Thanks, Chair.
There's some really good discussion happening here. To start off, MP Michelle Rempel Garner made some good points in terms of the heaviness of not just today but this whole pandemic and how it impacts mental health. It's personal for me on multiple levels. What I heard today reinforced a lot of things I've seen in my own community and in my own family.
I want to go back to where Dr. Lalonde talked about pragmatic and practical approaches to this. Again, being somewhat relatively new to this job—I'll be able to say that for only so long—when we look at interim reports.... Again, I guess this is on the elasticity of the analysts, but I personally would be happy to do an interim report on the things that happened and were discussed before mental health. We could look at ways to bookmark this, with one on mental health and one on vaccines. Is that practical? Is that doable and whatnot? I've been an author of many studies. The worst thing that can happen when you do a study is that it sits on a shelf and gathers moss. Those are a couple of the things I wanted to bring up.
The other aspect of this is how we started off the conversation. To paraphrase it, we don't want this to be a way for the Liberal members to slow down discussion on vaccine, or meetings on vaccine, or whatever the case may be. You know, that to me is such a.... I'm trying to find the words here and I can't really find them. There is no way, in any reality check, that we would do that. Would anybody do that? Would anybody on this panel do that? Would any party delay a discussion on vaccines that is already lined up?
My hope is that throughout these sessions, because it is wartime, we sit down and.... Again, we can critique the hell out of each other and our parties' stances on this, but I wonder if we can start with the practical first and then work at the political second.