Health Committee on Jan. 25th, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I call this meeting to order.

I'd like to welcome everyone to meeting number 14 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health. The committee is meeting today pursuant to Standing Order 106(4), as requested by four members of the committee, to discuss their request to undertake a study of all matters related to Canada's COVID-19 vaccination strategy.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format pursuant to the House order of January 25, 2021. Therefore, members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website. So that you are aware, the webcast will always show the person speaking rather than the entirety of the committee.

Today's meeting is also taking place in a new webinar format—

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Pardon me, Mr. Chair, but there hasn't been any interpretation for the past four or five sentences.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I'm sorry.

Are you getting translation now?

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Right now, yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I'm not sure where I left off.

Today's meeting is also taking place in a new webinar format. Webinars are for public committee meetings and are available only to members, their staff and witnesses. Members may have remarked that the entry to the meeting was much quicker and that they immediately entered as an active participant. All functionalities for active participants remain the same. Staff will be—

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

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair, on that point. The “raise hand” function does not work. I would like my hand to be noted. I would like to be on the speakers list. The “raise hand” function in the update does not work.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

I was just going to say the same thing, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you.

The clerk's “raise hand” is working. Could you try that again?

We'll have to work without that particular functionality.

I shall continue—

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

Mr. Chair, on that point of order, I'd like to be recognized as the first to speak. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Yes, Ms. Rempel Garner. You will be first to speak to move your motion when the time comes.

Hopefully, the technical staff will be able to address this problem with the “raise hand” function.

I shall continue with the housekeeping matters here.

All functionalities for active participants remain the same—which may or may not be correct in the current circumstances. Staff will be non-active participants only and can, therefore, only view the meeting in the gallery view.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind all participants of this meeting that taking screenshots or photos of your screen is not permitted.

Given the ongoing pandemic situation and in light of the recommendations from health authorities, to remain healthy and safe, all those attending the meeting in person are to maintain two-metre physical distancing, must wear a non-medical mask when circulating in the room—it is highly recommended that the mask be worn at all times, including when seated—and must maintain proper hand hygiene, using the provided hand sanitizer at the room entrance. As the chair, I will be enforcing these measures for the duration of the meeting, and I thank the members in advance for their co-operation.

For those participating virtually, I would like to outline a few rules to follow. Members and witnesses may speak in the official language of their choice. Interpretation services are available for the meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of “floor”, “English” or “French”. With the latest Zoom version, you may now speak in the language of your choice without needing to select the corresponding language channel.

You will also notice that the platform's “raise hand” feature is now in a more easily accessed location on the main tool bar should you wish to speak or alert the chair. With regard to that point, I note that I don't see that particular functionality either.

Members participating in person, proceed as you usually would when the whole committee is meeting in person in a committee room. Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. If you are on the video conference, please click on the microphone icon to unmute yourself. If you are in the room, your microphone will be controlled as normal by the proceedings and verification officer. I will remind you that all comments by members and witnesses should be addressed through the chair. When you're not speaking, your mike should be on mute.

With regard to a speaking list, the committee clerk and I will do the best we can to maintain a consolidated order of speaking for all members, whether they are participating virtually or in person.

Before we start, I would like to make a couple of comments regarding the letter that requested this meeting.

First, the letter decries that it has been 45 days since the previous meeting. I find this odd since this is the normal intersession interval that happens every year at this time. There is nothing unusual or remarkable about it. The letter continues on to say:

We are deeply concerned that you have chosen not to call a meeting during the Committee's next regularly scheduled time slot. We expect the House of Commons to adopt a motion to renew the provisions which empower Committees to meet virtually. There is no reason this meeting cannot occur.

I should point out that, as of the scheduled start of the meeting this morning, there was, in fact, no such motion available, so the committee was not, in fact, empowered to meet at the prescribed time. There was also no clear expectation as to when such an authorization might be achieved, given that the state of the discussions last week was somewhat in flux.

It seems to me unreasonable to bring the House staff, to bring the committee staff and to set up witnesses who might sit there and hang all day waiting for such approval that might not come. I think it would be totally irresponsible to call a meeting in those circumstances.

This impediment is, in fact, acknowledged in the letter, which carries on to say:

If the house does not adopt an Order to empower this committee to meet safely, we will rescind our request to hold this meeting.

I would like to point out that this meeting was called on an erroneous pretext. Nevertheless, no such pretext is, in fact, required to call such a meeting. The only requirement is the signature of four members and a stated reason for holding a meeting, and those have been met, so here we are.

Let me say that I certainly welcome the opportunity to bring forward ministers at this time. I think it's very timely and very important. However, I have some concerns that the motion as proposed is not receivable. I'd like to explain why I have those concerns and follow up with some suggestions on how I think they could be addressed.

I note that the House motion of October 26 states:

That the Standing Committee on Health be instructed to undertake a study on the emergency situation facing Canadians in light of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, and that this study evaluate, review and examine any issues relevant to this situation, such as, but not limited to....

It then proceeds to enumerate a few examples.

I contend that this requires that any study, any receipt of information and witness testimony on COVID-19-related matters be subject to this motion. I think that is inherent in the request for the meeting itself today.

That being the case, I'm troubled as to where to fit this particular request in that structure. The most obvious place into which to fit that is paragraph (bb), which says:

(bb) within seven days after all documents have been tabled pursuant to paragraph (aa), the Minister of Health, the Minister of Public Services and Procurement, the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, and the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry be ordered to appear separately as witnesses before the Standing Committee on Health, for at least three hours each.

The problem with fitting that in is that it's triggered only upon receipt of all documents noted in the previous paragraph.

As we know from correspondence received from the Privy Council Office and the office of the law clerk, there are some millions of pages of documents in the offing, a substantial portion, the majority, of which of course require translation. This will involve a considerable amount of work and a considerable amount of time, and will also tax the capabilities of the law clerk's office in order to vet them for appropriate redactions and to prioritize them according to our previous request of the House.

This means that the timing of this paragraph (bb) being triggered is undetermined, and I suggest that is a problem we might want to rectify at this point.

Failing the application of paragraph (bb), paragraph (t) of that order specifies “that each party represented on the committee be entitled to select one witness per one-hour witness panel, and two witnesses per two-hour panel”. As we know, according to protocol and custom, ministers typically will attend in conjunction with other ministers and staff, but not at the same time as other witnesses. This kind of means that paragraph (t) of that order cannot be met by this motion.

In order to address those particular concerns, I would suggest to Ms. Rempel Garner that she might consider, when she moves a motion, first of all, incorporating a provision to report to the House a request to change paragraph (bb) from “within seven days after all documents” to simply “documents”.

Second, I would suggest that she indicate in the motion that the invitation to ministers be pursuant to paragraph (bb) of the House motion of October 26, and, provided the House grants concurrence to the indicated report, request changing paragraph (bb) and change the time in today's motion to three hours or drop the time entirely because it is actually encompassed in paragraph (bb) in any case.

That is my main point regarding the receivability of this, but I would also suggest that the second bullet of this particular proposed motion is not needed, and I would suggest that she omit it. The last meeting on the mental health aspects of COVID-19 is currently scheduled for Friday coming up. This provision of the motion would simply move that to Monday. Frankly, by Monday we could have that whole matter done and dusted, so I think this would be a good idea, and I would suggest that she just omit that particular requirement.

The last point is that the third point in this motion is in part redundant, to the extent that it duplicates some aspects of Mr. Davies' motion of November 13 and, to some extent, seeks to overturn it, although that is to the extent that the previous point on the mental health meeting is or is not retained as it stands. I would suggest in this case that when she moves the motion she change this aspect merely to specify how many meetings—between one and four inclusive per Mr. Davies' motion—to specify for the vaccine portion of the study.

That having been said, I will open the floor to Ms. Rempel Garner to move her motion as she pleases.

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

Thank you, Chair.

First, as vice-chair, I'd like to clarify some information that the chair provided.

The meeting we are currently undertaking as the Standing Committee on Health is happening during the middle of a pandemic that has caused many deaths in Canada and great economic burden on millions of Canadians. The meeting we're having is happening under the auspices of Standing Order 106(4). This is a procedural provision that allows members of the committee to call a meeting in order to consider business that might be of pressing urgency for the committee.

The notice that was provided to the committee, which precipitated this meeting, was done because of a very urgent situation that the country is facing right now. The fact is that many other countries around the world are receiving doses of what could arguably be described as the hottest commodity on the planet, the life-saving Pfizer vaccine. However, Canada is not, even though the government provided assurances to Canadians that this would be happening. This is something the government should have anticipated, given that it was briefed by the pharmaceutical company throughout the fall, and that production scale-ups happen when there's a new product.

The reason for this meeting is to hopefully move a motion to determine why Canada is not receiving these vaccines right now. Regardless of political stripe, I hope we can put aside our differences and agree that this is something that, at this present moment, the Standing Committee on Health should be investigating.

Why did we use Standing Order 106(4)? The chair asserts that there's nothing remarkable about this situation, that 45 days passed and that is the standard period of time that committees don't sit over the holidays, but this is exactly why 106(4) exists. I would argue that something remarkable has happened, and that is that dozens of people are dying in our country every day from a virus that could be prevented if people were administered the vaccine.

That characterization of bureaucracy and pedantry is standing in the way of the work of a parliamentary committee tasked with the mandate of health, during a pandemic. That it should somehow be unremarkable that it is not meeting is slightly problematic.

The second thing is that Parliament resumed on Monday. For those who are watching, and this might be inside baseball for people, our committee typically meets on Mondays and Fridays. There was no meeting called by the chair for this Monday. When I saw that last week, I was concerned. It meant that the committee would not have met for business today, which meant we wouldn't meet until Friday. We would have had a meeting called by the Liberals, and we probably wouldn't have had an opportunity to call the Minister of Health or the Minister of Procurement to talk about a vaccine shortage that is literally killing people and will be for some time to come in the future.

Canadians deserve better than that, and that's why we put this request forward. We need to put aside bureaucratic arguments about why the committee isn't meeting, and start meeting the needs of our constituents. That's what this committee is for, to actually hold the government to account on its decisions.

The chair has put forward a bunch of reasons why we should be editing this motion, and why it could fit under this motion or that motion. The reality is that the committee has the ability to change its mandate and its tasks as it sees fit, as the government often reminds us when we ask questions about committees in the House when the government manages to put things through that it finds beneficial.

In this situation, it's important to remind the chair that we are facing a monumental challenge in this country. We need answers on why we have a vaccine shortage and, more importantly, what the government is going to do to fix it. That's the only hope we can offer Canadians right now, and it's of the greatest significance. What we're discussing is probably the greatest thing that Parliament is doing right now. That's the gravity of this, and we need to do this.

I would be very uncomfortable going back to my constituents and reading a lot of wordy procedure as to why we couldn't invite the health minister or the Minister of Procurement, who is responsible for getting Canada the vaccine, to the health committee today.

I actually don't accept any of the rationale the chair tried to put forward with regard to how I should edit my motion. The motion I'm about to put forward is in the best interest of all Canadians. It still allows the Liberals to proceed with the meetings they've put forward. It gives the Liberals, actually, the opportunity to decide whether or not they want to proceed with a meeting that was agreed to in an entirely different context six weeks ago, before we were in a vaccine shortage that other countries aren't in right now. That's really going to be up to the Liberals. I'm going to work that into the wording of the motion.

Given the shortage, and given that we need answers for Canadians, I think it's important that we consider the motion as I put it forward in the letter. Canadians need to know when exactly they're going to be able to get a vaccine, and the provinces need to know when vaccines are going to arrive so that they can plan to deliver them.

Chair, should you rule it out of order, my instinct would be to challenge your ruling for all of the reasons I just gave you. We have to do this, and you know it. Every Canadian is depending on this committee to do this type of review. We have doctors on this committee. We need to get to the bottom of this, and we need a path forward.

With that, Chair, I move:

That the committee invite the Minister of Health, the Minister of Procurement and their officials to appear before the committee for no less than two hours each regarding all matters related to Canada’s COVID-19 vaccination strategy, and that this meeting occur no later than February 5, 2021;

That in accordance with a motion previously passed by the committee, the clerk of the committee be instructed to schedule the final agreed-upon fourth meeting regarding the Liberal-selected mental health theme of the COVID-19 study during the committee’s regularly scheduled meeting on February 1, 2021, unless the Liberal members of the committee elect to forgo this meeting in favour of beginning meetings on the next theme of the committee’s COVID-19 study;

That the committee select its next theme of the COVID-19 study in the agreed-upon manner set out in the original motion, with the next theme being selected by the Conservative members of the committee, with the Conservative members selecting the theme of all matters related to Canada’s COVID-19 vaccination strategy, and that the first meeting of this theme commence at the next regularly scheduled meeting of the committee after February 1, 2021, which is February 5, 2021, unless the Liberal members of the committee elect to forgo the last meeting in the prior theme per the option outlined above, and that parties shall submit witnesses to the clerk for these four meetings pertaining to vaccines no later than January 28, 2021 at 4 p.m. Eastern.

Again, to colleagues who are considering how to vote on this motion, every one of you has communities that are under lockdown right now. For those of you who are in Quebec, your community is under a curfew. Many of you have long-term care facilities in your riding. I know I have colleagues who have emailed me that they've had a variant go through their long-term care facility, and 40-plus people have died in recent days. Front-line health care workers are calling in tears, asking, “When am I getting my vaccine?” In some cases, some people have received one dose of the vaccine and are not sure when they're going to get the second. If it's delayed for a certain period of time, what does that mean for their health? Is it going to work? Provincial governments are telling the federal government that they can't deliver what they don't have.

There are times when we will fight on this committee. There are times when we are going to disagree on policy, but this motion is very reasonably laid out. It gives the Liberals the option of proceeding on Friday per the schedule we had before Christmas, before all of this happened. That's really up to the Liberal Party. I didn't want to fight you guys on that. It's up to you.

We give you the choice, but there is no situation in which the Liberals can argue that the Minister of Health and the Minister of Procurement should not be coming before the federal Standing Committee on Health within the next couple of weeks to answer these questions. Every day that we go without having them, without getting these details and just hearing more platitudes, is another day that people are getting infected, that health care workers have stress and anxiety and that we're under curfew or lockdown.

We have the foreign affairs minister floating the idea of the Emergencies Act. Our country needs to get this together. For those of you who haven't had a situation like this—or perhaps it's your first term in Parliament—this is real, and this is why this committee exists. It exists to get these types of answers. Should this motion pass, what it's saying is that we're going to start the next theme of the study either next week or on Friday, depending on what the Liberal Party wants to do.

It's up to you. Mental health is important. Vaccines are important. It's over to you guys.

Also, to get some answers, we're inviting to committee the ministers who are responsible for getting Canada's vaccines. How are we getting through this? I'll be very honest with you guys. I just had a devastatingly terrible panel on CTV National News with one of our Liberal colleagues, who was trying to suggest that Canada wouldn't make the target unless we were approving vaccine candidates that no other country has approved. He then had to walk that statement back. I'd like to have the ministers here to get to the bottom of that.

With deep respect and humbleness, I submit the motion as put forward in this Standing Order 106 notice. Chair, if you rule it out of order, I will be challenging you on that ruling, because I believe that you would be ruling it out of order based on pedantry, not on the Canadian public interest. I would encourage all of my colleagues to ensure that your ruling is overturned.

We need to have the ministers here and we need to get some answers from the pharmaceutical companies on vaccine supply, because we need a path forward. I would not feel comfortable as a vice-chair for the Standing Committee on Health, as a member of Parliament or as a Canadian if we were doing anything less. This is what we need to do over the next month as a committee: put differences aside and get to the bottom of this.

For those of you who are Liberal Party members, I have had moments where I have had to think about what is in the best interests of my constituents and not necessarily in the best interests of my political party. I would really encourage you to think about that in this moment.

There is no reason, no logical reason, why the Minister of Health and the Minister of Procurement should not be coming before the federal Standing Committee on Health at this moment in time. I'm hoping that we can dispense with this motion, we can support it, we can schedule things out and we can move forward with getting some answers and some hope for Canadians.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Ms. Rempel Garner.

I would like to respond to a couple of points you made. This meeting was not called by the Liberals. It was called by the chair.

You've mentioned that the committee is empowered to change its mandate and to set its own tasks. That is normally the case. However, we are also bound in this instance by the order of the House, which overrides those particular freedoms, and it is my job as the chair to attempt to maintain the integrity of that motion and to enforce it as well as can be done.

While I certainly share your view that it is important that we get the ministers before us—and I have many suggestions that would make that possible—under the particular constraints of the House motion of October 26, I don't see how we can do that except as I have proposed earlier. In that respect, I am obligated to find that this motion as moved is unreceivable in this—

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

I challenge the ruling.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you. That's understood.

Shall the decision of the chair be sustained? If you vote “yes”, then you're supporting the decision of the chair. If you vote “no”, you are voting to overturn the decision of the chair.

Mr. Clerk, I would ask that you conduct a roll call vote.

(Ruling of the chair overturned: nays 6; yeas 5)

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Clerk, and thank you to the committee.

Since the committee considers this matter to be receivable, the motion stands. However, I'm still obligated to try to fit this into the requirements of the House motion, and since paragraph (bb) does not pertain here, that brings paragraph (t) into operation, which provides that each party has the right to submit one witness per one-hour meeting and two per two-hour meeting. As noted, this doesn't really fit when we're inviting ministers, so this cannot be met in the case of ministerial appearances.

However, this is a right that the parties have, not an obligation. They are not obligated to submit that number of witnesses. The parties can agree to waive their right, but this would require that the motion be agreed to unanimously.

On that caveat, it is my ruling that this motion will need to have unanimous consent to pass.

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

I challenge your ruling.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I understand. I'll put it to the committee.

Mr. Clerk, would you please conduct the vote?

(Ruling of the chair overturned: nays 6; yeas, 5)

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Clerk, and thank you to the committee. Frankly, there is no surprise there, although I feel I have fulfilled my obligation to enforce the House motion as well as I could.

We will now undertake debate on the motion, as Ms. Rempel Garner has proposed it.

We now have hands showing up on the participants list. That seems to be working now, so for points of order I will ask people to sing out verbally and we will try to keep track of those. For the speaking order in the debate, I would ask that people use the “raise hand” function, unless that continues to not work for any of you.

First up, I have Mr. Davies. Please go ahead.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Once again, it's good to see everybody back. I hope everybody had a chance to relax, and I wish a happy new year to everyone.

I'm going to speak in favour of the motion. If I get right down to the chase here, I don't want to comment on events that have just been ruled upon, but we're here because it's Monday and, up to now, we haven't heard anything from the chair about what the proposed schedule would be. I heard the chair reference that this Friday we would be doing the mental health study. I haven't seen any notification of that.

One thing we all share is a sense of urgency. I would have hoped that last week we would have received a proposed schedule of meetings from the chair that allowed us to meet today, this Friday and next week in an orderly way, so that we can get right to business. However, that didn't happen.

I also want to point out that a Standing Order 106 meeting is an extraordinary meeting. It's the prerogative of any four members of this committee to sign such a letter and cause us to meet within the prescribed time period, and that can be at any time. With great respect to the chair, that operates in addition to the normal business of the committee. It doesn't contradict, in any way, any motion that's previously been passed, so I find this motion in order.

The real question is this: What does this motion do? The motion calls the ministers before this committee. I think it gives them until February 5, which I think is respectful. I'm open to suggestions. I know the ministers are busy but it's January 25 today, so that's a good 10 days from now. I think I speak for all members of Parliament and every Canadian when I say that we're extremely anxious about the state of vaccines in Canada. Governments do what governments do. The government may try to put forward as positive a picture as possible, but the fact is that we're receiving no vaccines this week and receiving 79,000 vaccines next week. The United States last week vaccinated an average of 1.1 million people a day. We haven't even vaccinated 800,000 people in Canada to date, so we have production issues.

I want to also point out that, just this morning, there was disturbing news out of the EU that they are thinking about proposing export controls on vaccines manufactured in Europe. The government blithely says that this is just a temporary disruption and not to worry about it, but there could be other problems coming. The fact that the government has not released a single word of a single contract it has signed with seven vaccine manufacturers leaves us in the dark on this. I think all Canadians deserve to know what's going on as much as possible, and I think the ministers have an obligation to come to our committee to address this.

The other thing I like about the motion is that it proposes a way forward. I'm open to some finessing of the dates, but the way I read the motion is that Monday hence, we have our fourth meeting on mental health, which was the final meeting of the Liberals' priority on the COVID study, so that takes care of next Monday. The following Friday we begin the first meeting of the Conservatives' priority, which is on vaccines. By the way, I still think as a committee we need to pass the assessment of how many meetings we will attribute to that. Ms. Rempel Garner's motion mentions four, but we do have to formally decide that. I personally will support four meetings.

That leaves us with the question of when we schedule the ministers if they have to appear before February 5, which is next Friday, as the motion suggests. That would mean we would have to have the ministers here between next Monday and next Friday.

I'm not going to move this at this point, because I want to hear what my colleagues have to say about this, but it would make sense to me to reschedule this a little by saying this Friday is the fourth meeting of the mental health theme of the COVID study. We then begin the Conservatives' first day of vaccines on Monday, and then we invite the ministers to come the following Friday to give the ministers the maximum amount of time to come.

I would be interested to see how Ms. Rempel Garner feels about that, if that's a friendly amendment or if she feels strongly about that. I don't see in the motion what we're doing with this Friday. Given the urgency that she so eloquently spoke of, and that I think we all feel, I would like to use this Friday, if at all possible.

The final thing the motion does, and I think it's positive, is that it gives a deadline for our submitting witnesses for the vaccine component of the study. I think it's January 28, which gives us several days to submit what amounts to four witnesses. We each get one witness per meeting, assuming the committee agrees that we'll allocate four meetings to the vaccine part of this study, which I personally will support. I think most of us will, because we all know how important vaccines are.

Those are my thoughts on why I support the motion. I would support it the way it's presently written, but I think my suggestions of utilizing this Friday and putting some shape to these meetings make sense. I'm interested in hearing my colleagues' thoughts on that.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Davies.

I would point out that at no time did I indicate that the use of Standing Order 106(4) was inappropriate or out of order.

I should note that although I thought the notice had gone out, we had scheduled for this coming Friday the last meeting on the mental health portion of the study, as I mentioned in my previous remarks.

We'll go now to Mr. Thériault.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I don't want to repeat what my colleague Mr. Davies said. However, there are still some things that must be noted.

First, I want to commend my colleagues' efforts to hold this type of meeting this evening. We must move quickly to organize our work. Without the motion—signed by four of our colleagues—to hold this evening's meeting, we wouldn't be trying to organize our work quickly.

Mr. Chair, I'm a little surprised that, in your opening remarks, you didn't refer to a new development over the break. We heard reports of a vaccine supply disruption. We're well aware that, in the current crisis, the only way to see the light at the end of the tunnel is to vaccinate people as quickly as possible, especially the most vulnerable people and the front-line workers.

Restrictive measures are in place. The measures in Quebec are particularly stringent. I'm thinking of the establishment of a curfew. In barely an hour, we'll be under curfew. As a result, we must be able to start organizing our work this evening.

Of course, the House couldn't have known in advance about the agreement regarding a hybrid Parliament. However, in practice, as soon as it became clear that everyone would set aside partisanship and agree on the hybrid format, it was entirely appropriate to arrange to meet as soon as possible, on the same day that Parliament returned, in order to organize the committee's work.

The motion moved by my colleague Ms. Rempel Garner simply seeks to organize our work in accordance with the motion adopted by the House. This is absolutely what the motion seeks to do. Furthermore, she was careful not to upset our Liberal colleagues who, before the holidays, wanted the committee to start the study of the motion passed in the House by looking at how the crisis is affecting mental health. My colleague was also kind enough to point out that the Liberals could, if they wished, ensure that the committee immediately address the vaccination issue, which is the most urgent. She gave them the choice.

I see in this motion nothing more than a desire to organize our work in a way that saves time. That's why I support the motion. The motion also states that the vaccination issue, which was everyone's priority before the holidays, is the Conservatives' priority. In light of the supply disruption and the scheduling issues, I'd like the Liberals to quickly tell me whether the government, on its honour, is making a commitment to all taxpayers in Quebec and Canada to meet the vaccination targets.

We must be able to quickly ask the Minister of Health and the Minister of Public Services and Procurement questions. I gather from the motion that we could start a series of four work sessions next Monday.

We voted against your ruling that the motion is out of order. I commend my colleagues' efforts and I want to reassure all my colleagues. This crisis is significant enough. This crisis has resulted in far too many deaths for us to indulge at times in partisan politics. I can assure you that I'll never let myself get drawn into this type of vice or partisan behaviour.

I'm here this evening in good faith. I'm pleased to see that, as soon as the House returned, we could meet and organize the committee's work. This includes shedding light on the vaccination and the issues encountered.

That's why I support the motion and why I challenged your ruling, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Thériault.

We will go now to Mr. Fisher.

Mr. Fisher, go ahead, please.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank all of the members who have spoken so far and the mover of the motion for recognizing the importance of this topic.

We recognized the importance of this topic when Mr. Davies, in his brilliant moment of bringing us all together, brought forward something we all supported. Not knowing the Fridays and the Mondays and all the different dates, I was under the expectation that we would begin studying vaccines on Monday. Perhaps that's not the case, but I do think it's something that we all agreed we needed to study.

No one on this committee, since we've formed, has ever voted against having the ministers come to this committee. I think we all—and I see some heads nodding—know that we want to have the ministers here and I do believe we all want the ministers here to speak on the topic that Ms. Rempel Garner brought forward today.

Mr. Chair, I am not exactly sure how I can get.... I know we can't have a back-and-forth between members, but was there, in the motion, the intention that this would be one of the up to four vaccine meetings, and that this would represent a culmination of all of the parties' witnesses for that particular meeting?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Mr. Fisher, the motion is silent on that. If that's something you wish to clarify, it's something you should amend the motion to take care of.

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

It may not need to be amended. I would like to ask Ms. Rempel Garner if it was her intention that the vaccine meeting with the ministers—whether it's the first one or the second one, and hopefully the first one—would be one of the up to four that the committee determines? I think we're all going to support going to the maximum on this.

I know, Mr. Chair, it's unusual to ask another member, but is it the intention of the motion that this would count as one of the up to four meetings that this committee is choosing to do as its next study?