Health Committee on June 2nd, 2021

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

On that point, Chair, just for clarification perhaps, I have a question for the clerk. Did he say the law clerk and other officials would be available on Monday for a meeting? That seems reasonable to me. I would look for consensus from other colleagues, but first I'd like clarification from the clerk that they are available on Monday.

[The Clerk]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I know from the clerk that he has approached them. I'm not sure that all of the witnesses who have been requested for that meeting are going to be available on that day, but I would like to be able to adjust the schedule according to the availability of ministers and so forth for the other meetings as well, so that we can properly deal with all the matters that are before us.

That being the case, I would ask members to submit their witnesses for Monday, assuming it is not through the clerk, and then we'll do the best we can to make this motion a reality.

[The Clerk]

Mr. Chair, I must inform the committee that I will make the request for a three-hour meeting for Friday, but the whips have to decide in the end, so I don't know if we'll get permission to extend for one hour, to make it three hours. I just wanted to inform the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Clerk. We will try to adjust the schedule however we can or fit in that extra hour, if need be, somewhere else to make it happen. We'll do the best we can.

Dr. Powlowski, please go ahead.

[Marcus Powlowski, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

I would just like the Monday meeting to be back on COVID. I don't think we've actually talked about COVID for a couple of weeks. There are some issues that have come up in the meantime. For example, mixing and matching vaccines is kind of a new strategy. There are several other issues that we haven't addressed because of what's happened in the last number of weeks. I think we're all agreed that in previous speeches in our last meetings we've been taken away a little from our duty, which is dealing with COVID in the time of a pandemic, so I would hope that at our next meeting we could actually get back to the business of dealing with COVID.

Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Doctor.

We'll go to Mr. Davies.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

That being the case, I think we have to know what Monday's meeting is going to be on. If it's not going to be on the documents issue, then the only other two choices are to have the meeting on Monday, for which we each call two witnesses or to call one of those meetings where we have one witness in the first hour with the deputy ministers in the second.

I'm going to ask the clerk which he prefers, and I will canvass my colleagues as well, because if we're going to use Monday for that, we have to have our witnesses in by the end of tomorrow for sure in order to give the clerk a chance to notify the witnesses. Imagine calling witnesses who don't even know on a Thursday that they're being called to testify on the Monday—

[The Clerk]

The headsets are an issue also. I will have to ship them a pair of headsets.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I'm easy with either of those options, whether it's two witnesses or one, but if we do the one, then it's a fairly healthy list of deputy ministers. I'd like to ask the clerk if he thinks he can get the vast bulk of the deputy ministers to the meeting on Monday, if he asks them tomorrow.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Let's leave that as something the chair and the clerk can work out together with the officials and see what we can work out as a schedule. I would agree with you that by tomorrow you should have together your witnesses for Monday. That will give us the scope of action we'll need.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Is it one or two, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Let's make it two...whatever works. We can do it either way, but I just want to be able to schedule the meetings coming forward according to the availability of all the different parties. There are a lot of chess pieces on the board. We'd like these meetings to be as effective as possible, so we want to make sure all the people who need to be in them are available.

Please do get your witnesses in to the clerk by tomorrow, and then we'll do the best we can to make all of this stuff happen in good order.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Might I suggest then, Mr. Chair, that by the end of the day tomorrow we have our two witnesses in and prioritized, and then if the meeting on Monday will have only one witness in the first hour, with the DMs in the second hour, the clerk will know the schedule to contact the first witness.

In fact, that gives the clerk the flexibility to pick one or the other.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Absolutely. I think that's a great suggestion, and I think that's what we should go with.

Ms. O'Connell, please go ahead.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I was going to suggest that committee members should probably get their witnesses in. The fact that these meetings are no longer kind of themed, providing, as Don said, if you want to put a priority list so that the whole point of not having fixed dates was for flexibility based on attendance.... I would suggest that, even if you have more than two witnesses, maybe send that in, and the clerk can start sending the headsets. Even if they're not until next week or the week after, that gives the clerk something to work from.

We should be prepared for that, given that we need to be a bit flexible with schedules and House resources, etc., but I would suggest we put in our priority lists of witnesses, and if multiple witnesses are available, those parties can decide which ones, on which date and whatnot, but you can't do so until you get them in and get those headsets out.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Ms. O'Connell.

We'll go back to Mr. Davies, please.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

That is a really good suggestion by Ms. O'Connell.

This motion we've passed means we'll have five witnesses. There will be one meeting with two, and three meetings with one witness each. I would suggest that it not be a requirement necessarily, but perhaps we should try to get five to eight witnesses in by the end of tomorrow.

I want some flexibility, though, because if I'm going to be rushed to put five.... I haven't thought of all five witnesses yet. I can easily put in a couple, but if we try to put in five witnesses in a priority order, that might be helpful for the clerk.

The other thing I was going to mention, Mr. Chair, is that it will help the committee if, over the next few days, you come back with a schedule of how you want the next five meetings to go. I don't think we can know this meeting by meeting. It's hard to prepare that way—not to put a deadline on you—but it would be helpful if early next week you had some basic map of how the meetings are going to go.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Davies. I agree 100%, and I'll do the best I can. I will talk to the clerk and work with all the various moving pieces involved here, and make sure we do the best we can.

That being the case and seeing no more hands, I believe we have reached a meeting of minds. Therefore, thank you, everybody, and I declare the meeting adjourned.