Great.
Well, in a positive way for the health committee, I think we have some consensus on how we can move forward, and I want to thank Mr. Thériault for that. I'm also sensing some desire to put some clarification around the timeline for both stakeholders and committee members to be able to plan work schedules, especially in light of the COVID-19 study.
What I would like to do, and I will look to Mr. Thériault for whether he wants to support this...but I think there's a desire to amend the motion to clarify the written brief submission.
The amendment I would move would come after the words, “if the committee deems it necessary”, and would read:
that the committee issue a request for written briefs and for requests to appear by the end of the week with a submission deadline of November 6, 2020.
Here are my thoughts on this for Mr. Thériault. First of all, my understanding is that at this point in time, today's meeting is the only currently scheduled for the health committee this week. Then we'll have meetings next week should the motion on COVID pass in the House. I'm assuming that one of those meetings, at the very least, would be an organizational meeting to get ready for the House of Commons direction on COVID.
I don't want two weeks wasted, such that we wouldn't be scheduling witnesses for Mr. Thériault's study until the end of November. This amendment would be a very clear signal to the stakeholder community to augment this. What we would be saying is, please submit written briefs for consideration by the end of next week so that there's movement on the study, and the clerk can start considering this information. Then we would start scheduling witnesses once we have some clarity from the House on when additional resources could be provided.
Here's the other thing that I'm thinking about, Mr. Thériault. The week following November 6 is a recess week for the House. I'm assuming there's not as much of a drain on resources that week. As we're doing a concurrent study, it would allow us to schedule witnesses that week and plan out work.
I'm hoping that Mr. Thériault would be amenable to that.
The reason I'm moving it now is that I'm not sure when we're going to have another meeting to discuss the work plan. I would hate to see his motion not get scheduled until the end of November. It's more of a help for him. If we give direction on this today, we can start asking stakeholders for briefs and start the work right away, and then our stakeholder community would be happy with us.