Like many of us here, I've sat on committees for a long time. What is customarily the case when we ask the minister to appear is that the minister appears for one hour on estimates, and then the minister's staff stays for the remaining hour. That was specifically and explicitly not done in this case. In fact, it's the first time I can remember a committee saying that it wanted the minister there for two hours, and why wouldn't we? We have the Minister of Health in the middle of the biggest “pandemic in a century.” Those are the words she uses, and she's right to use them.
By the way, it's also the governing party, the Liberals, that chooses when to schedule votes. They control the Order Paper in this case, and they chose to have a vote today in the middle of this meeting. One of the reasons that committees, which are the masters of their own business.... If we decide that we want the minister here for two hours because in our wisdom we believe that's the amount of time we need in order to have a fulsome explanation of the issues, then that's the will of the committee. If the government decides to schedule a vote during that time and to deviate and interfere with the committee's ability to enforce the very motion that we all passed...including the very same Liberals who are speaking today saying an hour is okay, who voted in favour of having the minister come for two hours, or if they didn't vote in favour, the majority of the committee said that's what it wanted, so that's what we need to do.
If you take this argument to its extreme example, the minister could have come, given her 10-minute statement and left, or she could have come and given a 10-minute statement and stayed for 10 or 15 minutes to answer questions. That's not what this committee requested and what we passed.
I think it's very unbecoming for a member of the government side to suggest that we're losing time when it's his own government that scheduled a vote that made it impossible for us to carry out a long-scheduled, two-hour meeting to have the Minister of Health come to answer questions.
I'm going to also say that one of the reasons we want two hours is that there are so many issues to canvass, and it's important to hear our colleagues' questions and the minister's answers so that we can actually follow up with further questions. When you only have one hour, that process is interrupted.
Where I'm going to conclude is where I started at the beginning of this. This motion says that she has to be here for a minimum of two hours. If she says that she can't be, then the motion cannot be respected, and we have no choice but to reschedule this. I sincerely hope that the minister will be available sometime next week to come for two hours. She has already offered generously to come for an hour. I'm sure we can find another two hours.
I'll conclude by saying that I realize there are a lot of important, busy people before this committee. So are the members of this committee. We are elected here by Canadians as the health committee, the Standing Committee on Health, to hold this government accountable. We haven't heard from the minister or Dr. Tam or staff for many months now. It's not an indulgence or a favour that the minister and these staff appear before this committee. It's their duty. It's their responsibility. The only question that we have here is that, of course, out of respect for the minister's schedule, we need to find an appropriate time. I'm sure we can do that. After all, we found two hours with the minister on slightly less than two weeks' notice already.