Evidence of meeting #6 for Health in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was clerk.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Tony Van Bynen Liberal Newmarket—Aurora, ON
For clarification, have the words “and hold one hour of committee business” been deleted? I don't recall seeing or hearing a motion to that effect.
Liberal
Tony Van Bynen Liberal Newmarket—Aurora, ON
Okay, right, so it would be helpful to hear the motion as amended.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
I'll take a stab at it. The motion as amended is that we invite the law clerk to appear on the panel with officials for the first officials' panel that we have for the House study.
Liberal
Liberal
Mike Kelloway Liberal Cape Breton—Canso, NS
On a point of information, Mr. Chair, I want to make sure I have it correct that it's officials and not witnesses. That's all I wanted clarification on. Thank you.
Liberal
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
Yes. Sorry, Mr. Chair, but I want to be clear. The motion is that the law clerk will come to the first meeting of the COVID study. Does it require us to have the officials in the second half? I'm unclear on that.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
It is to add the law clerk to a panel with such other officials as we invite to that meeting. It's not first panel, second panel; it's the panel with officials. We will add the law clerk.
Conservative
John Barlow Conservative Foothills, AB
I'm sorry. Perhaps I can intervene with information, Mr. Chair.
I'm not trying to muddy the waters here, but my motion and Ms. Rempel Garner's motion had nothing to do with officials. This was just to add the law clerk to a panel on our first meeting.
Perhaps Ms. Rempel Garner wants to chime in here, but my motion was to have the law clerk just for the one hour as part of a panel on the first study. I didn't include anything about officials or what that second hour would be.
I will maybe allow Ms. Rempel Garner to chime in there.
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
If I might, Mr. Chair, thank you for that clarification. The only reason I say that is this committee has not yet determined who the witnesses are—
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
—for our COVID study. Let's just nail down the first hour as having the law clerk for the COVID study, and we can cross that bridge when we come to it.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Are we clear? I see we have a certain amount of confusion here.
As I understood it, we amended, first, to remove the in camera part from Ms. Rempel Garner's motion. Then Mr. Barlow came along and changed it to basically get rid of the second part of the motion, and instead of having a stand-alone meeting, to add the law clerk to a panel of witnesses. I thought he said “officials”, but fair enough. We can say it's witnesses in general.
Are we clear that this is what we have agreed to so far? We are. Okay.
Is there any dissent from that? No. Okay.
That being the case, that is the motion before us. It is Ms. Rempel Garner's motion as multiply amended. It's that we will add the law clerk to a panel of the first witnesses we have for the House study.
Are we clear on that?
Okay. I think we're clear on that, so let's vote on it.
The vote before us is that we will add the law clerk to the witnesses we bring forward for the first meeting on the House study, which will be in public.
(Amendment agreed to: yeas 11; nays 0 [See Minutes of Proceedings])
Thank you, committee. We have now decided that we will include an invitation to the law clerk for the first meeting with witnesses that we call for the House study.
Going forward, we have Mr. Davies. Mr. Davies, go ahead.
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm going to move a motion that hopefully will allow us to plan our meetings until the holiday break. I served notice of that motion last week. I will read it into the record. I move that:
Pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, October 26, 2020, the committee commence its study of the emergency situation facing Canadians in light of the second wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic in the following manner: (a) each party shall submit four topics ranked in order of priority by the close of business Wednesday, November 18, 2020; (b) each topic will be examined in turn and by priority, on the following rotation: Liberal, Conservative, Bloc, NDP; (c) the committee will determine by majority vote the number of meetings allocated to each topic, holding a minimum of one meeting and a maximum of four meetings, unless determined by unanimous consent to hold additional meetings; (d) each party shall be entitled to an equal number of witnesses in accordance with the mandatory instruction from the House outlined in the order of reference of Monday, October 26, 2020; (e) all witnesses for the first round of prioritized topics shall be submitted within one week of the number of meetings for each topic being agreed to; and (f) once all four topics submitted by the four parties have been completed, the committee will determine if there are additional topics to be scheduled and, if so, will follow the process outlined in this motion once again.
Mr. Chair, to speak briefly to the motion, it would allow us to get started on the COVID study immediately, and it provides a process to do so by this Wednesday. The parties will submit their four topics ranked in order, and then we'll proceed with the Liberals' first choice. We'll have to decide how many meetings we allocate to that once we know what their first choice is. Then we'll go to the Conservatives' first choice, and then the Bloc's first choice, and then the NDP's first choice, and then we come back to the second and proceed, and so on and so forth.
I think this motion is fair. It allows each party to have an equal number of topics. As a matter of fact, once we submit our topics, we could even find that there's overlap. Perhaps we can even have discussions among ourselves to avoid that. I just want to make sure we have a full, broad examination of this topic.
I think we have to get started on the COVID study as a matter of priority. This is a very unusual situation in that the House of Commons has directed this committee to study this issue. I think when we marry that direction with the obvious red-hot pandemic gripping our country right now, we should get started on this right away.
I'm going to suggest a little bit more—
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
I'm going to suggest a little bit of scheduling beyond this. Again, this meeting is number eight. Friday we have the minister. That means we have six meetings after this before the holiday break.
Of those remaining six meetings, I am going to suggest that four of them be allocated to the COVID study and two to the PMPRB study, for a couple of reasons. We did pass a motion to study the PMPRB issue concurrently, which means at the same time, but that motion also required us to have a minimum of four meetings. If we have four meetings on PMPRB before Christmas, we would only have two meetings on COVID. I think that's not a justified allocation of time, considering again that the House of Commons has directed us to study COVID and that it's a far more pressing public health concern. I think we'd all agree on that. As important as PMPRB might be, along with dozens of other health care issues, it certainly is not more important than the COVID pandemic gripping our country.
I don't think we could hold all four PMPRB meetings and get a study done before the holiday season anyway. That would mean we'd have to basically allocate all six of our meetings to PMPRB before the holidays, which would mean this committee wouldn't be dealing with COVID until the end of January or February, which is, in my opinion, absurd.
That's what I'm going to suggest as a path forward to allow us to achieve everything we wanted to achieve, which is to get started on COVID and do the work Canadians want us to do, get started on the PMPRB study concurrently, and provide a fair process whereby all parties can address their issues.
I'm going to end by saying the reason I think the Liberals should go first is that they are the government. They have the largest number of seats, so I think it's only fair that it go in the order I proposed: Liberal, Conservative, Bloc, NDP. It mirrors the number of seats in the House of Commons, and I don't see how we could construct any fairer approach to getting under way. I sincerely hope we can pass this motion swiftly because, as I said before, it's already mid-November, and we haven't even started hearing from any witnesses on the health committee. I think I speak for all of us when I say we'd all like to do that and commence that.
The reason I want to pass it quickly now is so that we can get started. If this motion does pass today, we can have the topics by Wednesday. We'll know the Liberals' first choice by Wednesday, and then on Monday we can take a little bit of time to perhaps settle on the number of meetings, get the witnesses in and commence the study. Maybe in the time after that, we can get started on the PMPRB study.
I'll conclude by saying that of the six meetings, I don't think it matters which four are COVID and which two are PMPRB, but we can proceed in whatever way is most efficient for the committee.
Thanks to my colleagues for considering the motion.
Liberal
Bloc
Luc Thériault Bloc Montcalm, QC
I will start with the first thought in my head.
I quite agree about the fairness of the process. However, we are now in our sixth meeting. Since the vote in the House of Commons, there have been three meetings. If it is so important and urgent to study this motion, as I believe it is, we should have started this study three meetings ago.
It seems to me that, if one matter is proceeding well, it's the PMPRB. People have submitted briefs and have asked to appear despite the very short timeline of November 6. Today, we were supposed to consider their work and their requests to appear. We have half an hour left in which to settle that matter. We have taken the rest of the meeting to try to come to an understanding, once again, on the way in which we are going to study the motion passed in the House.
I feel we have to do that study, but we have set the deadline for the PMPRB as January 1. I would change that. We have six meetings left before Christmas. I would set aside four for the PMPRB, as per the motion we adopted, and I would set aside two for the COVID-19 study, because it will continue after Christmas, which is not the case for the PMPRB study. Let's keep in mind that the timelines are short and, if we really want to submit a report that could influence the decision, however slightly, we have to consider the recent call for the people who have submitted briefs and asked to appear.
It seems to me that, logically, we should reverse the order. We should determine when our four meetings on the PMPRB will take place and not leave that to chance. At the moment, my impression is that we are spending more time discussing the details of each tree than the forest as a whole. Usually, we discuss the details at the subcommittee. We hold public meetings of the subcommittee so that we can discuss the details. I am fine with that, but today is our sixth meeting. As for the study, apart from the opposition day when we were able to speak to the motion and pass it, which was a great step, we have made no progress on the substance of the motion.
I am sorry, but I will not be voting for this proposal because it reverses the priorities that we should have. People are waiting for us to recognize the effort they made on their side, to observe our timeline of November 6.
Liberal
