Health Committee on March 9th, 2023

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

I support the chair, Mr. Chair.

(Ruling of the chair sustained)

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

The ruling of the chair has been sustained, so the motion has not yet been adopted.

Mr. Thériault, you have the floor.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Mr. Chair, there's an imbroglio at the PMPRB that involves the minister. Two letters of resignation have been received. I think we need to stick to that. At the first meeting, we will hear the testimony from these people. If, in light of their testimony, we feel that we should have other witnesses appear, we can do that afterwards. It's still possible, as the notice of motion states: “in addition to any further witnesses the committee may consider relevant”.

However, I repeat that Mr. Clark was not at the PMPRB at the time of the events. If we consider it relevant to have additional clarification, and perhaps even receive other witnesses, we can do so afterwards. However, for the time being, I would simply like to briefly review the history of the two people who resigned and the minister's intervention. That's why I feel it would be most appropriate to proceed in this manner. It would allow for a second meeting if we needed one to reach our conclusions.

That's why I am proposing this amendment. I had already spoken about it with Mr. Davies. He may oppose it, but my intent to present it was very clear, and I thought it was already in the amendment. I had not understood that this was not the case.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Okay.

Just to be clear, Mr. Thériault, you wish to remove Mr. Clark's name from the list. Is that correct?

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Yes, to begin with.

Mr. Clark was not there at the time of the events, even though he was still working at the PMPRB. When you want to have somebody intervene who was not there at the time of the events, it's because you want to get to the bottom of things. My view is that the issue now before us is why people resigned and what the minister's involvement with these resignations was.

There are also two contradictory letters of resignation. We therefore need to work with the main players, and only afterwards, for further clarification, invite other people to appear.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

I see Mr. Davies and then Dr. Ellis.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I suppose the easiest way to deal with this, with the greatest respect to my colleague, is that the one and only and paramount reason he's giving for not hearing from Mr. Clark is factually incorrect. Mr. Clark was there the whole time. He's still there, as a matter of fact.

Mr. Clark has given notice of resignation. He was with the PMPRB throughout the entire process. He is there today, were you to phone over. His resignation is effective in June. I may have what he's doing today wrong, but he was, throughout the entire exchange of documents and letters, the executive director of the PMPRB.

Second, the reason he's an essential witness is that as the executive director of the PMPRB, there is no one who is better placed than he to answer questions that may come from this committee about what was happening at the PMPRB. He's appeared before this committee before. He's encyclopaedic in his knowledge. He's extraordinarily fair. He has no axe to grind, and he would be a resource.

This committee, when we schedule witnesses, just about always schedules four witnesses. It's my motion that I put forward, and these are the four witnesses I want.

This committee is always better served by hearing more evidence than not enough. If my colleague Mr. Thériault doesn't want to direct any questions toward Mr. Clark, he doesn't have to. He can focus his questions on whomever he chooses, of course, but Mr. Herder and Ms. Forcier will be there.

Mr. Clark is an indispensable source of knowledge about what's going on at the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board, and I think he would be an indispensable witness for all members here to question.

The last thing I'll say is that you have some contrary opinions about what happened. To have someone who was the executive director of the board and responsible for the daily operations be there to answer questions and to have a person who is not intimately involved in the exchange of positions perhaps help us resolve this is, in my view, indispensable.

I would defeat this amendment and invite the four witnesses.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Go ahead, Dr. Ellis.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thank you very much, Chair.

From a purely planning perspective, regardless of the “he said, she said” argument, I think it's important to this committee. We have a lot of work before us. I think that planning ahead and saying, “Let's have these specific witnesses” may allow us to not go into a second meeting with respect to this issue.

I think it's very important to be very cognizant of the time restraints we have. If we plan appropriately, then there's a good chance we may be able to move more legislation through the committee, which I think is, in essence, an important consideration as well.

I thank you for that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you.

Go ahead, Monsieur Thériault.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

We already heard from Mr. Clark in the study on the reform of medicine prices. He was among those who were saying that groups of patients were being bribed by the pharmaceutical industry. I believe that his opinions are well founded.

A careful reading of the two letters of resignation indicates that for at least one of those who resigned, there was an issue of internal resistance. I can't see why at the outset we would invite someone who resigned from their job. Whether or not that person was at the organization is one thing, but the person at issue is just someone who has resigned, and whose positions we are aware of, and if we need further testimony, we can hear it afterwards.

What I would like to know is why Mr. Herder and Ms. Forcier resigned and what the minister had to do with these two resignations. I don't need any clarification from a fourth person who did not produce any documents that would justify this study.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Go ahead, Dr. Powlowski.

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

For some of us, this isn't our first time through the issue of the changes to the PMPRB. It is an exceedingly difficult topic for anyone to understand. I think that the last time around, Mr. Clark was very good at explaining some of the concepts to people who weren't familiar with this difficult and hard-to-understand area of regulation. I think he would definitely be a good witness to have before us, given his familiarity with this exceedingly complex subject.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Mr. Davies, you have the floor.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I just want to mention a few things.

Mr. Clark also resigned, so we have three resignations from the PMPRB. It's immaterial whether he disclosed the letter in public or not.

There have been three high-profile resignations from the PMPRB, and the letters that have been sent out show that there are some issues we need to look at. I think trying to find out why the executive director of the PMPRB resigned in this context is relevant.

Second, we are not here to determine the merits of the substance of the PMPRB reforms. That's what Mr. Clark came to testify on before. That's not what we're looking into in this matter here; we're looking into the matters of the functioning of the board and potential issues of propriety.

My final point is this: The reason we almost have to have him is that he is referenced in Madam Bourassa Forcier's resignation letter twice.

I'm sorry; I just lost the quotes, but she makes specific reference to Mr. Douglas Clark, so it would be fundamentally unfair to hear from Mélanie Bourassa Forcier as she puts into evidence comments on Mr. Clark without Mr. Clark being here to hear that and respond.

I'll read you excerpts from her letter: “Following these two letters, I asked the executive director, who recently resigned from this position, if we had taken the time to meet with these stakeholders to understand their concerns in relation to the proposed guidelines, concerns that had not been brought to my attention as interim president. I therefore believed wrongly that our proposed guidelines posed no real problem. I then understood from the response of the executive director that he had met representatives of certain pharmaceutical companies and that he had never had any discussions with Health Canada in relation to the proposed guidelines.”

The very subject matter before us, which is going to be how the decision came to be—and it had to do with whether pharmaceutical industry pressure did or did not play a role—involves the executive director, who is intimately involved in the discussions with the board members, and Madam Bourassa Forcier herself refers to these in her resignation letter. Not only is he an appropriate witness; he's an essential witness.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Is there any further discussion on the amendment?

Mr. Jowhari, go ahead.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

I have just a short comment.

Typically we discuss about a motion and then we ask each side to submit their witnesses. We don't sit here and argue about who's going to submit what witnesses and why or why not.

Let us simply consider the motion as put forward. We are in agreement about the amendment. Now we are asked to go back and submit our witnesses by the end of the day on Friday. The list of witnesses is in front of us, and everybody is agreeing—except for one of our colleagues—about whether Mr. Clark is relevant or not.

Our member from the NDP says he's relevant and he's going to submit his name on the witness list, so he's going to be on the list of witnesses to be called. It's as simple as that.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Is there any further discussion on the amendment?

All those in favour of the amendment to remove Mr. Clark as a witness, please raise your hand.

(Amendment negatived [See Minutes of Proceedings]).

We will go back to the main motion as amended by Mr. van Koeverden's amendment only. On the main motion, is there any further discussion?

I see that it is passed unanimously.

(Motion as amended agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])

That brings us to Bill S-203.

On remarkably short notice, we have an expert here as legislative counsel if there are any technical questions.

Go ahead, Mr. Thériault.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

There was no agreement among the leaders on the fact that we could discuss Bill S‑203. We thought that there had been one, but I just learned that this was not so.

Unanimous consent would be required for us to discuss it today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Mr. Thériault, I was advised that I could add items to the committee's agenda. As you know, discussions were held, at the conclusion of which it was decided to add an item concerning the bill.

Unanimous consent is not required. We are now going to address this subject.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Mr. Chair, we spent some time organizing our work at our last in camera meeting. We only received your notice to the effect that Bill S‑203 would be on the agenda at 10 a.m. Do you think it's acceptable, at only an hour's notice, to add an agenda item to study a bill for 15 minutes when a political party is trying to introduce some amendments? Do you believe that's acceptable?

You assumed, on the basis of information from I don't know who—surely not an official representative—that there had been an agreement between the parties, which is not the case. What I am challenging is not the outcome of the agreement, but the fact of introducing a clause-by-clause item on the agenda of the committee meeting at only one hour's notice. I've never seen that.

It has nothing to do with obstruction. I know that Mr. Lake is keen on this bill. I think that if we were to begin this study on Tuesday, when we return from the break, there would be enough time for him to achieve his goal, which is to have his bill adopted prior to World Autism Awareness Day.

However, I disagree with the fact that we should have taken time to organize our work, only to find that on only an hour's notice, after having been contacted unofficially, you should ask us to begin a clause-by-clause study. That's not in keeping with the usual practices.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Mr. Thériault, you're absolutely correct. I'm not at all comfortable with the current situation, which stems from discussions hinting at the fact that there had been an agreement. However, we need to continue the debate.

Mr. Lake, you have the floor.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, AB]

Listen, it's important to me that we move this forward in collaboration with one another.

We thought that there was an agreement. It's clear that there wasn't an agreement. I think it's probably more important to wait and have some sense of collaboration and consensus on this than to ram it through five minutes after the meeting's end time, so I am good if we wait until our next meeting to deal with it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you so much, Mr. Lake.

I think we're now ready for a motion for adjournment.

Are you moving the motion, Ms. Goodridge, or do you want to speak?

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

I'm going to move the motion that we adjourn the meeting.