Health Committee on Nov. 23rd, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

We have an amendment by Ms. Sidhu on the floor, which is to specify that under the regime proposed by Mr. Davies, there will be four meetings on mental health.

Is there any discussion on Ms. Sidhu's amendment?

At the top of my list here I have Mr. Fisher.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

I was on the list again to talk to Mr. Davies' original motion, but I actually think that makes sense. This is a topic that is massive, this pandemic within the pandemic. I'm happy to support four meetings if that is something Mr. Davies feels like adding to his motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

It's actually not up to Mr. Davies right now. It's an amendment by Ms. Sidhu, so we support it or we don't.

Dr. Powlowski, please go ahead.

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

I have to say I'm somewhat agnostic about the procedure in terms of which meetings we have first. I certainly understand what Mr. Thériault is saying about the PMPRB and the—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I'm sorry, but we're running short on time. Can I get you to speak on Ms. Sidhu's amendment and whether it's four meetings or—

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

With all due respect, Mr. Chair, I am speaking on this as to whether we do four on mental health now or whether we do one with vaccines.

I generally agree with Mr. Barlow on the idea that vaccines are the number one issue that we're facing as a country right now. It will drastically change our lives when a large number of people are vaccinated, but we haven't gotten there yet. How are we going to get there? There are very important policy decisions to make on that subject.

I've listened to everyone else talk at length about various things, so I'm going to talk a little bit.

I don't really mind too much in terms of which order we do things. I think the problem here is that we're trying to do two really important things at once. There are several really important topics that we have to deal with. Certainly mental health is one of them. Vaccines are another one, and the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board. They're all important topics.

I don't really have any specific preference on which we do first, other than to say the problem seems to be that we just don't have enough meetings to cover everything.

That's all I want to say.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Dr. Powlowski.

Mr. Van Bynen, go ahead.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

I wanted to clarify that four meetings are important. Last week the list of the top four topics for study for each party was submitted, and it's no surprise to anyone here that the impacts of COVID-19 on the mental health of Canadians is at the top of our list.

I want to thank my colleagues for their support in prioritizing this important topic. Today I'm seeking the support of my colleagues to have no less than four meetings on mental health. In the motion I introduced earlier this fall asking for a mental health study, I outlined a number of key areas for the committee to focus on, and having four meetings on mental health will allow us to cover these topics without rushing through them or missing any of them.

I know it's been a while since we've had a chance to read the motion, so I'd like to briefly refresh our memories.

The first area was understand the impacts, including the gendered impacts of COVID-19 on mental health and the well-being of Canadians.

The second was to analyze the impacts on indigenous peoples, racialized Canadians and vulnerable populations in an effort to identify and address the support gaps.

The third was to study the availability of mental health promotion programs and supports for those experiencing new pandemic stress-related issues, the anxiety that those issues produce and how we're going to be able to respond.

Next was to study the effectiveness and availability of virtual mental health services, and also to analyze how the Government of Canada can assist the provinces and the territories in alleviating potential new demands on their health care systems that would result in an increase in depression, psychological distress and substance abuse, as well as PTSD and domestic violence.

Mr. Chair, I believe it was—and I can't speak for Mr. Davies—the intention to attribute the three meetings to the current year, and it was my understanding that the fourth meeting would be next year.

I do want to emphasize how important it is, given what we're trying to cover, to have four meetings allocated to the mental health study.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Van Bynen.

Mr. d'Entremont, go ahead.

[Chris d'Entremont, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Quite honestly, I understand the importance of the mental health review and that we have to spend time on it, but Mr. Barlow lined up the importance of the vaccines that are coming. Every day there seems to be a new vaccine brought forward. Today a different kind of vaccine may become available from Oxford University. There's a lot of information that we need to understand on that side of things.

We're not saying that we don't do four meetings on mental health, but maybe we could do a couple now, do one on the vaccines, and then come back and finish the other two, dispersing PMPRB in there as well.

I know we're trying to do an awful lot at the same time, but that's the complicated landscape we find ourselves in today. I hope we can do the first two on mental health, then head off into a meeting on vaccines, maybe one on PMPRB, and then in January we could come back and pick up the mental health side of things again.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. d'Entremont.

Mr. Thériault, go ahead.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Mr. Chair, this is getting a bit complicated.

First, according to Mr. Davies' motion, we would have three meetings for one study and one meeting for the other study by the holidays.

Second, Ms. Sidhu proposed four meetings on our priorities. The Liberals' priority is mental health. The themes we were to submit had to be related to mental health. The motion passed by the House could include other topics that have actually been rejected by the Liberals. They could have proposed mental health, since they just did that.

My understanding of Ms. Sidhu's motion is that the Liberal Party wants to set aside four meetings for mental health. That won't be done by Christmas. That will be done as part of the study and motion passed by the House on COVID-19.

It is pointless to move a subamendment to Mr. Davies' amendment, as his amendment strictly concerns organizing our work until Christmas. Why does this subamendment need to be moved when what is proposed by Mr. Davies does not currently go beyond Christmas?

I am struggling to understand why we are receiving this subamendment when Mr. Davies' amendment concerns the organization of the work we will do until Christmas. Does that mean Ms. Sidhu absolutely wants four meetings on mental health by Christmas? That is what the subamendment means if you accept it, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Sidhu did not specify why she moved her subamendment. I would like our true intent to be clarified.

Mr. Davies' amendment concerns the organization of work from now until Christmas. He talked about three meetings for one study and another meeting for the other study. Earlier, he said two meetings to look good because we are in fact having a meeting on the PMPRB today. If we count them, we have had a number of meetings on COVID-19 and half a meeting on the PMPRB. We have not had a two-hour meeting today. I would not take today's meeting into account.

Mr. Chair, can you clarify what we are talking about?

Why have you accepted Ms. Sidhu's motion, which concerns the work after the period mentioned in Mr. Davies' motion?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Thériault.

The motion is in order. Although she said in her remarks that she intended three meetings before Christmas and then one after, she basically wants it understood that there will be four meetings in total on mental health within that study.

Mr. Davies, go ahead.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

I would like to thank Mr. Barlow and Mr. Kelloway for their thoughtful questions. I think Mr. Thériault is correct that there's a little bit of complexity here, but I think it can all come together.

The reason Ms. Sidhu's motion makes sense is that my motion is simply trying to deal with the remaining meetings we have before Christmas—and, by the way, what else is there to deal with? I think I can say without offending anybody that we've wasted a lot of time in the last couple of months. What I'm trying to do is get an orderly system of business so that we can get down to hearing witnesses both on the PMPRB study and on COVID. That requires us to determine what our remaining four meetings in the next two weeks are going to be.

The reason that Ms. Sidhu's motion is entirely in order is that if you go back to the motion we passed setting up the COVID study, we said that once we determine the order of issues, then it would be Liberal, Conservative, Bloc and NDP, in that order. We left it open to the committee to vote by majority as to how many meetings would be allocated to each topic.

Now we know that the Liberals want to proceed with mental health. That's established. We know we have three meetings on COVID before Christmas, according to my motion, if it passes. The question before this committee is how we are going to use those three meetings. The Liberals have said mental health, so now we have to determine whether we will have one, two or three meetings on mental health.

It's entirely in order and it is entirely sensible, because if the Liberals said they want to study mental health but we only want one meeting on it, then we would schedule that for the second meeting next week, and then we would have two more meetings on COVID, at which time we would proceed to the Conservatives' topic. Then we would take their first priority and have a discussion about how many meetings the Conservatives would like on that topic, ranging from one to four. Of course, we can have more by, I think I said, unanimous consent. The range of one to four meetings was to ensure that every party would get at least one meeting devoted to their topic, but no more than four.

I hope that we can proceed to the vote on this motion now, because otherwise, if we don't pass this today, despite everybody's pronouncements about how important these issues are to them, we're not going to be able to move ahead with any of them with the remaining four meetings we have—not PMPRB, not COVID. I would like to move forward on both of them.

I'm agnostic on the number of meetings. I do think all of us agree on mental health being an important issue. The issue of vaccines was the NDP's number one topic. I don't know if we've distributed the topic choices, but my number one pick on the COVID study was vaccines, so I empathize with Mr. d'Entremont's comments on that.

The reality is that we're not going to be able to get to everything or do justice to the subjects. Let's honour the motion we passed. We said we would go in order. The Liberals have identified their issue. We just have to determine how many meetings we want allocated to mental health. They want four. That's fine with me. When we come back after the holiday season, we will finish off that fourth meeting and then we will proceed to the Conservatives' next choice. Hopefully, before we break for the holidays, we'll determine how many meetings are appropriate for the Conservatives' next choice as well. That gives the analysts January to schedule those witnesses and for us to get our witness lists in.

Please, let's get down to business and start getting witnesses before this committee and do the work we're supposed to be doing here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Davies.

We go to Mr. Thériault now.

Go ahead, Mr. Thériault.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Mr. Chair, I thought it was clear, but the further it went, the less clear it became.

I am acting in good faith, but you said earlier that Ms. Sidhu mentioned she wanted to split the four meetings as follows: three for one study and one for the other. In the blues, the Liberal Party said they wanted four meetings on mental health as part of the COVID-19 study by the holidays. We are here talking about the part concerning getting the study done by the holidays. Mr. Davies' motion concerns the breakdown of meetings and the organization of work until Christmas. He said earlier in his presentation that he wanted three meetings to be set aside for COVID-19 and one for the PMPRB. Once again, that's from the blues. How can that be compatible? So Mr. Davies thinks that the first three meetings could all focus on mental health. If the answer is yes, there is some consistency. If it is not, I don't understand Ms. Sidhu's amendment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Monsieur Thériault. Ms. Sidhu's motion is that in general we want four meetings on mental health. That fits into Mr. Davies' motion, which means that three of those meetings on mental health would happen before Christmas and one would happen after. That is perfectly consistent with Mr. Davies' motion, but it is important to clarify how many meetings we have on a particular subject so that we know how to allocate witnesses.

We have now Monsieur d'Entremont.

[Chris d'Entremont, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Thanks a lot.

I'm still trying to—

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Hold on now.

Mr. Chair, you just explained it to me, but I want to understand. This means that, if we were to vote for Ms. Sidhu's subamendment, the three meetings on COVID-19 would focus on mental health. Is that correct?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

That is correct.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Mr. Chair, I would like the clerk to reread Mr. Davies' amendment, please.

[The Clerk]

That would be hard, because I don't have it in writing. I made some quick notes, but I don't have the exact wording. Perhaps Mr. Davies could reread it.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I'm sorry; I delivered it verbally. I don't have it written down. It's in the record. Is there a particular question about it?

I'll go over the basics on it again. Starting next week, we have four remaining meetings. The first three are devoted to the COVID study. The fourth meeting is on PMPRB. The parties will have until the end of Wednesday of this week to get their witnesses in on the COVID study. Of course, that presumes that we choose what the topic is, which will be mental health. We have until Friday of this week to get our witnesses in on the PMPRB meeting, which will be held two weeks from Friday, and there will be an equal number of witnesses, one from each party. I talked about having a conflict of interest declaration and screen by the analysts being required by all witnesses on the PMPRB study.

I think that was the nub of it. I'll defer to my motion that I moved if there is anything missing, but those are basically the elements of it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Davies.

We'll go back to Monsieur D'Entremont, s'il vous plaît.

[Chris d'Entremont, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Thanks a lot.

Again, I don't want to discount the issue of mental health. We all have the phone calls in our riding offices. We're all talking to people who are having a tough go of the lockdowns that continue to happen in our respective provinces. Today, of course, the bubble has been burst; Newfoundland and P.E.I. have left the Atlantic bubble or the maritime bubble. It will be causing a whole bunch of other problems.

I think what people really need to understand is the issue of vaccines and how vaccines will be becoming available to us. Under this current run, we're going to be bumping the issue of vaccines until February, at this point, by any look of it, because we're going to be taking that break over Christmas. We don't come back until the second or third week of January. Vaccines, as Mr. Davies alluded to or said, are their number one concern as well.

I'm just wondering if there is a way to break it up so that we can at least get one kick at the can before February rolls around and we haven't had any look at this issue at all. I mean, everything has been changing. Things could go backwards—