Health Committee on April 20th, 2023

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I'm really glad you asked this question because it's a section of the bill that I struggled with. I don't think I landed it perfectly, and I would welcome help in getting it to a better place.

When you look at paragraphs 4(2)(c) and (d), for example, there's an acknowledgement that we need sustained collaboration between the Minister of Health, provincial governments and indigenous communities in the development of the plan in order to align approaches and address any jurisdictional challenges, and, boy, did we live through many jurisdictional challenges in the course of our own pandemic response.

Paragraph 4(2)(d) is a section I think you guys could improve because it says “provide for training programs, including collaborative activities with other levels of government, Indigenous communities and relevant agencies”. I didn't really mean training programs as it were.

David Naylor and others emphasized the need for tabletop and simulation exercises. It's the idea that you would work collaboratively as a federal government alongside provincial governments and municipal governments and would have simulation exercises to test the plan you have and improve the plan accordingly. That really isn't about training. You could talk about training, but what I really wanted to drive at is simulation exercises with other levels of government. That could be a section you could improve upon and would speak directly to that concern, Sonia.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Thank you.

I have a follow-up question. The health committee did a study on health human resources. We all know there's a shortage of nurses and doctors.

Did your bill also look into the human health resources?

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Yes. Don mentioned that paragraph 4(2)(i) speaks to the working conditions of essential workers across all sectors. That would include, obviously, PSWs, and that would include nurses.

Paragraph (h), though, is probably where it speaks to it most directly: “support local public health and primary care capacity building”. I know there are some jurisdictional challenges here. Primary care is ultimately delivered by provinces. Having said that, we just entered into bilateral health accords where we, as a federal government, are delivering dollars and emphasizing the need to use those dollars for primary care.

I think there is an opportunity here not to take on provincial jurisdiction—primary care is provincial jurisdiction—but to emphasize in the course of any plan, “Here is the work the federal government is doing,” including through PHAC, as an example. If you read the name of the report in the wake of SARS, they emphasized the need for PHAC to deliver funding directly to public health agencies in some ways.

There are ways of thinking about unique funding opportunities. There are ways of ensuring that strings are attached in some ways, but at all times I think we, as a federal government and all levels of government, need to work together to ensure, as you say, that we're addressing the health human resources challenge, and we're ensuring that there's capacity for contact tracing and capacity for all of the activities for responding to a pandemic, especially the health care response in relation to local public health and primary care.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Do you have anything else to say about your bill?

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Please bring experts in. Please improve the language where you can. Then let's make sure we pass this and kick it over to the Senate. Let's get this done.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Ms. Sidhu.

Thank you, Mr. Erskine-Smith.

That concludes the questions for today.

It certainly has come as no surprise to me and probably to anyone else who knows you, Mr. Erskine-Smith, that you have been incredibly thorough and insightful in your presentation today. Congratulations on getting it to this stage. You have now handed it over to us and given us a fair degree of latitude as to where it goes from here. Thank you for that. Good luck with the challenges you have in front of you now. Once again, we really appreciate your work on this and the very informative and thoughtful way that you presented before the committee today.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thanks, Sean.

I trust in all of you to work together to improve it and get it done. I really do. I have full confidence in all of you to work together on it.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you.

Colleagues, we're now going to move in camera, so we're going to suspend for five minutes to allow for that to happen.

The meeting is suspended.

[Proceedings continue in camera]