of Proceedings])
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
The ruling of the chair is not sustained. Therefore, it would apparently be in order.
Mr. Davies, go ahead.
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
Thank you. I would like to speak to the motion. I might also just say that in my 12 years in Parliament, I have never heard anybody raise a point of order that someone else was recognized before they were. You know, we are going to have to have some stable rules and respect of the process in this committee. When the chair recognizes that someone has the floor, we can't be complaining after the fact that we should have been recognized.
Second, I am very glad that the committee saw fit to overrule your attempt to declare a motion out of order when it had been validly moved. You know, we may not like a motion before us, but that's not a reason to prevent us from discussing it. We are in our first committee and we are discussing committee business, and it is wholly in order for any member of this committee to put forward any motion they want—short, long, simple, complex—as they see fit. Complexity is not a reason for ruling a motion out of order.
Now, to the motion itself, to be honest, I am surprised that anybody on this committee—in particular the Liberals, who sat through eight months or really seven months of study on COVID with me—would find anything complex or challenging about this motion. Really what this motion does is a couple of very important things. It adopts all of the evidence that we heard from the previous session and, second, it continues the extremely important work this committee has in looking at the COVID-19 issue on a holistic basis. There is nothing surprising and nothing complex or disturbing and nothing that should be controversial about this motion.
I want to say, as my colleague Michelle Rempel Garner said, that we are facing the biggest public health crisis in a century, and while I totally respect the motion that was raised by Mr. Van Bynen to segregate this committee's attention onto mental health, as vitally important as that is, it is not the only issue facing this country as this point in time.
We are in the middle of a second wave. In fact, some might even argue that we are in a continuation of the first wave. Our two largest provinces in this country, Ontario and Quebec, are on red alert, with a thousand cases of COVID occurring in Quebec and, I think, cases approaching that in Ontario. As we speak, we are approaching the same high level of pandemic that we were experiencing back in March or April.
Now, HESA of course has a critical role to play in this. It's our job to evaluate the effectiveness of the federal government's response and, first and foremost, fundamentally to protect Canadians. That is what we are doing here across party lines, and I believe all of us share that same goal. It's about not only holding the government accountable but also the larger purpose of making sure that we can produce information that will allow the government to provide the best possible health care, safety and protection for Canadians.
In the last session, of course, all of us were dealing with COVID-19 on the fly. When this committee was meeting in March and April, it was unprecedented. We had no real context. We had no real experience. I remember back in March the health minister of Canada saying that the risks of COVID-19 were low. I remember the chief medical officer, the public health officer of Canada, saying that not only were masks not helpful but that they were harmful. Of course we had, I remember, Dr. Theresa Tam telling this committee that there was no real evidence of community transmission or asymptomatic transmission. These were all arguably somewhat forgivable errors back in March or April. It's now October. We have a lot of context here. We are facing a deepening of this crisis that, if you listen, public health officers across this country are warning us could get disastrous.
Therefore, I think it's incumbent on this committee to have a broad study. I think that the itemization is not exclusive; it is inclusive. The motion that's before us lists a number of things that I think are critically important for this committee to be studying, things like vaccine development. If there is one thing that Canadians are waiting for to get our economy back on track and to get public health taken care of, it's to develop a vaccine as soon as possible and to get that distributed.
We need to be delving into this to find out where we are with it. This can't be done by a task force in secret. We need all Canadians.... This committee has a right to ferret out full information on this, because it's the number one public health concern of every Canadian in this country.
I want to know why the early warning system, the GPHIN, was cancelled. I want to look into this, not necessarily only to hold people accountable, although that's critical, but also because I want to know if this network is back in operation. If not, why not? Who made the decisions?
On the adequacy of health transfer payments, which has been a very important priority to my Bloc colleague, it is critically important to look at whether our provincial and territorial governments have the resources they need.
On our level of preparedness for the next level of the pandemic, we know—let's face it—that the current and previous governments were caught with their pants down in preparing this country for a pandemic. We did not have sufficient PPE in this country.
As we stand on the verge of perhaps a second wave or a deepened wave, surely every person on this committee should want to do everything we can to find out how prepared we are today.
These are the kinds of matters covered by this motion. As much as Mr. Van Bynen's motion is absolutely something that should be looked into—I note this motion does look at the very important part of mental health—for us to limit ourselves just to mental health issues in light of all the rest of what I said would be flagrant irresponsibility and a dereliction of duty of this committee.
I want to conclude by saying one thing about redaction. Prime Minister Trudeau famously said that his government would be open by default. He pledged that the government would be transparent. When this committee asked for documentation to be provided—and we limited the criteria of redaction in our motion—it was ignored by the government. The ministry redacted information on 15 grounds, the grounds listed in the Access to Information Act, and not the criteria we specifically limited them to in our motion.
In my opinion, that was contempt of Parliament. It's not going to happen again. This motion requires the production of documents to this committee be limited only to redaction for national security concerns and personal privacy concerns. That's as it should be. In order for this committee and its members to do their job, we have the right and the ability to have the documentation before us unvarnished, so we can see the information on behalf of Canadians and do the job they elected us to do.
These committees are not nuisances to government. These committees aren't inconveniences to be managed by the government. We play a critical role in the parliamentary process. Part of that is to act as a second set of eyes and a set of information, and, to a wise government, a source of helpful information. We can't do that job if the government is censoring the information that comes before this committee.
I want to put down a marker right now that if this motion is passed, the information that comes to this committee better not be redacted beyond the information specified in this motion or that will be a clear and premeditated contempt of this committee.
Every member of this committee has an independent obligation to get the information we need to do our job. I can't imagine anybody, even on the government side—unless they are just doing the bidding of the government—who would want to limit the information this committee can see.
For all these reasons, I very much support this motion. I want to continue this committee's very critical work to examine the most important public health issue in this country.
There are a thousand issues in public health, and there are many that are extremely important. We all know what they are. Everyone on this committee has priorities, but surely we can all agree that standing above all of them right now is a global pandemic that is crippling our economy, killing our senior citizens in long-term care homes and threatening the health of Canadians from coast to coast.
I urge my colleagues to vote in favour of this motion. Once again, there is nothing complex about this motion; of course it is in order.
We should all be, I would hope, unanimous in getting back to the business of putting the health of Canadians before partisan interests and getting the study under way as soon as possible.
Liberal
Liberal
Mike Kelloway Liberal Cape Breton—Canso, NS
Thanks so much, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Mr. Davies, for your comments.
Most of everything that's been said today has a profound impact on Canadians. The pandemic has ravaged individuals, communities and sectors. It has touched mostly every facet, if not all facets, of life.
When I thought about voting on the motion, I looked at the e-mail I received. I think I received the motion at 2:52 p.m. Atlantic standard time. It's now 3:18 p.m. It's absolutely serious to every parliamentarian. For someone to own that, or say that perhaps it's of less importance to a particular group or party.... We're all in this together.
What I'm suggesting is that we take a little time to actually read what's been presented. Yes, our committee was one of the few committees that met during COVID. We interviewed copious numbers of witnesses, important witnesses, people who are impacted by this pandemic and people who are on the ground servicing the needs of people who are impacted by it. However, if we take just a little time to review, to do the due diligence that's important to do as parliamentarians, I think we'll do the people of Canada a great service.
All I'm asking for is the ability to take a look at this and give it a thoughtful reading. I think that's what Canadians expect, and I don't think they would expect anything less of us.