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
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
I think that's essentially what you dealt with in your previous motion. It's substantially the same, so I'm going to rule that amendment out of order.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Chair, I challenge your ruling, given that my amendment had two components, including a change of the number of meetings. I would say that this is different and I challenge your ruling.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, Ms. Rempel Garner.
The question is whether the decision of the chair shall be sustained. Mr. Clerk, could you please take the vote?
(Ruling of the chair sustained: yeas 6; nays 5)
The chair's ruling is sustained.
Mr. Davies, your hand is up. Please go ahead.
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
I think it's really important to clarify. I think that everybody agrees, and I want us all to be on the same page. I want to reassure Ms. Rempel Garner that the motion reads very clearly that we will be picking the priorities of each party and then going in turn.
The other thing is that perhaps I shouldn't have ventured into the number of meetings. You are right, Mr. Chair, that this motion does not speak to the number of meetings that we allocate at this point. It allows us to set those. All it obligates us to do is to have our priority issues in by Wednesday, and then next week we can determine how many meetings we will allocate.
I also wanted to reassure Ms. Rempel Garner that the number of meetings that are attributed to each issue is to be determined by majority vote of this committee. It just sets out a minimum of one and a maximum of four.
Once we determine what the issues are, then we will have an opportunity to discuss how many meetings will be allocated to that particular issue. We'll settle that by a majority vote.
I hope we can pass this motion now so that we can have a path forward. I think it will satisfy everyone at this point.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, Mr. Davies.
Is there any further discussion on Mr. Davies' motion?
Seeing none, I'll ask the clerk to please conduct the vote on Mr. Davies' motion.
The motion is as Mr. Davies moved it. We've had copies distributed in both official languages, and there have been no effective amendments.
Please go ahead with the vote.
(Motion agreed to: yeas 7; nays 4 [See Minutes of Proceedings])
Thank you, Mr. Davies, and thank you all.
We've reached the normal end of our committee meeting. We have not dealt with the PMPRB.
Is it the wish of the committee to continue a little bit longer? No?
My personal concern right now is what to do with the meeting next Monday. Since there seems to be no interest in carrying on a discussion at this point, we'll work something out off-line and we'll propose it by email to all the members. Hopefully we can get a meeting either on the PMPRB on Monday or on the House motion.
Thank you all.
Oh, we have Mr. Thériault. Mr. Thériault, go ahead.
Bloc
Luc Thériault Bloc Montcalm, QC
Mr. Chair, you have touched on the point I wanted to raise. It would be a little illogical if we could not deal with the PMPRB on Monday, given that people have worked on it and done their homework. We have to do our homework on this problem.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you.
Hearing that, I think it's going to be difficult to get witnesses sorted out for the PMPRB, apart from officials. Perhaps on Monday we'll do a meeting on PMPRB with officials—
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.
It is Monday today. That is a full week. I can guarantee you that the stakeholders who are watching this can appear by next Monday. I cannot accept your saying that you can't schedule meetings in a week, virtually. That's crazy.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
I'm happy to go forward from this point and discuss PMPRB, which is what this meeting was called for. People need to put forward their witnesses, and we need to decide as a committee who those witnesses are. If we want to go forward right now, let's do it.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.
We did submit witnesses, so now your job is to schedule the meeting from that list of witnesses.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, Ms. Rempel Garner.
Someone needs to be muted here but is not muted.
Liberal
Marcus Powlowski Liberal Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON
Mr. Chair, I think it's an interpreter who is coming through in French.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Fair enough. They can speak whenever they like.
Mr. Davies, I think you had a point.
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
I think you made a good suggestion. We begin every study by hearing from the officials. It is particularly important we do that in this case because, quite frankly, I don't think there is anybody on this committee who understands all the changes to the PMPRB.
There is an immense amount of confusion in the general public on what the proposed PMPRB regulatory changes do or don't do, but we're all going to benefit from having a thorough understanding from the experts at the PMPRB of exactly what the changes are before we hear from witnesses.
I have to respectfully disagree with Ms. Rempel Garner. We have not submitted our witnesses. All we had was a deadline for stakeholders to submit their briefs and their desire to appear. The parties have not been invited to submit our witnesses yet, nor have we determined what the allocation of witnesses would be.
The best way forward is to schedule next Monday. Ms. Rempel Garner is correct that we should be moving forward. Why don't we have that meeting next Monday on the PMPRB? We'll hear from the ministry officials to give all of us a chance to grill those officials and have a thorough two-hour understanding of those changes, which is so important for us to have going forward.
We also need to set a deadline for submitting witnesses. Perhaps we can submit witnesses by the end of this week, by Friday, and then the analysts can proceed after that.
I'm not going to open up this debate again, but I will also say to Mr. Thériault that there is nothing in that motion that says the PMPRB study must be completed by any particular time. It's not correct to say that. It said that it has to happen concurrently, and although there are some people who would like to have the PMPRB study done by the Christmas holidays, others do not, and those changes are coming into place in January. Maybe they'll be postponed. They have been postponed twice already, but I'm not undergoing a study on PMPRB to stop them, which I think is the agenda of some people, particularly big pharma in this country. They want to stop the PMPRB changes that are set to come into force on January 1.
That's not this committee's mandate. The committee's mandate is not to do the bidding of big pharma. It is to study the issues, and if we end up studying this issue into February or March and issuing a report to the government, the government can take that report into consideration in March or April and make regulatory changes after that if it sees fit, but I am not marching to the tune of big pharma to do their bidding.
We can get this study under way, which is what our motion called for. We can start the study and examine it concurrently, which means at the same time. We can even have that debate next week as well. I just throw that out now. It's still open to the committee to determine how many meetings we allocate of the remaining six meetings, but let's at least get a start on this, as Mr. Thériault has rightly said. We'll get this started next Monday and hear from the ministry officials.
Liberal
Mike Kelloway Liberal Cape Breton—Canso, NS
Mr. Chair, as a point of quick clarification so that I'm clear, we are suggesting that on next Monday, the first hour is the law clerk and the second hour is the PMPRB—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
The law clerk will be added to the first witness panel on the House motion.
What we're talking about now is what specifically to do for Monday. What I'm proposing, and Mr. Davies is apparently supporting, is that we take that opportunity to hear from officials on the PMPRB.
Bloc
Luc Thériault Bloc Montcalm, QC
Mr. Chair, I am not impressed by the pharmaceutical companies. I work for patients who want access to their medications and to new medications. That is really important to me. I want us to find points of convergence in this topic.
The government has said that it could provide a technical briefing. It seems to me that questions should be handled in a technical briefing, but not by taking time away from all those who have submitted briefs, who have asked to appear, who want to meet with us and who have not had the opportunity to be heard.
I do not want us taking time to ask technical questions about the PMPRB. That can be done in a technical briefing. I propose that we ask the technical questions to the officials who are looking after this reform in a technical briefing. I propose that we start hearing from witnesses right away and that we send in our list of witnesses.
In the first session, we can hear from eight witnesses. If each party were to propose two witnesses, we could organize a session right now! We have the list of people who have asked to appear as well as the briefs they have submitted. We could do all that. I propose that we have a technical briefing and that we hear from the groups and the witnesses, starting on Monday.
Liberal
Liberal
Marcus Powlowski Liberal Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON
On that point—the technical briefing—I hadn't heard of this. If we are going to have it, when would that be? I certainly think that it would be mandatory for all of us to take part in it if we want to understand the subject, because I know this matter is very complex, as Mr. Davies said. There's a PMPRB, but there's a sub-board or something. How do they make their decisions about what to finance?
It is all very technical. It took me an hour talking with pharmaceutical representatives to start to understand how it works, and I've done medicine for 35 years. I would be happy to have that technical briefing outside these hours, but when are we going to have it so it can be arranged?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
That is the point of having officials come in at a first meeting.
Go ahead, Ms. Rempel Garner, please.
Conservative
Michelle Rempel Conservative Calgary Nose Hill, AB
Chair, it was my understanding, in correspondence with the clerk and from the text of the motion, that we were supposed to have witnesses in last week, because I think there was a deadline for the briefs. That was the intent of the original motion as we all understood it: It was that the briefs would come in and be distributed by the clerk, and we would read them. We did have correspondence with the clerk, and the clerk had told my staff to have these witnesses in.
Whatever, Chair, I'm frustrated that we don't have a schedule for meetings yet. We've done a lot of work. My team is doing work behind the scenes. What I would suggest....
It's not for me to tell you how to do your job, but we can't keep sitting in these meetings with stakeholders watching us while we don't have a clear path forward. Please don't take no for an answer from the clerk that we can't schedule this meeting. I would suggest that you schedule a subcommittee meeting this week and we hammer all this out, or schedule another meeting with everybody on board so that we have a very clear path forward.
What I don't want to see is a notice of meeting coming out later this week for another meeting to discuss more meetings on Monday. We need to start both of these studies. We have submitted witnesses. We have read the briefs. We have very clear direction from the House. We passed Mr. Davies' motion. Let's get started. On Monday, we have to get going on at least one study.